It Came From The Bargain Bin Movie Review by John Thurmond.

I love bad movies.  I always check the bargain bin for cheapo movies, diamonds in the rough.  Sometimes, you get lucky and find something awesome.  Sometimes. . . .not so much.

 

 

The Funhouse

 

 

The Funhouse came packaged as one film in a fourpack at that beacon of capitalism, Walmart.  The fact that these four movies together are worth about $5 to the studio that owns the rights should tell you all you need to know, but I bought this pack for one reason: The Serpent and the Rainbow, which I’m a huge fan of.  The other movies were Phantasm 2, Sssssss, and the aforementioned The Funhouse.

 

 

Now, The Funhouse should be a cool movie, and I wanted really badly for it to be.  It’s directed by Tobe Hooper for God’s sake, he of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist fame, and if you’ve seen either of those, you know they’re great. Sure, I remembered that he also did Eaten Alive, but I refused to let that sway me.  In hindsight, I should have.  The Funhouse is very similar to Eaten Alive in pacing, acting, and scary moments, of which there are seriously few.  But Hooper didn’t write it, so I guess he was just working with what he had (guess who did?  Larry Block.  He has two credits to his name on IMDB:  This movie and a little gem from 1990 called Captain America)

 

Let’s take a look at our characters:

1.  Amy – the main protagonist, the for-the-most-part wholesome girl next door. She’s our only survivor.
2.  Buzz – Amy’s date, and all that is man.  He’s a mechanic, and drives a souped up car.  Imagine Han Solo in a Member’s Only jacket, and you’ve got it.
3.  Liz – Amy’s best friend, and the shrieker of the movie.  That’s probably how she got the part.
4.  Richie – Liz’s bumbling boyfriend.  Every idea he’s ever had has probably been a bad one.  More on that later.

 

 

About the coolest thing in the movie happens right at the beginning.  It opens with Amy getting ready to take a shower (and as an 80s horror film, nudity under 10 minutes in is a requirement).  We cut back and forth from the shower to someone sneaking around a room, taking a mask from the wall, a knife from the wall, and then stalking slowly toward the bathroom.  This scene is shot just like in the beginning of Halloween, with the camera looking through the mask.  The shower murder scene is pretty similar to Pyscho as well, a nice homage that unfortunately doesn’t mean anything about what happens in the rest of the movie. But it turns out the murder scene isn’t a murder at all, and the killer is Amy’s little brother Joey, and that the knife is fake, and all this.  It was about the most suspenseful, scariest part of the movie, and it was all a joke.  Keep that in mind.  (Not to mention little bro busting in on his big sister in the shower.  Good joke and all, but kinda creepy).

 

 

One thing I would like to mention here is the horrible sound effects used in this film.  From the moment Amy turns on the water and it sounds like a jet taking off or something, you know you’re in for a treat.  I spent most of the movie on the lookout for sounds that made no sense, and I was not let down.  Cigarette lighters sound like broken bones.  Knifes make ridiculously loud noises when they are unsheathed.  None of it really makes any sense.

 

 

Anyway, Amy and Joey’s parents are downstairs watching The Bride of Frankenstein while their daughter could have been being killed upstairs (she screamed and everything, but they’re really into the movie).  Amy leaves for her date with Buzz, and they head off to the carnival that’s in town, picking up Liz and Richie along the way. Apparently, there was some “trouble” when the carnival was in another town a while back, but that’s not really a reaosn not to go, is it?  They smoke some pot on the way, cause that’s what teens did in the 80s (Buzz is a teen, even though he looks like he’s 26), and the fact that Amy refrains from joining in probably has a lot to do with her surviving the movie.  It’s horror movie laws at work.

 

 

So the kids go to the carnival, and we get to spend the next 30 minutes just watching them test their strength (of course Buzz rings the bell? What kinda question is that?), go to magic shows and fortune tellers, and sneak a peek at the peep show by cutting a slit in the tent.  When did peep shows at carnivals go out of style?  The carny advertises with the slogan “They wiggle and they dance”!  I mean, I’d have to go see that.  I’d be compelled to.  But I know, I know, 70s, free love, etc, etc. And speaking of carnies, the carnies at this movie are fucking awesome, just the quintessential, stereotypical carny.  When I say carny, and that image pops in your head, I’m telling you that guy was in this movie.  Small hands, and probably smelled like cabbage.

 

 

While our characters are doing this, Joey sneaks out to go to the carnival too, and he gets there and starts looking for the group.  He sees them go into the funhouse, but not out, and that’s because the kids have decided to spend the night in the funhouse . Remember what I said about Richie and his ideas?  Yeah, this was his idea.  From here on out, it’s pretty basic.  The kids witness this guy I’ll call Young Frankenstein (cuz he wears a Frankenstein mask, being that he’s a horribly disfigured demon child) kill the fortune teller (a misunderstanding over prostitution and services rendered.  The handjob counts, apparently, and Frank can’t have his money back just cause he jumped the gun) and thus our movie truly, finally, thankfully, begins, 45 minutes into our feature (Joey will be fine, he gets caught by King Carny and his parents pick him up later. It’s really not that important to the plot).

 

As the kids try to escape the funhouse, they happen upon Frank’s room, and Richie steals the money there (lots of money, apparently, not just the money Frank wanted back from the fortune teller).  Bad idea number 2.  Five minutes later, Richie gives the whole group away when he drops his lighter cause he was trying to get a closer look at things.  You can tell this guy is totally gonna die first.

 

And die first he does!  He ends up getting a noose wrapped around his neck and then lifted out of frame.  Liz screams and screams, but to no avail.  And when someone starts to come down the rails in one of the funhouse cars, Buzz does the obvious thing.  He produces an axe (from where?  doesn’t matter) and plants it in the head of the person in the car.  Only it’s Richie!!  Then the car moves along, and we’re treated to a shot of Liz crazily chasing her dead boyfriend who still has an axe sticking out of his head.  She falls through a trap door where she is greeted by Frank.  She tells him she’ll be nice to him and she’ll make him feel good, cause she knows he likes girls, but then she just stabs him in the back when he gets close (just like a woman!  and where’d she get the knife. . . .you know that doesn’t matter).  So then Frank kills her,entirely out of frame, for the most part.

 

Buzz and Amy are confronted by King Carny, as I’ll call him (he’s Frank’s dad!  I’d hate to see Franks’ mother), and a fight ensues between the two dudes.  Carny can fight, but ends up impaled on a knight’s sword.  This cues Frank to drop from the ceiling like Spider-Man or some shit, and Amy runs away while Buzz deals with freaky Frank.  Alas, Buzz doesn’t make it, and Amy is left alone and lost in this funhouse, which really seems to go on forever.  We get some shots of all the crazy shit in the funhouse, Amy finds her dead friend Liz in Frank’s room, and then he tears the door down.  Well, most of it.  He has some trouble with the knob, which is wierd, cuz Amy didn’t lock it, but whatever, it doesn’t matter.

 

 

Amy escapes to the . . .um. . . control room, I guess.  It’s the area where all of the gears and chains and circuit boxes and shit make all the funhouse stuff move and light up.  But Frank finds her, and we have our final confrontation.  Franks drools and screams and growls at Amy, who knocks a ladder over into these two big gears (which crush the ladder. . . remember that), and finally wields a tire iron to defend herself.  She gets a few choice shots in, but Frank takes it from her, and ends up getting it into the exposed circuit box and frying himself.  So that’s that, crispy Frank, done deal right?

 

 

Wrong!  You always have to kill the bad guy at least twice!  But he is hung up on a chain or conveyor or something and is slowly being dragged toward the two big gears from earlier, and won’t let go of our protagonist.  But Amy escapes, and we’re treated to Frank pinned between the two gears, flailing about like a fish outta water and screaming like a banshee, while sparks fly in the background, Fourth of July style. This does the job.

 

Amy eventually finds her way out (it’s the next morning), and does the stagger-away-from-the-scene thing every lone survivor does at the end of a horror movie.  Two random carnies are off to the side, and they look like they’re in just as bad shape as she is, which is weird, cause they didn’t just survive a night of terror (or maybe they did, who knows what carnies do on their time off.  I bet they party balls).  So Amy just walks away from the funhouse, and that’s our movie.

 

 

Pretty flipping weak.  There was no real action until the last 30 minutes, and even then, it wasn’t all that much.  Richie looked pretty cool with an axe sticking outta his head, and Freaky Frank was not only gruesome looking, but pretty well acted be whoever was in the mask (shit, I hope it was a mask).  All of the actors did ok, Elizabeth Berridge as Amy probably the best.  You may have seen Cooper Huckabee (Buzz) lately if you’re a True Blood fan, and he does an ok job here as the manly man.  The movie is low on gore, and that’s fine, but the scares were few and far between, and I didn’t get a creepy vibe most of the time, even though that’s what Hooper was going for.  It just didn’t do it for me.  But check it out yourself sometime, see what you think.