The Funhouse

Every time I'd see this film pop up on a streaming service I'd skip it because it has a low rating. I've seen some reviews say the first half is boring and has no direction, but I think that's what makes this movie great.

The first half of the film does a great job at making you feel the atmosphere of the carnival. You get to see how a night out with these characters is like, it felt very natural almost as if you're there hanging out with them. As the night goes on things begin to take a sinister turn and things just keep escalating from there on.

If you appreciate 80s horror I would highly recommend you watch this film and be your own judge. Sometimes the directors want to put you in the front seat with the characters and I think they did an awesome job. Just sit back and enjoy the night out at The Funhouse.

Along with every other horror fan out there, I have been puzzling about Tobe Hooper. Texas Chainsaw features highly in my list of favorite films. At least two of his other films are really worthwhile, one of them right here. But, it all quickly unraveled for him and by the time he had moved on to Cannon in the mid-80's, he was pretty much over as a filmmaker. I think the crux of the problem is that he was not Hollywood material. He seems to have been a shy and almost asocial presence on his own sets, a kind of droopy, charmless guy, bullied off The Dark by the crass Kinski, sidestepped in Poltergeist by the more agile Spielberg, which can be viewed in Europe as the kind of quality that signifies an artist, but the Hollywood environment requires someone to direct the crowded set and costly , complicated production, and that means energetic decision-makers of some persuasive wit and strong character.

You see, he did not come up through the Hollywood system at all. He was a documentary cameraman in the 60's and you can see that in his best work. He did Chainsaw in a close circle of friends, away from Hollywood fanfare. It just didn't seem like he could muster the ego for necessary friction to see that vision through (the drug problems were probably ways to cope with that). His own fault was that he couldn't find it in him to cut out on his own.

At any rate, I consider Hooper our loss. The guy had a genuine vision and that vision is prized by me, even snippets of it like we have here.

Here's an easy riddle: the film is typical in the slasher vein about a group of teens stranded after-hours in a funhouse. Its singular call to fame now is that it was once part of that notorious list of Nasties. Now that list is dumb and arbitrary in a number of ways, but why this nearly bloodless film? Why not Friday the 13th?

But of course for the same reason that Texas Chainsaw got an R rating. The very fabric and walls of the thing are violence.

Oh, a lot of what's inside including the storyline and bad guys is silly or simply mediocre, and mainly put together from bankable horror elements, from jump-scares to ruby-red color filters, which is after all the gist of a funhouse: the horror house is fun because you anticipate the elements and staging, and look forward to this being controlled around you. The opening that slyly takes us from a re-enactment of famous scenes in Halloween and Psycho through a Frankenstein poster on the wall to Bride of Frankenstein playing on TV, is Hooper's way of commenting on the redressing of spare parts he's going to use.

That's fun and really a lot of the film is, but not genuine vision. Hooper's vision is something more powerful than either Carpenter or Argento, both effective in other respects, were doing on this level, and that is the place itself is causing evil. It was dumbed-down by Spielberg in Poltergeist - written by him but a Hooper-originated project - as an actual force in the walls, and all sorts of gizmos and movie effects were brought around to clarify. But it was something altogether different to a 'haunted house' effect in its original conception.

Chainsaw is the most pure in this regard. But, it's a recurring feature in Eaten Alive, Salem's Lot, Poltergeist, and this. Hooper explained it as a 'physical sensation' he was after. I think it's something more he achieved.

There is violent energy in the gears and walls of the world, and it's the turning of those gears much more than storybased character decisions that control and manifest the energy as a kind of semiconscious , animal evil in the narrative of the film.

You can observe that the 'Funhouse' extends and anticipates the actual physical place (opening scene - dog - shotgun guy). It's something mischievous in the air. In our film, all of it is centered on a imaginative kid on his way to the scary place. That kid is scared out of consciousness. Shots of the unconscious kid are intercut with shots of the terrified teenagers trapped inside the maze. And there is the enigmatic shot of the boy saying nothing about that to the parents.

This is brilliant. The boy pulled a prank and expects one back from his sister, the cosmic prank that shatters lives is the universe conspires to stage the real thing.

