TOBE OR NOT TOBE

RIP to the brilliant Tobe Hooper, passed on at 74. Hooper directed 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the most harrowing of all horror movies. It was one of several films from around those years that helped to launch a new era of hardcore, high-intensity horror that I don't much care for or even entirely approve of, but the ugliness to which it led does not take away in the least from Hooper's cinematic skill, his pitch-black wit, even a certain grotesque poetry that comes through in that classic.

In Hooper's honor...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week let's acknowledge Barlow...

...the Nosferatu-esque vampire played by the ever-cadaverous Reggie Nalder in Hooper's TV-movie adaptation of Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot.