Director: Minh Collins
Writers: Minh Collins, Sadie Katz
Stars: Elissa Dowling, Sadie Katz, Randy Wayne
Run Time: 1 Hour, 49 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/38zG0M9
Synopsis
We begin with a few clowns in a smoky room. They have a circus fan tied up on a chair. “Why does he have to bring these whore back here!” Yells the clown’s girlfriend. Joey, the other clown, has his daughter come into the room to watch while the first clown beats the girl to death with a hammer. Credits roll.
We segue into “Clown City, USA” ten years later.
A woman has a car accident and flips her car over, but she’s more upset about getting wet in the rain. She’s crashed right in front of the “Clown Inn” in “Clown City,” and she acts surprised that the place is creepy. That said, the place is really creepy. She takes a shower, but then she gets out of the shower, followed by a clown midget. She kicks him in the nuts, but then finds out that an even bigger clown is behind her, who stabs a knife right through her head.
We change scenes to a bride, Carlee, on her wedding day. They’re getting married at a place that has a drive-through window. She’s marrying a guy named Tommy, who’s clearly too smarmy to even sell cars. The smarmy dude turns out to be the classy half of the duo, as he finds certain text messages on her phone. Tommy dumps her in the middle of the ceremony.
Carlee and her three bridesmaids drive off. It turns out Carlee wasn’t actually having an affair, she was “playing” with her female stripper. Tommy figures this out and decides to follow Carlee to get her back. Carlee and the girls get lost in the desert and break down… in front of the Clown Inn. “Of all the motels in all the world, we just happen to break down in front of the Clown Inn,” says one of the girls.
Tommy and his friend Miles run across a clown with a bunny. In the middle of the road. At night. The clown rips the rabbit’s head off in front of them. Then he does the same to Miles, as Tommy runs off in a panic. Meanwhile, the girls check into the Clown Inn, and then their problems really start…
Commentary
The sound, at least in the first several scenes, sounds like it was recorded over a radio or something. Really bad sound, and we had to scan forward to make sure we even wanted to sit through this. It does, however, clear up later in the film, but the sound never really gets good. Later on, I realized that it wasn’t audio distortion, it was supposed to be the soundtrack of the film, but it only sounded like audio distortion, even when it was covering up the dialogue.
The acting isn’t terrible, the camerawork isn’t bad, the sets and scenery are fine. The clown Inn itself is a really interesting setting, and it’s definitely creepy. I wonder if it’s a real place somewhere? The story itself is fine, albeit a little thin.
There’s something explained about the motel being built over some kind of cemetery, and there have always been evil clowns there, even since cowboy days or something. “If you ever break the code of the clown, you die a painful death,” we are told. “It’s like some kind of weird religion.”
Eventually, the story climaxes with a clown trial, which is actually a fun scene. After all, who can resist a dunk tank full of acid? On the downside, there were a lot of slow, dragging scenes to get there.
There’s lots going on here that makes no sense, but the one bright thing to say is that I didn’t hate this quite as much as Kevin did.