Owner, operator, and fuzzy retro feelers giver at NightmareNostalgia.com.
Worshipper of our Lord and savior Boo Berry, Patti is a seasoned pro having written for the top horror websites and magazines over the past few years until she decided to go balls to the wall and make her own focusing on pure feel-good nostalgia. Mom to two humans and three furballs.
Remember back in the day when you relied on a boxed TV with rabbit ears for entertainment purposes? You know, the kind where you had to adjust the antennas for that perfect reception with the smallest amount of static? With just the right amount of ominous static and bonus scenes that I never saw again until twenty years later; this, my nostalgic nuggets, is how I first viewed The Funhouse.
It was an early rainy Saturday afternoon in 1988. After a glorious morning filled with two bowls of Yummy Mummy cereal and Super Mario 2 on my highly coveted Nintendo Entertainment System, the combination of 8-bit eyes and a sugar crash began to settle in. Hence, along with the pitter-patter of the rain hitting the rooftop, it seemed like a good time to settle in with a little basic TV.
Grabbing the TV Guide, I skimmed up at the clock to see it was almost 1:00 PM and that meant Saturday afternoon movies on Vegas 33, who were pretty notorious for showcasing horror films on the weekend for us young genre aficionados. Low and behold, according to the Holy Bible of TV programming, I was just in time for a little film called The Funhouse, which I had never seen prior.
PERFECTION.
Knowing nothing other than the brief synopsis from Mr. TV Guide, it didn’t matter one bit as I was immediately suckered in through those glorious opening credits. Hypothetically speaking, the rest of the movie could have been 100% trash and I would still love it as much I do today based alone on that creepy as shit opener filled with animatronic nightmares.
Hooper’s Funhouse has become one of my top go-to comfort films. As the saying goes, “You always remember your first kiss.” Well, I remember my first time seeing Gunther; and it was creature feature love at first sight.
TV runnings of certain films tend to differ from theatrical versions with either an addition or subtraction of scenes to accommodate time slots. For example, the televised version of John Carpenter’s Halloween usually had axed or alternate scenes from the theatrical cut included in an airing. While they don’t necessarily add anything prominent to the feature, it’s still pretty fun to view an alternative variant of one of your favorite movies. Such as with The Funhouse, as I had actually seen this full-blown, yet edited for violence gem from Hooper first.
Uploaded courtesy of Goremeister100, the clip shown below offers fifteen glorious minutes of what was seen in Hooper’s cult classic during a televised showing. Both alternate and deleted scenes are included offering a different look for Funhouse fans. One of mypersonal favorite little bits may be trivial but I actually kind of prefer the televised scene of Gunther strangling the slutty fortune teller. Instead of focusing on the kill, the camera keeps panning away to those again, creepy Funhouse animatronic terrors that line the walls of the terror ride.
So now enjoy The Funhouse as I once did over 30 years ago!
As a byproduct of the early 80s, one of my earliest home gaming memories was the Atari 2600. This beast of a console was the first system a wee Patti owned and was shared, albeit reluctantly, between my little brother and I. I can’t tell you how many times I would get the urge to play Kaboom or Haunted House, and find my 8-bit hogging 4-year-old sibling snotting all over the joystick playingFrogger.
The struggles of a one-console household is very real boils and ghouls.
Presently, the original Atari 2600 is pretty much a dinosaur (and looks like one too) compared to the sleek Playstation 5. However, Brontasauraus console boasted some graphics that looked like sorcery in our eyes at the time. Regardless of the now outdated sights and sounds of the Atari, the gaming system launched the beginning of household video games over 40 years ago, and hell, we need to respect that. Not to mention, hosted some pretty off-the-wall cartridges that embodied the glorious horror genre within them. Four decades later, and I still haven’t seen one damn Texas Chainsaw Massacre OR Halloween video game! Unless of course, you look towards the Atari 2600.
That being said, kudos to the breakthrough video game system that honored the horror genre in 8-bit fashion. So let’s look back at some of the coolest horror-themed video games the breakthrough gamer device had in its library, shall we?!
Halloween
First released by Wizard Video in 1983, The Shape was forever immortalized 2600 style with his very own Atari game. You actually don’t play as Michael Myers, but the “babysitter”, whom I can only guess is supposed to be Laurie Strode.
The object of the game is to save the children you’re supposed to be caring for from the Boogeyman. Who, by the way, is running through the house waving a knife all to an Atari-sized version of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme. FANTASTIC. You’re given three lives which are represented by jack-o-lanterns on top of the screen, of which will disappear one by one when you are caught and killed. The highlight of this game, and I’ve been known to purposely do this just for fun, is when you’re caught by Myers. Why? Because he decapitates you (as shown in the video below). Yes, ladies and gentlemen,this appears to be the very first video game decapitation in history. You only get a tiny bit of blood spurts from said kill, but nevertheless is extremely amusing.
Another horror treasure from Wizard Video brings the Tobe Hooper classic to the Atari world in 1982. Unlike the Halloween game, gamer roles are reversed and you actually get to play as Leatherface; with a chainsaw attached to his dick.
You basically just run across a field of cow skulls and wheelchairs trying to get to your next victim. It’s heavily rumored throughout the gamer community that the high-pitched tones you hear when a victim appears is actually supposed to be a girl’s scream. The chainsaw in the game is run on fuel, and when you press the appropriate button to run it, your fuel starts to deplete. When you run out of fuel, you lose a life. So, just an educated guess here, the point is to kill off as many people as you can before running out of gas.
