Review: The Funhouse

So this is my first review.  I am going into this knowing I am probably not going to be as detailed as Roger Ebert or Leonard Maltin.  I just plan on writing these in free flow form and speak as if I am speaking to a friend or telling someone about it.

There are movies that I have wanted to see for years.  Some I have resisted the urge for whatever reason.  The Funhouse is one of these movies.  I do not know why I never made the leap to actually watch it.  I never owned it.  But I remember going to our local Media Play nine or ten years ago and always checking out the dvd's.  The Funhouse was always in the horror section and it was always under $10.  It had a cool cover.  The back of the box made it sound interesting.  And it was directed by Tobe Hooper, the same guy who directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  But I never got it.  There was always something I wanted a little more.  And I never recall any of my local blockbusters ever having the movie in stock, then again I do not recall ever looking for it either.

Let's start with what first attracted me to this movie.  The dvd coverart.

Creepy looking I think.  Just the evil little clown alone is creepy.  And one could think looking at it that it is a movie about a killer clown in a carnival type setting.  Well you would be wrong and here is why.

The movie starts out with a creepy scenairo of looking at the world through a would be killer/stalker's eyes.  He is in a room going through things and touching them with his black glove.  A quick shadow appears over the frame and you realize the killer has just put on a mask.  He moves slowly.  Then it cuts to a teenage girl named Amy in a robe seemingly about to take a shower.  Back to the killer now in someone else's room.  Back to the girl.  Off goes the robe.  Becoming one of the memorable gratuitous tit shots the horror movies are famous for (This gives me an idea for a future blog, be on the look out).

  Thank you Oscar the censor cat.  I tried to explain to my girlfriend exactly why we the audience needed to see this disrobing but she wasn't buying it.  Whatever.  Some say gratuitious, I say completely plot essential.  Well anyway, the frame goes back the killer's point of view and you see them getting closer to the shower.  Then you see the girl soaping up her body and a dark shadow emerging over her shoulder getting closer.  Then of course the shower curtain pulls open and the killer is really short and wearing a clown mask and it looks nothing at all like the clown on the cover.  The girl is screaming and trying to push the killer away, he moves the knife slowly down her body close to her stomach going even lower while the knife begins to bend revealing a not so well thought out prank.  The killer's mask is removed and you realize this is the girls pervy little brother Joey, who just got more then a peek at his sisters boobs.  Of course she chases him and is led to another prank infested room where she attacks him under his sheets only to reveal it is a dummy.  And she finally finds him the closet, and right away tells him she is not taking him to the carnival that she has promised to take him too.  And then threatens to get even with him and that he will not know when or where but she will scare him so bad that he will never forget it.  Then he runs away realizing she means business.  Then we there is the usual girl going out and the parents warning her not do something, and her promising not to scene.  Well her boyfriend arrives (he honks his horn of all things, what a douche) and she leaves.  Well as Amy and her boyfriend Buzz (awesome) drive away we get a long sinister shot of Joey that you cannot tell if he wants to hurt his sister or is terrified of her threats.  

You would think judging by the length of my first paragraph and trying to detail the important parts of the opening scens that Joey would feature heavily in this movie and especially the feeling you get seeing the attention they put on Joey is this shot.  But no.  Joey is has very little screen time the rest of the movie.  The movie then picks up with Buzz and Amy in the car with their couple friends Richie and Liz.  They spend the next half hour walking around the carnival and going on the rides.  We get to see them waiting in line.  Enjoying the rides.  Eating.  You know stuff that is very plot heavy.  At one point they go to a ghoulish magician who while drinking from a flask asks for volunteers and you think that maybe this is the point where it gets creepy.  Yes he stabs a member of the audience who came up to help the trick, but it was his daughter and he did not really stab her, it was all an act.  Why this scene is important to the plot I don't know.  Well then we get a few quick scenes of Joey sneaking out and and making his way to the carnival and finally arriving at the carnival.  Then the gang of teens finds there way into the the freak animals booth which includes a cow missing his upper lip and a two headed cow.  I am pretty sure the cow missing his upper lip was real though it could have been faked.  But the two headed cow looks like it is a special effect.  The guys of course think it is awesome and the girls are freaked out.  They then find themselves in a tent that has a crazy looking alien baby in a tube and that of course freaks the girls out and the guys are having their fun with it.  This is where the plot continuation starts.  Slowly.  

So now that you think something is actually about to happen it slows down.  And this is where it gets very weird.  There is a burlesque tent in the carvinal.  In all my years of carnivaling I have never seen a tent that said "Girls, Girls, Girls" on it.  And I learned to read rather quickly.  So of course the guys try to find away into the tent so they could see the girls girls girls.  So they cut a whole and it just some girls dancing around with the tassels on their boobs.  You can take a break on this one Censor Oscar.

