Midnight Movie

April 18, 2011
Lauded screenwriter and director Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) debuts with a movie-like novel featuring a fictionalized Tobe Hooper. At a screening of Hooper's first film, the obscure Destiny Express, audience members exhibit bizarre behavior and soon hot zones of aberranceâlow-grade terrorism, zombies, STD-induced hypersexual maniaâbegin to spread across America. The only thing the various Case Zeroes have in common is having been present for that fateful screening. Hooper and his diverse cast may be the only ones who can bring an end to the plague they inadvertently helped unleash. Hooper leaps from one viewpoint character to the next, never lingering on one scene long enough for the reader to become bored or for the characters to become developed. Though constrained by the conventions of the genre, Hooper demonstrates an undeniable talent, using established horror tropes with considerable skill and ingenuity.

May 15, 2011

The creator of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes to print with a co-authored foray into zombie comic novel territory.

Tobe Hooper, real-life auteur of on-screen mayhem and gore, is the protagonist in his own novel, chronicling a plague of "suicide bombers, burning cities, an inordinate number of missing persons, and a new strain of STD." The all-in-good-horror parody begins with Hooper invited to screen his never-seen teenage-filmed first effort, Destiny Express, at the famous South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Austin happens to be Hooper's home town, he's been offered a generous fee and he's sure to see old friends. Enter a bonanza of bizarre characters. Dude McGee, the corpulent slacker organizing the screening, resides in his mother's basement, has body odor redolent of lunch meat, and purposely mangles Hooper's name. Erick Laughlin is a local film reviewer and sometime musician. Janine Daltrey needs the bucks she'll earn taking tickets at the door, but she refuses to enter the screening venue, a raunchy bar called The Cove. Then there's Janine's sister, Andi, plus assorted meth cooks and tweakers, and Tobe's childhood best friend, Gary Church, who starred in Destiny and then moved to Hollywood for a career chewing scenery in horror flicks. The world begins to turn upside down at the screening when the film somehow releases a virus that infects those present. Andi turns from virginal good girl to a mega-obsessed sexual glutton. Gary returns to "Hell Lay" and morphs into a zombie. Arsonists flame up everywhere. A Homeland Security agent becomes a terrorist. And it's all because of the Game—the virus—transmitted by the never-before-screened film. This isn't a straightforward narrative. The frenetic, quick-change-of-scene novel lands on the pages as handwritten notes, copies of e-mails, blog posts, Twitter tweets and first-person recitations from the various characters.

Horror as comedy, bawdy and blue, more yucks than frights.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011

Don't recognize Hooper's name? He's the legendary director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. His debut novel, presented as fact, concerns a film he made as a teenager that after decades has just had a festival screening. A strange and lethal contagion befalls anyone who saw it that night, and as it starts spreading to others, Hooper himself must revisit his past to save the day. The well-connected Hooper will promote, and given Chain Saw's cult following, this clearly has an audience.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2011
Hooper, the director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and one of the most recognizable names in horror cinema, takes a stabmultiple stabs, actually, some of them pretty darn deepat fiction. The idea is a fun one. A film festival discovers Hooper's long-lost first film, Destiny Express, and plays it at a midnight show. It's a piece of crap, but everyone who attends the screening becomes infected with negativity, which manifests itself as a gooey, sexually transmitted zombie virus. Conveniently enough for this first novel's target demographic, females become especially nyphomaniacal, and what ensues is a cavalcade of screwing and slicing, with body fluids of all sorts squirting hither and yon. It's catnip for splatterpunk fans, sped along by first-person testimonials from all the key players, including Hooper himself, who is portrayed as a rumpled, hard-drinking curmudgeon always low on bread. This ain't Shakespeare, as Hooper might say, but it's a lecherous and barbarous good time. A concluding interview explains the real-life inspiration behind the story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)