Elimination

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Horror / Action
IMDB Rating: 3.1 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium
Breast-O-Meter: 2 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

It’s movies like this that make you lose faith in the whole premise of film making. I mean, you want to believe that film makers are trying their best to put out high quality, original movies, and then this rather blatant Saw ripoff comes along and makes you question everything. Yeah, we all know that none of that’s true, but Elimination isn’t even subtle in what it’s trying to piggy back on. Granted, it has some of the cheapest CGI I’ve ever seen in a film and each and every actor could’ve easily been outperformed by a paperclip (which unintentionally gives it its entertainment value), but I spent my whole time sitting in front of the TV just waiting for someone to say “I want to play a game.” But I guess this is what you get from a movie that has unnecessary breasts thrown in front of the camera before the 1 minute mark has even been passed.

Whatever you do, don’t show any emotion…

As I’m sure we’re all painfully aware, we live in the age of reality television, and the Good Lord knows that they’ll stick a camera in front of anyone and follow them around. Everyone wants to be famous, right? Well, so does our bunch of generic clichés (and there’s a lot of them – latino, latina, jock, bitch blonde, bitch blonde’s caring boyfriend, street thug, smart hot girl in a cardigan etc.). They’re all about to audition for a brand new online reality show called Spotlight. They don’t really know what it’s all about or where it’s being filmed, but there’s a $1 million dollar prize at the end of it for the winner, so I suppose the finer details might not be at the forefront of their tiny minds.

Featuring a special guest appearance by My Friend The Killer Clown Movie.

After getting together in a parking lot and meeting one of Spotlight‘s crew members, the gang is bundled into an unmarked van, stripped of their cellphones, drugged, and taken to an unknown location in the middle of the desert. None of them seem to find any of this particularly disconcerting, so they all make their way through to the audition room. Here they meet Jigsa… I mean the Executive Producer… via a live stream. He explains to them that the game they’re about to play might be a tad bit more extreme than they were planning on, and that it may or may not cater to an audience who likes watching snuff but doesn’t want to call it that. You see, Spotlight involves the gang running through various zones in an attempt to make it to the end. They’ll be pursued by a psychotic clown and an Amazonian warrior (who, again, has two breasts) who will try to brutally murder them. Since none of this is entirely above-board the kids can’t really back out on contractual technicalities, so it’s off into the labyrinth of doom for them.

Imagine the permits you’d need to have that installed…

Whilst the pseudo-Amazon and the clown provide some real-life threats, there are also stock dangers like machine guns, giant blades, giant furnaces and oversized food blenders to watch out for. To balance out the rather steep danger curve, the zones also have several hidden immunity statues, granting the holder 15 minutes where the clown and Amazon can’t kill them. Also, if a spotlight appears, anyone who stands in it is also safe from the executioners. But whilst the executioners and the oversized food blender are certainly areas of concern for the group, their greatest threat will be one another. Only one person can make it to the final zone and win the $1 million prize, so every clichéd character is going to underwhelmingly bring out their worst character traits in an attempt to make it out alive. If you’re like me, dear reader, by the time it comes to the final showdown, you too will be rooting for the oversized food blender.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• It’s never a bad idea to give your cellphone to a creepy old man and climb into his unmarked van.
• Kids these days are incredibly whiny about being drugged and taken places against their will.
• It takes years of Tae Bo training to effectively kick a man in the balls.
• Research indicates that modern killers don’t really concern themselves with their victims’ comfort when building their killing contraptions.
• Rampaging murderers are easily thwarted by an empty cardboard box.
• Even murderers edit their footage to make their shows more dramatic and increase their ratings.
• Even psychotic executioners are part of a union.
• Psychotically deadly situations really bring out some people’s inner narcissist.

ELIMINATION TRAILER

Sloppy the Psychotic

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 5 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1 /5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with that feeling that something is terribly wrong? I had that the other night. I was sleeping soundly, fantasising about buying bed linen made from Egyptian cotton, when I was suddenly jerked awake with this feeling of absolute dread. Not two minutes later my phone rang, and there was My Friend The Killer Clown Movie, sobbing on the other end. We’ve been friends for so long, but as usual we haven’t seen one another in ages (in fact, not since all those frat boys were murdered over on Hell Island). I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I told him to dry his clownish tears and get on over to my place ASAP.

