Grease Painted Death: Funland

Welcome to a world of fun, fancy and murder!  Well, that's actually a bit of a lie.  Despite its cover art and promotion, this movie is much more of a comedy than a horror film.  Yeah, I would see a clown with a shotgun and think 'Laughs ahoy!'  First off, I should mention that this is by Michael A. Simpson, the man behind Sleepaway Camp II and III.  That's your first hint that things are going to be more skewed by comedy.  There are two other Writers involved, but I won't spoil that just yet.  Needless to say, they aren't anything like Steve Miner!  The film is a bit the titular amusement park which goes through some turmoil, leading their mascot to go a little crazy.  What he does next is...not exactly what you might think.  To find out the joys of Funland, read on...

As you can see, this film is Written by Simpson alongside Bonnie and Terry Turner.  If you don't know, this pair wrote Wayne's World and created Third Rock from the Sun.  Weird, right?

Anyhow, Funland is an amusement park preparing for its yearly opening in the Summer.  They're mascot is a somewhat-deranged Accountant turned Clown.  Get used to him.

Things take a turn for the worse when the Owner dies a week or so before the opening.  The new owners are a bunch of mobster cliches.  Cue Clown funeral make-up.

The new owners decide to replace the Clown, bringing in the national mascot.  This pushes the guy over the edge just a bit...

Which explains why he is conversing with a wax figure of Humphrey Bogart from Casablanca and, later, the dead owner- complete with a hole in his head.  He's slightly-crazy, yeah.

He finally snaps and plans to assassinate the new Clown with a gun stolen from one of the mobsters.  However, things don't quite work out how you would think...

He actually ends up killing the mobster's son, getting credit for stopping his actions and manages to buy the company, after getting rid of the other mobsters via exposition.  In The End, they reveal that- make-up or no make-up- he's still crazy.

It's hard to laugh while I'm being shot.  The plot of this movie is good, although a bit unfocused.  You see, there's a bit more to this plot than I put in the overall synopsis.  Throughout the movie, a few comedy characters get random scenes and/or sub-plots.  For example, a crazy lady ripped right out of Police Academy does stuff like blow someone's door off of their car when they get the keys locked in.  In addition, there's a whole sub-plot where the Park Photographer both hits on a lady working there and 'feuds' with a guy named the Assistant Park Supervisor.  It's a good thing that guy can't fire you...and that your plot just sort of peters out.  This helps pad the film out to about 86 minutes.  The movie has a lot of moments that drag and, quite frankly, the comedy is hit or miss.  If you are inclined to like the jokes, you'll like this movie.  If you don't find the jokes funny/polished, you will just find it kind of dull.  The biggest problem is that all of the marketing makes you think that it's going in a horror direction, but it barely does that.

Up next, the final Killer Clown movie involves a Haunted House that's, well, haunted.  Didn't see that coming, did you?  Stay tuned...

Forgotten Sequels: Sleepaway Camp III

Here we are again with the third and final Sleepaway Camp of the 1980s.  I should note that a fourth film was made, but not completed.  All of you who actually spent the money on that box-set can feel special, I guess.  So what's changed this time around?  Well, it's a new camp full of teens and naive counselors.  In a return to form, Angela is a camper, although it is notable that Pamela Springsteen was 26 when she made this movie.  To the film's credit, there is a joke or two made about her not looking 17.  Ha ha, plot holes are funny!  If you thought that the social commentary and humor was too subtle in Part II, you're going to love this movie.  If you thought that it was way too blunt and ridiculous, you're going to really hate this movie.  The good thing about viewing the film on DVD is that all of the blood and guts that were excised from the original cut are back.  I hope that can distract me from the tedium.  Get out your age-concealing make-up for my review of...

The film begins with a bitchy teen getting up to go to a camp.  If you were wondering if the film would have pointless nudity in the first two minutes, the answer is 'yes.'  She goes to the bus stop, but is chased away by an oncoming garbage truck!  She runs into the alley...as opposed to just some stairs and gets run over.  Somehow, nobody goes to check on this or the driver's subsequent crushing of the girl's body in the back of truck.  Any guesses on the who the driver is?  Yeah, it's Angela, who conveniently has 'Angela is Back' spray-painted on a wall behind her.  People in New York really are blind!  She arrives undercover at Camp New Horizons, a special camp set-up by a married couple.  The plan is simple: half of the campers are rich socialite teenagers and the others are poor teenagers from 'the inner city.'  Fun fact: the rich teens are named after The Brady Bunch kids, while the poor ones are named after characters from West Side Story.  That's the kind of subtlety you get in this movie, so get used to it!  A reporter does a story on them and leaves, but not before being given some 'drugs' by Angela.  She drives twenty feet out of camp and snorts the 'cocaine,' only to find out that it's industrial cleaner and she dies.  Nobody ever discovers the body, by the way.  Angela is primed and ready to kill!

