Why this movie is awful.
In Dead Clowns, Lions Gate Entertainment demonstrates once again that their distribution wing is located several stories below the barrel that other studios only dare to scrape the bottom of. First allow me to set the stage by quoting from the marvelous plot synopsis located on the back of the packet: "As a hurricane approaches the small coastal town of Port Emmett, an innocent group of residents are [sic] visited by an unspeakable horror. Fifty years ago a bridge collapsed in the small town, plunging a circus train into the dark water below. THE CLOWN CAR WAS NEVER RECOVERED. [emphasis mine] Tonight the zombie clowns emerge from the bay to exact revenge on the descendants of those who left them buried under the silt and mud for half a century." Given that this synopsis contains the immortal phrase "The clown car was never recovered", which causes me to erupt with spontaneous laughter every time I hear it, rest assured that I was not expecting a high quality piece of entertainment. What I was expecting (unfortunately for me) was some piece of entertainment...
Dead Clowns starts with a ponderous lead-in filled with insistent nature shots, which neither reinforce the important fact that a hurricane is supposed to be coming, nor even adhere to any particular continuity concerning the time of day. The ostensible purpose of these scenes is actually to introduce the audience to our cast of low-rent victims, but Brinke Stevens as the adult woman who grew up in Port Emmett, and is now returning to show her husband her home-town, is the only one of particular significance.
She will soon be picked off, like everybody else in Dead Clowns, but her role actually serves a purpose. Unable to afford to show the circus train crash, writer-director-composer Steve Sessions opts instead to have Brinke Stevens' character recount the tale to her husband. One gets the impression that Stevens thought they would be cutting away from her monologue, or at least overlaying her with milky stock footage of a train and a few notes of public domain calliope music, but there was nothing. Just Brinke Stevens in a crummy motel room, looking out at the gentle breeze and smattering of raindrops that was standing in for an oncoming hurricane.
Eventually, the titular clowns arrive, after some underwater footage showing the cheerfully-clad corpses shuffling through the silt. The clowns themselves look like they might have spent five decades under water, all rot and rubber and no lips. But their clown suits are inexplicably brand new, right down to their white, white gloves. Even in the underwater shots. And somehow they manage to eat the citizens of Port Emmett (quite sloppily, in long drawn-out scenes of cannibalism accompanied by celery-biting, pasta-slurping sound effects) without ever getting blood on their outfits. After chewing his way through a screaming teenager who was spewing blood, a zombie clown still wears an unblemished ruffle around his neck. Did Sessions have to return these clown suits to a rental place after filming? This obviously-shot-on-video effort does nothing to legitimize DV as a medium, nor does it add anything to the recently-bloated zombie genre. At least the actors generally seem to be acting, which puts Dead Clowns solidly ahead of many other LGE offerings, but few of them are successful in their thespian attempts. The utter lack of tension can't be blamed wholly on either the script or the cast, but the two of them together conspire to keep all semblance of fear or suspense (or audience involvement) as far away from the viewing experience as possible. You would think that any director could take the premise "zombie clowns" and make at least one interesting thing happen (be honest, you thought of at least one interesting thing just now, didn't you?) and in this respect, Steve Sessions has managed to deliver a shock.
Ooo, baby, your domestic gross is SO BIG. That's how I know how GOOD you are!