Tobe Hooper made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for almost nothing on 16mm in Texas heat, and the film’s power comes from how much it looks like footage instead of like cinema. It is far less gory than its reputation suggests and far harder to sit through, because the technique refuses the usual reassurances.
Poltergeist is the commercially successful entry and remains contested, with persistent claims that Steven Spielberg directed much of it. Hooper maintained otherwise and the question has never been settled.
Salem’s Lot for television produced one of the most frightening images in the medium, a child floating at a bedroom window, achieved with almost nothing.
