American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper

**A master of gritty horror, Tobe Hooper captured on-screen an America in constant crisis and upended myths of prosperity to reveal the country's internal decay.** Tobe Hooper's productions, which often trespassed upon the safety of the family unit, cast a critical eye toward an America in crisis. Often dismissed by scholars and critics as a one-hit wonder thanks to his 1974 horror classic *The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,* 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 the director was an auteur whose works featured complex monsters and disrupted America's sacrosanct perceptions of prosperity and domestic security. *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.