Director: Tobe Hooper
Writer: Lawrence Block
Starring: Elizabeth Berridge and Shawn Carson
Body Count: 6
Review: Carnivals and amusement parks are just awesome settings for any kind of movie, and especially for a horror movie. Even if a movie totally sucks, the fact that it's set in a carnival can sometimes be enough to make it watchable.
Such is the case with this early 80s flick from Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper, in which four teenagers on a double-date visit a sleazy travelling carnival and decide to spend the night in the funhouse--despite multiple warnings from the homeless lady preaching to them that "God is watching!"
They witness a murder, and throughout the rest of the film are pursued by the carnival owner and his deformed son.
I'm not quite sure why, but The Funhouse just doesn't quite live up to my expectations. Maybe my standards are too high, who knows? There's some really interesting things going on in the first forty minutes, but once the murdering starts, it all just gets a little boring. The deaths aren't that special, and the only character who really stands out is the carnival owner, who is pretty chilling--not because he's ruthless, but because he's not. He's not insane or maniacal--he's just trying to protect his better interests, which makes The Funhouse somewhat scary--but not much.
Still, this is probably the best slasher picture that Hooper has done since making Chainsaw, and will probably remain that way, seeing as how he hasn't done much lately--come to think of it, nobody involved with The Funhouse has been doing much lately...
Trivia: Also known as Carnival of Terror, The Funhouse features a number of scattered references to other films, including Psycho and Hooper's own Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Also, interestingly, when Universal released the film in '81, they hired a young writer by the name of Dean Koontz to write the novelization of the film. Published under the name Owen West, The Funhouse novel takes the story in entirely different directions. It's a great book, with the action from the film only taking up a third of the entire story. The book was reprinted a couple of years ago, this time under Koontz's name, and is still available. It's worth reading, especially if you like the movie.
