Director Tobe Hooper’s new debut novel, Midnight Movie, centers around a long-lost film that turns viewers into zombies. Sound familiar? Maybe that’s because Hooper’s 1982 classic, Poltergeist, features a demonic television set that zombifies a 5-year-old girl, and his 1985 film, Lifeforce, involves space vampires that turn London into a city of zombies. Clearly, regeneration is key to Hooper’s horror; the schlock-horror Scorsese explores new terror through recurring themes. Now you can, too, with the Tobe Hooper Plot Generator. (Warning: contains spoilers. And lunch-spoilers.)
Forumula | An innocent girl wants to… | but her travels take her to a seedy… | There she meets… | who attacks people with… | Soon she discovers a horrible secret… | Finally the evildoing is gruesomely foiledwhen… | But is she truly save? After all,… |
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) | visit her grandfather’s grave, | house in the backwoods of central Texas. | Leatherface—named for his mask of human skin— | a chain saw. | He comes from a family of cannibals. | a truck driver hits Leatherface in the head with a wrench. | Leatherface is later spotted dancing with his chain saw. |
The Funhouse (1981) | go on a date with her pothead boyfriend, | traveling carnival. | a deformed carnival worker in a Frankenstein mask | funhouse props. | He has red eyes and fangs. | the slasher is electrocuted and crushed in the gears of a ride. | the carnival endures. |
The Toolbox Murders (2004) | find cheap rent, | Hollywood apartment building. | a ski-masked man | a hammer, a drill, and a nail gun. | He was born from a deceased mother. | the killer is shot out a window and hung by a lamp cord. | he stands back up at the end of the film. |
Mortuary (2005) | give her kids a fresh start, | funeral home. | the believed-to-be-dead son of former owners | his bare hands | A well teeming with black ooze that turns people into zombies. | some kids toss salt into the well, which pulls in the attacker. | she’s a zombie. |
Midnight Movie (2011) | earn quick cash to pay late bills | bar in Austin Texas. | filmmaker Tobe Hooper | his long-lost movie (unintentionally). | The flick turns viewers into zombies | a solution presents itself. (Sorry to be vague; read the damn book.) | Hooper is filming in Abu Dhabi RIGHT NOW. |