You are now listening to post-mortem with Mick Harris, where the most influential

voices in horror cinema will spill their guts, literally literally to the renowned horror director, writer and producer.

Now here's your host, Mick Garris.

I'm Mick Garris and this is the post-mortem podcast. I'm a bit at a loss for words. The sense of loss is almost overwhelming.

Just as we were finishing up putting together our tribute show to salute West Craven two years after his death. I got the shocking and

completely unexpected news that my friend Toby Hooper had died. Toby was a friend, a really good

friend, and we had just set a date for him to come in and be on this very podcast.

Toby could be hard to reach sometimes, a bit of a hermit who could disappear for months at a time,

then return a call as if no time at all had passed.

That gruff Texas Jimmy Stewart drawl could only belong to one person

and I lit up every time I heard his voice. Toby and I had crossed paths so many times in

work and plague that to know that it's never going to happen again just breaks my heart. We first met on the

set of poltergeist where I was working as a publicist and we became friends right there. We worked together or next to one another on amazing stories,

Freddie's nightmares, tales from the crypt,

masters of horror, and so many other times,

including on projects that never saw the light of day.

It's been a tough time for horror icons.

West Craven, George Romero, and Toby Hooper are three of the horror Mount Rushmore masters who changed the course of modern horror.

They made movies that created their own cinematic vocabularies.

Hell, they made many of us into horror fans in the first place.

All of them had a lot more to say than just making you jump.

These were the guys who paved the way for all that was to follow, and we're here to pay tribute

...