That’s some poor judgement right there…

By the time he arrived I’d just managed to throw on some seductively manly pyjamas and make hot chocolate with marshmallows. After a lot of hugs and comforting words, My Friend The Killer Clown Movie was finally calm enough to tell me what was wrong. Turns out this recession has hit everyone pretty hard, and even great movie concepts like my dear friend has had to resort to whatever it takes just to pay the bills. That’s how he landed up starring in Sloppy the Psychotic, a decidedly z-grade movie about a once-lovely clown that goes a tad bit off the rails. He explained to me that, while it looked good when he read the script, when he got there there was neither the acting talent to make it somewhat credible, nor the humour to make the constant barrage of shock tactics even remotely entertaining. Poor guy, I don’t know how much more his dented ego can take.

See? No good will come from buying illegal cigars.

So there me and My Friend The Killer Clown Movie sat, under a blanket with me braiding his neon green hair, and I asked him to give me a run down of this movie that pushed him to the brink; a good friend needs to understand what’s he dealing with before he can provide any kind of help. It’s a simple enough story: Mike was a nice guy with a dream – all he ever wanted to do was be a clown and entertain all the children of the world. Now, times are tough, and the world of clowning is cut-throat. Turn you’re back for one moment and a mime will be trying to take away all your business. But if you love what you do, as Mike does, then none of that really matters. Nothing, until you’re victimised by a group of pool partying white trash that make fun of your life long dream. Oh no, dear reader, that’s when you push a clown one step too far.

Do I really need to explain this?

Just telling me this much got My Friend The Killer Clown Movie all weepy again, so I ran him a candle-lit bubble bath and put some Enya on in the background so that he could really relax while he told me the rest of this movie. At this point I was still on board, but I could see that things were going to take a very sharp downward turn. Oh boy, did they ever. Apparently one bottle of vodka is all that it takes to turn a mild-mannered clown into one that’s shoving a dead hooker in a trunk. And then there’s all those repressed emotions: anger, fear, rejection, sexual drought, and somehow all that’s gotta come out. As is often the case, these feelings manifest with Mike becoming a cannibal, poisoning some small children, barbecuing other small children, running over mentally handicapped individuals, amputating penises, using fish hooks on prostitutes, running a lawn mower over teenagers, decapitating housewives, and doing unspeakable things to men with a very large candy cane. Yeah, that’s what being under appreciated at work will do to a person.

I think that between the hot chocolate, hair braiding, and the bubble bath, My Friend The Killer Clown Movie has just about regained the will to carry on doing what he does best. The important thing is to focus on the good – I reminded him that this movie has a rather epic version of Pop Goes the Weasel playing in the background quite often, and that’s something at least. After he’d toweled himself off we lay in bed for a while reminiscing about all the good times we’d had together, and as the sun slowly dawned on the horizon he decided that he’d best be heading home before the wife knew he was out. She never has approved of our friendship – neither of us can figure out why. This time, however, we promised not to let so much time go by before we got together again.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Coulrophobia in small towns forces many clowns to live out their lives in secrecy and shame.
  
• It’s a risky career move to hedge all your bets on being a clown.
• Any clown company worth its salt has a fleet of vehicles ready to transport loads of emergency rubber chickens at a moment’s notice.
• Recently retrenched clowns and vodka are a deadly, deadly combination.
• Secretly, every woman wants to have sex with a man in full clown costume at least once in her life.
• Hobos have only two natural enemies: hungover clowns and puddles of their own urine.
• Death by anal candy cane isn’t a way that anyone wants to go.
• There’s no length a hooker won’t go to if there’s $500 on the line.
• It’s rude to discuss your sex life in front of a hired clown.

SLOPPY THE PSYCHOTIC TRAILER

BUY SLOPPY THE PSYCHOTIC AT AMAZON.COM

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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Camp Blood

Year of Release: 1999
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

*sniff sniff* What’s that? It smells like home… Aah yes, it’s a killer clown movie! A long time has passed since I last saw this dear old friend of mine and it felt about time for a visit. Of course when you want to do a catch up with someone you need some time to yourselves to chat and relax in each other’s company so I thought, ‘why not go camping?’ Of course, Camp Blood is beautiful at this time of year: the trees are in bloom, the birds are singing and the forest is teeming with life. It’s quite rustic, there aren’t any cabins and certainly no electricity, but thankfully it comes with its own killer clown built-in and fully operational. So let me tell you how this old friend of mine is doing…

Ronald McDonald after a bad McNugget binge...

