Grease Painted Death: Fear of Clowns

Well, that's direct!  

Today's film is all about the fear of clowns and how it can affect people.  Skipping all pretense, they just called it Fear of Clowns.  

However, the movie is much more than that.  

In reality, it is a fairly-short film that is padded out by two unnecessary sub-plots that make it last 90 minutes.  As a bonus, it has an anti-climax ending and a conclusion right out of a Project Terrible film.  

Which one?  

Wouldn't you like to know!  

The movie is a fairly low-budget and doesn't really feature any stars.  Does this hold the movie back or liberate it?  To find out the answers to all of the questions raised above, read below...

The film begins with a random dream sequence that serves no purpose.  

I should be used to those by now, really.  On the plus side, it's not the cliche 'opening kill' scene...

Our heroine is a painter who has one subject- clowns.  She is having some personal problems- including a divorce and custody battle- but that is abated a bit when she meets a handsome, rich man...

Unfortunately for her, she's being stalked by a Clown who chews steroids instead of cotton candy.  

I should also point out that the make-up job, while creepy, is not the same on the menu or DVD itself.  How do you mess that up?!?

Pointless sub-plot #1: A random, rich guy hires her to make a painting of his father- a famous clown.  She does it, in spite of finding out that he was a child molester.  

She gets paid and... that's it.  No, really.

The plot gets a bit convoluted as our heroine is going through a romance, as well as being stalked by the clown and having a man following her that was hired by her soon to be ex-husband, which leads us to...

Pointless Sub-Plot #2: A man is hired by the ex-husband to kill her, even though he's probably going to get custody.  

His attempt fails- although his plan wouldn't have fooled nobody to begin with- and he dies.  

To further kill this sub-plot, the husband is also killed...by the clown...who he also sent to kill her.  Confused?

The film comes to a head as the killer clown confronts our heroes at a movie theater where they are having a private date- more on that in a later post.  After a lot of stalling and chasing, he gets caught.

Don't worry, he escapes after the action is all over...apparently.  The End.

I ain't 'fraid of no clowns!  The plot of this movie could have been good, really it could have.  However, the execution is a bit faulty and the script does it a disservice.  

The film is also not helped by the inclusion of two pointless sub-plots mentioned above.  

Seriously, what was the point of the 'you're hired to do this painting' sub-plot?  The killer has no connection to the man?  

The whole thing is not a plot to trick her?  

All she gets is paid- more than was planned in fact.  

To further add to this nonsense, she takes the job to hire a better lawyer for her divorce case...which pretty much ends when the husband is murdered!  

I also love the amazing redundancy of the husband- hiring TWO different people to kill his wife.  Furthermore, he connects himself by having a former patient- who is somehow out, while still being insane- do the job.  

On top of that, he doesn't tell the non-clown killer about the clown...unless they just added this plot explanation later.  

Notice how I'm not talking about the leads at all?  Well, they're boring as hell and don't add much to the film.  They don't do a bad job, but they also don't make me care.  

Overall, this is a decent film, but nothing more.  There are certainly worse killer clown films out there...

Up next, a film that should be awesome.  Sadly, it's as dull as dishwater, in spite of featuring a famous comedian from the '80s.  Stay tuned...