Funland

Understandably some people view this movie as a waste of time, but one man's trash is another's treasure. Funland was the creation of a couple of Saturday night live writers - and it shows. Some sections appear to be nothing more than skits filling out the storyline . . . and while some jokes work, some don't, but it's often in the eye of the beholder. Promo posters make it look like a psychotic clown on the rampage but Bruce Burger is the unwitting protagonist trying to save the one thing he believes in. When a mob family take over an amusement park and fire the mentally unstable resident clown he retreats to the closed down wax museum. Here the film takes a bizarre turn as he finds companionship with Marilyn Monroe, Bogart and his hand puppet Peter Pepperoni. They all come 'alive' sometimes preaching tolerance and other times revenge. He's also visited by the murdered ex-owner who wants him to stop the mob destroying the park they both love. Watch out for Bruce's hilarious descent into madness (complete with scantily clad angel of death) when the cafeteria men start rapping and a poster advertising the new roller-coaster, 'Man's Biggest Thrill Is Coming'.

As disorganized, bewildering, and downright strange as Michael A. Simpson's Funland is, to say I didn't enjoy it at all would be a blatant lie. To say I don't admire or appreciate the culture or saga of films it belongs to would be another hurtful jab at the very era I have grown to love and provide ample amounts of respect to over the years. That specific era is the eighties horror film era, where popular slasher films like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, immensely successful films financially that were made on a shoestring budget, proved to ambitious writers/directors that you didn't need to have millions of dollars and studio connections to make and release a film (the original Friday the 13th had an unmissable advertisement in a magazine before a script was even written).

Because of this new trend, directors and writers were racing to a neverending finish line to make their own slasher films, which is why there are so many unsung gems (and duds) that still haven't gotten their recognition. Many of these films achieved a cult following and, if one were to peruse a catalog or one of the many websites dedicated to the preservation and admiration of such films, they could find these kinds of films quite easily. It's films like Funland that you need to dig deeper for; the kind of quirky, unabashedly ridiculous, low-key effort that you almost can't believe passed the script stages. Whether or not the film was released in theaters is a mystery to me, but if it was, this may indeed be the most forgotten American horror film to ever grace the silver screen.

The film focuses on the titular amusement park, which is owned by the goofy Angus Perry (William Windom). The amusement park is a sore for sight eyes, as the employees are bored and uninterested in their positions, the rides have an unsafe look to them, and the entire environment reeks of cheesiness and sleaze. However, the most dedicated member of Funland appears to be Niel Stickney (David L. Lander), who plays "Bruce Burger," the clown mascot of the park, who is draped with a slice of pizza. Neil has played Bruce for so long that he no longer wants to be called "Neil," nor have his checks made out to him in that name. This all adheres to his grip on reality, which is becoming looser and looser as time goes on.

The back-breaking straw is when Angus dies under circumstances almost too unbelievable, and the park becomes overtaken by a mob family, who oversee a great deal of changes to the park, one of which is getting rid of the park's signature clown character in favor of the corporate mascot. Angus always defended the relevancy of Neil and the character he passionately plays, but now that he's gone, the mob ousts him at once. The mob's pawn is the park's careless manager Mike Spencer (the great Bruce Mahler), who agrees to let Neil go, leading Neil to buy a rifle and take revenge on the park that has let go of him.

Despite a great deal of lovable cheesiness, stemming from everything from the acting to the production quality (the opening titles have a strange fuzziness to them, as well as the catchy opening music being a bit louder than normal), Funland's biggest misstep is that it's a horror film that never realizes it's a horror film. It toys with genres of dark comedy, action, and mystery, and occasionally masquerades as a horror film with suspense and unpredictability within its tone, but never does the film forgo its numerous other genres to work as what it should be trying to achieve. Most of the film, however, operates with a wonderful sense of blackness to its comedy, which works wonderfully, especially in the first half hour, when we're getting acquainted with this demented Funland Amusement Park. During this time, humor flows in unrestricted free-form, while characters say and do the most outlandish things possible, with humor arousing from almost every circumstance.

With this, I was kind of disappointed to realize that Funland doesn't keep up this sense of dark humor all the way through, and instead goes for a more potboiling thriller in the weakest sense towards the end, while only emphasizing a small element of the blackness in the meantime. However, during the first half hour there's a certain hilarity that almost can't be replicated, as it's a hilarity that exists because of our unfamiliarity with this crazy world. Indeed, the film exists in a world of its own, and for that, operates as one of the most humble and ridiculous films of the 1980's I have yet to see.

Starring: David L. Lander, William Windom, and Bruce Mahler. Directed by: Michael A. Simpson.

Lavern and Shirley, SNL and the Police Academy films are all represented by the main characters and films writers. The director is also responsible for Sleepaway Camp II & III, the goofy sequels to the legit original. Add a parody of the Godfather and every stereotype of 80s movie characters, and you get this movie. It's slightly funny, but it doesn't come close to being horror, or even horror comedy. Watch it for the over the top acting and ridiculous plot, which at times is pretty funny. But the best parts are the background conversations "you kids are gonna have fun if I have to beat it out of you" (look for the mom of this scene, a pre-Trump Marla Maples), or the jokes in the sets, like the sign before the line of a ride that shows a clown holding a rubber sphere that says "you must be as tall as my balls to ride this attraction". It's all stupid sophomoric humor, but it's still funny. Not a must see, but a good rainy day movie with friends trying to spot the little hidden jokes.

David Lander (Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley) plays Bruce Burger, an angry clown who talks to himself. Need I say more? Although I'm an old man and a lot of people reading this probably think "Laverne and Shirley" is a lesbian porn, I'll go on anyway. When the owner of Funland dies, a mob family buys the park and makes some changes that the parks clown doesn't approve of. After talking it over with his favorite puppet, he takes matters into his own hands. Don't get the wrong idea, this is meant to be a comedy although it's packaged more like a horror film. It's not a bad dark comedy if you can get past some of the bad acting but it did keep me mildly amused.

I'm sure many people sit down to watch this film expecting horror. Although the chintzy tagline does suggest an even chintzier slasher flick, this movie rises above that genre. It's not a slasher flick at all, which is just fine. If anything, I would definitely classify this film in the Dark Comedy genre. It's almost an amusing and mocking look at insanity. The story is an interesting one, and a very creative one at that. Watch it if you enjoy a good chuckle, but not if you're looking for some cheap gore or contrived "pop-out" scare tactics. Prepare yourself for lots and lots of ethnic stereotyping, but done in such a way that it mocks those who actually believe in such stereotypes. The thing that makes this film a dark comedy is not only its ability to poke fun at bigots by catering to their ridiculous beliefs, but also at the utter random (and often crude) humor. If you enjoy films like Better Off Dead and I Love You to Death, it's almost guaranteed that you'll like this movie.