March 13, 2021

This Day in Halloween: Tobey Hooper's "The Funhouse" opens across the U.S. in 1981. / Illustration by Jocelyne Reyes.

The Funhouse opens across the U.S. in 1981. Director Tobe Hooper’s slasher film receives mostly positive reviews and is mistakenly deemed a “video nasty” in Britain for a film with the same name. Hooper’s work on the film is considered the main reason he is hired to direct Poltergeist.