A Dirge For Clowntown

Clowns can be scary can't they? Arguably the scariest of all clowns is Pennywise, as he is literally the stuff made of nightmares.

Then the Killer Klowns, whilst not the scariest clowns to grace small screen, have gained notoriety because the film is just so much fun. But then Sam Rockwell could argue that the awful Clownhouse is the scariest thing for him This has all the right ingredients for a decent horror come stalk and slash, but the end result is just a boring film that tries to hard to be an amalgamation of the later Friday films and a Rob Zombie film.

So once the main narrative of the film commences second act, always when one of the protagonists sees something overly bizarre , it's just so formulaic, and so lethargic, you are willing the clowns to walk just that little fast, kill the stupid kids and let the film just finish. So we are 'treated' to a wealth of horror film tropes, killers walking slowly and always getting who they want, protagonists making silly decisions that have been made since the late seventies, and the old man, who comes out of nowhere, who has never been harmed and should have minded his own business.

It's pretty poor stuff,many horror fan would have seen this film dozens of times before, and not have let themselves get drawn in by the predictable decent DVD cover art.

But fair dues, every once in a while, there is a little gem amongst the dirge and the filth, and sadly this isn't one of them. Borrowing from too many better horror films is always a mistake, because you remember just how good those were, whilst suffering this rubbish. TheLittleSongbird 26 March Killer clown films are not done quite as often as ones centred around sharks and zombies.

Those that do exist are wildly variable, with good ones like 's 'IT' and really bad ones like 'Clowntergeist' which made 'Killjoy' look like a masterpiece. When featured clowns are scary, they are the stuff of nightmares, a prime example being Tim Curry's Pennywise. Not so with 'ClownTown'. It is certainly better than 'Clowntergeist' the recent killer clown film seen, so sadly very fresh in my head, hence the comparison , as lame as its execution was there was nowhere near the same amount of the feeling that it was not trying.

An effort was also made in making the clowns menacing. Sadly the clowns themselves were not very threatening and came over as silly at times. They were not well served with what they were given, with a lame opening, a lot of cheese and a complete lack of suspense and chases and kills that one expects to be disturbed by but were nowhere near brutal or tense enough for that to work. On paper, their action seemed disturbing, in execution it was pretty cheesy and somewhat tame.

For any disappointment that was had with the clowns, they are nothing compared to the rest of the characters and acting. The characters are bland and obnoxious, either or and in a few cases both, with truly dumb illogical decision making that makes them and even the viewer stupid and make one endear to them even less and you don't even like them in the first place. The acting is a bad mix of over-compensating and disinterested. Despite the photography not being bad, the rest of the production values were not so good, looking drab and choppy. The obvious and over-bearing sound really annoys and hinders the impact of any scares or suspense when they are telegraphed when being built up that they become predictable.

Script constantly sounds stilted and even cheesier than a large cheeseburger. It tries to include horror film references but they don't come over as affectionate or clever, they are random sometimes and too often are clumsily done and completely lack the impact of what is being referenced.

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The direction is barely competent. Overall, not appalling but very bad. Maybe if this film had capitalized on the creep clown sightings that were all the rage last year, this film might have had something. Very low budget, but so were the first two films I mentioned and they are both arguably horror classics, but this film lacks Hills or Chainsaw's suspense, originality, or even good old fashioned scares.

This horror film is strictly running and chasing and creepy clown imagery. The creepy clown imagery was enough to hold my attention, but just barely. I can say after watching it was a lot better than what I thought it was! The blood in the film was good, not as much as I'd want but it was good! The favourite part I liked was when the clown got crushed by the rubbish lorry compactor!

But it was a pretty good film I'd recommend a watch to! Coulrophobics beware and coulrophiles rejoice - it may not be a particularly original film, but it's well executed no pun intended , great fun and thoroughly enjoyable. ClownTown was clearly shot on a very low budget, but still manages to deliver a well crafted homage to those much loved straight-to-video slashers of the early 80s. The camera-work, lighting, direction, soundtrack - especially the soundtrack - all manage to beautifully re-create a wonderfully evocative early John Carpenter feel as the film reliably works its way through various well worn horror genre tropes.

Is it staggeringly original? Is it immaculately acted? But it is a well-crafted and unpretentiously entertaining B movie - and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I really wish I could have seen this at a drive-in, preferably on a hot summer night, somewhere around There isn't anything truly terrible here, apart from maybe some of the effects.

However it is also completely paint-by-numbers and there is nothing that stands out even a little, which is pretty bad for a killer clown movie. Have you seen Terrifier? Now that is memorable, although he is arguably a mime.

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There just wasn't enough effort put into making an original and fun film and instead this comes off as people who just wanted to make a movie, and they did that, and I'm sure it was a lot of fun to make, but none of that translates to the viewer. Overall I'd give this one a pass, there is nothing you haven't seen before and it never falls into 'so bad, it's good' territory. Traveling to a nearby concert, a group of friends get stranded in a remote, desolate town with another pair of travelers and being chased by a gang of deranged, homicidal clowns determined to kill them one-by-one and must find a way to stop them and get out alive.