Nothing of this registers directly, because we are distracted by the much more ordinary monster in the narrative (initially Frankenstein).

The entire last 20 minutes are a zap of cinematic energy from these cosmic gears that create and destroy the monster that is the prank that throws the world helter skelter (the finale takes place in a staging area full of gears).

Why? Because the god of the machine is watching (as the old crone cackles about) and wants to be amused.

Make no mistake, this is the sister film to Texas Chainsaw.

Fun-loving teenagers break into a carnival funhouse for an overnight spree and discover that there's a bloodthirsty and deformed murderer inside waiting to pick them off one by one.

The Funhouse can't help but be unfavorably compared to director Tobe Hooper's triumph, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It doesn't quite hold a candle to that film and it's intensity, but all the candy colors of the funhouse corridors aren't a terrible place to lounge around for 90 minutes and the makeup effects for the main bad guy are impressive.

Certainly not in the list of greatest Tobe Hooper films, but must say it is an old slasher you would need to see if you are a fan of that genre. We are introduced to Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) in a scene that is Alfred Hitchcock's PYSCHO meets John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN. It surprisingly does work well and works better than most films that have been influenced by those pair of classics. I think you can thank Hooper for that. Amy is off to the carnival with her new boyfriend Buzz (Cooper Huckabee) and two other friends Liz (Largo Woodruff) and Richie (Miles Chapin). After some good scenes that well set up the carnival atmosphere they decide to spend the night at the funhouse.

Hooper really does create some very good tension in the film. To go along with good and intense music by John Beal. Along the way though we do see a major influence to this film and that is FRANKENSTEIN. What with one of the workers of the funhouse hidden behind a Frankenstein's monster mask and the secrets that are revealed about that character. Personally, I feel the second half of the film doesn't work as well as the first. Not to say that the second part is bad. Far from it, but to me the build up just seemed to work better than when you are getting into the meat of the story.

Rick Baker did some good makeup effects and also starring Kevin Conway who nicely portrays three different barkers at the carnival and William Finley as Marco the Magnificent.

Up until THE FUNHOUSE, Tobe Hooper had only come pretty close to recapturing the relentless and ruthlessly nightmarish feel of the classic that catapulted him to fame, THE Texas CHAINSAW MASSACRE. TCM 2 came closer than most of his films, but it traded in psychological terror for buckets of blood 'n' guts, where the first TCM had very little.

THE FUNHOUSE goes back to Hooper's roots, trading in the gore for playing with your nerves like Jimmy Page playing guitar. Traveling carnivals have always had a sinister, menacing undertone to them - that's part of what makes them so attractive - and Hooper, with a smart assist from Larry Block's script, takes that queasy unease and turns it up to '11', so that when the true horror is revealed, it's intensified that much more.

Four friends on a double date (Elizabeth Berridge, Miles Chapin, Cooper Huckabee and Largo Woodruff) decide to hole up in the Funhouse of a traveling carnival just outside of town way past closing time, just for kicks. It's a weird place that gives off a freaky vibe, but they don't come to realize just how freaky, until they see something that puts all of their lives in danger, and realize to their horror that not all the freaks in the show are fake...or at all "fun".

I don't want to spoil the surprises, but as is his habit, Hooper front-loads the movie with some acting vets, including genre favorites William Finley and Sylvia Miles. Plus the great Kevin Conway plays a pivotal role in bringing about the terror and death that the seemingly endless night holds for the trapped teens.

Anyone expecting Hooper and company to just pour on the gore is bound to be disappointed. THE FUNHOUSE is more about empathy and atmosphere...I mean, who HASN'T been through a funhouse like this at some time in their lives? The more you can put yourself in the place of the main characters, the spookier the film will be for you - especially in the third act.

Kudos to everybody for putting in some damn good performances, but especially to Berridge and to Wayne Doba who gives us a monster that is by turns pathetic, disgusting, pitiful and horrifying. And for John Beal, who created a score that plays with your nerves just as powerfully as the visuals do.

This is one of those best viewed alone, with the sound up and all the lights out...And don't worry - if you screech like a little schoolgirl at some parts, it'll be our secret, I promise...(hehheh)