The Funhouse (1981) - Hooper's nightmarish carnival creepers

♥♥♥♥

A terrific tag-line, a devious jack-in-a-box, the pedigree and cool title effectively sell Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse on this poster

Our teenage heroine Amy and her three friends attend a traveling carnival, which is the source of some dubious legend, late one night. They act rudely to the weird carnies and decide to sleep over in the horror ride! (Great idea, hu?!)

The Funhouse is written by Lawrence J. Block (Captain America (1990), story)) and directed by Texan master filmmaker Tobe Hooper (Eggshells (1969)).
After a strong title sequence, which builds up anticipation effectively, Hooper slowly unspools his atmospheric horror carpet, (directly following a fun, Psycho-referencing first scene.) The Funhouse is a horror that continually has its hands planted in the genre's iconography and past works.
The unreal and very nightmarish aspects of the carnival continue in the horror ride, creepily coined The Funhouse: It turns out that a gross, murderous family, (not unlike the one from Hooper's masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)), are revealed to be living directly under the ride. At this point the already thin plot gets jumbled, and Amy's little brother's placement in the story is scary, yet the filmmakers still neglect to fully descend him into the horrors.
What the third act of the movie is lacking in innovation, it certainly has in screams! And despite shortcomings, The Funhouse is still a highly creepy acquaintance, not unlike an evil dream.

Related post:

Tobe Hooper: Dance of the Dead (2005) - Hooper's ugly Masters of Horror nonsense

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 7.8 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertain - but likely a big hit
[The Funhouse was released 13 March (USA) and runs 96 minutes. Universal Pictures wanted their own teenage-centered horror after the wild success of Paramount's Friday the 13th (1980). Hooper turned down Steven Spielberg's offer to direct E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), because he was busy with The Funhouse. The two instead collaborated on Hooper's next film, Poltergeist (1982). Shooting took place from March - May 1980 in Florida, including in Miami. Florida was chosen due to its relaxed child labor laws, as the cast was youth-eschewed. Hooper reportedly drank as much as 12 Coca Cola cans a day during filming; he was bitten by a brown recluse spider on-set. 4 days of re-shoots were required, after some footage was lost in a local Teamster conflict. Cooper Huckabee (True Blood (2010-11)), who plays 'teenager' Buzz, was 30 at the time of shooting. Dean R. Koontz wrote a novelization based on the script, which was finished and released before the film. The film opened to a 2.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it grossed 7.8 mil. $, - far from the 5.8 mil. $ opening and 39.7 mil. $ final domestic gross of Friday the 13th (1980). However with international grosses, the film likely made 10-13 mil. $; if made on a realistic 2 mil. $ budget, this would still earn the film the rank of big hit, at least. It was unsuccessfully prosecuted as a 'video nasty' in the UK a few years after its release; a suit that is thought perhaps was really intended for Last House on Dead End Street (1977), a much more gruesome and infamous horror movie which had the alternative title The Fun House. Hooper returned with Poltergeist (1982). Elizabeth Berridge (Broke Even (2000)), who plays Amy, returned in Amadeus (1984). The Funhouse is fresh at 67 % with a 5.96/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Funhouse?

Border/Gräns (2018) - The second Lindqvist adaptation is another wtf-experience with muddled implications if any

♥♥♥

Standing in a very vivid version of a Swedish forest, Eva Melander's uniformed lead stands out on this curiosity-sparking poster for Ali Abbasi's Border

Tina is a customs officer at a Swedish ferry crossing, a job which she is especially good at since she can smell sinners out. Her unusual, Neanderthal-like traits one day match those of a mysterious crosser, Vore, whom she immediately has a connection with.

