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philosoraptor42This is the second post counting down to Tobe Hooper's best movies. To see what I viewed as the very worst of Tobe Hooper's career, look here.
13. The Mangler (1995)
Okay, so this film is utterly stupid from beginning to end. Still, I didn't feel like it was taking itself quite so ridiculously seriously like Tobe Hooper's other film "Spontaneous Combustion". Which is fortunate, because "demonic laundry press" is an exceptionally silly premise...
Robert Englund plays a ridiculously cartoonish figure. The Scrooge-like owner of the laundrette who whacks his stick in frustration as a woman is mangled by the laundry press of doom. (From the imagination of Stephen King!)
Initially this seems like the thinnest kind of allegory you could possibly imagine. The oppression of the working class is portrayed by an oppressed and overworked set of workers in a laundry. The cruelty of the upper class employers is portrayed by a cruel suit-wearing employers who discompassionately drives for employees to work faster even in spite of regular accidents. The power of the rich to get away with exploitation is represented by a police officer who finds himself unable to do anything to prevent the continued suffering of these workers in their clearly unsafe working environment. It's not a subtle message whatsoever.
However, where things get a little more interesting later on is when we realise that an intended future victim of the machine is actually from an upper class family. There's also some indication that the rich and cruel factory worker suffered an accident with the infernal machine himself. This aspect of the story basically makes the plot completely irrelevant to real life, but it does make it rather less predictable and generic than it initially appeared.
Waving body parts near the machine ready to get chewed up happens a lot here.
That's what happens when you have an entirely immobile villain.
The two most major characters are a troubled police officer and his new-agey friend. While they seem far too generic to start with, trying their best with a horrible script. They get to be much more entertaining towards the end when the film starts to liven up. At a climactic moment in the film where the new agey guy turns to the police detective and says "I think we're f--ked" I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Those two are seriously putting their all into their performances and I'm glad they had a genuinely fun moment towards the end of the film to make up for the dreck that was required to get us there.
Sadly I could find no images of his new-age comedy sidekick
Sadly Robert Englund is appalling in this film. I loved his performance as Freddy Kreuger as much as the next horror fan, but here he is just ridiculous. Perhaps not quite as bad as his performance as the Marquis DeSade in Hooper's "Night Terrors", but pretty close.
The depiction of the eponymous Mangler itself is actually done really well and the effects work on that is highly effective. The central monster is as fun as it's intended to be. Unfortunately the dialogue in this film is utterly dire and there are plenty of parts of the film where it seriously drags. If the first half of the film didn't take so long perhaps I'd have been able to take this film in my stride, but sadly the attempt to slowly build up atmosphere ends up instead just making this a really dull experience. Tobe Hooper genuinely expects us to take this film seriously and I'm afraid it just ain't happening.
Oh, and there's a cursed fridge too! With some recycled effects from "Lifeforce"!
This is not the worst horror film ever made. It's also not the worst film Tobe Hooper has ever made. However, it's not a good film and in spite of a few fun moments here and there this is a very slow and stupid film. I wouldn't wish this film on anyone, but you could do worse.
D-
Bizarrely this somehow managed to get a sequel starring Lance Henrikson...
And then another sequel! ("The Mangler Reborn" eh? Compelling title. With little enough showing of the protagonist's face so that people might mistake him for Paul Giamatti....)
12. Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
From this point on the film follows the progress of the baby, but it shoots forward to him as a college-age boy played by Brad Dourif (who looks too old for the role). This important character is generally treated as a bit of a loser; so far so generic.
11. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) - D-
(Full review already posted here.)
Sequels often cannot live up to the promise of the original, not least because the last thing audiences really want to see is a pale imitation of the original. There's some indication that, before studio bods decided they weren't happy, Hooper was in the process of making a horror comedy here. That being said, Tobe Hooper apparently felt the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre was hilarious, so his sense of humour is a little twisted to say the least. There are admittedly some great moments in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but they don't make up for the problems with the film as a whole. The scene where the female lead decides to use sex appeal to get Leatherface on her side felt particularly misjudged.
10. Lifeforce (1985) - D+
(Full review already posted here)
One scene in this movie pretty much sums this up. The protagonist has been revealed as the last survivor of an attack by space vampires. He now appears to have some psychic connection with the main vampire, who seems to be roaming the countryside in the form of a naked woman, but also appears to be hypnotically as well as sexually attracted to the vampire (as appear to be most men, and some women, who come into contact with her).
