The Funhouse

Rating:
Summary: The "other" splatter flick from director Tobe Hooper
Review: All things considered, Tobe Hooper's "The Funhouse" is actually a better movie than his infamous original version of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." True, you will not a single scene in this 1981 splatter flick to rival the first appearance of Leatherface (i.e., the scene with "THE HOOK"), but overall the production values are better and the atmosphere never goes careening off into the totally bizarre (at least not in my book).

After a title sequence that sets both the setting and the tone, "The Funhouse" begins with a nice nudge-nudge, wink-wink that combines the opening of "Halloween" with the shower scene from "Psycho." Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) has a pesky younger brother, Joey (Shawn Carson), who violates their sibling propriety so badly that she pins him up against the wall and says not only will she not take him to the carnival that is in town, she will, one day, at a place and time of her choosing, get him in a way that will pretty much scar him for life.

Our story really begins when Amy's dad forbids her to go to the carnival, because a couple of girls were found dead after it left a nearby town. Of course Amy not only goes to the carnival with her date, Buzz (Cooper Huckabee) and her friends Liz (Largo Woodruff) and Richie (Miles Chapin), but after enjoying the freak shows and other tacky sideshow attractions, she ends up going along with Richie's brilliant idea to spend the night in the Funhouse. However, before the two couples can get really comfortable they witness a gruesome and unexpected murder on the level below them, and when they make the mistake of letting the killer know that they are there, the fun really begins.

This horror film really benefits from the setting, both in terms of the seedy carnival and the mechanical innards of the funhouse itself. There is a slight let down because the funhouse ride, which the quartet take so that they can jump off to hide for the night, is nothing special. On the one hand, that is not surprising, because this is a seedy little carnival. But the title credits heighten our expectations and it is actually not until the power is off in the funhouse and the figures are all still that they start to creep you out. You know most of our little group is going to end up dead and Amy meets the only requirement a young woman needed to survive a splatter flick way back then, but Buzz actually does a decent job of keeping his head and trying to fight back, which is a rather welcome surprise, even though it is obviously a doomed effort.

The script by Lawrence Block was based on a novel by Dean Koontz, but once it became clean the finished film was going off in a different direction, Koontz got his name pulled from the credits. Despite that badge of dishonor, "The Funhouse" is an above average splatter flick and one of the few that came out in the wake of "Halloween" that was not a wretched disappointment. Final Thought: I wonder if years later, when Cooper Huckabee and Kevin Conway (who plays the carny barker) both appeared in the film "Gettysburg" if they got together and commented on the fact that they got out of "The Funhouse" with their careers alive. Then again, Conway does give the best performance in the flick and has all of the good lines.

Rating:
Summary: A real treat for fans of 80s slashers and monster movies
Review: What a pleasure it was sitting back watching this again as it was a while -- an 80's slasher that's a bit different and still a great watch.

From the beginning of the opening credits start and the movie's title flashes up on the screen, John Beal's sinister soundtrack let's one know that there's going to be menace in store. It takes a while to get going perhaps, but the wait is well worth it.

The set up is okay, too. Amy (Elisabeth Berridge) is getting ready for her first date with Buzz (Cooper Huckabee). Their double date, who set them up, Richie and Liz (Miles Chaplin & Largo Woodruff) is joining them for a night at the traveling carnival, Early on in the film, one character mentions the previous year the carnival had came, it had coincided with a couple of murders in the town. Coincidence? Come to the funhouse to find out.

After Buzz and a rigid Amy get off on the wrong foot, eventually everyone relaxes and is having a good time at the carnival. There's some pot smoking, seeing a "boring" magic show with a great little ending, obnoxiously heckling a fortune teller and seeing an "Amazing Animals" show with all sorts of deformities, including what looks like a baby mutation.

Then Richie has a great idea! Spend an overnight in the funhouse at the park for kicks. The girls call home to make an excuse to their parents.

There's a nice scene in all of this with Amy listening intently to the announcer in front of the funhouse..."You will scream with terror...you will beg for release, but there will be no escape...for there is no release from the funhouse". Sets the tone well.

Liz saying to Richie, "this better be good", with he enthusiastically replying "It's gonna be great!", the quartet take a ride in the funhouse, jumping off their cars mid-ride. The park closes, and as the night's crowds are leaving, the growing danger can be felt and safety diminished with the four still inside as the camera pulls an aerial view of the diminishing crowd going home.

From there, it's a flat out horror movie. Period. It's scary and intense. After witnessing a murder, and being found out by carnival owner Kevin Conway and his son, visuals and sounds play an abundant part to the unknown terror that could be lurking around every corner, and director Tobe Hooper knows it. This movie ain't titled "The Funhouse" for nothing. It's all about the atmosphere.

The four "teens" are good in their roles. Miles Chapin was 27 when he did this, but I actually bought him as a college age kid. Huckabee does the requisite hunk hero adequately enough here. The girls are worth watching, though. My guess is Elizabeth Berridge's agent tried to set her up as the next scream queen with this one. Interesting that she's really more trained into theater and does a lot of stage work today. The real scream queen is Woodruff, however. She's really good and totally believable, and perhaps the most memorable scene of the movie involves her trapped in a vent with a scary visitor. She is absolutely terrified, desperately trying to talk her way out of her situation and I bought every minute of it.

Both Conway and his son, played by mime Wayne Doba, are also good. Conway is simultaneously disgusted at and affectionate towards his son, and Doba potrays a range of emotions just from his body language alone, and there is sympathy for him, although he is as frightening as hell.

Admittedly, some of the material seems a bit padded to fit a 90 minute feature and could be taken out. Some of it is mean spirited, and the little brother subplot is rather weak, although it does lead up to one nice scene involving a character reaching for safety that is close, but yet so far away.

Overall, however, "The Funhouse" is quite a good watch.

Rating:
Summary: Pay to get in. PRAY to get out.
Review: "Thet boy just ain't right" If you've seen this movie, then you'll know what I mean. Lately, I've been collecting late 70's, early 80's horror movies and I came across The Funhouse (1981). Directed by Tobe Hooper, best know for 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I thought this movie would be fun and it was.

The movie is slow going for the first hour, and then things pick up from there. This provides a slow build up of the tension, which I enjoyed. Basically you have a small group of teenagers who decide to spend the night in a carnival funhouse, and most don't live to regret it. There are some thrilling/scary moments, but the movie is more low key than The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The gore is very limited, and a lot of it is off screen, but as a choice of direction, I thought it was better that way, for this movie. The settings are very effective, using natural lighting in most scenes, giving the movie a gritty feel. The actors, I feel, did an effective job in portraying their characters, giving them a little more depth than what we used to in these types of movies. The one minor issue I had was I thought the monster make up might have been a little over the top, in that I thought it would have been more effective had it been toned down a notch. The monster, by the way, is the son of a carnival worker, and is very disfigured to the point of being grotesque. I am not giving away anything here, as we learn this about midpoint in the movie, and it's not a shocking revelations or anything.

While this movie shared many elements of other horror movies, teenagers, creepy location, psycho killer, it rises above it's peers somewhat in the gritty realism. Again, I want to stress that this movie is slow going through the first hour, but was worth it to me for the last half hour.

Rating:
Summary: 2.5 stars.
Review: Knowing that the director of the texas chainsaw massacre was behind this, I decided to look into it. After watching it though I said" that wasn't all that scary." It was pretty sad and to cheesy to be scary. The acting is okay for a slasher film. If you're gonna see it, don't expect texas chainsaw massacre, and I'm sure you'll do okay with this film. WARNING: It's not that scary.

Rating:
Summary: Elizabeth Berridge your the light of my life
Review: if your reading this i just want you to know i'm a bored college junior who loves you. if i ever see you i'll let you know its me. i love you i love you i love you i love you i love YOU. bye bye

Rating:
Summary: half and half
Review: The first half of this movie is brilliant. You have all the ingridients of a classic horror flick: the oblivious parents, the bratty little kid, the sweet virginal heroine, the rebel boyfriend and the sidekicks;the best friend and the goofy guy. You also have a carnival that seems wrong from the minute the kids arrive. Everything moves on a quick, suspense building pace until the second half. Once the monster chase is on the movie starts to slow down and by the time the ending came I didn't care anymore. Later I read the book and was shocked to see how much was left out of the movie. In this case the director should have hired his screen writer and stuck with the novel.

