The Funhouse is one of those notorious horror movies I grew up with but never watched, mostly because there was no way I could convince my parents to let me see a Friday the 13th movie when I was nine, never mind something by the guy who made The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . So when the flick turned up on my VOD queue, I thought I'd give it a try. How does this 33-year-old slasher movie rate? Stick with me! Four teenage friends spend the night in a carnival funhouse and are stalked by a deformed man in a Frankenstein mask.

For a no-budget, under-the-radar horror film, this isn't bad. It's not great, but it's not bad. A group of friends decide to break into an elaborate carnival funhouse after hours only to discover the attractions have come to homicidal life. The cool premise is hindered by the filmmakers' lack of imagination when it comes to executing the scares and the PG-13 violence. But the cast is better than average and everything moves along at a fast enough pace to make one almost forget this isn't as good as it could have been. Worth the watch once, so it's a Bad from this Basement Dweller.