Often dismissed by scholars and critics as a one-hit wonder thanks to his 1974 horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the film director Tobe Hooper nevertheless was instrumental in the development of a robust and deeply political horror genre from the 1960s until his death in 2017. In American Twilight, the authors assert that he was an auteur whose works featured complex monsters and disrupted America’s sacrosanct perceptions of prosperity and domestic security.
A master of gritty horror, Hooper captured on-screen an America in constant crisis and upended myths of prosperity to reveal the country’s internal decay. His productions, which often trespassed upon the safety of the family unit, cast a critical eye toward an America in crisis.
American Twilight focuses on the skepticism toward American institutions and media and the articulation of uncanny spaces so integral to Hooper’s vast array of feature and documentary films, made-for-television movies, television episodes, and music videos. From Egg Shells (1969) to Poltergeist (1982), Djinn (2013), and even Billy Idol’s music video for 'Dancing with Myself' (1985), Tobe Hooper provided a singular directorial vision that investigated masculine anxiety and subverted the idea of American exceptionalism.
Kristopher Woofter is a faculty member in the English department at Dawson College, Montreal. He is the editor of Shirley Jackson: A Companion and coeditor of Recovering 1940s Horror Cinema: Traces of a Lost Decade.
Will Dodson is the Ashby and Strong Residential College Coordinator and an adjunct assistant professor of media studies at UNC Greensboro.
University of Texas Press, 312pp, 15cm x 23cm, paperback, 2024
