Tobe Hooper

A California couple and a survivalist encounter Leatherface and his family. A couple encounters a perverted gas station attendant who threatens them with a shotgun. They take a deserted path in Texas to seek help, but only meet up with a cannibalistic clan interested in helping themselves to fresh meat. —Mark J. Popp <poppmj@cadvision.com> A brother and sister set out from california to florida in there fathers car to deliver it for him. Meanwhile, the police have found bodies buried in the ground covered in toxic waste, from the Original Family from TCM 1 and 2. The brother and sister stop at a gas station and are threatened by a crazy man with a shotgun. They take a road they were told of at the gas station but are hunted by leatherface and his family. There only hope is a Survivalist with alot of firepower. —Andrew L. <andrew71388@hotmail.com>

George Gardner (Timothy Bottoms) encourages his 12-year-old son David's (Hunter Carson) dreams of becoming an astronaut by stargazing with him. A thunderstorm wakes David, and he observes a strange alien spaceship landing on Copper Hill, just beyond the house. His father agrees to investigate, but returns a changed man. In the morning, David Gardner notices his father wearing only one slipper. His normally sunny disposition is somber and his personality is flat. David also notices a wound on the back of his father's neck in the shape of a letter 'X'. In the kitchen, George Gardner dumps sugar cubes into his coffee, and the coffee dribbles down his chin as he drinks. David is frightened by his father's change in behavior. At night, when he confesses his suspicions to his mother, Helen Gardner (Laraine Newman), she assures him that George is fine. Later, however, Helen calls police after she realizes George is missing. When the police chief (Jimmy Hunt) and Officer Kenney (Kenneth Kimmins) agree to investigate Copper Hill, George suddenly appears. The officers return to the house with altered personalities, but only David notices the difference. He wakes up in the middle of the night, and observes as his parents disappear over the ridge. In the morning, Helen is transformed. She offers David a plate piled with burnt bacon, and wants to take him to see the special place on Copper Hill. When David sees his mother eat a chunk of raw hamburger smothered in salt, he declines to go. At school, David overhears his schoolteacher, Mrs. McKeltch (Louise Fletcher), tell the police chief about a plan that involves George Gardner. David sneaks into Mrs. McKeltch's office and catches her eating a live frog. Mrs. McKeltch chases David, claiming he knocked over a female student. Nurse Linda Magnusson (Karen Black) rescues David and questions him in her office. She has no neck wound, so David gives his account of the unidentified flying object (UFO) at Copper Hill that robs people of their personalities. When Linda confronts Mrs. McKeltch, the teacher refuses to let the nurse examine the "boil" on her neck. Linda also notices a bandage on the neck of a student named Heather (Virginia Keehne). Linda fears for David's safety and suggests he hide at her house. However, David evades Mrs. McKeltch and Heather as they search for him in the parking lot, and becomes trapped when he hides in the teacher's van. She drives to a cave, and David follows her inside. After walking through a series of tunnels, Mrs. McKeltch encounters a round alien creature, a face and brain uttering sounds. As it speaks, light flashes from the device planted in Mrs. McKeltch's neck. The aliens realize David is in their midst, and Mrs. McKeltch vows to "get him" before he escapes. Soon, Linda Magnusson finds David on the run, and he shows her the alien cave. When he gets to the location, however, the cave has disappeared. He insists they go to Copper Hill, but the spaceship is also gone. In the distance, they hear George Gardner send two men with metal detectors into the sandpit at Copper Hill. David and Linda watch as a circular opening in the earth swallows the men. Linda and David drive away and narrowly miss hitting a school bus driven by Mrs. McKeltch. When Linda stops at a gas station to call state police, Mrs. McKeltch kidnaps David and drags him toward the school bus, but he breaks free. Linda hears the disturbance, and David gets into her car. They arrive at her office to find the telephone inoperable. The chief and Officer Kenney search the building while David leads Linda to the basement furnace room. They knock over some equipment, alerting their pursuers. However, an alien spaceship emerges through