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.

CROCFIGHTING

RIP to Marilyn Burns, departed at 64.

A native of my beloved hometown of Erie, Pa., she was unforgettable as the hapless heroine of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and as Linda Kasabian in the original Helter Skelter TV miniseries. She also appeared in Tobe Hooper’s lurid, little-remembered giant crocodile shocker of 1977, Eaten Alive. So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …in her honor let’s give the nod to the hungry leading reptile of that bizarre swamp melodrama…