Look, I get it. You're a major studio, you see a movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre make a boatload of money, you look at a movie like Friday the 13th make a trainload of money, you think "Well, if we could get the director of THAT to make a version THIS, we could make a planeload of money!"

 

Here's your wake-up call. Tobe Hooper is only ever gonna do what Tobe Hooper wants to do. He doesn't just follow his own drummer, he IS his own drummer (listen to the TCM score if you don't believe me) and while you may think you're going to get a quick cheap slasher movie out of a film like The Funhouse (1981), what actually turns out is much much stranger.

 

When a drug-addicted auteur is flown to Miami and given access to the DP from The Warriors and a football field's worth of carnival rides, The Funhouse is what results. In this episode of Tracks of the Damned, the horror film commentary track podcast, find out how this chimera came to be, how it's novelization got in the way of it's audiences enjoyment of the film and just what it takes to play a half-cow half-man mutant killer.