the floor, causing the officers to lose their footing, and enabling David and Linda to escape. David wants to find his parents before leaving town, but Linda insists they get help. David and Linda meet with General Wilson (James Karen), commander of the military base that employs David's father. The general attempts to verify their story by questioning the men with metal detectors, but the interrogation is halted when an invisible force kills the prisoners. The neck devices emit sparks of light as they appear to unscrew from the necks of the corpses. The general orders the base perimeter sealed, and summons officials from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA and Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) scientists meet with the general and insist that their launch to Mars go as scheduled. For security purposes, the general calls for a temporary delay until they can determine the risks. Meanwhile, George Gardner plants a bomb inside a truck bound for the launch pad. A monitor in the general's office indicates that the bomb has successfully destroyed the Mars rocket. It is here that General Wilson finally believes David's claim about aliens and speculates that the aliens are from the nearby planet Mars and when they observed the SETI rocket under construction and bound for Mars, the aliens misinterpreted it as an attack on their planet and so they decided to strike first by landing on Earth to destroy the rocket before it could be launched. General Wilson asks David to show him the sandpit at Copper Hill, and orders his soldiers to surround the area, but Sargent Rinaldi (Eric Pierpoint), the general's aide, loses his footing and the sandpit swallows him. Two aliens stand near the cave, eyeing advancing soldiers and Dr. Mark Weinstein (Bud Court), a member of SETI. Weinstein wants to converse with the aliens before the military launches an attack. He returns an alien mechanical part, believing the aliens understand him. Nevertheless, the scientist is vaporized by the alien's ray gun, and the soldiers kill the aliens. David runs into the sandpit hoping to locate his parents, and Linda follows. Both are swallowed up, and the general sends soldiers after them. They lay down explosives and rappel into the hole left by the explosion. Inside a lab at the alien spaceship, David observes as a device is implanted in Sgt. Rinaldi's neck to control humans. Mrs. McKeltch orders other aliens to capture David and Linda. David pleads with the Martian Supreme Being to release his parents, arguing that mind control is wrong, and predicting the aliens' failure in conquering Earth. The head Martian comments that David is "a poor little guy," and the boy punches him in the nose. As he runs away, David knocks over Mrs. McKeltch, who falls into the gaping mouth of an alien and is eaten alive. In the tunnel, realizing Sgt. Rinaldi is under the control of the Martians, the general orders his men to shoot him dead. David leads the soldiers back to the spaceship to destroy the Martian Supreme Being and save Linda from receiving an implant. Many soldiers are vaporized, but American firepower causes the Martian Supreme Being to retreat into a protective eye-shaped shell. As Linda is saved, soldiers plant explosives, and the general orders a five-minute delay to escape before detonation. Upon discovering that the escape route is blocked, David sacrifices a mint copper penny his father gave him to activate an alien weapon that is left behind since the metal copper is the source of the alien's technology. Meanwhile, the wounded Martian Supreme Being orders the aliens to prepare the ship for takeoff. The soldiers escape through the new opening, but David hears his parents calling. He refuses their entreaties to join them on the spaceship, and while he struggles against them near the ridge, the spaceship explodes in the sky. The implants in his parent's necks are apparently deactivated, but the aerial fireball begins to overtake and consume both David and his parents.... Suddenly, David awakens in his bedroom. His parents comfort him, and he is relieved to find nothing implanted in his father's neck. The entire Martian invasion and battle was apparently nothing more than David's nightmare. His mother tucks him into bed and reminds him that dreams are not real and tells him goodnight. But sometime later, a thunderstorm snaps him awake. When he opens his window, David sees the exact same Martian UFO spaceship landing on Copper Hill. He runs to his parents' room in a panic. David's nightmare is starting again.... or is it?

