The Funhouse Blog: Marc Chagall and The Funhouse

Monday, September 6, 2010

Marc Chagall and The Funhouse

"...I had a chance to work with this really great production designer on The Funhouse and we were trying to make the carnival look like Chagall, with those tones and colors. The colors do something emotional to me. So I fixate on that."

- Tobe Hooper

Horror.com feature "Masters of Horror Explore the Art Hidden in the Nightmare"

A cursory glance at the works of artist Marc Chagall indeed reveals a palette of colors strongly resembling that of The Funhouse, as well as the recurring subjects of circuses and carnivals.

Courtesy of the excellent art collection website Olga's Gallery there is a collection of Marc Chagall paintings available to view online. JR and I have selected a smattering of works which struck that Funhouse chord with us, and which Hooper may have shared with production designer Mort Rabinowitz during preproduction of the film.

Bride With Blue Face

1932-1960

Bella in Mourillon

1926

Circus

1979-81

Equestrienne

1931

Flayed Ox

1947

Golgotha

1912

The Juggler

1943

Les Trois Acrobates

1926

Peasant Life

1925

The Concert

1957

The Magician

1968

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Universal Pictures presents

a film by Tobe Hooper

"The Funhouse"

Introducing Elizabeth Berridge as Amy

Also starring

Cooper Huckabee as Buzz

Miles Chapin as Richie

and Largo Woodruff as Liz

Kevin Conway as The Barker

Wayne Doba as The Monster

Sylvia Miles as Madame Zena

William Finley as Marko the Magnificent

and Shawn Carson as Joey

Featuring

Sonia Zomina as the Bag Lady

Sid Raymond as the Strip Show MC

and Herb Robbins as the Carnival Manager

Casting by Pamela Basker and Fern Champion

Written by Lawrence Block

Music by John Beal

Edited by Jack Hofstra

Cinematography by Andrew Laszlo

Production Design by Mort Rabinowitz

Special makeup design by Rick Baker

Special makeup execution by Craig Reardon

Produced by Steve Bernhardt and Derek Power

"Atmospheric and genuinely scary."

- John McCarty, Official Splatter Movie Guide

"It's not every day that the fright genre produces a film capable of commenting on epic subjects like the ties that bind and the disintegration of the modern family, the foolishnes of dabbling voyeuristically in others' pain, and the possible detrimental effect of the Polaroid Instamatic on American moral fibre (a theme touched upon also in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Hooper's extreme pro-vegetarianism tract), while doing its proper job providing plenty of cheap thrills."

- Time Out London Film Guide

"...A spitty movie, full of great expectorations. That is, there's more drool on view than blood, which is a new twist for the horror genre."

- Variety

"Five dead bodies.

Two breasts.

Mutant farm animals.

Strangling.

Stabbing.

Shooting.

Hanging.

Impaling.

Drooling.

Ax to the head.

Crowbar to the head.

Electrocution.

Mutant-grinding.

Side-show stripping.

Exhaust fan Fu."

- Joe Bob Briggs, Monstervision

"Often lumped in with the cash-in slashers of the same year, it's actually an exuberant collision between classic monster tropes and the splatter body horror of its day...Rather than spooking us with images of murder and mayhem, we have been treated to body mutation, both human and animal, and mounds of aging twisted flesh, the real horror of mortality and age. Happy clown faces, images of childhood crack, peal and mockingly laugh. This ride has been going on forever. Something wicked does indeed, this way come..."

- Kindertrauma.com

"The New Horror was always described by its critical defenders as a radical attempt to shock its audiences with visions more graphic and confrontational and real than had been shown in the past. This ignored just how connected the genre is to the past, how self-conscious these new directors were. Hooper, Bogdanovich, Polanski, Carpenter and Romero were making movies that were as much about movies as they were about monsters. They were sold as honest and frighteningly real, but these films were made in a film language that was either referencing or dialoguing with movies of the past."

- Jason Zinoman, Shock Value

"For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers...He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator - though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed."

- John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (1968)

"Everyone was getting fleeced and shortchanged, to boot, at the ten-in-one. Hell, that's why we went there. This was a carnival - this wasn't a merry-go-round and cotton candy, this was a carnival - and we were making fun of the horror of existence, saying, 'Fuck you; tonight I'm going to party."

- David Mamet, A Time For Mickey Mouse (1989)

"WHO will be The Bride of Frankenstein? WHO will dare?"

- tagline, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)