The Funhouse (1981)
What's It About?
A group of asshole teens decide to spend the night in a carnival funhouse and draw the ire of a deformed man who lives beneath the attraction.
Is It Any Good?
I've seen this movie getting a lot of love since Tobe Hooper's death and I've enjoyed a handful of Hooper films over the years so I decided to check it out. The Funhouse does not live up to the hype at all.
If Shocker was Wes Craven's failed attempt at creating another Freddy Krueger then The Funhouse is Tobe Hooper's failed attempt at creating another Leatherface. The set-up is very much the same as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A group of asshole teens go to a place, encounter a weirdo, wander into a place they shouldn't be, and get murdered by a dimwitted monster man and his abusive father figure.
Whatever magic Tobe Hooper brought to rural Texas (and to suburban Texas in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) is completely missing in this movie and it takes place at a location that is inherently visually interesting and creepy.
The kids are all horrendously unlikable and the villains aren't scary, even though the monster man has a really scary looking face he looks absurd except in extreme closeup. The movie rather implausibly expects us to believe that this cavernous complex that is The Funhouse is supposed to be an attraction that a team of carnival workers can set up or tear down in a day? The room full of giant murder-gears alone seems to be housed in a concrete bunker. The film has a 45 minute build-up that fails to build suspense or set up anything that will pay off later. Even when things finally kick off, the movie is pretty boring.
There are Tobe Hooper films worth revisiting, this is not one of those.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Toss it.