The Funhouse (1981)

While not a classic, The Funhouse takes some of the standard 1980s slasher tropes and mixes them with a unique setting and some occasionally imaginative filmmaking.

The plot sees teenager Amy (Elizabeth Berridge) going on a double date with Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), Richie (Miles Chapin) and Liz (Largo Woodruff) to a carnival. Once there, they ride the rides, eat dodgy looking food and, being teens in a slasher film, smoke pot, and make out. Richie has the bright idea that the four of them should spend the night in the funhouse. What they don't realise is that they are locked in with a deranged carnival employee who has already murdered the fortune teller.

There's plenty of genre clichés, such as nudity drug use, a POV shot from behind a mask (with a creepy - not in a good way - punchline). There's also not a whole lot of action on the first half of the film, with the emphasis on the creepy unwholesome end of the carnival, the freak shows, burlesque dancers and mutant animals. The carnival is almost a character in itself and there is very much an "us and them" attitude of the carnival workers to the outside world, reminiscent of Leatherface and his family in Hooper's earlier classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The shocks and suspense come once the teens come under threat, with director Tobe Hooper makes the most of disorienting location helped by dizzying editing and photography that plays up the lurid colours in the climactic confrontation. Kudos also to Rick Baker's gooey mutant creature work and John Beal’s orchestral score.

The Music Box (1932)

One of their best known and best loved Laurel and Hardy films, The Music Box is a perfect example of them taking a simple idea and getting the most from it.

The pair play deliverymen who have one job, which is to get a box containing a player piano to the house of its new owner. Unfortunately, the house in question is at the top of a very long flight of stairs indeed, and they also must contend with obstacles like a vengeful nanny, a bad-tempered policeman and their own blissful incompetence. 

The film is perfectly structured with the repeating joke playing like variations on a theme, and, rather than being unconnected from each other, link together to set up a new hazard for the duo.

The box itself is as sometimes as much of a star as the Stan and Olly, seemingly possessing a sentience that gives their efforts an air of people trying to wrangle a difficult wild animal.

The Music Box went on to win the 1932 Oscar for Best Short and remains a brilliant example of Laurel and Hardy at the height of their powers.

Are You Being Served? (1977)

Part of the 70s trend for TV sitcoms getting big screen adaptions, Are You Being Served? is a particularly joyless example of the genre.

The Grace Brothers department store is closed for refurbishment, so the staff are sent on a paid holiday to the Spanish resort of Costa Plonka. A misplaced note leads to misunderstandings and the whole thing ends with the hotel being overrun by revolutionary terrorists (the film was made during the transition to democracy era in Spain, after the death of Franco)

The script is based on a stage play and it shows, with nearly the whole film taking place on two locations, the department store and a very obviously studio bound hotel. Nearly thirty interminable minutes is spent at the former, with nothing but corny gags, chatter about the holiday, and a surprise appearance by Derek Griffiths as a wealthy sheik (surprising, not least because all we've heard so far is people saying the store is closed). Things don't improve when we get to Spain with seemingly endless strained farce and more corny gags, only relieved by the novelty of seeing Andrew Sachs playing a Spaniard working in a hotel (although at least this time he's running it).

The characters are one dimensional and cartoonish, and not that interesting, being reduced to the standard seventies sex obsessed sitcom archetypes. The only one who makes any impact is menswear assistant Mr Humphries, and while his mincing camp demeanour may seem dated in the 21st century, his unapologetic refusal to be anything other than himself, especially when telling tales of his social life, is actually quite charming.

Sadly, he is not enough to carry the whole film. On the surface, with the same writers and cast, it has all the ingredients of the TV show, but that is not the case. Apart from a sorely needed laughter track to indicate the arrival of a joke, much of the comedy on the small screen came from the interactions and tensions between the staff and the customers. Here, with only themselves to squabble amongst, the results are painfully unfunny.