Emerging from Austin, Texas, where he first handled his father's 8 mm camera as a child, Hooper studied at the University of Texas at Austin and spent the 1960s teaching and shooting documentaries. His first feature, the low-budget Eggshells (1969), led to the breakthrough Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), co-written with Kim Henkel and later hailed by the British Film Institute as one of the most…
