The Heisters (1965)
The teenage Tobe Hooper’s first film was a slapstick comedy. This farcical low-budget short is about three thieves who are wanted dead or alive. A bit Three Stooges, a bit Chaplin and a bit Keaton!
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I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
The Heisters (1964)*** (out of 4)This ten-minute short comes from Tobe Hooper who made this nearly a decade before THE Texas CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. The plot is rather thin but I guess the only thing you need to know is that it has the feel of a Three Stooges film and the look of one of those Roger Corman Poe movies.The story is pretty lite but there are three men doing a wide range of experiments. That's pretty much all there is as there's nothing really coherent here because it's just a slapstick comedy with some pretty amusing moments including one sequence involving a cockroach that continues to grow. Another highlight deals with a gingerbread man being eaten and then the guy having to pick bones out of his mouth.I was really impressed with Hooper's comic style here and it makes you wonder what he might have done had the horror film not became the massive success that it did. Visually the film is quite impressive and we're also given some pretty good performances from the cast.
This film is very much in style with The Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. It's very cartoony and full of slapstick.I loved the scene where the guy was eating the gingerbread man and he was taking the actual bones of the gingerbread man out of his mouth, that was really clever. The pie fight dual and the giant pie was also very creative. The moment where one of the thieves smacks the other one in the face with the knight's hand and we cut to the man's feet as we see his teeth and his jawbone fall to the floor.This is all very impressive and creative and it's hard to believe the man who made one of the most controversial horror films ever made directed this.