So with all this in mind, the protagonist's visions lead them to a psychiatric ward. Once there, the protagonist starts slapping a woman they've decided to question. He asserts that no one should be concerned about him physically assaulting her because "she's a masochist, she wants me to do this to her" (and heck, he's psychic donchaknow?). The detective from Scotland Yard turns out to be quite happy with this explanation, sitting straight down on the sofa, crossing his legs and asserting just as confidently and seeming just as bizarrely calm: "I myself am a voyeur".
This film is apparently written by the same guy who wrote "Alien" which seemed to have sexual ideas in its subtext. Here however there is no such subtlety, with characters openly announcing their sexual proclivities to each other in a rather bizarre way, yet showing complete ignorance of how a masochist/sadist relationship would actually work.
That being said, the idea of space vampires sucking out people's souls works pretty well and there's some great atmospheric moments. But overall this film is pretty damn trashy. It seems like the filmmakers thought they were being a great deal subtler and more intelligent with the subject matter than what actually comes across to the viewer in the final product.
9. Death Trap! (1977) - D+
(Full review already posted here.)
Very low budget and occasionally featuring the obnoxious central murderer ranting to himself. There's also a few points with gratuitous nudity which felt unnecessary. However, once the film finally gets going the situation becomes somewhat farcical (albeit in a kind of twisted way) so there's some enjoyment to be had from watching the characters get picked off one by one. For once, Hooper's odd sense of humour actually seemed to shine through properly. That being said, this is a very seedy movie that seems much more worthy of its position in the video nasty list than many others (not that any film truly deserved the kind of vindictive and nannying moralism that sparked the creation of the video nasty DPP list).
8. Toolbox Murders (2004)
Tobe Hooper made a bunch of controversial flicks during the video nasty scandal, so perhaps it's not surprising, after a slew of less successful films, that he should choose to remake a video nasty from that era.
I was especially excited to see this film because stars none other than the wonderful Angela Bettis, who I've mainly seen in films directed by Lucky McKee (e.g. "The Woman" and "May"). She's an absolutely fantastic actress and she serves to elevate the material here.
The first half of this film really appealed to me, but as we came closer and closer to the climax of the film we also drew closer to a particularly disappointing climax. The end of "Toolbox Murders" was absolute rubbish and it was sad because the early scenes showed so much promise.
For much of the movie, the audience is fairly obviously misdirected as to who the villain is. However, I think a stylistic choice regarding the look of the villain stopped a particular character (who shows up during the climax randomly anyway) from being revealed as the main villain. With the actual villain being nothing more than a monster essentially, it was hard to get excited about anything at this late stage of the film. The villain was basically a characterless entity which had little connection to the characters we'd been following. Angela Bettis becomes a bit of a damsel in distress towards the end and though this trope is arguably subverted, it's still not a pretty unsatisfying way to take the story.
An appearance by Juliet Landau (Drusilla from Buffy The Vampire Slayer) was kind of nice to see, but her performance wasn't exactly amazing. Sometimes though, it can be nice to see a familiar face.
Angela Bettis' performance alone might be enough to make this worth watching. This film had a lot of potential and with a better ending it could have been a really solid entry in Hooper's filmography. As it is, this is just another disappointment.
D+
7. Crocodile (2000) - D+
(Full review already posted here)
A cheap low-budget attempt to cash-in on the success of Lake Placid with mostly poor actors, yet somehow I preferred this to "Lake Placid". Sure it's not a good movie, but it has a real sense of charm. Once the story gets moving, this gets extremely watchable, even if it IS utterly stupid and trashy.
13. The Mangler (1995)
Okay, so this film is utterly stupid from beginning to end. Still, I didn't feel like it was taking itself quite so ridiculously seriously like Tobe Hooper's other film "Spontaneous Combustion". Which is fortunate, because "demonic laundry press" is an exceptionally silly premise...
Robert Englund plays a ridiculously cartoonish figure. The Scrooge-like owner of the laundrette who whacks his stick in frustration as a woman is mangled by the laundry press of doom. (From the imagination of Stephen King!)
Initially this seems like the thinnest kind of allegory you could possibly imagine. The oppression of the working class is portrayed by an oppressed and overworked set of workers in a laundry. The cruelty of the upper class employers is portrayed by a cruel suit-wearing employers who discompassionately drives for employees to work faster even in spite of regular accidents. The power of the rich to get away with exploitation is represented by a police officer who finds himself unable to do anything to prevent the continued suffering of these workers in their clearly unsafe working environment. It's not a subtle message whatsoever.
However, where things get a little more interesting later on is when we realise that an intended future victim of the machine is actually from an upper class family. There's also some indication that the rich and cruel factory worker suffered an accident with the infernal machine himself. This aspect of the story basically makes the plot completely irrelevant to real life, but it does make it rather less predictable and generic than it initially appeared.
