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The Funhouse
[?]
1981; color
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Starring: Elizabeth Berridge, Shawn Carson, Jeanne Austin, Jack McDermott, Cooper Huckabee, Largo Woodruff & Miles Chapin
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The Funhouse is a fairly standard early '80s horror flick directed by Tobe Hooper during the years between what is arguably his most famous film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and what I gather to be his second most famous film, Poltergeist. (A fact I found particularly interesting since I didn't even know he directed Poltergeist!) At the risk of stating the obvious, the story revolves around a funhouse. More specifically, what happens when a group of teenagers decide to spend the night in one; and you don't have to be an expert in horror films to figure out the majority of the plot just from the information listed above. A statement I mean literally because I am no horror film expert and I figured out the entire film based on this information with a fair amount of accuracy - including my guess that there would be at least one shower scene. I did not guess the shower scene would be executed in the first five minutes but clearly Tobe Hooper was ahead of his time. Conversely the set-up portion of the story took a lot longer than I expected but, by the same token, it featured a lot of cool shots of the carnival. (Something I always enjoy regardless of what era a film is set in.) Not to mention it afforded the director rampant opportunity for brief appearances by various weird characters, the repeated appearance of one guy as a series of assorted weird characters, and at least one gimmicked two headed cow that could have easily been on loan from Professor Ouch's Odditorium. (Had it not been established well after the film was made.) Assuming you also don't mind sitting through a seemingly endless supply of random acts of carniness, which takes up the better portion of the 95 minutes, things pick up steadily after the first killing and keep at a fairly clipped pace until the relatively expected ending featuring a final face off between what evil lurks in the heart of the carnival and the girl who showed her boobs in the first scene. (Anyone want to guess whether or not boobs triumph over brawn?) Those looking for something along the lines of the former film will probably walk away disappointed as, while there is a murderous crazy lunatic running amok here, it's one who is really only a threat if you're a prostitute who gets the job done too quickly and openly mocks his deformity and virility or one of the people who witnesses her murder. Mainly I went into this just hoping I wouldn't have to cover my eyes at any point during the proceedings and, to that end, it did not disappoint.
—Bunny
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