The Funhouse by Dean Koontz

Imagine this: you are a writer that has seen some success, yet still haven’t gotten to the point where money isn’t an issue, when one day a book publisher asks you to write a novel based on a screenplay that a world famous horror director would be using for his next movie. Sounds good, right? Well, this is exactly the type of offer that was proposed to Dean Koontz back in the early eighties, a time when his novels were doing pretty well, but hadn’t yet reached the monumental bestseller status he is familiar with today. The screenplay was for the movie The Funhouse, which Tobe Hopper would be directing (you may have heard of him, earlier in his career he made a little movie titled The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that did pretty well). The idea was to have a novel written based on the screenplay, and then have each project -- novel and film -- be released on the same day, the hopes being that each one would act as an accelerate toward the other, driving up sales in both sectors (something that is done quite a bit now, but was a new idea back then). So, screenplay in hand, Dean Koontz started working on the novel, one that ended up looking nothing like the movie, and, in my opinion, tells a much better, more character driven story.

The novel version of The Funhouse begins in a small trailer parked upon a desolate Pennsylvania landscape where a carnival has been set up. In the trailer is a young lady named Ellen Straker who is getting ready to do something terrible, something involving a horribly deformed baby she gave birth to six weeks earlier, one that hisses and screeches while digging its wicked little claws into the wooden crib, its reptilian green eyes always searching for a way out. Ellen wants to kill the baby, but has to do so quickly before her husband returns home.  Success is hers, though it was a struggle.  Death did not come easily to the baby who literally fought tooth and nail to prevent its own demise.  Seconds later Ellen’s husband enters the trailer.  Bloodied, Ellen tries to explain to him why she did what she did, but to no avail.  After giving her the beating of her life, he throws her out.  A promise to kill any future children she has as payback for taking his wonderful son follows.  He will not forget her or the beloved son she stole from him.  Years pass, and Ellen does have more children; two to be exact, a boy and a girl, both of whom grow into fine young adults.  Of course, neither one has any idea of their mother’s past, nor the fact that she once had connections to the carnival that comes to town that year.  If they had, they probably would never have planned to visit the funhouse.  Visit it they do, however, their minds completely clueless to the horror that is awaiting their arrival.    

Well written, fast paced, and deliciously terrifying, The Funhouse is a horror novel fans of the genre should not pass up, one which is sure to give plenty of sleepless nights as the meeting between Ellen’s children and her former husband draws near.  Even better, it paints a beautiful picture of an attraction that few people get to see today, that of the traveling carnival.  Forget the cliché midway characters you are used to seeing from films and TV shows.  In The Funhouse (and to an even great extend in his novel Twilight Eyes) Dean Koontz puts a human face upon these figures, one that readers are sure to remember long after the book finishes.  Horror entertainment at its best, and therefore, a must read.