After the small screen misfires reviewed in part 1, it seemed that the only place Tobe Hooper could go in the film world was up. Wrong! Following a few un-filmed announced projects, Hooper closed out the decade by making the theatrical feature SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION (see review), which got an unceremonious release in 50 theaters in February 1990 and bombed hard. Hooper was already onto his next project, the feature length TV movie I’M DANGEROUS TONIGHT, which debuted in August 1990 on the USA Network. Perhaps because of the burst of SPONTANEOUS, Hooper continued to remain active with several TV projects over the next few years.


Adapted from an issue of Vault of Horror, “Dead Wait” is a decent half hour with the prototypical EC storyline offering an immoral criminal who receives their twist comeuppance. Hooper obviously has budget to work with here and gets the best use out of him minimal settings.
On the plus side, you get two cool gory bits. One is when Remar has to dig into some worm infested guts to retrieve the pearl and the other is pretty gruesome a decapitation. Another plus is you get nudity provided by former Prince protégé Vanity. On the downside, you have to watch her act. She actually isn’t that bad but you can see acting isn’t really her strong suit. The worst acting honors go to Whoopi Goldberg – fresh off her GHOST Oscar win - who can’t seem to figure out if she is going to do a Jamaican-style accent or not. Seriously, if you watch this, notice how quickly she slips back and forth between her regular voice and accent.


The show focuses on three real life semi-famous ghost stories with re-enactments and then interviews with the real folks who experienced them. “Ghosts R Us” details the haunting of a Toys R Us store in Sunnyvale, California in 1982. This history here is that store was built on some old farm land where a servant accidentally killed himself after the landowner’s daughter rejected him. So, naturally, he has decided to make life hell for Toys R Us employees.
This entails whispering their names, running ghost fingers through their hair, playing with toys, and turning water faucets on and off. The store employees look up the history at the local library and then contact psychic Sylvia Browne (playing herself), who holds a séance there to contact this dead spirit. In the end, she claims the spirit has left…but has he???

“The Legend of Kate Morgan” tells of a lawyer who spends the night at the rumored to be haunted Hotel Del Coronado (known to movie fans as the setting for THE STUNT MAN) in San Diego, California. He stays in the room where Kate Morgan, a 19th century con woman, died under mysterious circumstances. Folks ruled it a suicide but, wouldn’t you know it, our intrepid lawyer digs deeper and finds out she was murdered. Of course, her ghostly formation in his TV set had nothing to do with this. In the story’s final twist, it is revealed that Morgan had a child before she died. She gave the baby away and it was raised by a Reverend who just happened to be this lawyer’s great-great grandfather. Creeeeeepy! And in case you question his credibility, the show tells us he is believable because, after all, he is a lawyer.


Hooper’s next television excursion is perhaps his most solid work in the medium since SALEM’S LOT. Hoping to develop a TALES-style show, Showtime courted Hooper contemporary John Carpenter with the end result being the movie BODY BAGS. The show also featured Carpenter – looking eerily similar to the Crypt Keeper – as the cadaver host who ushers out a series of tales from the crypt, er, morgue. Getting a bone from Carpenter, Hooper got the final segment “Eye” to bring to life.

Looking at all of Hooper’s small screen work from this six year period, “Eye” might be his most focused (ah, boo yourself) work. It is definitely the best episode in this omnibus. Hooper seems to have regained his footing in terms of his style, offering some low, fish-eyed camera shots and some shocking edits. There is one shot where the camera drifts back from Matthews on the operating table that is pure Hooper. Given that it is only a half hour, the events unfold rather quickly but Hooper relays them nicely and gets a truly good performance out of Hamill.
You also get to see 50s horror lead Agar in a choice role, Corman as his associate and even Charles Napier gets one scene as a gruff baseball coach. To cap it off, Hooper even gets in on the acting fun in the final segment as a coroner who gets to cut up Carpenter. Of course, with Tobe in this era you always have to expect a downside and that comes in the form of sharing the screen with talentless fattie boytoy Tom Arnold. You can’t win ‘em all, I guess. But I’ll take Hooper’s “Eye” over his NIGHT TERRORS, which I may or may not be foolish enough to revisit for review.

Next time: Tobe goes sci-fi!
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