Review of Masters of Horror 3: Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead

Left: director Tobe Hooper. Right:Robert Englund.

Tobe Hooper as been sucking for the last...........I don't know, decade. I love the man and his early work from "Lifeforce", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 & 2","Poltergeist","Eaten Alive","The Funhouse", to "Salem's Lot". To tell you the truth I found his latest movies to be horribly entertaining, like 'Crocodile" and the remake of "Toolbox Murders". When I thought that he might of lost it, and I believed real hard, he proved me wrong. His latest chapter of "The Masters of Horror', is very entertaining and predictable but executed to a point of extremity. Based off a short story from Richard Masterson(OmegaMan) about a post-apocalyptic future ran by wild youth that take control and run rampage and it gives the cue for Hooper for sex, drugs and rock n' roll. After a nuclear wipe out that left people to survive and others to die or just many that were crippled to the point of decaying. The rest who survive try to live normal live, for instance this one family that runs a restaurant with a mother that his dedicated to her daughter. The rest who live in the outskirts of town are ravaged youth that hang out at the "Doom Room". A nightclub that is ran by Robert Englund's character where he substitutes entertainment by re-animating dead corpses that were from the effect of the nuclear holocaust. The kids refer to the show as the 'loopies". The story follows the daughter of the overprotective mother, who encounters a group of kids that exposes her to the 'Doom Room". Robert Englund his over-the-top, the visual jump cuts and MTV style edits is overt. I guilty pleasurely enjoyed Hooper's short, the whole episode is an excuse to show violence and sex, because I find there is no real set-up. Others will this to be pointless, but I find it pointlessly entertaining. Hooper can have a sense of elegance in his films even if they are marketed as exploitation, like "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", which is sometimes branded as gaudy filmmaking. I find it to be very well made and expertly crafted. In 'DAnce of the Dead" he has a tone of trashy filmmaking, the whole movie carries an over-top-style just to please viewers with a fetish. Except I find this movie to be good trash, and Hooper as definitely succeeded, others will not like this but they won't turn the channel. The characters are really stick figures you surpass the drugs and sex and find the story that unfold till the end with, not a twist, but a twisted ending. Jonathan Tucker also did a good job, with as less material as he was given. I think Hooper wanted that way! Not the best out of the series, but a very entertaining one!Enough to keep me stay tuned to watch Dario Argento's next one