It’s a fun way to murder ten minutes of your life. But one thing that really irked me about this game other than the inability for game developers to give Leatherface’s body a different color than the chainsaw, is the fact your character gets “stuck” quite easily. The obstacles I mentioned above, as it turns out, you better steer clear of them. If even one pixel of Leatherface breathes too close to these in-game hazards, you’re stuck for a good couple of seconds. It’s a total pain in the ass.
Developed by Fox Interactive Games in 1982, Atari Alien has no shame in hiding that it is, in short, a basic rip-off of Pac-Man. However, instead of dodging ghosts through a maze, you’re running from Xenomorphs, which is just way cooler anyway.
The in-game maze is supposed to be designed to look like the inside of a spaceship, and said ship is infested with adult aliens laying these eggs all over the place. Just like Pac-Man, the pellets littering the screen are eggs and can be destroyed by simply running over them. There really isn’t too much else to explain, as it really is just Pac-Man with aliens. Though if you enjoy the classic arcade game, as a horror fan you’ll likely get a kick out of something different from that floating yellow head.
Published by Data Age for Atari in 1983, Frankenstein’s Monster, for me TBH, is one of the more entertaining games to come out of the 2600 era of gaming.
The basic object of gameplay is to build a wall surrounding the monster before he comes to life. To do this, you have to climb up and down the screen grabbing bricks one by hellish one. Along the way, you’ll encounter a giant tarantula, bats, ghosts, and a lovely pool of acid. You know, normal creepy castle shit. If you build the wall before the timer runs out, you save the village below from a monster rampage. If you don’t make it in time, Frankie comes to life and destroys every damn thing in its path, which is kind of my favorite part anyway. If you get a chance to play, let yourself lose at least once.
Birthed by Activision in 1985, Ghostbusters for Atari 2600 comes one year after the theatrical release, and is fuckin’ fun as hell.
You immediately begin by trapping ghosts in front of buildings, which in most cases, takes the form of Slimer. All the while, a synthetic Atari version of the Ghostbusters theme plays in the background. The graphics when ghostbusting aren’t half bad considering the console, and the driving sequences with the Ecto-1 are not as stretched out as other versions.The greatest part, however, is when you finally get to the end and fight Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It’s goddamn hilarious because he just kind of jumps around in front of a building like a little kid.
Clownhouse: A true video nasty if there ever was one. I mind-wrestled since the beginning of Nightmare Nostalgia on the notion to ever even write about this film, and here we are finally. At the end of the day, I got some things to say so we’re diving into this really troublesome movie that has become the true horror fan’s forbidden fruit.
Let’s start with my first experience with it:
Walking around the horror section in 1990 at my local mom and pop rental store Action Video, was definitely a highlight in my childhood. I’ve written countless times about how the hypnotizing VHS art covers opened up a world of horror I may have never known about before. Classic films like The Blob remake and Popcorn would have slid right by me in this era had it not been for those glorious artwork promos on the plastic rental box staring at you from afar like a lonely stranger begging for conversation. And of course, this new film stalking the shelves in the Summer of that year by then-unknown filmmaker Victor Salva caught my attention. The peering eyes of a demented clown taunted me. So duh, of course, I rented it. Brought it home, watched it on a Friday night with my dad, and I absolutely loved it.
I really hate saying that knowing we all know now about the movie.
Clownhouse is a fairly straightforward horror film about three brothers, Nathan Forrest Winters, Brian McHugh, and a then-unknown Sam Rockwell left alone in the house with some lunatic clowns on the loose who so happen to target the brothers in particular. Casey (Winters) has classic coulrophobia, and of course, his asshole big brother (Rockwell) who has a hot date but is also in charge of his two younger siblings while Mom is out of town, takes the clan to the town carnival to kill two birds with one stone. After a scare inside the big tent with a red-nosed nightmare (which was solely based on Casey’s own fears) the brothers head home for the night and the clowns retire to the makeup tents to wash off their faces- but the circus clowns themselves are being stalked by a trio of escaped mental patients. They themselves are killed and the lunatics take their clown gear, makeup, and have a hunt of their own. The prey being the three brothers of course.
As stated, Victor Salva was then an unknown to the industry and came in with this, actually really good B-horror movie flick. Beyond the obvious, this is what is incredibly problematic. The film hardly has any gore but rather plays on a psychological scare and chase theme. I would almost go far as saying it’s like a hardened, and more sophisticated “Are You Afraid of the Dark” episode made into a movie with much better acting. Which could be why I liked it so much as a kid. The film has great tension-filled pacing and eerie cinematography that sets the mood for a terrifying night filled with pained nightmares running around. But alas, it’s so uncomfortable to sit through now.
Is it possible to separate the art from the artist? Well, it’s not easy when the center of the art involves child molestation and really unsubtle shots of young boys in their underwear throughout the picture. I used to be able to think I could. However, the older I get, the more I can not. It hurts knowing what happened to the star, Nathan Forrest Winters and what he must have felt and gone through during production. After the disgusting scandal was made public, and if you do happen to rewatch it, you can just tell in this kid’s eyes the fear he has. The torment that Casey goes through in the film is a disturbing parallel of the heinous abuse Winters was subjected to at the hands of a real monster. That’s not acting, and that really angers me. It angers me even more that this piece of shit didn’t do nearly enough prison time AND went on to make a goddamn movie with Disney of all people: Powder, another really suggestive-looking trope with lots of half-naked young men, and then ultimately, Jeepers Creepers– who fuckface Salva himself said he modeled The Creeper after his own persona.
What a fuckin’ slimeball.
Anyways, if you’re one of those people who can by some magic sorcery separate the film from the behind-the-scenes horrors, then you’ll probably enjoy it; good luck finding it though beyond a free version up on YouTube. Just be prepared for the most uncomfortable hour and twenty minutes of your cinematic life.