Waving body parts near the machine ready to get chewed up happens a lot here.
That's what happens when you have an entirely immobile villain.
The two most major characters are a troubled police officer and his new-agey friend. While they seem far too generic to start with, trying their best with a horrible script. They get to be much more entertaining towards the end when the film starts to liven up. At a climactic moment in the film where the new agey guy turns to the police detective and says "I think we're f--ked" I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Those two are seriously putting their all into their performances and I'm glad they had a genuinely fun moment towards the end of the film to make up for the dreck that was required to get us there.
Sadly I could find no images of his new-age comedy sidekick
Sadly Robert Englund is appalling in this film. I loved his performance as Freddy Kreuger as much as the next horror fan, but here he is just ridiculous. Perhaps not quite as bad as his performance as the Marquis DeSade in Hooper's "Night Terrors", but pretty close.
The depiction of the eponymous Mangler itself is actually done really well and the effects work on that is highly effective. The central monster is as fun as it's intended to be. Unfortunately the dialogue in this film is utterly dire and there are plenty of parts of the film where it seriously drags. If the first half of the film didn't take so long perhaps I'd have been able to take this film in my stride, but sadly the attempt to slowly build up atmosphere ends up instead just making this a really dull experience. Tobe Hooper genuinely expects us to take this film seriously and I'm afraid it just ain't happening.
Oh, and there's a cursed fridge too! With some recycled effects from "Lifeforce"!
This is not the worst horror film ever made. It's also not the worst film Tobe Hooper has ever made. However, it's not a good film and in spite of a few fun moments here and there this is a very slow and stupid film. I wouldn't wish this film on anyone, but you could do worse.
D-
Bizarrely this somehow managed to get a sequel starring Lance Henrikson...
And then another sequel! ("The Mangler Reborn" eh? Compelling title. With little enough showing of the protagonist's face so that people might mistake him for Paul Giamatti....)
12. Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
It has been said that Tobe Hooper considered even his original Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be a comedy. Certainly the ridiculousness of it was part of the charm. "Spontaneous Combustion" has to be Tobe Hooper's most ridiculous film yet, but it still seems to take itself a little too seriously overall.
"Spontaneous Combustion" opens with a couple strapped into chairs side by side. They are sitting in a bunker in the middle of a nuclear testing site about to be hit by a nuke. Apparently this has been set up intentionally as part of a test. The couple are testing a special injection intended to make recipients immune to radiation poisoning. The test also involves the couple remaining in the bunker in the period after the initial nuclear explosion. It turns out that during this time the lady of the couple has become pregnant. In the background of the celebrations after this seemingly successful test is a mysterious figure who is always seen only as a silhouette even when he is at the head of a conference table.
To finish the opening of the movie, both parents spontaneously combust, bursting into flames and rapidly burning to coal black soot-covered bodies. This early combustion scene is actually hilarious, not least because it comes out of nowhere. I was hoping this scene would set up a darkly comic tone for the rest of the film. Essentially the scene should be deeply sad, seeing as it involves a newborn child becoming an orphan, but the way it happens is just so utterly unrealistic and bizarre that it's hard to be too concerned about the characters involved.
From this point on the film follows the progress of the baby, but it shoots forward to him as a college-age boy played by Brad Dourif (who looks too old for the role). This important character is generally treated as a bit of a loser; so far so generic.
Inevitably Dourif's character finds that flames are shooting out of him. Running his flaming parts under a tap does no good at all. All the while the film takes this all very seriously and this serious tone is particularly inappropriate for the subject matter when Dourif is tranferring his flames over the phone. (No seriously, he's got flames coming out of him on one end of the phone and they are shooting out of the receiver on the other. What???)
The acting is alright, but the pacing is slow. Once you've gotten used to Dourif bursting into flames, you're likely to be extremely bored for the most part. The story doesn't really go anywhere and the whole thing would be a lot more entertaining if the central premise were played for laughs.
In spite of the mysterious constant-silouette guy who seems like such an obvious trope yet doesn't actually seem to be treated as a point of humour within the film, I don't think the problem here is Tobe Hooper's weird sense of humour. Even in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" Hooper seemed to know to make the events grow gradually more and more over-the-top and crazy as the film went on. In "Spontaneous Combustion" the events go over-the-top very quickly and there's not really any way to surprise the audience later on. The craziness peaked far too early and the rest of the film ended up feeling slow and pointless, particularly when it tried to get us interested in some kind of conspiracy narrative. Perhaps if this story ran a little faster it would be easier to enjoy the joke (and with a title like "Spontaneous Combustion" this is definitely a joke), but at this snail's pace it's hard to enjoy any of it.
