Eli Roth Eying Tobe Hooper's 'The Funhouse' For A Possible Remake

I'm about as tired of Hollywood's seemingly endless stream of remakes as the next movie nut. Surely there are more original stories out there just waiting to be told. Still, when you're talking about a remake that will mix the sensibilities of directors Tobe Hooper ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre") and Eli Roth ("Hostel"), I kind of have to sit up and listen.

In a recent -- and info-packed! -- interview with Fangoria, Roth spilled some details about a potential remake of Hooper's "The Funhouse." The only real "news" here is that Roth is "talking" to rights-holders Universal about the possibilities, so don't take this as anything even approaching confirmation. Then again, fans reading Roth's comments will hopefully generate enough interest to push those talks into a reality. Want to know what he said? Then read on.

"'The Funhouse' is a movie where the first half is brilliant -- they set up these great characters -- and then they pay off none of them. You have Marco the Magician sawing his daughter in half, the brothers who run the carnival and the funhouse setting. And then it’s all about this weird mutant thing. It should be about the kids getting killed in horrible ways, put in different contraptions in the funhouse and the final girl being strapped into the ride and sent into the tunnels to be confronted by terrifying tableaux of her dead friends. A smart remake could be so much fun. Kill the kids in fabulous ways and continually reuse the bodies by making them freaks in the freak museum, sew their eyes shut, waxworks…."

From the sound of things, Roth is more interested in putting his own spin on the idea of a horror flick set in a funhouse than in actually carrying over significant elements from Hooper's effort. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Couldn't Roth just torture poor innocents in a funhouse of his own creation? It would be sick and twisted and full of gore, and it would leave that particular segment of Hollywood history untouched for at least a little bit longer. Just my two cents.

Go and check out the rest of the Fangoria interview. Lots of good chatter from Roth in there.

Have you ever seen Hooper's "Funhouse"? Would you want a Roth-led remake? Or would you prefer he leaves the original untouched and builds his own sick amusement park?

Tags Eli Roth, the funhouse, tobe hooper