Just one of my three obsessions:

 

"The Funhouse" (1981)  This movie holds a special place in my heart because 1. It's about Carnies, and movies about Carnies and freaks tend to be great (Freaks, Nightmare Alley, Carny and The Elephant Man) and 2. At ages 12 and 13 I was trapped on not one, not two but three rides (the Octopus, the Squirrel Cages and that Rocket thing that holds you upside down, seemingly forever) by speed addled Carny workers with screwy ideas concerning the courting of young ladies. Nevertheless, those memories only make films about the subject seem scarier and more mysterious. So I ask: Why aren't more movies set in carnival fun houses?

 

Tobe Hooper well understood the magically seedy setting with The Funhouse, a movie that, outside of horror fan circles, has remained relatively unnoticed. It's baffling since the picture is a tight little horror film imbued with some tremendously scary (and funny) sequences. Dig this idea -- a group of teenage friends decide it'd be a kick to stay the night in a fun house after closing time. Yeah, such a kick -- especially when a deranged, hideously deformed albino fond of wearing a Frankenstein monster mask begins terrorizing you. Something of an under-looked classic, The Funhouse makes me long for those creepy Carnies of my past. Do they roll into small towns and terrorize teenage girls anymore? It's such a shame if they don't.

 

Read the rest of my current obsessions here.