Now if that was not weird enough here is where the film catches up with Joey.  We see that Joey has found his sister and her friends and is watching them from afar.  Almost stalking them.  These shots of him continue every few minutes until the teens go into The Funhouse ride and do not come back out.  Well this is where the teens get the brilliant idea of spending the night in the funhouse.  Obviously these are brilliant kids.  So they go to the funhouse ride and sneak off and wait for the carnival to close.  The make their way to some kind of landing and make out and getting all touchy feely with each other.  Then they are disturbed by the sound of movement and voices as two people enter beneath them.  A woman and what we presume to be a guy.  the woman is the fortune teller who is whoring herself out to a masked worker we have seen previously in the movie working some of the rides.  Well he obviously wants to get some and the fortune teller keeps raising her price.  He only talks in grunts and she talks to him as if he is challenged so she is obviously of high character.  Well they start their business and he finishes rather quickly.  So quick that he is upset that it is over practically before it began and all she can say is something along the lines of "No Refunds".  He freaks out and strangles her to death and leaves the room.  The teens having just witnessed a murder know they need to get out of here and quickly.  

So what is Joey up to you ask?

Waiting of course, it is all he basically does in this movie after being a creepy perv to his sister at the beginning.

Well while talking about what they need to do the masked man comes back with another guy who is bossing him around and it turns out it is his father.  He is pissed that he killed the fortune teller and not a local.  Because killing a local would have made it A-OK.  The dad finds out that the son was going to pay $100 to bang the whore fortune teller and flips out telling his son that he could have gotten him two of the dancing girls for $15.  This is the time he picks to give his son the value of a dollar speech.  Well he berades and hits his kid and rips his mask off revealing a kind of grotesque monstrosity of a human.  It looks almost like an alien and then you realize it looks like a grown up alien of the baby alien in the jar.  This is the point where the teens make a noise.  Good job.  Now the dad is on to you.  The dad and son leave trying to figure out how to get to whoever made the noise. 

What is Joey up too?

Well it looks like Joey was found by "The Monster".  But it's okay he gets away and finds the carnival management.  And they proceed to call his parents and a few scenes later they appear and take Joey home.  And that is the last we see of Joey.  Why make such a big deal.  You would think because the movie keeps shifting back to him that he would play a bigger part in the end but no.  That is it.  I do not know if some footage got cut  but yeah,  big case of what was all that about.

Finally after a good hour into the movie it starts to get interesting and then out of nowhere the first victim is taken as Richie is caught in a noose by his throat and is pulled up out of nowhere.  Minutes later Liz falls through a trap door.  Eventually they are in a tunnel of love type of ride a see a cart coming near them and of course Buzz swings his ax without looking and boom hits a dead Rick right in the head.  

Liz is finally killed once "The Monster" follows her into a shaft and decides he wants to see if her head will stop a rapidly moving fan blade.  It didn't.  "The Monster's" dad shows up with a gun and gets in a fight with  Buzz and after a little struggle Buzz is able to push him back onto a perfectly placed blade being held by a shiny knight statue.  What are the odds?  "The Monster" shows up and is rightfully upset and chases Buzz into a ride and after a few seconds of silence the ride starts up and here comes Buzz's corpse being held by a clown as part of the ride.  So that only leaves Amy and "The Monster".  This might be the creepiest part of the movie as she runs and hides and he follows and she loses him and of course as a horror movie watcher you know he is going to pop up any second and get her.  Well he does just that and of course she kills him by electrocuting him and sticking his body on a conveyor belt hook as he is caught between two huge gears and finally dies.

Amy lives!  You knew it was going to be her so no surprises there.  And as she leaves it is now morning and we see one last creepy shot of the funhouse.  

And so ends a movie I waited at least 9 years to see.  In the end I was disappointed.  But would I watch it again?  Absolutely.  I would only recommend it to those who like cheesy horror movies from the 70's and 80's.  But it was enjoyable despite all of its flaws.  

I am thinking I am going to do my reviews based on 5 stars including half's.  So I think this movie deserve 2 ½ stars.  With the extra  ½ coming in because like I said I see myself watching this one again.  I know your not supposed to tell everything that happens in a review so I will try do do better with that next time.  But I got carried away.  

Pros:  Creepy premise, Decent acting for 70's/80's Horror, Great tit shot, Good feeling of nostalgia of how even the bad horror movies of the past are better then the crap they make today.

Cons:  Bad special effect, Seemingly cut off story lines, Horribly paced, and the fact the creepy clown on the dvd box was nowhere in the movie.

