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Life & Mortality Quote by Tobe Hooper

"The original Return of the Living Dead, I was attached to direct it, and I wrote the story. Production was delayed. In the meantime I went to London to do Lifeforce"

About this Quote

Hooper drops this like a casual scheduling anecdote, but it’s really a snapshot of how horror history gets rewritten by logistics. “I was attached to direct it” is Hollywood’s softest verb: it signals desire without guaranteeing power. In one clause, he’s inside the machine; in the next, the machine stalls. “Production was delayed” reads like bureaucratic weather, the kind that reshapes careers while pretending it’s nobody’s fault. The subtext is that authorship in cinema is always provisional, especially for directors who live project to project.

The most telling pivot is “In the meantime.” That phrase shrinks what could’ve been a defining film into a gap on a calendar. Hooper’s intent feels less like bragging than like quiet record-correction: he wants you to know he didn’t just arrive at Lifeforce by taste or whim; he arrived there because another door jammed. It’s a reminder that the canon is full of near-misses and alternate timelines, and that cult movies often emerge from contingency, not grand design.

Context matters: Return of the Living Dead eventually became a different creature, with a different sensibility and comic punk sheen. Hooper, associated with a rawer, sweatier American terror, instead goes to London for Lifeforce, a glossy, strange, big-swing sci-fi horror hybrid. The line frames him as a director pulled between underground credibility and studio-scale ambition, while hinting at the industry’s indifference to who “originated” what. The horror genre, he implies, is built as much by delays as by monsters.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Hooper, Tobe. (2026, January 15). The original Return of the Living Dead, I was attached to direct it, and I wrote the story. Production was delayed. In the meantime I went to London to do Lifeforce. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-original-return-of-the-living-dead-i-was-161719/

Chicago Style
Hooper, Tobe. "The original Return of the Living Dead, I was attached to direct it, and I wrote the story. Production was delayed. In the meantime I went to London to do Lifeforce." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-original-return-of-the-living-dead-i-was-161719/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The original Return of the Living Dead, I was attached to direct it, and I wrote the story. Production was delayed. In the meantime I went to London to do Lifeforce." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-original-return-of-the-living-dead-i-was-161719/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.

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Tobe Hooper on Return of the Living Dead and Lifeforce
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Tobe Hooper (January 25, 1943 - August 26, 2017) was a Director from USA.

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