Border is written by Isabella Eklöf (Holiday (2018)), John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In/Låt den Rätte Komma In (2007), novel), based on his same-titled short story from the collection Let the Old Dreams Die/Låt de Gamla Drömmarna Dö (2011), and co-writer/director Ali Abbasi (Shelley (2016)). It is a very strange film that is part horror, part fairy tale, part crime drama, and partly a romance. Some may find it very beautiful, a few may find it erotic; some may find it very funny, - and some of its grotesqueness does provoke chuckles, - others mostly disturbing and frightening. I found it mostly uncomfortable.
Tina's journey is so intimate, and the bodily fixation in the film is so strong that it almost continually seems to transgress an intimacy border most other films keep up. The transgression, of course, is felt more strongly because both romantic leads are uncommonly hideous to look at (SPOILER and even have unusual genitalia and reproductive abilities!) As if to make the film's unpleasantness an absolute constant, a subplot concerning pedophiles and baby pornography is also a prominent part of the plot. - Oh yeah: Plus voracious insect-munching, don't forget that.
There are many animals in the film: Impressive scenes with a moose, a fox and deer help keep it fascinating; the prosthetics and makeup designs for Tina and Vore are also incredibly accomplished, and what the leads must have gone through for this film boggles the mind.
The unpleasantness also causes the film to feel overlong, SPOILER as Border develops into a quirky riff on an old Scandinavian mythical forest creature, the troll. This will add interest for Scandinavians and outlandishness for anyone else, I should think.
The score is in line with the overall confusing tone and hard-to-categorize elements, sometimes upping its art film romance feel, at others sounding as a hip indie horror. The head-scratching and disturbing elements (concerning infants) are not illuminated by the film's end, as audiences make it with clammy hands and backs out of the cinemas. 
Border is likely to be 2018's strangest film, and it is fascinating but also a complete cipher to me, besides its genre fantasy allure: Does it tell us anything, and if so what?
From a country with such vast internal problems, no present government and a state that has just rolled out an initiative which encourages people to turn in hand-grenades and other bombs and explosives at local police stations with impunity, as a means to calm gangland explosions that are now so common in the soon unrecognizable Sweden, (not for a week or two but running for 3 months!), - I can't help feeling discouraged that leading Swedish filmmakers apparently don't dare tackle more of that pressing and indeed unfantastic, disturbing reality.

Abbasi gives an interview about the film here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unreported
= Uncertain
[Border premiered 10 May (Cannes Film Festival, France) and runs 108 minutes. Casting took a reported 18 months. Shooting took place in Sweden. Eva Melander (Flokken/Flocken (2015)) reportedly spent 4 hour before shooting every day to have the prosthetics applied. The film won the Un Certain Regard prize in Cannes, and it has been elected as Sweden's entry for the coming Oscars. It is slated to open 19 October in Norway, 25 October in Russia, 26 Oct. in USA, 3 January in Portugal and 9 January in France. Abbasi does not have his next project announced yet. Leads Melander and Eero Milonoff (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki/Hymyilevä Mies (2016)) also don't have coming gigs announced. Border is fresh at 95 % with a 7.5/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Border?

Wonder (2017) - Remember napkins for Chbosky's heart-warming family drama

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Family Movie of the Year + Most Deserved Hit of the Year + Best Tearjerker of the Year

A family of four is at the heart of Stephen Chbosky's Wonder as well as this turquoise poster

Auggie Pullman is a boy living with a rare facial deformity, whose parents are supporting him to start in middle school after years of home school. But finding his place in an often less than kind world is a challenge for Auggie.

Wonder is the third feature from Pennsylvanian master co-writer-director Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), written by Chbosky, Steve Conrad (Lawrence Malm (2004)) and Jack Thorne (War Book (2014)), based on the same-titled children's novel by R.J. Palacio.
Chbosky returns with another moving adaptation of the pains of growing up, again rooted in school life and its tensions, and once again with a plot that uses music well and applies theater positively to its story, in this case by Auggie's big sister's performing in Our Town.
Owen Wilson (Zoolander 2 (2016)) and Julia Roberts (Grand Champion (2002)) are probably cinema's nicest parent couple here since Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock played Thomas Horn's parents in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Both are just great, and they share fun parental interplay here. But the story is really about kids, - not just Auggie, but is structured in chapters around four kids, which is a neat device that broadens the film's scope to insightful effect.
Jacob Tremblay (Room (2015)) is really the film's star, and despite the heavy prosthetics he has to wear here, his instinctual talent gets across freely. The fine cast also includes Sonia Braga (An Invisible Sign (2010)) in a fine scene as a grandmother and Mandy Patinkin (Lulu on the Bridge (1998)) who is well cast and fatherly as the good principal.
The tone is brimming with sentiment from the get-go, and the production is bright and family-friendly, - which also means that the other kids are almost overly photogenic and have issues that are not exactly gritty, - but the film's big and thoroughly sympathetic heart makes these notes redundant.
Wonder sports a message; 'Choose kind', which is as relevant today as it ever was, and which it drives home with touching skill. The lengthier version of it that is promoted in the film is this; when you have the opportunity to choose between doing what's right and doing what's kind, - choose kind. That wisdom also becomes a practical part of the story, which is great. The film should also be commended for also creating sympathy for its mean kid, SPOILER whose internal makeup is shown to have come from somewhere, (flawed parents.)
Wonder is the come-together cinema event for the whole family this season, a noble and great film that speaks equally to kids and adults and which you shouldn't miss.

