Funhouse: Not Much Fun. Tobe Hooper? What Happened?

Wow. This movie for some reason looked promising. I was mistaken. The funny thing is, I was entertained all the way up until the kids went into the actual funhouse. After that the movie was just contrived and lame. I love the idea of a film about creepy carnies, but never was it creepy. If you want a creepy carnival-like scene, watch the beginning of House of 1000 Corpses. Sid Haig delievers all the goods. Not to mention the scene is a direct take off from The Funhouse. It's just executed much better. My big question is, what happened to Tobe Hooper? What happened to the raw insane and bizaar nature of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It seems like once he got money to work with, Hooper just lost all creative genious. I have yet to see one Hooper film I like since "Chainsaw." Poltergeist might be the exception, but from what I heard, Spielberg rowed the boat on the film. The Funhouse starts of in a real fun way. We get three omages to horror cinema. We get giallo, Halloween, and Psycho in the first 5 minutes. Then we go to the infamous traveling carnival, which has been known to leave people dead in it's path. Yet four teenagers go against their parents will. Ok. Cliche, but I don't mind it. We get to see a two headed cow and a mutated baby. Alright, I'm in! But then we have the stupid idea of, Let's spend the night in the Funhouse. Bobby and Jeanna did it last year!" Ok, I can't blame Hooper for the writing, but man that is just a bad premise. I absolutely hated it. Not to mention, nothing really happens after that until the very end (which is still anti-climatic). Everything from then on is just drawn out. There is the attempt at being thrilling, but it never is. The Monster is just ridiculous and looses impact once he takes the frankenstein mask off. I was actually more intrigued with the mask on. The actual monster makeup was just hideous. It didn't work for me. Another thing. I appreciate it when movies will hide a viscious death scene and leave it up to the imagination, which is what this film did. Unfortunatly it did it very poorly. The timing was so awkward on the scares and all the scenes involving gore were covered. It was very disappointing in terms of what a horror film should deliver. That's all I can say.