Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

lovecraft231 "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night!" So said John Lydon in what was supposed to be the final Sex Pistols show. I never was a fan of the Pistols, but I feel that said quote is appropriate here. The band performed a cover of The Stooges classic "No Fun", then called it a night. That was the whole show. If they had gone off like that and remained split up, I would probably have more respect for them. The audience wasn't the least bit happy, which is how most should feel after seeing Steve Sessions' 2003 movie "Dead Clowns"-especially when you first read it's synopsis. What could have been a decent low budget gem is instead a dull, incompetent mess.The plot at first reads almost like a Troma movie-fifty years ago,a hurricane caused a circus train accident, which killed off several clowns. The town has mostly forgotten about this incident. That is, until another Hurricane is coming, and before you can say "Send in the clowns", here they come-undead, angry, and without flowers that squirt water.Amazingly, the movie decides to play itself straight for the large part, avoiding what could have been a sub Troma level Horror Comedy. It's also obvious what Sessions influences are here-John Carpenter's "The Fog", the zombie films of Lucio Fulci, and Amando de Ossorio's "Blind Dead" series. It obviously means well-it's atmospheric and gory enough-but the whole thing is a chore to watch. Why's that? Well for one thing, for all it's atmosphere, it doesn't know what to do with it. The movie just plods along, with events and kills occurring without any real interest or energy. There's no real story arc to it either. Sure, it has a plot, but the whole thing feels like it has no interest in doing anything as far as characters and story goes. And the characters are dumb too, and not amusingly dumb. They behave stupidly and barely even try to escape the zombie menace before them-as if they are practically begging to be killed. Let's also not forget the solution to stopping these Undead Bozos, which sets new standards for terrible plot devices in zombie movies.It particularly sucks because the idea of Zombie Clowns is a novel one, and it's obvious that Sessions' heart is in the right place. The problem is that the whole thing-from the script to the direction and so on-is so poorly put together that it fails in nearly all accounts. It's best that you skip this one. I wish I had another clown joke to make, but alas.

Bill357 Apparently made by and for clowns, Dead Clowns is an inept rip-off of The Fog.First of all, I don't buy the story that a train full of clowns would plunge into a body of water without at least an attempt made to recover the corpses, even in the 1950's. Secondly, I don't believe for one minute that someone wouldn't have erected some kind of a monument, not even in a local cemetery.However, I'll give director Steve Sessions some credit for being one of the few low-budget filmmakers to understand that a film is primarily a story told in pictures and not endless streams of worthless dialogue, but he loses all points gained by loading the film down with endless scenes of characters doing lots of mundane things like Brinke Stevens removing her contact lenses, the guy in the wheelchair taking out candles from a drawer, and the night watchman preparing a line of cocaine. These things just bloated the running time and made the movie more boring. Also, what's with the camera always being on the floor constantly photographing the clown's feet? Is this movie called Dead Clowns or Night Of The Living Clown Shoes?Most of the dialogue is drowned out by the blaring music and rain sound-effects, causing most of the zombie clown's back-story to be nearly inaudible. This is unacceptable.The serial-killer couple are obnoxious and pretty pointless. What was the reason of making them murderers? Was it to solely to show a priest getting his brains blown out? I found it pretty laughable that this bonehead tries so hard to stop the zombie clown attack. Does he feel like he's the only one entitled to murder people? Last but not least, the method used to (temporarily) repel the dead clown attack is horribly silly. Mr. serial killer makes a memorial sign with a piece of poster-board and a Sharpie and places it on the bank. That's all they wanted?!

bladingfp The production of this thing looks like a local cable access show with the production budget of an 8th grade film class. There is no score, no screenplay, no lighting. It is often so dark that you can't even see who's who (not that we care). The sound is so bad that you can even hear what they are saying (again, not as if we care). The "actors" look and sound like they were pulled off the street to make a movie; "just stand there and read this!". In reality, it isn't even a movie; just really bad hurricane footage borrowed from some local cable access news show with a $100 camcorder and some people in cheesy Dollar Store clown masks. I have no idea how it even made its way onto our local cable pay-per-view line-up. Customer service actually said it was "an error in programming" and promptly credited our account the $4.00.

bernzabub Stay away from this movie. The filmmakers don't know the first thing about creating suspense or fright. Why wouldn't you have the actors scream? They're being attacked by zombie clowns, for frick's sake! One guy wouldn't even scream as his arm was being sawed off. Maybe the actor knew how horrid the movie was right from the get-go. The pacing is ludicrously slow and plodding. No one is going to be scared by this or even find this entertaining. I love my zombie movies and was looking forward to this as the mythology of it seemed amazing. Clowns left to die under water. Very cool. But it's this script should've been left there. That would've been cooler.I know I gave this 1 out of ten but that's only because I couldn't find the -36 on the scale.