The Funhouse:
What's it about?
A group of teens go to the carnival on a double date and then dare each other to stay the night, but as they hide out inside the titular attraction, they witness the bloody results of the beast behind the Frankenstein's Monster mask getting out-of-hand. Will they get out alive?
Who would I recognise in it?
Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, Kevin Conway.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Impatient viewers might tire of the build-up (
it's at least forty minutes before the first blood is shed), but those into a beautifully captured atmosphere will be very happy indeed. Tobe Hooper's ghoulish little 1981 horror flick is a visual treat and populated by hyperbole-spouting carnies - the sort of crazy-eyed fringe-elements he covered so well in
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and
Eaten Alive. Violence-wise it's pretty tame by today's standards (
and yet this flick was at one point caught up in the Video Nasties scandal here in the UK), but blood and guts isn't the business that
The Funhouse is in - this flick is more interested in the carnival atmosphere and that garish sense of fun mixed in with (
sometimes cheesy) scares. In some ways it's dated, and despite some apparent behind-the-scenes troubles regarding how certain scenes were shot, Hooper's film is jolly good fun. As an aside, it's interesting to note that while it does play along with genre conventions, it also breaks them too - the "
final girl" smokes pot and gets saucy with her fella. It's a big, hearty "
BOO!" scare from a grease-painted freak with booze on his breath.
Good.
Click "READ MORE" for Hugo, Sherlock Holmes 2, and Inferno...
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