The Funhouse

Which is socially acceptable - to love Tobe Hooper movies for their perverse but stubborn puritanism, or to love them for the incredible way they decoy your attention with stylish homages to other horror classics, then spring on you new and inventive means of scaring you out of your seat? The Funhouse, a story of two amorous young couples who arbitrarily enter the sleazoid world of a sinister travelling carnival (despite warnings) and Find They Are Not Alone, is a little too long, but what the hell? It's not every day the fright genre produces a film capable of commenting on epic subjects like the ties that bind and the disintegration of the modern family, the foolishness of dabbling voyeuristically in others' pain, and the possible detrimental effect of the Polaroid Instamatic on American moral fibre (a theme touched upon also in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hooper's extreme pro-vegetarianism tract), while doing its proper job providing plenty of cheap thrills. Not that taste is nesessarily involved here, but it's rare that any film follows through its chosen themes with such attention to detail, much less leavening the package with a truly anarchic blend of black humour.