Angela's plan hits a wrinkle when she meets the third counselor (yes, only three): the cop father of the male lead in Part II.  He's also one of the cops that arrested her after the end of the original film, so, naturally, he doesn't recognize her.  The campers are split up into three groups and sent to different sections of the woods.  We get a little characterization, but it really amounts to very little.  The poor kids are ethnic cliches, including the black kid who always plays rap and the grungy white kid who's always spray-painting things.  As far as the rich kids go, they're all just variants of the same vanilla character, save for the 'final girl.'  Fun fact: this final girl is also the sister of a celebrity- Melanie Griffith.  Does anyone care?  I didn't think so.  We don't have to wait too long before we get some killings.  One of the poor kids who annoys Angela with firecrackers dies early, but not after a sight gag with the Jason mask and a joke about it being Saturday the 14th.  That only serves to remind me how I can't watch that movie, you jerk!  The slutty girl is also killed, alongside the perverted husband/camp co-owner.  After killing off the kid with the spray paint, our heroine leaves the group and moves on to a second one.

The problem with the movie is pretty evident here- nothing without Angela is actually interesting.  The wife's group is joined by our villainess, who proceeds to target them next.  She takes advantage of a trust exercise to lead the racist, rich girl away and kill her.  Aside from reminding me of Princess Clara, I don't care about the character one bit.  The remaining group is taken out with ease, including the rich guy who has the hots for Angela and the wife.  The former has his arms ripped off by a tow line, while the latter is buried in a hole and decapitated with a lawnmower.  No, I don't exactly know how that is supposed to work.  With that out of the way, she joins the third and final group.  Things don't go well, however, as the cop finally figures out who Angela is and, after a whole film's worth of build-up, is shot to death.  Wow, that was anti-climactic.  It comes down to our 'final girl,' the lead boy (also her love interest) and two expendable teens.  Angela holds them hostage with the black kid's gun from earlier and makes them do a Saw-like game where they must find the 'final girl' in two minutes or die.  When they get to her, they set off a trap that kills the two expendable teens.  Angela decides to spare the two because of their 'innocence,' so they stab her.  On the ambulance ride away, Angela kills the EMTs and escapes...with a stomach wound.  The End.

This movie blows and for a great many reasons.  For one, Angela is the only reason to watch this movie.  Every character besides her is replaceable and is given the same amount of care and work that went into naming them.  Hell, even the guy with two films worth of back-story (the cop) does nothing and dies!  The acting is...well, it's a low-budget, '80s horror film that tries to be funny- you figure it out.  The only thing of note is that a couple of them- especially the Asian gal- are kind of hot.  The plot is really silly and stupid, but that's no surprise.  We're on the second sequel to a film that is really only notable for its twist ending, for crying out loud!  Hell, even Pamela doesn't seem that interested in this material.  You can tell this by the necessity of adding a new quirk to her character: wearing Ray Ban sunglasses while killing people.  That helps block the sight of your actress always rolling her eyes at her dialogue, I suppose.  The biggest strike against this movie is the really blunt and pointless satire.  So much of it is just ridiculous and does nothing to help make this movie timeless.  It's only been twenty years or so since this movie came out, but it really feels like a product of its era and nothing more.  Unless you have to see every slasher film ever made (guilty), you can skip this one without missing much.

Up next, Mondo Bizarro celebrates 800 posts in the usual style.  Who wants a weird, foreign film that you've probably never heard of?  Stay tuned...

Forgotten Sequel: Sleepaway Camp II

After the surprise success of Sleepaway Camp, a sequel was sure to follow.  Hell, the only '80s film of this type that didn't really get a sequel is Neon Maniacs, that poor bastard.  This film was made a mere five years after the first one, so the waters weren't exactly fresh.  On a positive note, the lead was wisely-recast, a lesson that Don Coscarelli should have learned sometime around 1988!  The film is notable for casting two people related to famous people as their leads: Pamela Springsteen and Renee Estevez.  Hmm, one of them is the sister of a singer and the other is a sister of the guy from Repo Man.  I could say that she's the daughter of Martin Sheen, but it's funnier to call her the niece of Joe Estevez, so I will!  Anyhow, the illusive Angela has somehow worked her way into being a counselor at a camp that is on the same grounds that her original murders took place.  Was Crystal Lake too much of a trip for you?  Oh and that's not spoiling any surprise for you, since her identity and motives are literally revealed before the film's title card!  Will this movie be a new cult classic like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 or a big disappointment like Friday the 13th, Part 5?  Get out your bug spray for my review of...