It's August 9, 1985 in the year of Halley's Comet. The space shuttle Churchill, on a joint British-American mission, approaches the comet. While investigating, the crew finds a 150-mile long alien spaceship hidden in the tail of the comet. Upon entering the alien spacecraft, the crew finds hundreds of dead and shrivelled bat-like creatures and three naked humanoid bodies (two male and one female) in suspended animation within glass coffin-like containers. The crew recovers the three aliens and begins the return trip to Earth. During the return journey, Mission Control loses contact with the shuttle as it nears Earth and a rescue mission is sent to find out what happened on board. The rescuers find the Churchill completely gutted by fire, except for the three suspended animation cases bearing the aliens. All three are taken to European Space Research Centre in London where they are watched over by Dr. Leonard Bukovsky (Michael Gothard) and Dr. Hans Fallada (Frank Finlay). Prior to an autopsy taking place, the naked female 'vampire' (Mathilda May) awakens and sucks the lifeforce out of a guard. She then escapes the research facility and begins robbing various humans of their life force and moving through various host bodies. The two humanoid men wake up and attack the guards, who open fire on them with their assault rifles and are blown to pieces (so it seems). It transpires that the aliens are a race of space vampires that consume the life force energy from living beings instead of blood. Meanwhile, in Texas, an escape pod from the shuttle Churchill is found with Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) still alive. He is flown to London and tells how the crew were drained of their life forces. To save Earth from this fate, Carlsen set fire to the shuttle and escaped in the pod. During hypnosis it is clear Carlsen has a psychic link to the female alien. Carlsen and Col. Colin Caine (Peter Firth), a member of the SAS, trace the alien to the body of a nurse at a hospital for the mentally disturbed in Yorkshire. They believe they have managed to trap the alien girl within the heavily sedated body of the hospital's manager, Dr. Armstrong (Patrick Stewart). However, the entire episode was a trick to lure them away from London. As Carlsen and Caine are transporting Dr. Armstrong in a helicopter back to London, the alien girl breaks free from a sedated Dr. Armstrong and disappears. Carlsen then admits to Caine that whilst on the shuttle he felt compelled to open the female vampire's container and to have shared his life force with hers. When they arrive back in London it is clear that a plague has taken full control... the entire city is affected in a wave of violence and panic as people are being taken over and have become rabid-like vampire-alien-zombies rampaging through London. Upon arrival back at SAS headquarters, Carlsen and Caine soon realize that even the prime minister has been infected and martial law has been enacted to prevent the spread of the plague out of London. The two male vampires have also escaped from confinement and begun to transform most of London's population into zombies. Once transformed, the 'dead' victims cycle into living-dead every two hours and seek out the living, absorbing the life force from their victims through physical contact. These people themselves become zombie-vampires and the transformation process repeats. This blue energy is then collected by the male vampires who direct it to the female vampire who transfers it to the waiting spaceship now in Earth's orbit. Carlsen and Caine are found by a military patrol and taken into quarantine outside the London city limits where they try to persuade the authorities to let them return to the city to find and kill the three space vampires which they hope will save the contagion from spreading. The two men return to the ruins of London, albeit taking different routes: Carlsen goest to St. Paul's Cathedral, while Caine makes it back to the remains of the research centre, driving through rampaging mobs of both fleeing humans and zombie-vampires. Caine finds Fallada in his office who has managed to kill one of the male vampires by impaling him on a sword made of lead. The vital area on the vampire is a few inches below the heart, rather than the heart itself. He surmises that the legends of vampires may well be drawn from a previous visit by this space vampire race. Meanwhile, Carlsen realises his psychic connection is being used to lure him back to the alien so she can regain the life force she shared with him. She is located lying upon St. Paul's Cathedral's altar transferring the energy to her spaceship. Caine follows Carlsen's trail and dispatches the second male vampire (with the lead sword, obtained from Fallada, who Caine had to kill due to becoming infected as with the others at the research centre) before locating Carlsen who sacrifices himself by impaling himself and the female alien in the process. Wounded but not fatally, the female vampire returns to her ship, releasing a burst of blue energy that blasts the top off the church building's dome in the process and taking Carlsen with her. The two ascend up the column of blue light to the vessel with all the countless human souls taken from the planet. Caine is beside himself as all the vampire-zombies fall dead. Caine looks on as London is still in flames, but at least the rest of Earth is saved... for the time being. On board the alien ship, the vampire girl along with Carlsen are entombed back in her crystal glass coffin along with thousands of souls of victims in the form of blue light energy to power up the ship as it departs from Earth's orbit and heads away towards the comet it came from... with the grim implication that it will return one day 75 years later.