This here turned out to be quite the enjoyable effort.

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One of the more engaging efforts to this one is the way it manages to work out the group getting trapped at the town and setting up their inevitable being hunting down. Going for the group getting lost and then purposefully directed to their hunting grounds where the first incidents give this such a great starting point for the action to come later on. The groups' first encounter on the streets of the abandoned town where the near-accident leads into the clowns emerging and beating down the first of the group is a nice beginning, and leading into the ambush in the junkyard as well as the eventual escape gives the film a great sequence.

The multitude of chases and the rather brutal action that emerges inside the abandoned facility where the great chases down in the bathrooms or the endless hallways lead into some really fun and exciting scenes of the clowns hunting them down, and the brawl out on the rooftop is exceptionally good which has a lot to like about it. The film's best action scenes in the finale really work nicely when they're captured and forced to brawl with the remaining gang of clowns makes for a rather fun time overall here, and once it gets to the big final escape here really gives this one some fun and somewhat chilling scenes that work rather nicely overall here.

Alongside the brutal, graphic kills and the rather creepy look for the various clowns, these here hold this up over its minor flaws. The biggest issue is the fact that the simplistic story offers nothing about what's actually happening here. While the group is thrown right in with their encounters against the clowns, we get nothing about what's the point of being hunted or how the whole affair got started with a lame opening that gets tied into the rest of the story in a throwaway line that doesn't connect at all, and the reasoning for the whole story is really underwhelming.

The other issue here is the fact that while the clowns look threatening, it's not that hard to laugh them off as lame as the fact that taking them on as a group would probably have saved themselves a lot of trouble against what they're trying to do and it really doesn't help this one much. Otherwise, it's not that bad of an effort. That slogan goes for a lot of horror slashers, most of them are slightly guilty. But this story and the characters are beyond ridiculous. The opening scene is - unfortunately- the best part. A babysitter is at the Strode's residence while watching a TV news reporter named Weathers.

Any horror fan can appreciate the nod to classics like "Halloween" and "Scream".

clown town - Memory Hole

The fun stops right there when the leading cast is introduced including a blond girl who is certainly no actress but only hired for her rack. You know you're in trouble when the last name of the director is also spotted several times in the cast and production crew. Anyway, four friends wait in a spooky town for a total stranger to bring one of the girl's phone. They wait for hours even though they're already late for the concert and the fact that the town seems abandoned, which doesn't seem to bother them at all.

When the killer clowns arrive they're saved by an old hermit who hides them and calmly starts making dinner. There are killer clowns out there but life goes on, right? The clowns aren't scary, just painted faces and not menacing or convincing because of the bad acting even behind the painted faces that is.. The end reveals that the local sheriff is involved but since he's the one who told them to go there in the beginning of this wretched tale, it's insulting that it's supposed to be a twist. Some gore but hardly worth mentioning and even for fans of the genre I'm one of them it's a total letdown.

Way too many bad films have been released the last 2 years and this is one of them. Instead of being scared, I laughed. It's sad really how they actually tried to make the movie scary, it would of made a lot more sense if it was a comedy. Stay away from this garbage. Of course can't be sure if the persons responsible for this movie have some urinary problems hopefully not cancer but no other explanation I can think of for the constant references to urination, people peeing, scenes with urinals, women and men discussing their urination.

A Murder Coming , edited by Peter Sellers. In he received the Edward Hoch award; his acceptance remarks can be found at shortmystery. The current editor, Janet Hutchings, writes admiringly of James Powell in her introduction to his humorous essay on what makes a good mystery story. Below are the written responses by James Powell to my questions. Buy from Crippen and Landru. You asked how I happened to write for Ellery Queen. I thought one of these policemen might be an interesting character study.

So I invented my own Principality, San Sebastiano, as his stamping ground, complete with its history, streets and population. I submitted the story to seventeen magazines. Then Ellery Queen accepted the story. Two were published in Playboy when it was under the fiction editorship of Robie Macauley.

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You asked how I came to be down here. I had edited my college literary magazine [ The Gryphon , formerly Trireme ] and hoped to write fiction on the side. I believe that was or He later married and moved to the Midwest to work for a Catholic diocesan newspaper. A year or so later he recommended me for a job on the same paper. I made Iowa my home for the next few years, finished a novel as yet unpublished — nor will it be and my first short stories.

My friend, with his wife and daughter my god-daughter , had moved by this time to Mexico where he worked at a training centre for what I would best describe as the Catholic version of the Peace Corps, preparing American Catholics to bring their business skills, etc. Two or three years later he and his family died in an airliner crash returning back.

As it happened, his sister and her husband were about to leave for Spain and would be gone for three months. They suggested I babysit their house while they were gone and this I did. Marietta is a small town of 2, to 3, people on the banks of the Susquehanna River, the longest unavailable [closed to boats] river in the US.

Dickens crossed it in a stage coach in his first trip to the US. Though only ten miles downriver from Three Mile Island, I think the town is a charming one.