Since it’s been such a long time since I last saw my friend the killer clown movie I had completely forgotten just how rough he can look sometimes. Not to say that he isn’t still scary looking (perish the thought), but the way he was put together in this particular instance was quite unsettling. Sometime between our last meeting and now his budget was slashed tremendously and the only way that he could be made was by some fool with a handheld camera and a few friends who had a free weekend. Sitting there watching him regale me with his story I felt a little bit queasy, not only because the camera was going a little all over the place but also because everything seemed to have either a slight green or yellow tinge (I must remember to pick something up for him so he can sort that out). After getting over that I was also struck by how old my friend the killer clown movie was looking in this particular manifestation since, although he was only born in 1999, he looked like he was brought into this world sometime in the mid-80s. I didn’t mention any of this to him since I thought it might bring down the mood of our little camping session, and nobody wants a sad killer clown movie crying over his toasted marshmallows, but I was feeling sorry for my friend even before he revealed his plotline to me.

Even in death my boobs are amazing!

After our toasted marshmallows me and my dear friend the killer clown movie sat down under the stars while he told me about this very bad plotline that he was being saddled with. In the very beginning, before the main plotline kicks in, we are briefly introduced to a guide and what I’m taking to be a nerdy tourist walking along the trails of Camp Blackwood, the official name for the area that the locals have dubbed ‘Camp Blood’. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, a sex scene breaks out and our two minor characters are going at it as best they can while still wearing pants. After a beautiful love-making session of soft moans, delicate music and gentle caresses, the camp’s resident psychopath in a clown mask comes out from the undergrowth and proceeds to hack the two to pieces with his machete. Two hunters will come to the same fate while they attempt to hunt some deer to add to their trophy collection. At this point I can see that my friend the killer clown movie is a little embarrassed by what he’s telling me, so I decide that it’s time for some steaming hot chocolate to soothe our souls.

Time to hug it out and make up for the bloodshed.

With the hot chocolate finished we retired to our tent and began delicately spooning one another. Feeling that he was in a safe place my friend the killer clown movie began opening up to me about his main plotline. A group of 4 friends have decided to take a little camping trip up to Camp Blackwater to get away from it all. Along the way (well, after becoming lost and needing directions) they happen across a somewhat crazy town local (by definition I thought this meant that there needed to be a town nearby, but apparently I’m wrong) who warns them not to go near the old campsite because of The Clown. Not believing that some man is running around in the forest killing people they set off anyway and, once arriving at the camp and going wandering in the woods, they meet up with their burly lesbian guide who will show them how to get around and where to find the best place to get in touch with nature (i.e. have sex). During a campfire session involving ghost stories the guide expands on the old man’s story about The Clown, informing us that he is actually just a man who went a touch insane and killed two innocent people. Again the group doesn’t believe the story but, when they wake up in the morning to find the guide dead and a clown chasing after them, they need to pull all their wits together to try and make it out of Camp Blood alive.

We awoke the next morning in a gentle embrace to see the sun coming over the mountains and a single bird perched in a tree branch. My friend the killer clown movie seemed to be happier having gotten all of that off his chest and, after a long breakfast where we discussed the intricacies of life and Lady Gaga’s medical condition, we decided to head back to civilisation. I told him that I wasn’t sure when I would see him again but that, no matter what happened or how many b-movies I watched, he would always have a special place in my DVD collection.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Forest sex is best done half-clothed with a piano and flute instrumental in the background.
• Locals in small towns are always foul-mouthed lunatics.
• Memories are usually repeated over a megaphone.
• Why wait for a guide when you can go into strange woods blind?
• Lesbian camping guides are very heavy-handed with their customers.
• Heavy foreplay is often a sign that a woman just wants to cuddle.
• After sex women like to sleep in their bras and jeans.
• When helping an injured person walk you should always support the leg that’s working fine.

Clownstrophobia

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 2.7 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Oh sweet baby Jesus, what just happened? A bit of time has passed since my last z-grade clown movie, so I thought it was time to revisit my coulrophobia. Unfortunately Geraldine Winters, the fool behind Clownstrophobia, didn’t take 5 minutes to do a Google search to find out what the actual term for a fear of clowns was. It was all downhill from there really: the clown is quite frightening to look at but the actors are wooden, the storyline is so convoluted that Tolkien would have been confused and for the most part I’m hoping that Winters was on crack so that there is at least some excuse for this awful mess. I’m not entirely sure what was happening or what the whole point was meant to be, but if it made sense then it wouldn’t have earned its place here on the B-Horror Blog 🙂

Kindly note: Choose the clown for your child's birthday party well.

We begin our odd and confusing little tale in a mental hospital where one of the new nurses is being given instructions on how to care for Patient X, a female patient admitted to the hospital after she was found outside a carnival. Dubbed ‘Patient X’ because no one knows her name, this woman has repeatedly tried to commit suicide, believes she was a member of the circus and that the hospital staff have stolen a child that no one has seen. The new nurse’s job is to make notes on Patient X while making sure that she doesn’t further harm herself. In another ward in the hospital is Snuffles the Clown, another psychotic inmate who brutally murdered his parents when he was just a teenager. As a side thought, for a genuinely creepy clown, ‘Snuffles’ strikes me as a rather daft choice for a name, but if it was actually frightening the movie might have made a little more sense and the director seems to have tried her hardest to avoid that. Anyway, Snuffles’ irritating and whiny psychiatrist has decided that it’s time to give the clown a little more room to wander, the thought being that this will help him in his recovery. Nothing can go wrong with this plan…

This happened, I don't know why, and I wish it hadn't...

The only surviving member of Snuffles’ murderous rampage was his sister, who has now gone on to become a psychiatrist. Ironically her own psychiatrist is the same one as her brother’s, something that no one appears to think might be a conflict of interests. Since drugging herself with 5 horse tranquilisers a night doesn’t seem to be curing her of her past she decides on a more alternative form of treatment. In an attempt to fix herself she invites a group of juvenile criminals to her country estate who all share her clownstrophobia. The treatment plan? Lock everyone in the house, have a dinner of doughnuts and exchange creepy clown stories with one another. Since it isn’t the most orthodox plan in the world there doesn’t seem to be any intended outcome, but this doesn’t seem to be the point of doing it in the first place. Somewhere along the way between the good doctor tranquilising herself and the kids smoking pot Snuffles has managed to break into the house (how he did it or why no one noticed he escaped from the asylum are left unanswered) and is getting ready to play.

Finally, a killer with some heart!

So now we arrive at a point where there’s so much going on that it’s virtually impossible to keep track of it all. Back at the asylum Patient X is progressively becoming more agitated after once again slitting her wrists and seeing fat, hairy clowns where there aren’t any. Worried for her career the nurse doesn’t want to tell anyone that it happened on her watch and is desperately trying to calm the woman down. Back at the estate Snuffles is very quickly making his way through the kids and harvesting them for their organs which he stores in a jar. Dr Weathers has come out of her near-comatose sleep to don clown lipstick and stand in a doorway telling the kids not to leave until they are cured of their phobia. Oh yeah, and Patient X is begging stockings off of her nurse.

In the last 2 minutes of the movie a desperate attempt is made to bring all of this together in some semblance of order, but the possible interpretations of events are too numerous to list. Watch for yourself, if you dare, and let me know if it made any more sense to you than it did to me 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• You should always wear sunglasses when electrocuting someone.
• Half of all patients in a mental institution will have worked in a carnival at some point.
• Juvenile delinquents should always be escorted by juvenile policemen.
• You can land up in juvenile court for switching a girl’s shampoo with hair remover.
• Mental patients are often pitted against one another in cage battles for sport.
• A victim wrapped in the right wrapping paper will never escape.
• Nurses in mental hospitals aren’t trained to understand that their patients REALLY don’t know what reality is.
• Giving someone your heart metaphorically is romantic. Giving someone a heart literally is f*cking weird.

CLOWNSTROPHOBIA TRAILER