The Funhouse (Horror)

REVIEW

TLA Guide:
A group of teenagers decide to spend a night in a carnival funhouse and are stalked by a ghoulish creature. Not very spooky, the film relies on the occasional shock for its chills.

Danger After Dark:
The Funhouse isn't one of director Tobe Hooper's acknowledged horror classics, i.e. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist, but it remains an atmospheric and often creepy little effort that seemed particularly imaginative when contrasted with the glut of teen slasher movies that flooded theatre screens in the early 1980s. Hooper's best work -- the two Chainsaw films, Eaten Alive, his new remake of Toolbox Murders -- often centers on the decaying fringes of American society, and the eccentric denizens of such crumbling environments, and Funhouse fits neatly into this category.

The plot is rather formulaic, with two young couples visiting the traveling carnival that has arrived in their small town, and then deciding to spend the night in the funhouse after the carny has shut down for the evening. While there, they witness a murder committed by one of the freaks, and soon the four teens are being stalked by the mutant and his protective father.

While Hooper's film doesn't necessarily have the same degree of authenticity in its depiction of this milieu that is demonstrated in such other carny shockers as Freaks (1932) and She Freak (1966), Funhouse does possess a unique visual sensibility with respect to chronicling carny life. The gritty, seamy hyper-realism of Hooper's early work is evident in the film's first half, as the kids explore the operating carny attractions, but Hooper pushes the film into more stylized territory once the action shifts into the funhouse settings, with some colorful lighting that wouldn't look out of place in a Bava or Argento film. Unfortunately, Funhouse does have a rather critical problem that prevents it from being one of Hooper's very best films, and that's Larry Block's screenplay, which is not only a largely dull retread of teen slasher cliches so prevalent during this era, but is also often infuriatingly dull and uneventful -- the film is more than half over before one feels like any sort of action is kicking into gear, and it's difficult for Hooper to sustain any intensity or suspense when saddled with such a lackluster story. Still, The Funhouse -- which also boasts one of 1980s horror cinema's best taglines: "Pay to get in! Pray to get out!" -- is a stylish and slick shocker that remains of interest to Hooper fans.