In the suburban housing development of Cuesta Verde, California, the homes are modern and comfortable. Steve Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) is a successful real estate agent who works for a firm headed up by Teague (James Karen), a developer. Steve lives in one of the Cuesta Verde homes with his wife, Diane (JoBeth Williams), and their three children: teenage Dana (Dominique Dunne) and preteen youngsters Robbie (Oliver Robbins) and Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke). Strange events begin to occur when Carol Anne begins sleepwalking and carries on a seemingly one-sided conversation with a TV set that's turned on but has no signal. Soon thereafter her pet bird dies, and the family conducts a small burial service. Later that night, Carol Anne awakens again and talks to the television, while a spectral manifestation erupts from the television screen and enters the walls, causing an violent tremor that only the Freelings feel. As the family wakes up, Carol Anne mysteriously announces, "They're here." The next morning, drinking glasses inexplicably break at breakfast, and utensils bend by themselves. When Diane asks Carol Anne who she meant when she said "they're here," she answers, "The TV people." At first the ghosts play harmless tricks and amuse the mother, including moving and stacking the kitchen table chairs. Diane and Carol Anne discover an area in the kitchen where an unseen force will pull anything, including people, across the floor. When he arrives home from work, Diane convinces Steve the phenomenon is real by demonstrating it. He then announces that "Nobody's going' in the kitchen until I know what's happening." During a terrible thunderstorm, a gnarled tree outside the kids' bedroom window suddenly comes to life and grabs Robbie (Oliver Robins), Carol Anne's brother, through a window. However, this is merely a distraction used by the ghosts to get Carol Anne's parents to leave her alone. Using a force like a wind tunnel, they take Carol Anne through her bedroom closet into their dimension. Steve rescues Robbie, and the family believes that a tornado caused the trouble, until they realize that they can't find Carol Anne. They search the entire house including the pit for the new swimming pool until Robbie hears Carol Anne calling for her mother eerily through the TV. A traumatized Steve meets with a small group of parapsychologists from UC Irvine, stating that "We just want you to find our little girl." Dr. Lesh (Beatrice Straight), Ryan (Richard Lawson), and Marty (Martin Casella) are awestruck by the manifestations they witness. With the parapsychologists present, Steve shows them things they've never before seen. He opens the door to the children's room to reveal toys and other objects flying around by themselves and disembodied laughing voices reverberating throughout the room. Previously, Ryan described a Matchbox car taking seven hours to move seven feet, calling it "fantastic. Of course, this would never register on the naked eye." After they see the Freelings' house, they are all humbled. Over coffee (and a coffee urn that moves by itself), the parapsychologists explain to the Freelings the difference between a poltergeist and a haunting. They determine that indeed, it is a poltergeist they are experiencing. The group witnesses several paranormal episodes where they hear Carol Anne talking to Diane through the TV, see spirits, and hear the pounding footsteps of some terrible force, which subsequently injures Marty. Marty also suffers a terrifying hallucination where he seems to tear off his own face. The parapsychologists leave, with the exception of Ryan, admitting they need more help. Shaken and overwhelmed, Dana leaves to stay with friends. The Freelings also send Robbie to his grandmother's house for his safety. Later that day, Steve has a conversation with his boss, Teague, about a new housing project going up. They talk about how Steve's company has built over cemeteries in the past, even where the Freelings live now. Whenever the company needed land to build or expand housing communities, they'd move the cemeteries, coffins, headstones and all. Teague shows Steve a new housing development the company is building not far from where the Freelings live. As the two walk by a hillside cemetery, Teague tells Steve that he can have a new house right in that spot, with a large bay window overlooking the valley. Steve remarks that the house can't simply be built over a cemetery. Teague tells Steve that the company has moved whole cemeteries before: the coffins were dug up and moved, along with their headstones, to new locations nearby. Teague then reveals that much of Cuesta Verde was built on the location of one of these relocated cemeteries. Steve seems quite astonished at the news, stating that "that's sacrilegious." When the parapsychologists