The Funhouse
Dir. Tobe Hooper 1981 Disobeying her parent's orders, teenager Amy sneaks out to visit a sleazy travelling carnival with her friends Liz, Buzz and Richie. They decide to spend the night in the carnival funhouse, but after witnessing a gruesome murder, are stalked by the maniacal, disfigured offspring of the carnival barker. Tobe Hooper’s masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre needs no introduction. One of the most highly regarded, visceral, provocative and controversial horror films of all time, few films have matched it for its raw intensity: not even many of Hooper’s own subsequent offerings could live up to the extreme intensity it generated. That said, much of his earlier work still retains an edgy grittiness to it; the sweaty bijou snuff-atmospherics of Eaten Alive and the nasty underbelly of Spielberg produced Poltergeist , all display the kind of intensity Hooper specialised in mustering. Even in the creepy Prime-Time vampires-invading-a-small-town Stephen King...