Funland

Regardless of how you label this, surprisingly good or absolutely terrible, one thing is for sure: "Funland" is not what you expect. I was hoping for a bloody and violent horror/revenge thriller set in an amusement park; - especially since this is what the awesome DVD cover-art and the plot description promise. Well, guess again... Instead, this is a strange combo of black comedy and downright slapstick, albeit peppered with a few (too few...) sinister aspects.

Is the element of surprise a good thing? Not really, because the concept of a deranged clown-mascot seeking bloody vengeance against a clan of mobsters that took over his beloved theme park sounds tremendously cool, and now I very much regret that I didn't get to see just that.

"Funland" stars an actor named Bruce Mahler, and throughout most of the film I couldn't quite figure out where I knew his face from. Then, suddenly, I remembered he's the clumsy geek Fackler from the "Police Academy" series. And, bizarrely enough, "Funland" actually has a lot more in common with "Police Academy" than with any random horror movie/thriller from the 80s. It's the type of comedy that makes you laugh hard several times, but overall, it's poor and unmemorable.

There are strong moments, for sure. Whenever main character Bruce Burger turns schizophrenic, the story benefices from a moodily ominous atmosphere. His speech at the funeral of the murdered park owner, complete with black clown make-up, is also hilarious! Heck, I could even smile at Robert Sacchi's double-role as stereotypical Italian mafia-patriarch and - obviously - Humphrey Bogart's wax statue coming to life. The rest of the gags and running jokes are borderline pathetic, though, and the complete lack of action is unforgivable. The "revenge" of clown Burger is hardly even worth mentioning, and the ending is beyond dumb.

When a mob family takes over an amusement park after the owner dies under mysterious circumstances, the recently-fired clown mascot (David Lander, known as Squiggy on "Laverne and Shirley") seeks vengeance for the loss of his job.

The humor of this film is very strange, with a mixture of racist watermelon jokes, a "rectal surgical suppliers" convention, Natalie Wood's rowboat, some Mafia guys who take over the park, and a very, very good Humphrey Bogart impersonator. I am not entirely sure who this is supposed to appeal to (but I think it might be me).

What is really weird is that the film is sort of marketed as a Mafia picture. That is how Netflix sells it, and it is how the plot is described on IMDb (see above). But that is not even the point. A mentally unhinged clown gets fired and then seeks revenge. It does not matter if the mob is in the story or not, because the focus is this crazy clown.

The box said "Non-stop action."... is this legal?! The whole movie is just a stupid clown talking about his state of mind... who honnestly want to see this! The only action during this movie is the clown shooting some guy. Don't rent it, unless you want to be bored and waste your time.(I know it all sound crude but I wan't to save some from making the same mistake as me.)

As disorganized, bewildering, and downright strange as Michael A. Simpson's Funland is, to say I didn't enjoy it at all would be a blatant lie. To say I don't admire or appreciate the culture or saga of films it belongs to would be another hurtful jab at the very era I have grown to love and provide ample amounts of respect to over the years. That specific era is the eighties horror film era, where popular slasher films like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, immensely successful films financially that were made on a shoestring budget, proved to ambitious writers/directors that you didn't need to have millions of dollars and studio connections to make and release a film (the original Friday the 13th had an unmissable advertisement in a magazine before a script was even written).

Because of this new trend, directors and writers were racing to a neverending finish line to make their own slasher films, which is why there are so many unsung gems (and duds) that still haven't gotten their recognition. Many of these films achieved a cult following and, if one were to peruse a catalog or one of the many websites dedicated to the preservation and admiration of such films, they could find these kinds of films quite easily. It's films like Funland that you need to dig deeper for; the kind of quirky, unabashedly ridiculous, low-key effort that you almost can't believe passed the script stages. Whether or not the film was released in theaters is a mystery to me, but if it was, this may indeed be the most forgotten American horror film to ever grace the silver screen.

