THE FUNHOUSE (1981)

THE FUNHOUSE (1981)

Tagline: Something is alive in the funhouse...something that, tonight, will turn the funhouse into a carnival of terror!

(Horror, Thriller, Creepy Carnival) [R]

...Who will dare to face the challenge of the Funhouse? Who is mad enough to enter that world of darkness? How about you, sir...?

In this one, Amy Harper tricks her parents into thinking she and Buzz are going to the movies. Instead, they decide to go to a carnival with some other friends Richie and Liz. The carnival is known for having issues in the past so Amy’s mother and father specifically didn’t want her going to that one. For the most part, things go well until Richie talks the group into spending the night inside the carnivals Funhouse. While in the Funhouse Richie ends up stealing some money from the carnival manager setting off the manager who tells his son who is seriously deformed to kill the intruders. Suddenly a night of fun and hijinks has become a battle for survival. 

First off, there are very few Tobe Hooper movies I like. This is actually one of them. I am sure that pisses off a lot of horror fans, but it is what it is. I put off watching this movie for quite some time, but when it came up on a streaming service I have, I had to check it out and man this thing is nuts. This is one of those 80’s horror flicks that has a little depth with a side story of sorts about Amy and her brother who is a bit of a psycho kid who should be on some government watch list somewhere. We also get a small backstory about the killer which is pretty intriguing all by itself. 

Interesting side note. Dean R. Koontz wrote a novelization of the screenplay under the name Owen West. Because the movie’s release was delayed, many people mistakenly thought the movie was based on the book and not the other way around. 

Acting wise the lead female is Elizabeth Berridge who plays Amy and she does a solid job showing quite a bit of range, from shy to fierce. She is still acting to this day and is most famous for AMADEUS and HIDALGO. Cooper Huckabee does an okay job as Buzz. I didn’t love the character at all, he was written basically to be the guy you want to see get punched. He’s had a pretty successful career with over 60 TV and movie credits. He is probably best known for SPACE COWBOYS. Largo Woodruff plays Liz in this and does a solid job overall, but winds up being given the only Godophobic line in the entire movie which feels about as out of place as the reason she said it. 

The pacing in this is kind of slow for the first hour, but after that, it gets pretty nuts. The creature design work in this is pretty fantastic giving us one of the more memorable horror “faces” ever. I did like the score for the most part, but this thing has some issues.

The first kind of weird moment is about a 5-minute scene where they go to an exhibit at the carnival that is basically strippers not quite stripping. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that they weren’t stripping really, it was just odd that they were there in the first place. This might be a thing that happened at carnivals in the 80s, but definitely not at any carnival I’ve been to. Larry Block’s original script had a lot more weirdness in it than we got on screen and I am thankful for that, but this one would have been better off also cutting out another janky near-rape scene that was completely unnecessary. 

In spite of a few complaints just the fact that Kevin Conway portrays 3 different very creepy carnival barkers in this is worth checking out. It also relies far more heavily on atmospherics than gore and I dug that about this one. 

Overall I have to give this one a solid 5 out of 7. It’s not perfect, but it stands out in the crowd. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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