D-
11. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) - D-
(Full review already posted here.)
Sequels often cannot live up to the promise of the original, not least because the last thing audiences really want to see is a pale imitation of the original. There's some indication that, before studio bods decided they weren't happy, Hooper was in the process of making a horror comedy here. That being said, Tobe Hooper apparently felt the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre was hilarious, so his sense of humour is a little twisted to say the least. There are admittedly some great moments in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but they don't make up for the problems with the film as a whole. The scene where the female lead decides to use sex appeal to get Leatherface on her side felt particularly misjudged.
10. Lifeforce (1985) - D+
(Full review already posted here)
One scene in this movie pretty much sums this up. The protagonist has been revealed as the last survivor of an attack by space vampires. He now appears to have some psychic connection with the main vampire, who seems to be roaming the countryside in the form of a naked woman, but also appears to be hypnotically as well as sexually attracted to the vampire (as appear to be most men, and some women, who come into contact with her).
So with all this in mind, the protagonist's visions lead them to a psychiatric ward. Once there, the protagonist starts slapping a woman they've decided to question. He asserts that no one should be concerned about him physically assaulting her because "she's a masochist, she wants me to do this to her" (and heck, he's psychic donchaknow?). The detective from Scotland Yard turns out to be quite happy with this explanation, sitting straight down on the sofa, crossing his legs and asserting just as confidently and seeming just as bizarrely calm: "I myself am a voyeur".
This film is apparently written by the same guy who wrote "Alien" which seemed to have sexual ideas in its subtext. Here however there is no such subtlety, with characters openly announcing their sexual proclivities to each other in a rather bizarre way, yet showing complete ignorance of how a masochist/sadist relationship would actually work.
That being said, the idea of space vampires sucking out people's souls works pretty well and there's some great atmospheric moments. But overall this film is pretty damn trashy. It seems like the filmmakers thought they were being a great deal subtler and more intelligent with the subject matter than what actually comes across to the viewer in the final product.
9. Death Trap! (1977) - D+
(Full review already posted here.)
Very low budget and occasionally featuring the obnoxious central murderer ranting to himself. There's also a few points with gratuitous nudity which felt unnecessary. However, once the film finally gets going the situation becomes somewhat farcical (albeit in a kind of twisted way) so there's some enjoyment to be had from watching the characters get picked off one by one. For once, Hooper's odd sense of humour actually seemed to shine through properly. That being said, this is a very seedy movie that seems much more worthy of its position in the video nasty list than many others (not that any film truly deserved the kind of vindictive and nannying moralism that sparked the creation of the video nasty DPP list).
8. Toolbox Murders (2004)
Tobe Hooper made a bunch of controversial flicks during the video nasty scandal, so perhaps it's not surprising, after a slew of less successful films, that he should choose to remake a video nasty from that era.
I was especially excited to see this film because stars none other than the wonderful Angela Bettis, who I've mainly seen in films directed by Lucky McKee (e.g. "The Woman" and "May"). She's an absolutely fantastic actress and she serves to elevate the material here.
The first half of this film really appealed to me, but as we came closer and closer to the climax of the film we also drew closer to a particularly disappointing climax. The end of "Toolbox Murders" was absolute rubbish and it was sad because the early scenes showed so much promise.
For much of the movie, the audience is fairly obviously misdirected as to who the villain is. However, I think a stylistic choice regarding the look of the villain stopped a particular character (who shows up during the climax randomly anyway) from being revealed as the main villain. With the actual villain being nothing more than a monster essentially, it was hard to get excited about anything at this late stage of the film. The villain was basically a characterless entity which had little connection to the characters we'd been following. Angela Bettis becomes a bit of a damsel in distress towards the end and though this trope is arguably subverted, it's still not a pretty unsatisfying way to take the story.
An appearance by Juliet Landau (Drusilla from Buffy The Vampire Slayer) was kind of nice to see, but her performance wasn't exactly amazing. Sometimes though, it can be nice to see a familiar face.
Angela Bettis' performance alone might be enough to make this worth watching. This film had a lot of potential and with a better ending it could have been a really solid entry in Hooper's filmography. As it is, this is just another disappointment.
D+
7. Crocodile (2000) - D+
(Full review already posted here)
A cheap low-budget attempt to cash-in on the success of Lake Placid with mostly poor actors, yet somehow I preferred this to "Lake Placid". Sure it's not a good movie, but it has a real sense of charm. Once the story gets moving, this gets extremely watchable, even if it IS utterly stupid and trashy.