return, they bring a spiritual medium, Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein), a tiny woman who uses her psychic sensitivity to ascertain facts about the disturbances. Tangina tells them that Carol Anne is "alive and in this house." According to Tangina, the spirits haunting the home have left this life but have not gone into the spectral "Light." They are stuck in between dimensions, watching their loved ones grow up, but feeling alone, causing them to feel lonely and even angry. Carol Anne was born in the house and has strongest connection to it. At only 5 years old, she gives off her own life force that is as bright as the Light. It distracts and confuses the spirits, who think Carol Anne is their salvation. Hence, they have taken her. However, Tangina also warns everyone that a malevolent spirit also exists in the next dimension. It likes that the spirits are confused and lost, and uses Carol Anne as a distraction so they cannot move on into the Light. Tangina says "it lies to her and tells her things only a child can understand. To her, it simply is another child. To us, it is the Beast." They realize the entrance to the other dimension is through the children's bedroom closet. Tangina tests the dimensional portal with a few tennis balls that drop through the living room ceiling below the kids' closet. By tying a rope around a live person who can enter, and presumably exit the other side, with enough time to grab Carol Anne, they could bring her back. Tangina intends to be the one to go into the light, but Diane insists, saying that Carol Anne will only come to her mother. With the rope around her waist, Diane goes into the portal and Tangina coaxes the agonized spirits away from Carol Anne to the real Light. While Tangina is in her trance-like state telling the lost spirits to cross over into the Light, Steve panics and pulls on the rope, meeting the Beast face-to-face. Diane falls through the living room ceiling clutching Carol Anne and bearing new streaks of grey hair, presumably from fright; both Diane and Carol Anne are also covered in ectoplasm. After Steve revives both of them in the downstairs bathtub, Tangina pronounces that "this house is clean." Unfortunately, though the spirits have seemingly moved on, the Beast hasn't, and wants revenge. On their final night in the house, Steve leaves Diane alone with the children so he can go and talk to Teague, who presumably is trying to get Steve to reconsider leaving. While Robbie and Carol Anne are getting ready for bed, Robbie's clown doll comes to life and pulls him under the bed. Diane, relaxing in the master bedroom, hears her son's screaming voice and tries to investigate, but is pulled against the wall and ceiling by an unseen force. Robbie manages to rip the clown doll to pieces but a strange, mouth-like portal appears in Carol Anne's closet and attempts to suck the children in. Diane tries to get to her son and daughter but runs into the Beast itself, in the form of a snarling, skeletal demon. It blocks Carol Anne's and Robbie's door and lunges at her, causing her to fall down the stairs. Diane runs to the backyard to seek help from her next-door neighbors, but slips into the freshly-dug swimming pool. A rainstorm has filled it with rain and mud, and as Diane tries to escape, coffins begin erupting from the earth, releasing skeletal corpses into the pool. Her neighbors hear the commotion and arrive to help Diane out of the pool, but they refuse to enter the house with its windows now blazing with ghostly energy. Diane runs back into the house alone to get Robbie and Carol Anne. She finds Carol Anne and Robbie barely able to fight the energy that tries to suck them into the portal; they dangle from their bed frames, hanging on only by their hands, while their feet sway toward the closet door. Diane manages to pull them to safety and they run from the house. Coffins and bodies begin exploding out of the ground throughout the house. Steve pulls up in his car with Teague as a passenger, and they both see the dead bodies erupting from the ground. Steve recalls the earlier conversation he had with Teague, where Teague revealed that Cuesta Verde was built over the site of a relocated cemetery. It is now obvious that Teague never really relocated the cemetery, he simply built the housing development over top of the graves after moving only the headstones. Realizing this truth, Steve rebukes him in anger. Dana arrives in her boyfriend's car and is hysterical over what is happening to the house. The Freelings get into Steve's station wagon and they drive off. The Beast grows so angry that the house implodes through the portal into the other dimension as stunned neighbors (including Teague) look on. The weary family checks into a hotel for the night. Not wishing to tempt fate, Steve pushes the television set outside their room.

