Rish Outfield's reviews
A teenage girl and her best friend go to the local carnival with their boyfriends. For some reason, her kid brother sneaks off after them. For another some reason, the foursome decide to spend the night in the carnival's funhouse, where they witness a murder. As the night progresses, they witness more . . . their own!
Me trying to be clever aside, I liked this film. This was enjoyable because it seemed so real and fresh. The first half of the film is just a bunch of teens at a carnival, having fun, checking out the sights and rides, walking around and breathing (you know, all the stuff I should've been doing in my youth instead of watching horror movies). Then, it turns into a claustrophobic, hellish labyrinth of death. Boy, I'd like to write for video boxes!
Tobe Hooper has directed some great flicks (Poltergeist, Lifeforce,Salem's Lot, but he also made some bad ones (Eaten Alive, The Mangler, and I've never cared for the film he's most famous for, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But with The Funhouse, he's tipped the scales back in his direction.
I found the first half much better than the second (I think tyranist felt just the opposite), before things got too disagreeable. It didn't pull punches, and you didn't know who would survive and who would not (which is a problem I have with a lot of 80's slashers, lots of them play it safe and are predictable because of it), in fact, for a while there, I wasn't sure ANYBODY would survive. I was very wrapped up in it until the very end, which was one of those downer the-survivors-are-forever-effed-up type endings.
Actually, this film's final moments and Hell Night's ending (which we watched together) were very, very similar. Hmmm.
Best Scare: I found the inner workings of the darkened funhouse to be much scarier than the murderous freakazoid, but that could be just me.
I'd Recommend It To: Well, some people. It wasn't a pleasant film, though (as many of Hooper's films aren't). It did have a sleazy, distasteful undertone to it, but I suppose carnivals are really that way. In fact, didn't Austin Powers once say that one of his two major fears were carnies?

The tyranist's thoughts
Tobe Hooper is kind of a hard nut to crack for me. Once in a while he does something brilliant, but largely his movies are at best mediocre and at worst crap. This one doesn't quite fit the mold for me. It has spots that are brilliant that seem to be wrapped in something pretty mediocre. Considering that this was his fifth movie and he had yet to go on and make Lifeforce (my personal favourite), I guess some things can be forgiven.
From the straight-out-of-Halloween opening to the terribly drawn out ending the movie packs a few scares into what would be a pretty creepy environment. I like Elizabeth Berridge in this and wish she had made a few more movies. She is basically what makes the show though. Kevin Conway does a good job as the carnie but without someone good to scare, it would have been a waste.
The setting is one that always feels creepy to me, but I think there was a little too much time spent developing it. All you have to do is walk into a carnival and the atmosphere is there. No need to wander around for an hour first. I suppose that really they knew that there wouldn't be that much that they could do once the kids got locked in the funhouse so they spent as much time as they could outside.
The mutant/monster in this one seems pretty stock and was actually scarier with the mask on than without it, something I consider to be a bad sign. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it Kevin Conway was scarier than the mutant without the mask on.
See it if you are a Tobe Hooper fan or if you are curious as to why I liked Elizabeth Berridge so much, but you can probably safely skip it for other, better movies.