The Funhouse (1981)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Cast: Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, William Finley, Kevin Conway

Have I Seen It Before: No. Somewhere along the line it had been recommended to me as a potential Beyond the Cabin in the Woods movie. I don’t remember how it came to me, whether we discussed it off-mic among the panel, whether somebody mentioned it to me, or it was (improbably) recommended in an old episode by either Siskel or Ebert*. We’ve got a rule on the show that I have to, you know… actually see the film in question before I recommend it for the show.

Did I Like It: Not really. It’s probably best that I can’t for the life of me remember who recommended it, as I can now think almost anybody made the recommendation**. It’s not as brazenly cheap and sleazy as Friday the 13th (1980) or any of its sequels. It’s nowhere near as classy as even some of the worst sequels for Halloween (1978). It does try to be visually interesting in its banal exploration of 80s horror, which might put it in the same pantheon of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), or any of its better sequels, but it doesn’t quite measure up in that regard, either. Its opening minutes reach for something approaching meta horror, but the entire sequence only left me wondering why the parents wouldn’t let Joey (Shawn Carson) stay up to watch the end of Bride of Frankenstein (1935) when he is demonstrably a fan. No wonder he left the house.

I suppose it’s interesting to see the progress of a filmmaker. This doesn’t have the relentless discomfort of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). It’s not hard to draw a line from Hooper’s explosive introduction to the movie world, to this, to Poltergeist (1982), where people are still trying to work out whether he was at all up to directing the film in the first place.

*As I look into info for the film it turns out that it was indeed a Siskel—yes, you read that right—liked it quite a bit. Sometimes I can’t quite account for much in the world.

**Pay no attention to the man behind the footnotes. I had started writing that sentence before tripping over that little Siskel nugget. A Sugget, if you will. (You shouldn’t.)

Amadeus (1984)

Director: Miloš Forman

Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly. Despite its R rating, I have a strange memory of see most of the movie in my youth, as showing (certain parts) of the film was the “giving up” action of a music teacher in elementary school. That’s an ugly way to see a movie, honestly. Let the kids skip the movie, and watch it in its full context later on, if you ask me.

Did I Like It: I’m pretty sure only Forman could bring to life the ultimately vulgar reality of Mozart to life. Between Andy Kaufman and Larry Flint, it might seem like the story of the greatest classical composer would be an aberration. But working with source material like Peter Shaffer’s stage play makes it almost inevitable that Forman and Mozart would find one another.

The production is immaculate, with every attempt made to authentically recreate the later years of the eighteenth century, even if the vast majority of the audience would have no way of knowing if the film achieved any sort of historical accuracy. It largely is not accurate, as scholars have long since proven that Salieri could not have been responsible for Mozart’s death, and Mozart was not dumped in a mass grave. However, there is no trace of contemporary fashion in the production, so people years from now would not be able to place it in the context of other films produced in the 1980s. Timelessness in this fashion lends credibility, even if the story is nearly completely fiction.

Tom Hulce brings the title character to such vivid life, it’s a wonder that he didn’t enjoy a more notable career in motion pictures beyond the role. It’s also hard not to imagine what might have happened if Mark Hamill might have played the role instead, as he was playing the role on Broadway at the time, but was dismissed as a prospect for the movie because Forman decided people would not be able to think of the actor outside of his involvement with Star Wars.

But this movie is only tangentially about Mozart, right? Abraham as Salieri is one of the more delicate balancing acts of the movies. Functionally the villain and the protagonist of the story (Mozart has no arc other than to burn out his talent and die), he is sympathetic, likable, odious, and unrepentant, often moment-to-moment. His tale of woe and jealousy fueled by a contempt for a world which did not see fit to reward the sacrifices he thinks he has made for his future success. In that sense, even though the film is a foreign subject made by a foreign director, the tragedy of Salieri might be the most American tale ever put to film.