Rating:  2½ Stars

 

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

     Every year since I was a child whenever Halloween rolls around I always think of the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books written by Allen Scwartz.  They are short stories that are sometimes humorous, scary, ironic and sometimes just flat out silly.  I have the collection of all three books in one volume and a few Halloweens ago Lisa and I took turns reading each other different ones before going to bed.  Well to my surprise this year we found and audio book form of these books.  So we got them for cheap and decided to give them a listen. One of the ones we listened  to was very first one of these stories I ever heard.  When I was a kid our teachers sometimes would take us to the school library for story time.  Our library had a big multi stepped circle that had three or four steps and all the kids would gather around and the teacher would be in the center and read from books.  Well during October one year our teacher read a few short stories from one of the books.  But the very first one was called The Bride.

     The Bride is a story about a bride (obviously) on her wedding day (again, obviously) who during a game of hide in go seek hides in a trunk in the attic and is accidentally locked in.  Well the idea of this terrified the crap out of me.  Just the mental image of that gave me shivers.  Well after the teacher was finished the story she said there was a drawing.  There was a drawing with all the stories.  So she passed around the book and we all looked at the picture.  I was instantly scared.  This image just left me speechless which was something hard to do to me back then.  The image still is burnt in my head.  And still gives me the creeps to this day.  And here I am uploading it to my blog.

     Would that not scary you as a child?  Give you nightmares?  No?  Well what about if after hearing that story and viewing that picture you were spooked by a kid who was hiding in the closet waiting for someone to open the closet door so they could jump out for a quick scare.  Needless to say it made a lasting impression on me.  So much so that it still can scare me to this day.  As mentioned in on of my previous posts, This one here to be exact., the effect of this story and the incident with the closet still had an effect on me in 2003 when I saw The Ring for the first time and they got to the point in the film where they were discussing finding the body of a girl who was only in the first ten-fifiteen mintues of the movie and while describing how the body was found this quick image bursts on the screen.

     See the resemblance?  So did I.  I instantly stopped the movie for a minute just because it was so shocking to me how it matched my memory of the drawing from the story almost exactly.  Yeah some of the smaller details changed but basics of it all is still there.  Over the years I have read many different versions of The Bride and always compared them with the original one I heard as a kid.  It still creeps me out and I can still remember the feelings I had as a kid when first hearing it and this will be the version that I will tell to my kids in Halloweens of the future.  I think I will leave out the part that daddy was a big chicken when it came to opening closets for many years. 

Night Gallery: Since Aunt Ada Came To Stay

     Well last night was the first night of "Horror Movie Month".  And while we were looking for our Supernatural dvd's I put on an episode from my Night Gallery collection.  It was an episode I had never seen before.  Night Gallery was basically a darker/funnier color version of The Twilight Zone that came on in the 70's.  I had never heard of it before around 2002 when I saw the replays on Encore Mystery channel.  I recorded so many episodes.  This was right before DVR's and Tivo's took off.  So I had to record them old school style with vhs' and VCR's.  I'd say I have seen over half of the episodes so finding a new one is a treat.

     Well this episode is about a guy who freaks out because his wife's aunt is forced to live with them because she is elderly.  There is just something about her that he doesn't like.  Well over the course of the episode he comes to believe that she is a witch who is after his wife's body.  Basically he thinks she is going to transfer her spirit into his wife's body so she can continue to live.  Well the episode was not the best but not the worst.  But it did provide the first creepy moment of "Horror Movie Month".

     In this scene Craig receives a phone call letting him know one of his colleagues who knows a little something about witchcraft has passed away mysteriously only after a few days since telling Craig what he knows about witchcraft.  While at the end of the phone call and Craig is in disbelief the door behind him slides open to reveal Aunt Ada staring down maliciously as his realization that she is to blame washes over his face.   

     This was a very subtle scene but if I were a kid it would totally creep me out and give me nightmares.  That is kind of how I judge scary movies.  Because the last movie that came out that truly creeped me out and scared me was the Ring in 2002.  I was 19 then.  And there was only one scene that scared me.  And most of that was because of a childhood experience involving someone hiding in a closet.  But it stayed with me for a few months and even creeped me out the second time I saw The Ring. 

So good start to Horror Movie Month

Horror Movie Month

     Tonight is October 1st.  It is the kickoff to horror movie month.  My girlfriend Lisa and I have a tradition that each year during October we watch either one scary movie or an episode of a scary television show a night.  In the past we have watched as many as six movies in one night and as little as a thirty minute Tales From the Crypt episode.  It just seems to be a better atmosphere to watch a scary movie in October.  It is a very interesting feeling to walk our dog Kira at night right after watching a scary movie and be a little creeped out by the cold wind and the spooky shadows the moving clouds create.  A unique thing for us is about halfway through our nightly walk there is a lamp post that goes on and off at random.  So it is an added bonus after we watch a really creepy movie/show when we hit that point of our walk and the light goes out.  So I am looking forward to this years batch of movies and shows.  Tonight we start light with just getting caught up with Supernatural.  And we always save the "best" for the week of Halloween and usually watch classic horror movies on Halloween itself.