If you are reading this and enjoy horror movies, you may believe that "The Funhouse Massacre" is either a remake or sequel to Tobe Hooper's "Funhouse." The former film is likely influenced by the later but the two are unrelated. The Funhouse Massacre is actually a humorous bloody slasher. The best part of the film is the practical gore effects. The body parts and puncture wounds look very lifelike in that they aren't obvious puppets or CGI cheapies. The film avoids the excessive blood squirting during the many death scenes you would expect from a bloodbath. There are still some creative death scenes involving the walls and other surrounding objects besides the usual knife action.

The basic premise involves an beautiful insane killer releasing her father and several other psychotic killers on Halloween night so they can murder anyone who visits the local haunted house. The killers are hoping that they can camouflage their actions by the revelry of patrons and Halloween scenery masking their crimes. The filmmakers give a nod to their special effects work when one patron says, "it looks so real."

The film's main characters are a bunch of late 20s taking the night off. Everyone intentionally has no personality other than what their trope is. That's alright here because there is just enough dialog between the bloody bits that you are unlikely to become bored. Two of the characters are inexperienced with weapons or firearms so one attempts to use his buddy as a human shield when the group splits up to take out the baddies. The other character is a child trapped in a man's body who cannot handle a real weapon. The script for these two doesn't progress their characters in any meaningful way. The jokes become a bit stale to be honest.

The Funhouse Massacre suffers from an abundance of characters. There are more than 5 killers and each ges only a brief introduction before the killing spree starts. After that we get none of their personalities or backstories at all. A few barely have any screen time at all, killing or speaking. It plays as if the filmmakers couldn't decide how many villains there should be and just left the extra characters in the story. The jokey tone was selected to band aid the lack of a cohesive story. One of the killers is the daughter of one of the other killers. The father apparently led some kind of cult that encouraged members to commit suicide by lighting themselves on fire. As I was getting bored, I wondered why the film goes out of its way to introduce this much backstory at the expense of the other killers then do nothing with it. One of the heroes has some kind of connection with the suicidal group that is also unexplored.

The Funhouse Massacre is too bloody to recommend for comedy fans and too silly to recommend for most horror fans. Pop culture references and genuinely good gore effects are not enough to warrant a viewing.