The Delicacy Of A Chainsaw

It was a kind of horrible juxtaposition: Watching flood waters from Hurricane Harvey swallow up Houston and then getting the news that Tobe Hooper had died. The director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre passed away while his home state was being pummeled by a tropical storm. When I was in college and they allowed me to study such things, I wrote a paper about how brilliant a conceit it was to make it chainsaws. What ends up being shown on the screen turns out to be so much less grotesque than anything your average moviegoer's imagination could conjure up. Just knowing that somewhere out there in Texas, or places like Texas, there were families of inbred mutants using the least subtle methods for vivisection possible caused an entire generation to reconsider the wisdom behind hitchhiking. 
Yes, Mister Hooper made more than one film, but was Leatherface and his cannibal crew that left its indelible mark on pop culture. He worked in the cinematic ghetto that is horror film. Home video allowed me to keep track of his films that I didn't catch at the drive-in. His remake of Invaders From Mars became a favorite of my older brother and mine. Years later, we were still quoting the line, "Don't worry, Son! We Marines have no qualms about killing Martians!" We were excited to see that Tobe got his shot at the big time with Poltergeist, We were a little let down to find out that Steven Spielberg had more to do with it than we had been led to believe. 
Still, it was a high-speed turbulent roller coaster-type ride and it offered up creepy new ways to make us think twice about living in suburbia. Just like Lifeforce made me nervous about space vampires. I was already nervous about Billy Idol when I saw Tobe Hooper's video for Dancing With Myself, but these were times in which we found ourselves. 
Tobe Hooper taught us not to build subdivisions on old cemeteries. He let us know that the Marines had our back, especially when it came to space invaders. He let us know about the dangers of laundry folding machines and carnival funhouses. 
And when that family from south Texas invites you over for barbecue, you might want to RSVPing in the negative. Tobe Hooper stomped on the cinematic Terra, and once Texas dries out again, I hope they give him a hero's sendoff.