Saturday, November 2, 2019

FUNLAND - "Welcome To The Abusement Park" (1987)

 Halloween's over, so now it's on to Turkey Time, and the first Saturday Night Special of the month, a totally insane movie that was made in 1989 titled "Funland!"

 "Funland" is an amazing piece of Pop Culture garbage with a wild and crazy cast! It would be a pretty good movie if it was only about an hour shorter!

 Funland is an amusement park and one of the main attractions is Bruce Burger/Neil Stickney as the Brewster's Burgers clown. As Neil, he was an accountant for Funland, but after a nervous breakdown, he became the clown Bruce. His best friend and puppet pal is Peter Pepperoni!

 They're getting ready for opening day, and the owner of Funland, Angus Perry, tells all the employees that he intends to keep Funland up and running as a family business forever!
Angus was played by the distinguished William Windom. He's another of the few actors that was ever in one more than one "Twilight Zone." He was in both "Five Characters In Search Of An Exit," and "Miniature," and besides that, he has another 251 credits!

 The next day they find Angus dead! 
Supposedly it's suicide, but a bunch of gangsters knocked him off so they could get their dirty hands on Funland!

 After the funeral, they open the park anyway!
 The hot ticket food item is the Pizza Burger! Yum!
There's not really any foul language of nudity in this film, but there are lots of sexual innuendos, and strange comedy bits!

Of all groups they had to host, of course the main one would be the "American Council On Rectal Surgical Supplies!"

 I don't even know what to make of this sign!

 The gangsters take over Funland and Bruce Burger gets the boot! They kick him out of his dressing room, and send him over to the wax museum which is no longer open to use as a dressing room.
If Bruce looks the least bit familiar to you, it's because it's the iconic 'Squiggy' from the "Laverne and Shirley" TV show, David L. Lander.

 Once inside the wax museum, two of the wax figurines come to life, Bogie and Marilyn.
Bogie was played by Robert Sacchi, who made a career of being Bogie, and he's real good at it!
I played Hell trying to find out who the blonde was, and there was no info on the IMDB, so I watched the ending credits again, and they said it was Dawn Stone as Bogie's companion. I couldn't find any other information on her at all. This whole movie's a joke, so why should the credits be real?

 Robert Sacchi is always cool and his first performance was in a 1972 film called "The French Sex Murders," that you can read all about right here!

 "Funland" was shot at the real amusement park called "Six Flags Over Georgia!"

 Bruce freaks out a little bit when the dead Angus shows up in the cafeteria line.

 Besides being a ringer for Bogie, Robert Sacchi shows that he's not a one trick pony!

 
 And what I meant by that is here Robert is also playing the ringleader of these mobsters, Mario DiMauro!

 "Funland" is chock ful of nutty humor, like this guy in drag who strips down to his skivvies, and the intolerant rednecks in the audience storm the stage. 
There's one questionable bit that has black guys working in a watermelon concession stand, and I swear at one point when all the crowd is coming in through the front gate, there is a group of people in white hooded outfits that don't quite fit in. All in the name of humor I guess, but.....Really?

 They replaced Bruce with a classically trained actor who is not happy about the whole thing at all!

 Like I was saying before...........

 As a disc jockey goes on an endurance ride on the roller coaster, they have a ring card girl counting off the rounds just like in a boxing match!

 The credits say that Donald Trump's ex-wife Marla Maples is in "Funland" as a Mother, but this is about the best shot I could get of any blonde Mothers, so I don't know if that's her or not, because they never show the face of this character.

 So......After being egged on by his dead boss and the wax figure of Bogie, Bruce comes up with a plan to disrupt opening day. He steals one of the DiMauro boy's weapons and starts targeting people like his replacement. He fires off a couple of rounds, but he never shoots anybody. 
What does happen is that he draws the attention of the owner of the gun, who tries to get it back, and gets shot in the process!

Bruce is declared a hero since nobody really knows what happened, and is able to buy the park, and live happily ever after!

4 comments:

  1. I saw this a few years ago and was not thrilled. Well made, it seems, but very odd.

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  2. "Well made but very odd" describes it to a T. Thanx Joe!

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  3. The Marilyn Monroe look-a-like resembles pornstar Seka. And given the tone of the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if it was indeed her.

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  4. Possibly, but if you put a blonde wig on almost anybody in 1987, they would look like Seka. It's hard to tell since she has her clothes on!

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