THE FUNHOUSE - ***

Directed by Tobe Hooper. Cast: Elizabeth Berridge, Shawn Carson, Cooper Huckabee, Kevin Conway, Sylvia Miles. USA, 1981, cert 15, 91 mins.

Release on Blu Ray by Arrow Video on July the 18th

Two teen couples, Amy and jock boyfriend Buzz, sweater sporting Richie and girlfriend Liz, go on a double date to a travelling fairground. After trying the rides, seeing a magic performance, and sampling the delights of the freak show (including a two faced cow, and a deformed stillborn baby in a pickling jar), the couples have a “jazz cigarette” and sneak a peek at the burlesque girls through a gap the tent.

Unbeknownst to Amy, her horror obsessed kid brother Joey has snuck out of the house and followed her to the Carnival (rather improbably hitching a lift from truck driver). Richie dares Buzz, Liz and Amy to sneak into the Carnivals’ “Funhouse” ghost train and spend the night. This leaves Joey stranded without a ride home, and will be a decision they will be lucky to come to regret. The Carnival is hiding a dark and murderous secret, not all the monsters are sideshow fakes on display in a tent, some are prowling the crawlspaces of… The Funhouse.

Hooper’s 1981 slasher film is one of his two entries on the DPP’s notorious “video nasties” list (the other being the often retitled EATEN ALIVE from 1977), it is also one of the least deserving of such notoriety. While many of the nasties have now been released either with small cuts (even the fearsome CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is soon to be re-released with only one 18 second cut) or uncut at 18, only two have suffered the ignominy of gaining a BBFC 15 certificate. Lugio Cozzi’s incredibly boring ALIEN rip off ALIEN CONTAMINATION (1980) is one, THE FUNHOUSE is the other. A 15 certificate video nasty is more than a little ridiculous, and goes to show just how ludicrous the moral panic of the early eighties actually was. Even more perplexing THE FUNHOUSE is also one of the few studio pictures to make the list being from Universal Pictures. One wonders if anyone at the DPP office actually watched it or just assumed a film from the director of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE had to be extreme!

If you are looking for gory thrills you won’t find them here, THE FUNHOUSE is a relatively bloodless affair. The plot and characters by Larry Block (no connection to the crime writer Lawrence Block) offer little that could have been new even in 1981 (when the slasher phase was at its peak). There are the usual teenagers in twenty something bodies, a boiler suited killer, and streak of reactionary moralising (the teens defy their parents, smoke soft drugs, peek on nekkid dancers without paying, and other activities that mark them as prey). However Hooper makes the most of the Carnie setting, and the Funhouse itself is a gaudy multicoloured phantasmagoria that must have been an influence on Rob Zombie’s HOUSE OF A 1000 CORPSES. The film is beautifully shot by Andrew Lazlo, an accomplished cinematographer who worked on some of Walter Hill’s finest films (including THE WARRIORS and SOUTHERN COMFORT). The film was also an early experiment in surround sound and Hooper smartly confines these effects to scenes inside the Funhouse itself were they are sparing but effective. Hooper also stages some efficient frights, although he does rely a lot on SUDDEN LOUD NOISES!!!

Stuart Barr.