Against her stern father's orders, teenager Amy Harper visits a sleazy traveling fun fair with her new boyfriend Buzz, her best friend Liz, and Liz's irresponsible boyfriend, Richie. At the carnival, the four teens smoke marijuana, peep into a 21-and-over strip show, heckle fortune teller Madame Zena, visit the freaks-of-nature exhibit, and view a seedy magic show. Amy's 10-year-old brother, Joey, sneaks out of the house to go to the carnival as well. Richie dares the group to spend the night in "The Funhouse" - actually a dark ride. After the park closes, the teenagers sneak back into the fairgrounds settle down inside the ride, at which point they witness the ride assistant (a man in a Frankenstein suit who never speaks) engage Madame Zena as a prostitute. He experiences premature ejaculation, but despite nothing physical having happened, Zena won't return her $100 fee. He strangles her to death in a violent rage. The teenagers try to leave, but find themselves locked inside the ride. As they attempt to escape, Richie secretly steals the money from the strongbox from which "Frankenstein's monster" took Zena's fee. The fun fair's barker, Conrad Straker, then discovers what "Frankenstein's monster" (his adopted son Gunther) has done to Zena. Conrad also promptly realizes that all the money from the strongbox is missing. Thinking Gunther took it, he attacks his son, at which point Gunther's mask is removed, revealing a gruesomely deformed face with sharp protruding teeth and ruby-red eyes. When Richie's lighter falls from the teens' vantage point, Conrad realizes someone is watching. At this point, Conrad and his "monster" son Gunther then stalks through the ride to eliminate any witnesses after also heckling the reluctant Gunther into a murderous rage. Throughout the ride, various props readily double as murder weapons. Meanwhile outside the funhouse, Joey hangs around the dark carnival after it closes for he witnessed Amy and her friends enter the funhouse but did not come out. While searching for a way in, Joey is suprised by the appearance of the unmasked Gunther/Monster at an air vent and attempts to flee only to be found by the other carnival workers who call his parents to pick him up. Mr. and Mrs. Harper soon arrive to pick up the clearly traumatized Joey to take him home (with the implication they will beat him as punishment for sneaking out to go to the carnival). Joey is unable to speak and thus explain to his stern and abusive parents that Amy and her friends are still inside the funhouse. Trapped in the funhouse, the teens quickly die one at a time by the hands of Conrad and Gunther. Richie is first when Gunther throws a noose around his neck and he is strangled to death. Liz is next when she falls through a trapdoor in the floor to a hidden air vent where Gunther approaches. She attempts to sexualy intice the sex-starved monster who lets his guard down for a mintue and Liz stabbs him with a dagger. Wounded but angry, Gunther snatches the dagger away and viciously stabbs Liz to death. Meanwhile, Amy and Buzz attempt to break out of the funhouse through one of the exit ride doors only to be confronted by a gun-toting Conrad. The barker tells them that he is only protecting his son from the authorties and implies that Gunther had previously killed two teenage girls a few months earlier whom inticed him. Just then, Buzz lunges at Conrad to wrestle the gun away from him and manages to impail the barker against a prop sword. Just then Gunther the monster arrives and seeing his father dead, attacks Buzz who attemps to shoot him. Amy is forced to run only to find Buzz's dead body a minute later after Gunther apparently wrestled the pistol away from Buzz and shot him with it. With only Amy remaining, she is terrorized by the funhouse props and dummys which leads her to flee to funhouse maintenance area underneath the building where Gunther follows her to kill her as well leading to the suspenseful, climactic showdown. Amy defends herself with a crowbar against Gunther the monster who grabs the crowbar away from her only to get electrocuted on a nearby fuse box when he swings the crowbar to strike Amy where he is then caugh on a track chain that controls the moving cars through the funhouse. But Gunther revives and grabs Amy only to get crushed to death when the track chain drags him through two spinning gears as Amy screams. As dawn breaks, an exhausted and shaken Amy emerges from the funhouse through the broken down doors while the animatronic fat lady perched atop the ride laughs. Amy then slowly walks out of the deserted carnival, passing a few carnival workers taking down the rides and tents as she heads for home.