Might as well start with this one. Anyone who’s seen it knows it to be a perfect opener for a website with “Gore” in the title. Scary clown prowls the neighborhood with a trash bag full of rusty tools. “Scary clowns again? What is it, 2016?” Funny you should mention it, as this movie came out the same year that we had all that crazy bullshit about people seeing scary clowns everywhere. Perfect opportunity for a new scary movie mascot. Art the Clown is destined to be the newest Leatherface/ Jason/ Freddie/ Jigsaw/ Chucky/ Michael Myers/ etc. A third movie (not including the original “All Hallows Eve” which featured him, or counting the original YouTube shorts he was born from, because that’s where everything starts now) is coming out this year, and you know it will make bank, and so you know there will be a fourth, and a Fifth, and a Sixth, and one in 3D, and one where Rob Zombie makes a prequel, and one where he fights King Kong, and one where he is in fact a cyborg version of himself, and eventually he’ll have his own Lego playset and even an Art the Clown breakfast cereal in which the milk turns to blood as you pour it.
Getting ahead of myself (you’ll get used to it). So Art the Clown (have to say all three words, like “A Man Called Horse” or “A Pimp Named Slickback”) is a scary clown with black eyes and teeth and a long nose and a big white clown suit and a trash bag full of the stuff and he writes his name with poop on the wall. Super gory, loads of blood and guts (and poop) and creative ways to pull a human body apart. The character is really compelling, actually. His whole persona is performed in pantomime, and the actor is convincingly expressive with it. One moment he’s childlike and gleeful, the next moment his face is as menacing as a face can get. That’s honestly my biggest takeaway from the whole thing. Seems like a fun guy, really. I could see myself hanging out all besties-like with Art. Drink some beers, do some high-fives, BBQ, forcibly amputate a woman’s limbs and beat her torso with a chain, and then maybe some mini golf.
Yes, to specify “women” was not a Freudian slip, as the principle victims are women, that’s one of the biggest complaints the public has with this movie (which is really saying something when you consider what the REST of the content is!), but that’s the nature of the slasher film. Arguably MOST horror films since the dawn of horror movies. Women are seen as the more vulnerable gender, women scream loudly (“scream queens” as it were), and there’s plenty of other reasons that I’m not educated enough in psychology and aberrant human behavior to comment on that probably have to do with sex or your relationship with your mother at a young age.
There’s not a lot of movie here beyond the stalking and killing. No motives, no back story, just a bad guy as unnerving as they could come up who takes particular pleasure in chopping up and slicing up and smooshing up people and their parts. Not a good date movie, not one to take the kids to, or your mom, or anyone whose opinion of you will make a major difference in your life after it changes dramatically upon your suggesting you watch this movie together. It’s super messed-up and kinda awesome for that reason. It’s pure grindhouse, reminds me of stuff we would watch at slumber parties… well kinda. We watched “Friday the 13th” but to pre-internet-era middle school kids “Friday the 13th” WAS “Terrifier.”
Mido wasn’t impressed. She slept through it.