Killjoy

Year of Release: 2000
Genre:  Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy
Breast-O-Meter: 1 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

For a horror fanatic Halloween is that one really important day that you want to spend with those closest to you. For me there was no one I would rather spend the day with than My Friend The Killer Clown Movie. We go back a long way and I hadn’t seen him since we went camping together in June at the beautiful Camp Blood. Since it had been such a long time I thought I’d give him a call and arrange to get together in a bad neighbourhood to have a sit down and a catch up. Now, if weird shit’s going to happen to anyone it’s going to happen to My Friend The Killer Clown Movie, so while we sat at a little corner café drinking very manly lattes he began telling me about the movie Killjoy, a movie that had made him feel more like a fool than many others he’s been forced to star in.

...and then I stuck my finger in the outlet...

What a lot of people don’t know about My Friend The Killer Clown Movie is that, while he is a bit of a psychotic lunatic, he’s very much in favour of equal opportunity. When he heard that Killjoy would be set in the hood with gangsters and guns and the like, he thought that this would be an amazing opportunity to prove that he isn’t a racist. Hindsight is an amazing thing and he now feels like this movie has set the civil rights movement back by about 50 years, something that brings a tear to his eye. After I wiped away his tears he told me the basic outline of what happened in the movie. Michael is the local nerd that no one likes, and he has a very big crush on Jada. Jada already has a boyfriend named Lorenzo, and he’s pretty thug. When he catches Jada speaking to Michael he gets his friends T-Bone and Baby Boy to beat the crap out of Michael. Rising above the situation Michael decides to perform a little black magic and summon a demon clown, the movie’s eponymous Killjoy, to take revenge, but Lorenzo & Co. kill Michael before the spell can be properly enacted.

Minimalist seances were all the rage back in 2000.

Being so close to My Friend The Killer Clown Movie I could tell that recounting this acting experience was very hard for him, so I decided to let him take his time. To put him more at ease we finished our lattes, ordered another round, took a few minutes to finish polishing our guns at the table and started taunting the odd old lady that walked by with them. This seemed to cheer him up a little and he continued with the story. A year has passed and Jada has since broken up with Lorenzo. She’s now romantically attached to a man named Jamal, a much sweeter man who knows how to treat his bitches and hoes right. Lorenzo & Co. are still around being thugs, but things are about to go rather badly for them. It seems that Michael’s spell was a slow-release one and has just kicked into effect, summoning Killjoy to our reality and letting him loose on the world. His ice-cream truck is a portal to his own dimension and Lorenzo & Co. are none too bright, so Killjoy lures them into the truck with promises of illegal drugs and discount ice-cream. Once trapped he then kills them in a number of ways that can only be done on a minimal budget before sending their bodies back to our dimension.

It's terribly sad to see a killer clown in the post-stroke phase of his life.

By this point we were all latted out and in the mood to torment some other people than just the old ladies we threatened to shoot, so me and My Friend The Killer Clown Movie decided to go for a walk, hand in hand, through this bad neighbourhood. As we walked along he told me the rest his sad story on the set of Killjoy. Playing the clown in this movie required that he become a lot more gangsta than he really is, learning to speak the lingo and acting like he rode in on the special bus. For reasons neither he nor the director could explain Killjoy now started to go after Jada, Jamal and their friend Monique. Thankfully a homeless man appears at random and tells them exactly what they need to do in order to stop the clown from killing them and trap him in his own dimension once more. Along the way they’ll encounter the spirits of Lorenzo & Co. and Michael, who’ll do anything to stop them. With faces that don’t move and voices that don’t range, our little group must ignore these spirits and bring Killjoy’s reign of terror to an end once and for all.

And so my lovely day with My Friend The Killer Clown Movie came to an end. I felt that him telling me about this awful movie he had starred in, with such good intentions, had brought us even closer together. In the back of my mind I also thought he was a bit of an idiot for starring in the movie’s two sequels, but decided that that was a conversation for another day. After a quick hug and a grab of the ass I went home, but promised to call him soon to arrange our next get together.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• A red mustang convertible will get you anywhere with a black woman.
• Hostages should not speak unless spoken to.
• Study groups are best conducted with porno RnB in the background.
• Year old breakups that you initiated mean nothing.
• Killer clown drug distribution from an ice cream truck is a major issue in poor neighbourhoods.
• Gangsta killer clowns use some of the most foul language you’ve ever heard.
• Lack of showering is one of the leading causes of foul vaginal smells.
• A pistol can hold, on average, 24 bullets.
• Women often come out of the shower wearing nothing but a pair of high heels.
• Some boys only have a doll and satanic magic as friends.
• 3 people count as ‘many, many’ murders.
• Boxes with lead pipes often include swords and axes as an added bonus.
• Pressing down on someone’s eyebrows can kill them.

