Funland

Michael A. Simpson is great at creating satire with exaggerated archetypical characters. Funland (1986), like Simpson's Sleepaway Camp films (2 & 3), features funny and interesting characters with good dialogue, decent settings, and a tongue-in-cheek storyline. There's some pretty zany stuff going on in this movie, some of which you might miss if you divert your attention for too long. For example, there's a sign at the gate of one of the rides of a clown holding a ball in each hand and it reads something like, "You must be as tall as my balls to ride." The camera aims momentarily at the clown's crotch. Also the whole absurd lectures given by managers who'd like their minimum wage employees to believe they were working in a powerful profession and to have them give them respect as if he/she were Bill Gates or someone all-important. There's a hilarious pizza-making speech. Once again, as with the Sleepaway Camp films, Simpson gets away with racial and homosexual slights because they're too obvious, so flagrant that no intelligent viewer could begin to take them seriously, in fact, they're very comical. Funland is good up to a point. About halfway through the film falls flat when it opts for quasi serious approach instead of evolving into a horror comedy. I strongly believe Funland could have been 100% better if it would have become a horror film. The two teenage leads should have had more camera time and the deeply troubled clown, Bruce Burger, played convincingly by David L. Lander of Laverne & Shirley fame, Andrew 'Squiggy' Squiggmann, should have went on a murderous bloody rampage, in which the two lovers would have had to fight to stay alive. Had Funland been closer to Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3 in its production it would have done much better in finding an audience. Sleepaway Camp 3 fans might notice the television reporter in Funland as the same actress in SC3 who also played the reporter. There are lots of familiar faces in Funland, actors and actresses who have appeared in many low-budget goodies over the decades. There's an overweight female character who acts like someone right out of a SNL skit, and she pulls the humor off quite well as an overzealous park security guard. All in all, Funland is an enjoyable little slapstick flick. But it could have really turned into a memorable cult classic if horror would have played a major part, and that's too bad. I suggest you watch Simpson's Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3 to see what Funland could have aspired to.

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'.

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.

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.

When a mob family takes over an amusement park after the owner dies under mysterious circumstances, the recently-fired clown mascot (David Lander, known as Squiggy on "Laverne and Shirley") seeks vengeance for the loss of his job.

The humor of this film is very strange, with a mixture of racist watermelon jokes, a "rectal surgical suppliers" convention, Natalie Wood's rowboat, some Mafia guys who take over the park, and a very, very good Humphrey Bogart impersonator. I am not entirely sure who this is supposed to appeal to (but I think it might be me).

What is really weird is that the film is sort of marketed as a Mafia picture. That is how Netflix sells it, and it is how the plot is described on IMDb (see above). But that is not even the point. A mentally unhinged clown gets fired and then seeks revenge. It does not matter if the mob is in the story or not, because the focus is this crazy clown.