Horror News and Events • Tobe Hooper and Texas Chainsaw Massacre at MoMA Aug. 8 - 20

Two programs, one highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Texas Chainsaw Massacrew, the other showing Hooper's many 80's flicks:
From August 8-14:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5717

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, among the most profoundly influential works in genre film history, MoMA presents the recently restored film in a special weeklong run. Though it was initially shunned for its violence and banned in some markets, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was honored by MoMA’s Department of Film at the time of its original release in 1974, when it also entered the Museum’s collection. In subsequent years the film has garnered near universal acclaim, and it is now widely recognized to reflect the disillusionment of Vietnam War–era politics and the loosening bonds of family and gender. Director Tobe Hooper (1943–2017) and screenwriter Kim Henkel’s modestly budgeted independent feature opens on a road trip through a sunny, vaguely sinister heartland—and quickly, jarringly descends into a tale of abduction by a cult of cannibalistic entrepreneurs. The film’s nightmarish vision and gruesome satire of American values has earned it generations of fans and the appreciation of scholars, and it has had an unexpected influence on artists such as Cindy Sherman.

This weeklong presentation opens on August 8, when members of the film’s creative team, including screenwriter Kim Henkel, cinematographer Daniel Pearl, actress Teri McMinn, and production manager Ron Bozman, will join curator Ron Magliozzi and Caryn Coleman, founder of The Future of Film Is Female, to discuss The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s production and legacy.

From August 13-20th:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5720

Presented in conjunction with our weeklong run of Tobe Hooper’s legendary The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), this series highlights the late director’s celebrated and controversial genre films of the 1980s: The Funhouse (1981), Poltergeist (1982), Invaders from Mars (1986), Lifeforce (1985), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986). After starting the decade with the classical slasher The Funhouse (which earned him a chapter in Quentin Tarantino’s book Cinema Speculation) and a high-profile collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Poltergeist, Hooper turned to science fiction with a B-film-inspired remake of Invaders from Mars, followed by the bizarre, ill-fated space-vampire epic Lifeforce. Hooper closed out his ’80s run with the delirious sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which is considered by some superior to the original. Although he continued to challenge taboos—and decorum—on screen in the ’90s and into the 2000s, promising Hooper horror titles like Spontaneous Combustion, The Mangler, Night Terrors, and Toolbox Murders failed to impress critics or attract audiences.

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