TheFunhouse

The Funhouse (1981)

The movie opens with an obvious nod to both Halloween and Psycho as a young boy sneaks up on his sister and pretends to stab her. The sister, Amy, then heads off to the carnival with her date and another couple. After walking around they decide to sneak into the Funhouse stay overnight. What they don’t know is that a hideously disfigured and violent “carnie” lives in the Funhouse. After the kids see him kill another woman he and his father then chase the kids down and pick them off one at a time to protect their secret. Will they survive the night in the Funhouse? You will just have to watch and see.

Director Tobe Hooper has had a very eclectic career to say the least. For me this is one of the few films he has directed since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that has been worth a damn. But even then this isn’t a great movie. After a pretty cool start with the homage and an effective jump scare involving a dog the movie slows down. The movie takes way too long between the opening and getting to the meat of the story, which is the stalk and kill. On the positive side I love the setting of the carnival and the Funhouse. I’ve always found both of them very creepy and the movie does put them to good use. Also once the cast is in the Funhouse and things pick up the movie gets entertaining again. The movie takes every advantage with it’s setting to create an atmosphere and build some tension. Though much of the tension and mystery that could have been created is lost when they reveal the “creature” too quickly. The cast is about what you would expect from a slasher movie. That is young and inexperienced which results in mediocre performances at best. But then that really isn’t the most important thing for a slasher movie.

So for me when I sit down to watch a movie like this (80s slasher) I expect two things. Nudity and good kills/gore are a must. The Funhouse fails to deliver either of these. There is little skin on screen, in spite of a beautiful young cast (damn you Tobe Hooper!). I’m not trying to be a pervert here, but there are sort of rules for a slasher movie. Also really disappointing is the lack of any good gore. All of the juicy stuff really happens off screen, so the gore hounds are going to be sad. I’m guessing that Hooper tried the same technique that worked so well in Chainsaw and left it to the audience’s imagination, but that movie was lighting in a bottle. What is really frustrating is that the killer looks great in the movie and that the makeup effects were handled by Rick Baker, who has an excellent track record. So they were part of the way there, but for some reason the gore and kills were lame.

The movie delivers some scares and atmosphere, but fails to deliver on the other staples of the genre. Because of this what could have been a great movie is an average one, but still worth checking out.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer