hedgehogcrump
Opening with a lady in cinema's most obvious wig describing the traffic she was in as 'murderous'; with zero subtlety, we know that this woman is an antagonist. We are then treated to a tour of the films other antagonists by Robert Englund, quite fitting because this scene nightmarishly bad.Foreshadowing the rest of the film, this scene has no suspense or dialogue of value. It is simply poorly executed exposition to introduce the rest of the films antagonists, set in a maximum security prison which is literally held together with duct tape (you can see it on the prison doors). As far as antagonists go, these are the weakest, most cliché slasher villains imaginable, given a backstory in the easiest way possible: spoken narration over a flashback. We have 'Animal the Cannibal' (yes, really) the less interesting cousin of Drayton Sawyer, 'Dr Suave' who's only definable attribute is that he's handsome, 'The Taxidermist' who's first line of dialogue made me physically cringe with embarrassment, 'Rocko the Clown', and pen-ultimately 'Mental Manny' the prophet. All of these backstories never come into play throughout the film, other than that characters trope in the funhouse. Although, they try to rope in 'Mental Manny's' backstory into the "plot", but this means nothing and he is shot in the head regardless. Wig woman then does the big reveal and we see she is, shockingly, another antagonist, as pulls another wig and full corseted clown costume out of thin air. After the title card is shown, we're introduced to the main protagonists of the film: two cops and a bunch of cannon fodder. All horror film clichés, of course. One thing that this film rams down your throat is its attempts at relatability, with all the cannon fodder making references to trends such as Vine, Hillary Clinton, and twitter. This is where the director tried to fit a message into the film about desensitization to violence. Examples of this are: the token black character filming the violence, everyone saying how 'real' the gore looks, and one extra seen walking around the funhouse, staring at his phone, unaware to everything around him. Just like the funhouse manager referencing 'Tweezer', the people making this film deliver this stale message in the least intelligent way possible, as it is so in your face. Poking fun at the younger generation all the way through the film is not a successful way of getting your message across. Cinematography in this film is monotonous, as the director overuses flat mid-shots and closeups. There are so many scenes in this film which we either don't get to see and want to see, or do see but don't want to. For example, we don't want to see the extensive sorting of the recycling scene leading to a false scare or the awkwardly shot toilet sex scene which seems to go forever (ironic because one of the films protagonists mock that it was 'quick'). We do want to see inside the funhouse, as it is the key setting of the film, when all we get is the protagonists running in and out of the funhouse, with camera shots having no respect for the audience, as I didn't know where the characters where half the time. Awkward cuts, boring shots, and quite frankly not enough of the funhouse being shown, cinematography was disorienting and stale. Weirdest of all, there seemed to be footage of non-actors at some Halloween event in real life put in throughout the film, filmed on a different camera, and with no diegetic sound in each of the shots, making for awkward jumps out of the film. Sound design in this film is what made me laugh the most (I guess it is listed as a comedy), because the choice of stock music and sound effects just completely removed me from any immersion I could have possibly held onto. Action music and rock played over every scene with a killer in, stock sound effects where overused (even a Wilhelm scream), and the script was clunky, with lines often making no sense or void of any relevance. As I mentioned before, there were even times in which no diegetic sound played at all, or music was cut off without any sound bridges between scenes. Lines would be awkwardly cut away from as soon as they were delivered; in one case the line was just cut off mid way! Unless racial stereotypes, sex jokes, 'that's what she said's' and puns are what you find funny, there was no comedy to this film. The funniest part of the film to me was the awkward rubbish sorting scene, because it was just so unnecessary. Gore was aplenty in this film, but none of it stood out or meant anything. I commend the film for using physical effects the majority of the time, but these effects were often poorly executed and came across as people wearing makeup in a funhouse. I wanted the gore to be a redeeming factor of the film, but it is in such high quantity that it does just come across as the whole thing has been set up by workers at a funhouse, giving it no impact on the audience. Maybe I truly have became desensitized... The ending of the film was a 'Silence of the Lambs'/'Friday the 13th' mishmash, with 'Rocko the Clown' rising from the grave after taking a shotgun shell point blank to the face, as well as the clown woman disguising as the cop lady, being taken away in an ambulance; I guess foreshadowed by her disguise in the exposition. I understand this ending is tongue in cheek, but I was happy with all of these characters being dead. Conclusively, this film is trash; and not B-Movie 'funny bad' trash either. Crowded with irrelevant plot, a slapdash script which hasn't been proof read, despicable characters who we all want dead, bottom of the barrel comedy and embarrassing sound design, this film takes the 'fun' out of 'funhouse'.
BA_Harrison
With a title that is a mash-up of two Tobe Hooper horror classics—The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Funhouse—it's obvious from the start that The Funhouse Massacre isn't going to offer much in the way of originality: it's Halloween night, a group of lunatics have escaped from a high security mental asylum and are killing the patrons of a fun-house. Nope, not much new there! Still, at least the film never pretends to be anything other than a whole load of silly splattery fun, its tongue firmly in cheek as the psychopaths slash, chop, smash, slice and dice their way through the attraction's blissfully unaware customers, who believe that the killing is all part of the show—at least until it is their turn to die.It takes a while to get to the really bloody stuff (the last act is where the best effects happen, including a couple of cool decapitations), but when it does, The Funhouse Massacre proves very enjoyable nonsense, each psycho having their own unique method of dispatching victims: Animal the Cannibal (E.E. Bell) eats them (obviously), demented dentist Dr. Suave (Sebastian Siegel) uses an unusually large drill to treat 'patients', The Taxidermist (Clint Howard) guts and stuffs people, Rocco the Clown (Mars Crain) uses a 'test your strength' hammer to crush heads, and The Stitch Face Killer sews shut the eyes and mouth. Meanwhile Mental Manny (Jere Burns) oversees the carnage, which features some surprisingly good gore effects (just checked the credits and Robert Kurtzman was involved, so maybe not so surprising after all).
HorrorOverEverything
I tend to love cheesy slasher flicks that don't take themselves too seriously so I was excited to check out "The Fun House Massacre". After seeing some trailers and reading some reviews this seemed like it would be right up my alley. Story seemed somewhat interesting and there were some very interesting names on the cast list (Robert Englund and Clint Howard), but for the most part I was just excited to see some over the top gory kills and from the looks of it I figured this movie would definitely deliver in that department, it did somewhat but it was also a bit of a disappointment. Six psychotic maniacs have broken out of a secret asylum that houses people who too violent for modern society, from there they descend upon a Fun house (haunted house) on Halloween and take the place of the staff so that they can have their violent psychotic fun without arousing too much suspicion (since people just assume it is part of the act). So the film does a great job of setting the scene for an ultra blood bath, but I think the main problem here (for me at least) is that the kills just weren't all that fun to watch. The effects weren't terrible but every kill was just kind of generic or not brutal at all. Of the six killers I really only felt like two of them were worthwhile, the rest just kind of felt pointless.The cast was OK, unfortunately the guys I was looking forward to seeing the most (Englund and Howard) had very little screen time, although the little screen time they had was pretty solid. Everyone else does their parts well enough aside from a few people who tried a little hard to be funny (although I would blame the cheesy dialogue for that). I felt like the killers could have had a bit more personality. It seemed like they wanted The Stitched Face killer to be the stand out but she just wasn't an interesting character and really just ended up feeling like a watered down version of Harley Quinn. "The Fun House Massacre" isn't an awful movie, it does have points where it is fun and entertaining but with the story line and cast they had at their disposal I feel like this could have been a much better slasher movie. They were headed in the right direction with it but at some point they took a wrong turn and the movie definitely suffers from that. In the end it's just another cheesy slasher movie that has a few redeeming qualities but is far from being anything special.
