The Funhouse

1981 Directed by Tobe Hooper

Horror Marathon 2024 Day 18 Film 36

The film starts with a masked killer coming through a girl's living space - she showers and it's revealed to be her brother stabbing her with a fake knife ala Psycho. It's oddly off-putting as nothing about this initial setup is called back to. She threatens her brother, and later goes off to a carnival with her new boyfriend and other friends.

The two couples visit the weird attractions at the carnival- perhaps my favorite moments being the carnival barkers trying to draw people in. The nostalgic weird buzz and overwhelming nature of the carnival is replaced by the spooky Funhouse ride attraction. Somehow the operator didn't pay much attention to people not coming back through the ride... later the couples are witness to a murder. While that's happening the girl's younger brother wanders the carnival too- but aside from giving some sense of the space his whole inclusion to the film feels like a red herring. I would have liked if some of the menace happened during the carnival as well.

The melodrama around the murder is another backwards family setup that Hooper keeps riffing on with a menacing dimwit monster figure. I don't know that I really liked it here, as it's not as the scares don't really ramp up. The meandering of being locked in a Funhouse makes you wonder how large the space really is- going through multiple rooms until finally the basement has this nice creepy setting of the interlocking gears that drive the whole attraction. Hooks shadow along the ceiling, bringing up steam and little pops of what will come up. The girl is pretty traumatized by the end, and the last laugh by the dying mechanical sounds of the attraction is darkly funny. The weight of the movie has to be in the monster however, and here it's pretty lackluster.