By Melissa Antoinette Garza
This was one of the movies I would watch on Sunday afternoons as a child during a local program called Spine Tinglers. When I was really young this movie horrified me. Though there are definitely creepy moments and the lead actress is fantastic, the movie certainly doesn’t hit me as hard as it once did.
The film begins with our lead, Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge) being sadistically pranked in the shower by her young and psychopathic brother Joey (Shawn Carson) who puts on a clown mask and stabs her with a fake knife. The director Tobe Hooper wanted to pay homage to the classics Halloween (1978) and Psycho (1960) which as a devout horror fan I appreciate. Nonetheless, seeing the young child purposely and with forethought plan this out and corner his sister while she was naked in the shower, is just disturbing.
Amy is as disgusted as the audience and angrily swears she will get Joey back. She lets it go rather quickly as she is excited about dating Buzz (Cooper Chapin) for the first time. They are going on a double date to a carnival with her annoying and trouble-making friend Richie (Miles Chapin) and Liz (Largo Woodruff) who is basically just a throwaway character with zero depth.
They arrive at the carnival and at first have a great time. Though the boys do unusual things with the girls present and they don’t seem to mind. For example, there’s a booth with strippers where only adults are allowed, and these “teenagers” cut through the sheet to see them. The girls seem to be enjoying it as well and laughing more like little kids who saw a naked body. Even if this group was a bunch of teens, I remember as a teenager I had no interest going to a strip club or seeing strippers. By that time, I was consistently watching R rated movies so other people’s nakedness wasn’t a big deal to me. If I had gone on a date in high-school (I didn’t but if I had) and the guy I was with brought me to secretly watch strippers, there wouldn’t have been a second date.
Next they peer down from a ride and see a man in a Frankenstein mask take some money out of his savings, a wooden box, to
pay a gypsy prostitute for a quickie. It turns out to be real quick as the guy prematurely ejaculates. He wants his money back but she refuses, so he kills her. During the fight, his masked is ripped off and he has the face of Jason Vorhees from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and the hair of Doc (Christopher Lloyd) from Back to the Future (1985).
The kids freak out and attempt to escape but they’re locked in. Idiot Richie steals the remaining cash from the wooden box which is the funds the mutant monster is supposed to give his father. When the monster goes to visit his dad, the kids watch. Once again, Richie is an idiot and drops his lighter from above, making their presence known.
So forty-five minutes in is really where the movie begins. From here on out, Hooper’s vibe is definitely present. Elizabeth Berridge is fantastic at expressing fear and there are definitely elaborate hoops she has to jump through in an attempt to escape. The haunted house that in any other scene would seem foolish, becomes quite frightening as Amy begins losing her mind and seeing the mutant’s face everywhere as the lights flash and the props light up and move around. The eerie laughter which also traditionally wouldn’t make any horror aficionado flinch, here works fabulously as Amy runs not knowing where the monster lies. Making it better, we generally don’t see where the monster is either until he just jumps into a scene. The viewers don’t see him chase Amy so instead she is escaping from an unseen force.
There are certain scenes where the monster does appear that are less frightening but more on the entertaining Friday the 13th level. Certain scenes definitely remind me of that franchise, but are still done well.
The last scene is perfect and I wouldn’t mind a sequel where Joey, now a grown man, feels guilty about his youthful actions. The carnival comes back to town just as Amy is released from a mental hospital. She doesn’t want to go but Joey thinks it will be good for her. After all, the carnival is not operated by the same place and he believes the monster was a false memory stirred from his stupid prank earlier in the day and by the tragedies that struck her friends. He accounts for the mysterious and unsolved disappearances of her friends as She agrees to finally go only to be confronted by the memories and the monster.
I’m a huge fan of Tobe Hooper. I don’t only enjoy his finest work like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Salem’s Lot (1979) and Poltergeist (1982), but I also believe many of his other work is underrated. Whether it be the cult classic The Toolbox Murders (2004), the lesser appreciated but still fantastic Mortuary (2005) and the amazingly original yet virtually unknown Spontaneous Combustion (1990) starring horror icon, voice of the doll Chucky in the Child’s Play franchise and star of one of the most amazing and little known gems out there Horseplayer (1990), Brad Dourif.
Overall, if you don’t mind a very slow start, the middle and ending is really worth the wait. The very last sequence has a pretty neat back story. The viewers see a large prop woman going back and forth as the eerie laughter is heard. Hooper used this sequence in reference to the phrase, “it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.” I thought that was very well done and I wonder how many other references I missed.
Scared Stiff Rating: 8/10
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