The film begins with a group of campers sitting around a fire and telling scary stories.  One of them tells the tale of Angela, the boy-girl who killed all of the people at the camp.  This is broken up by the youngest counselor in camp pulling the lead girl away from the group...and killing her.  You couldn't have waited until you were more than 10 feet away, huh?  So yeah, the young counselor is Angela, who was apparently given a sex-change operation while in the institution for the last few years.  This is the kind of out-of-control psychological institutions that Reagan rallied against!  Actually, this is a plot point that is never addressed fully, since it is mentioned in the camp story, but not confirmed or denied by Angela at any point.  Explain, movie!  We learn that the camp is full of 'bad eggs,' which is just a pretense for Angela to have trouble with all of the '80s slasher movie cliches.  When your movie is telegraphed within the first ten minutes, where is the fun exactly?  Oh and we meet our really obvious 'final girl' in the form of Estevez as the cute, innocent redhead.  Just for juxtaposition, we get a slutty blond who flashes the boys and wears wet t-shirts.  Thank you, movie- we all get it!  The first real victims are a pair of stoner girls who get burned alive by the fire.  Kudos for having the one girl sleep through both the sound and smell of her sister being charred to death a mere foot in front of her!

The film flows in a pretty linear manner, so let's see how interesting I can make this.  The teens do a bunch of 'naughty' things and proceed to get killed.  For example, the teen males have a panty raid of the girls' cabin, followed by the girls getting their retribution.  A pair of the guys dress up like Jason and Freddy Krueger in an attempt to scare Angela.  She counters this by dressing up like Leatherface and killing them with a chainsaw.  Fun fact or lazy writing: all of the campers appear to have a really bad sense of hearing.  The slutty girl actually escapes death when Angela's chainsaw runs out of gas before she can cut the door to the bathroom where she is having random sex open.  Wah wah lame!  Incidentally, how does Angela cover up the deaths of the teens at the camp?  She tells the camp leaders, including a great guy with a mullet, that she kicked them out for breaking the rules.  That's...extremely-lame, movie.  I would be remiss if I didn't address some of the film's more random scenes.  For example, Angela leads a cheerful sing-along early in the movie...for no reason.  Later on, she has a weird bit of regret via flashback to earlier scenes from this movie and Part 1.  Does it go anywhere?  No.

As things get worse, the movie gets even less subtle and even less clever.  The slutty girl finally gets killed by Angela after having sex with a random guy in the woods.  She is lead to an abandoned cabin, stabbed a couple of times and dumped in the latrine.  That's...awfully-sadistic and long-winded for a film that has had quick kills so far.  The movie's lone black girl gets killed when she talks about how none of the 'kicked out' teens have returned home.  She tells this to Angela, leading to her being garroted with a guitar string.  The lead up to this is supposed to be funny, but I don't care.  Angela's bosses finally kick her out for expelling so many youths without consulting them and she takes it well.  I'm just kidding- she kills them off-camera.  Our villain decides to capture 'final girl' and her boyfriend for some reason, only to kill the guy within a couple of minutes.  In one of the film's few clever moments, the mullet-sporting counselor shows up to save the day, only to have battery acid thrown in his face.  One throw-away line in the second scene had him mention his missing car battery and it sets up this.  Afterward, one of the remaining counselors fulfills one of the slasher cliches by wandering around and finding all of the people dead, including two perv kids from earlier.  Our heroine makes her escape...only to run into Angela after she kills a pointless cameo character.  The End.

This movie is...really not that good.  It has some interesting moments, but it is still one of the most 'by the book' films you can see.  You want to know why people talked about the slasher genre losing all of its steam and polish as the 1980s came to a close?  If so, check out this movie, not to mention tomorrow's review.  Pamela's performance as Angela is actually pretty good, although her act as a nice person is never that believable.  She always looks like she's plotting to kill someone in the next five minutes...which she usually is.  Never mind that only a few years has gone by since her famous arrest, institution sentence and release/escape.  By the way, could you guys please pick an answer to any of your back-story questions please?  There's really not a lot of plot here, so you could have taken time to focus on it, couldn't you?  We don't watch these films for the plot, so how is the gore?  It's pretty average, although there are some inspired moments near the end.  The movie tries to over-compensate by setting up a room full of bodies and it really feels forced.  Thank God for Angela that nobody checks one of the eight buildings in the camp!  If you want to see how odd the slasher genre got, this is a must-see.  For everybody else, just watch something else.

Next up, Angela returns for one last hurrah in a film with even more awkward comedy and gore.  I miss you, subtlety.  Stay tuned...