Related posts:

Stephen Chbosky: 2017 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV] 
Top 10: Best 'box office success' movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) - An instant classic     

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: 220.6 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say - but already a mega-hit
[Wonder premiered 14 November (Los Angeles) and runs 113 minutes. The novel was inspired by Palacio's daughter crying at the sight of a child with a facial deformity. The film was announced in 2012. Tremblay was cast in 2016. His prosthetics took 1.5-2 hours to apply daily and half an hour to get off. Shooting took place in British Columbia, Canada and in New York from July - September 2016. The film opened #2, behind fellow new release Justice League, to an overwhelming 27.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for a total of 5 impressive weeks (#2-#3-#3-#3-#4). The film has upcoming releases in China, Poland, Germany, Sweden and the Czech Republic, winning hearts and minds where-ever it lands. It has been nominated for a BAFTA. Chbosky is set to return with a romance entitled Prince Charming, and Tremblay returns in Xavier Dolan's The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Wonder is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Wonder?

Eraserhead (1977) - Lynch's extraordinary, unconquerably strange and surreal debut

♥♥♥♥

Jack Nance (Voodoo (1995)), with his characteristic crazy hairdo from the film, adorn the poster for David Lynch's Eraserhead

Henry walks around an industrial, very noisy neighborhood, where he seems to have fathered something ... nonhuman.

Eraserhead is the very abstract and strange feature debut from Montanan master writer-director David Lynch (Blue Velvet (1986)), who also acted as producer, editor and co-composer on it. It has a Luis Buñuel-reminiscent dinner scene and nightmarish scenes one after the other. - Eraserhead is generally a film like none other.
It elevates unpleasantness into high style but remains a cold acquaintance; chilling but not very emotionally stirring, probably because it is so outlandish. - Lynch already overcame this inhibition in his following film, period-set biopic The Elephant Man (1980).
Eraserhead is technically astonishingly well-made; both its images, sound design and effects are incredible. Eraserhead is extraordinary.

Related posts:

David Lynch: Blue Velvet (1986) or, The Strange World 

Dune (1984) - Lynch heads to space, with an (unsurprisingly) strange result

Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

The Elephant Man (1980) - Lynch's deeply moving second feature

Watch a clip of the 'lady in the radiator' from the film here

Cost: Reportedly 10-20k $
Box office: Reportedly 7 mil. $ (only USA)
= Mega-hit
[Eraserhead premiered 19 March (Filmex Festival, USA) and runs 88 minutes. Lynch was inspired by stories of Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol and the Bible as well as personal experiences of his own surrounding the birth of his daughter Jennifer with severely clubbed feet and living in a bad part of Philadelphia with his family. AFI's financing of the tiny-budgeted film was controversial, with the institute's dean threatening to quit if Lynch was not supported in his efforts. They erroneously assumed that his 21-page script would result in a short film. Instead, shooting of Eraserhead in LA, including at AFI's Center for Advanced Film Studies, lasted from May 1972 - October 1976, an extremely long and highly unusual principal photography, which was fraught with financial issues and an artist filmmaker involved in every detail of production. The film was seen by just 25 people on its opening night. It kept playing as a midnight feature in a few theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York for years, which got its gross up to the very impressive 7 mil. $. It further snailed its way out to theatrical releases in foreign countries over the course of the following three decades. Critically derided at its initial release, the film has since been hailed by many and been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry of the US in 2004. Stanley Kubrick told Lynch that Eraserhead was his favorite film around the shooting of Lynch's second film, The Elephant Man (1980), and it inspired Kubrick's masterpiece The Shining (1980) as well as countless other films and filmmakers since. Eraserhead is certified fresh at 91 % with an 8.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Eraserhead?