The Heisters
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!
-
- Cast：
Similar titles
Reviews
Absolutely Brilliant!
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.
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.