The film focuses on the titular amusement park, which is owned by the goofy Angus Perry (William Windom). The amusement park is a sore for sight eyes, as the employees are bored and uninterested in their positions, the rides have an unsafe look to them, and the entire environment reeks of cheesiness and sleaze. However, the most dedicated member of Funland appears to be Niel Stickney (David L. Lander), who plays "Bruce Burger," the clown mascot of the park, who is draped with a slice of pizza. Neil has played Bruce for so long that he no longer wants to be called "Neil," nor have his checks made out to him in that name. This all adheres to his grip on reality, which is becoming looser and looser as time goes on.

The back-breaking straw is when Angus dies under circumstances almost too unbelievable, and the park becomes overtaken by a mob family, who oversee a great deal of changes to the park, one of which is getting rid of the park's signature clown character in favor of the corporate mascot. Angus always defended the relevancy of Neil and the character he passionately plays, but now that he's gone, the mob ousts him at once. The mob's pawn is the park's careless manager Mike Spencer (the great Bruce Mahler), who agrees to let Neil go, leading Neil to buy a rifle and take revenge on the park that has let go of him.

Despite a great deal of lovable cheesiness, stemming from everything from the acting to the production quality (the opening titles have a strange fuzziness to them, as well as the catchy opening music being a bit louder than normal), Funland's biggest misstep is that it's a horror film that never realizes it's a horror film. It toys with genres of dark comedy, action, and mystery, and occasionally masquerades as a horror film with suspense and unpredictability within its tone, but never does the film forgo its numerous other genres to work as what it should be trying to achieve. Most of the film, however, operates with a wonderful sense of blackness to its comedy, which works wonderfully, especially in the first half hour, when we're getting acquainted with this demented Funland Amusement Park. During this time, humor flows in unrestricted free-form, while characters say and do the most outlandish things possible, with humor arousing from almost every circumstance.

With this, I was kind of disappointed to realize that Funland doesn't keep up this sense of dark humor all the way through, and instead goes for a more potboiling thriller in the weakest sense towards the end, while only emphasizing a small element of the blackness in the meantime. However, during the first half hour there's a certain hilarity that almost can't be replicated, as it's a hilarity that exists because of our unfamiliarity with this crazy world. Indeed, the film exists in a world of its own, and for that, operates as one of the most humble and ridiculous films of the 1980's I have yet to see.

Starring: David L. Lander, William Windom, and Bruce Mahler. Directed by: Michael A. Simpson.

Michael A. Simpson is great at creating satire with exaggerated archetypical characters. Funland (1986), like Simpson's Sleepaway Camp films (2 & 3), features funny and interesting characters with good dialogue, decent settings, and a tongue-in-cheek storyline. There's some pretty zany stuff going on in this movie, some of which you might miss if you divert your attention for too long. For example, there's a sign at the gate of one of the rides of a clown holding a ball in each hand and it reads something like, "You must be as tall as my balls to ride." The camera aims momentarily at the clown's crotch. Also the whole absurd lectures given by managers who'd like their minimum wage employees to believe they were working in a powerful profession and to have them give them respect as if he/she were Bill Gates or someone all-important. There's a hilarious pizza-making speech. Once again, as with the Sleepaway Camp films, Simpson gets away with racial and homosexual slights because they're too obvious, so flagrant that no intelligent viewer could begin to take them seriously, in fact, they're very comical. Funland is good up to a point. About halfway through the film falls flat when it opts for quasi serious approach instead of evolving into a horror comedy. I strongly believe Funland could have been 100% better if it would have become a horror film. The two teenage leads should have had more camera time and the deeply troubled clown, Bruce Burger, played convincingly by David L. Lander of Laverne & Shirley fame, Andrew 'Squiggy' Squiggmann, should have went on a murderous bloody rampage, in which the two lovers would have had to fight to stay alive. Had Funland been closer to Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3 in its production it would have done much better in finding an audience. Sleepaway Camp 3 fans might notice the television reporter in Funland as the same actress in SC3 who also played the reporter. There are lots of familiar faces in Funland, actors and actresses who have appeared in many low-budget goodies over the decades. There's an overweight female character who acts like someone right out of a SNL skit, and she pulls the humor off quite well as an overzealous park security guard. All in all, Funland is an enjoyable little slapstick flick. But it could have really turned into a memorable cult classic if horror would have played a major part, and that's too bad. I suggest you watch Simpson's Sleepaway Camp 2 & 3 to see what Funland could have aspired to.