The Funhouse (1981)

 

Director: Tobe Hooper

Screenplay: Larry Block

Cast: Elizabeth Berridge as Amy Harper; Cooper Huckabee as Buzz; Largo Woodruff as Liz Duncan; Miles Chapin as Richie; Kevin Conway as Freak Show Barker / Strip Show Barker / Conrad Straker (The Funhouse Barker); Wayne Doba as Gunther Twibunt (The Monster); Sylvia Miles as Madame Zena; William Finley as Marco the Magnificent

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

When you're stoned, Charles Manson is a terrific guy.

Tobe Hooper plus Universal Pictures equals a Video Nasty, and this is a higher budget and prestige title among the Nasties, normally independent productions or non-American studio films, and evidence that no one was particularly safe. In the case of The Funhouse, far from the nastiest of the slasher movies from this era entirely, I entirely suspect the infamy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) filters through this, the film which Tobe Hooper as a director immediately gained a reputation and notoriety for. (There is also another theory that this was mistaken for The Last House on Dead End Street (1977), which was titled The Fun House on British VHS¹, a film which for another day has to be seen to be believed as well as being legitimately gruesome in content). This presents an important part of Tobe Hooper's career, as it was the one made after Salem's Lot (1979), Hooper's seminal and (large scale) TV mini-series/film, his first steps into mainstream filmmaking. This as a result is a change of pace, with Hooper clearly interested with the carnival setting itself, enticed by the chance to film at a real one, an east coast production shot in Miami, Florida in reality¹, and with real rides and numerous extras onscreen to bring out the atmosphere.

I have a bias for carnival/circus films, so naturally I like The Funhouse even without factoring in it being a solid slow burn horror film, where even marginalized titles like Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), which people thought stole the 25th Best Picture Oscar from High Noon (1952), is a favourite for depicting historically this fascinating area of popular entertainment. Carnivals and circuses I realise are very different things, but they form a connection in my mind, as travelling entertainments which feel marginalised in the modern world, of spectacle and the reality of them, alongside the graft and in the case of carnivals, the ways they exist entirely on selling spectacle whilst even only providing the illusion. With their own worlds of aesthetic and figures that have to travel in the shows, they are all enticing, and in terms of the carnival by itself, The Funhouse is the same even if it plays to the stereotypes of them being places of the marginalised and the dangerous. Carnivals, more so than circuses, have had a legacy in cinema which is not just the infamous Tod Browning film Freaks (1932), but even film noir in Nightmare Alley, the 1947 and 2021 versions, of places ran by outsiders and with their own rules. Their posters displaying the now politically incorrect freak shows to their faded colours on the rides have a palpable energy to them which The Funhouse fully succeeds in bringing in.

Opening with a fake out twist combining Psycho (1960) and Halloween (1978) in one, if with the creepiness of a little brother inappropriately terrorising his older sister in the shower, we are also already seeing the time when slashers were prolific for this one to be commissioned, and could also nod to their lineage. The set up is simple. Four people - our female lead Amy (Elizabeth Berridge), on a date with her boyfriend Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), with their male and female friend - are at a carnival haunted with rumours of two kids killed there in another town. The film is methodical, where a large portion of the film is entirely feeding off the mood of the location, a world that makes the film compelling to witness if of another age. No carnival would be allowed to be like this one nowadays - we could probably get the exotic sexy dancing tent for an adult show, but the idea of an erotic female strip show near the rides kids are on reveals the layers of this culture from the past. The same goes to the carnival freak show, where alongside the prop things in jars here involves real animals born with physical deformities brought into the film, sad cows you wish to pet, with twin heads melding together or missing part of their face, immortalised onscreen. Even details you may miss add to this world, such as the fact one of the leads, actor Kevin Conway, is playing all three of the carnival barkers, not just the fun house's who is a central figure, adding layers in whether they are separate people or related.

As a slasher, it barely qualifies due to this lengthy set-up, where the terror comes in very late as, deciding to stay in the funhouse overnight, this ill-advised decision leads to the central quartet to witness a murder. This is not a bad thing as, alongside the fact it allows William Finley to cameo as a drunk Dracula magician, it gives the film so much more emphasis on the characters within pure pulp, not a lot of deaths transpiring for the genre but a lot more atmosphere produced as a result, drawing the viewer in to engage. Sometimes the style and presentation is enough, and being able to soak in a natural fairground environment for a large portion was worth it in sacrifice of the tropes of the slasher genre expected from the time. It helps this is the best funhouse you wish did exist; even if Humpty Dumpty is inexplicably there in the foreground at one point next to stereotypical cannibalistic tribesmen, the production design is exceptional when the film is mostly confined to this location in the finale, a vivid place especially with the creepy but exceptionally made animatronics, made by people who specialised in this in real life. Helping as well is that this is Hooper's first film in widescreen, the unrelenting and unnerving energy he had in his films before transitioning into a new style for him, with the cinematographer for Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979), Andrew Laszlo, and production designer Mort Rabinowitz in tow to give this ill-reputed Video Nasty a credible style.

The intensity of Hooper's films before, when the chaos starts, is still here, and it is apt that by the end, this wonderland of lights and rides ends with traumatised figures of various ages, even if the body count would be considered pitiful for many. How this managed to get on the Video Nasties list is curious, as speculated in the first half, but I am glad with hindsight it did, as this underappreciated film in its director's filmography, about to enter a period of vibrant and even weird films in the eighties, was allowed to grab attention even among the more notorious movies form the list.

======

1) Slashback! Something Not Quite Human is Waiting in THE FUNHOUSE (1981), written by Gregory Burkart for Blumhouse.com, published on February 16th 2016 and preserved on web.archive.org.