In this film, Kim Henkel plays a writer. He would later co-write The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with this film's writer/director, Tobe Hooper.
Eggshells had a handful of screenings in 1969, but made no money. At that point, Tobe Hooper became worried he would never have a career in film. Then a friend suggested he see a low-budget horror film called Night of the Living Dead (1968). He did and when he came out he said, "I can do that." Hooper and friend Kim Henkle put their heads together and wrote Hooper's next feature The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).
The first full-length film made in Austin, Texas.
Long considered lost, Eggshells was rediscovered, restored, and and re-released in the late 2000's. The restoration then debuted at the SXSW Film Festival in 2009 with Tobe Hooper in attendance. Austin Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Louis Black spearheaded the hunt, executive-produced the restoration, and wrote about it in "Found Film."
In the tradition of many Austin-area debuts by first-time directors, Eggshells eschews plot entirely - much like Richard Linklater's It's Impossible to Learn How to Plow by Reading Books (1988) or Eagle Pennell's The Whole Shootin' Match (1978). However, Eggshells sets itself apart from those films by laying out its rambling vision of hippie life in Austin, Texas in a series of acid-splashed reveries: