The Funhouse (1981)
Goodtimes DVD (region 1)
d. Tobe Hooper; pr. Derek Power, Steven Bernhardt; scr. Lawrence Block; ph. Andrew Laszlo; m. John Beal; ed. Jack Hofstra; cast. Elizabeth Berridge, Shawn Carson, Jeanne Austin, Cooper Huckabee, Kevin Conway, William Finley, Sylvia Miles (96 mins)
Tobe Hooper found infamy as the director of the most controversial and subversive horror movie of the 1970s, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the film that ignited uproar when many critics proclaimed it a landmark in American film. When it was indeed accrued such status, Hooper was expected to make a follow-up. However, when the subsequent studio-bound film of Eaten Alive failed to recapture the same nightmarish intensity, Hooper’s career was in danger of floundering, and he was quickly removed from several feature-film opportunities (including The Dark). He was thus somewhat lucky to get the job of directing the mainstream horror movie The Funhouse. Despite production hassles and budget overdrafts, Hooper was able to maintain a remarkable degree of creative control over the project. The resultant film is perhaps his last unsullied work, before he was recruited by Steven Spielberg for Poltergeist, was subsequently accused of having been overshadowed by Spielberg, and so set out to over-compensate with the fascinating flops Lifeforce and Invaders from Mars. Indeed, The Funhouse served neatly to briefly confirm Hooper as one of number of the more provocative horror directors to emerge from the 1970s, alongside such genre luminaries as George A. Romero, Wes Craven and John Carpenter. Sadly, Hooper’s subsequent output has gone a long way to sullying this reputation.
The Funhouse may seem to be a straight-forward teen-oriented slasher movie, made in the immediate post-Halloween boom period in such disreputable works. A debuting Elizabeth Berridge plays a young woman who is set to go out with a rebellious young man (Cooper Huckabee) on a double date with her friends. Her father warns her not to go to the visiting carnival as there have been reports of disappearances and even homicides connected to their previous stops. Nevertheless, she and her friends do go the carnival, run apparently by a ubiquitous barker (the gravelly-voiced Kevin Conway in brilliant form). They wander around experiencing the sights, especially the garish freak-show (which includes on exhibit a two-headed cow and a deformed, bottled fetus). On spying the haunted house ride, they dare each other to spend the night in the building. Some argument they decide to have some fun and hide away. After closing time, however, as they peer down into a room below, they see a bizarre situation, revealing a hugely deformed male sexually engaging with a carny worker / whore (Sylvia Miles) and then exploding in blind rage when he perceives she has slighted him and taken advantage of his needs. Conway duly intervenes but is alerted to the presence of the teenagers above them. The youths are hunted as they desperately try to elude the barker and his deformed companion. read more