KILLJOY TRAILER

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The Gingerdead Man

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Charles Band strikes again! Except this time we aren’t dealing with homicidal dolls but rather the resurrected soul of a madman contained in a biscuit. It’s difficult to know what to say about this movie. In some ways it’s a little bit like the Jack Frost of the 2000s but with a lot more problems. At only 70 minutes long it manages to simultaneously feel too short for proper story development but also incredibly boring as you wait for it to end. As someone who likes to bake and watch horror movies I thought this movie may be a good way of bringing those two joys together, but sadly this batch of cheese flopped a little early and doesn’t leave the sweetest taste in your mouth.

A somewhat different approach to tummy poking than the Doughboy

Our tale of sugary misadventure begins during a robbery at a local diner where Millard Findlemeyer is shooting anyone who tries to stop him entering the cash register. Cowering in a corner is our lead female Sarah with her dad James and brother Jeremy. James and Jeremy try to be the hero and land up being killed. Millard seems to hear voices in his head and believes, like his mother always told him, that he has to finish whatever it is that he started, and this means killing Sarah. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman or maybe it’s because her jersey was quite tight, but Millard has a sudden attack of conscience and finds himself unable to kill her and instead only shoots to wound her before the police show up to arrest him. Later on we find out that it was Sarah’s testimony that lead to Millard being imprisoned and ultimately sent to the electric chair.

Now this is a cake you don't see every day!

Since the loss of her father and brother Sarah has been effectively left to run the family baking store on her own since her mother, to deal with her grief, has resorted to the age-old method of Jack Daniels and shooting random buildings. Sarah has help from employees / friends Julia and Brick, but the bakery store is in trouble. Across the street arch-bakery nemesis Jimmy Dean is planning on opening up one of them there fancy eateries (we’re in Texas so I thought I’d give the lingo a bash) and running Sarah and co. out of business. He also has one bitch of a daughter, Lorna, who is hell-bent on making Sarah’s life a misery. Lorna, however, is blonde, which is always a plus. To ease her pain Sarah takes to making an enormous gingerbread man (maybe this is the bakery’s problem – shouldn’t  you be making more than one biscuit at a time?) but, due to a sad string of events that includes demonic ginger seasoning and Brick bleeding into the batter mix, the cookie comes to life with the soul of Millard Findlemeyer, still obsessed with finishing what he started.

It's either his soul or very lumpy jam...

So now, with a killer gingerbread man on the loose, we find ourselves with Sarah, Lorna and Lorna’s man-toy Amos stuck in the bakery trying to escape the demented piece of confectionary. Although Julia and Betty (the mother) rock up and are attacked by Millar since they don’t know what’s going on, two questions occurred to me while watching the other three trying to dodge being attacked by the biscuit: 1. Sarah has the keys, so why they don’t just leave the building is a mystery and 2. HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO KILL A COOKIE?!?!?! And it’s not like he’s a little biscuit that can just run and hide either; he’s the size of a baking tray! Somewhere in amongst all of this we have time to squeeze in a good bitch fight, a rat, a budding romance, a moral lesson on the dangers of combining alcohol, shotguns and old ladies, the beginning of one man’s wrestling career and an inside look into the darker side of the baking industry and the lengths people will go to to ensure that they have the freshest, tastiest croissants on the block.

While this movie is slightly brain-numbing, it is worth a watch if you feel like watching something absolutely daft and mindless. And no matter how bad I may have found it, it won’t stop me from watching The Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Druids now have a booming gingerbread seasoning delivery service.
• 2 cups flour, 1 egg and 1 soul. Mix well and bake until cookies sit up and try to kill you.
• Moral question: if a cookie eats baking ingredients, is it a form of cannibalism?
• Once-bitter enemies will become the best cycle sisters when faced with the threat of a killer gingerbread man.
• Coming face-to-face with a killer gingerbread man can make or break business decisions.
• When someone’s been run over with a car you should beat them repeatedly to see if they are still alive.
• Gingerbread men have a really bad aim.
• The best cure for massive blood loss is a breath of fresh air.

THE GINGERDEAD MAN TRAILER