Rating:
Summary: Was this the Dean Koontz idea?
Review: I read Dean Koontz' novelization of the film. I'm a huge fan of Koontz. He prefaces the book with the info that this film was totally changed and (almost) unrecognizable. But I noticed a few moments from the book...and Koontz was given absolutely no credit. The film is not great; rather, a formulaic horror film, suggesting scary stuff even though it's predictable. There are some good things about the film, as presented in this DVD 2.35:1 letterbox. The photography is very fine, and the use of color is vivid and crisp. Hooper's copying of certain shock-elements from "Texas Chainsaw" are evident, but he apparently learned something quickly, because the following year he made the brilliant "Poltergeist", legitimizing him. Koontz had said that the studio made this film totally contrary to his intention; preventing Hooper from presenting his idea, since it's been proven that he's quite a smart guy. I bought it because of the price, and my curiosity about the Koontz idea. It's a formula teen slasher film, with some genuine scares. The great Sylvia Miles appears, too briefly, with a bad middle European accent (she's always been a "gypsy" in choosing her characters, and the Academy nominated her twice for her bold choices). Rick Baker, the great make-up artist, offered a silly display of the deformed nemesis. Not up to his standards. This film can be written off, but there are talents involved, including Koontz, and it shouldn't be discarded too quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Stinks
Review: This movie is digusting and stupid and bad and boring and I'm tired of saying and. Don't see it! It is a waste of time and energy. It [is bad!]

Rating:
Summary: Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse
Review: First, I want to bore you with a story from my past. I shanghaied my poor father into taking me to see this when it first came out. I was 13. All I remember about it is the Elizabeth Berridge nude scene (I thought she was cute), and some guy getting an axe to the head.

Now, twenty years later, I rented this to relive my youth (and Berridge's topless scene). This film is not scary; wasn't then, wasn't now.

After getting frightened in the shower by her little brother with a rubber knife (ripping off both "Halloween" and "Psycho" in the process), Amy (Berridge) goes to the local carnival with her hunky date and another couple. Little brother follows them there. The two couples wander around the carnival for the first half of the movie. I do not know if this was supposed to be character development, all that developed for me was boredom. On a whim, the couples decide to spend the night in the funhouse, watched over by a guy wearing a Frankenstein mask. Kevin Conway plays three different roles as three different carnival barkers, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why. The couples witness Frankenface murder the fortune teller (Sylvia Miles, eons from "Midnight Cowboy") and the funhouse barker (Frank's father) comes in and unmasks his son. Of course, his son is a monster and probably retarded to boot, continuing the long cinematic history of having mentally retarded people as psychotic killers. The two couples are trapped in the funhouse, running from the killer and the killer's daddy. Little brother hangs around long enough to get picked up by his parents, but does not tell them where Amy is...well, I guess he was afraid of her. Again, I cannot figure out why. The two couples are offed one by one, until the final fight.

Tobe Hooper, riding the goodwill he generated with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for much too long, just cannot seem to get behind the screenplay. The gore is low, as is the body count (for a slasher film), and the pace is deadly slow. There are a few dark moments where you cannot tell what is happening. All the carny folk come off as hicks, the teens are horny, and the killer is a genetic mistake. Aside from Tobe Hooper's name, this is just another slasher film from the early 1980's that somehow did not spawn a sequel. Sometimes your prayers are answered. I cannot recommend "The Funhouse," although it is better than Hooper's later "Crocodile." (Boy, I really hated that film!)

This is rated (R) for physical violence, some gore, profanity, some female nudity, some sexual content, sexual references, drug abuse, and adult situations.

Rating:
Summary: You CAN'T escape the horrors of "The Funhouse !"
Review: I first saw this movie on A&E a long time ago when I was in the 3rd-Grade . GEEZ, it scared the hell out of me ! Later, they started showing it on Sci-Fi channel and a couple others . Its now one of my all-time favourite horror films, along with: "Nightmare on Elm Street"(1984), "House on Haunted Hill"(1999), and last but not least: "Resident Evil"(2002).

But none of these scared me as much as the REALISTIC look of "The Funhouse !!" Its a fun, chillingly gruesome, nightmarish monster B-movie about 4-teens looking for mischief at the County Carnival--and MAN DO THEY FIND IT !

After going on a couple rides, and seeing a bit of the other sights, they decide to spend the night in the Funhouse . BIG MISTAKE !!! Once they are inside, they discover that this ain't no ordinary funhouse ! This one's got sum'
murder-and-mayhem, and a trip into the terrifying unknown !

Released in 1981 as a blockbuster-hit, but low-budget motion picture, "The Funhouse" is a very fun thrill-ride, and is considered in my opinion: "Psycho" and "The Amityville Horror" rolled into one !!