Main cast: Sadie Katz (Carlee Summers), Augie Duke (Mia Sandusky), Tiffani Fest (Amber Snow), Nikki Kris (Nicole Conrad), Courtney Akbar (Kat), Gianni Capaldi (Thomas Ferguson), Randy Wayne (Jebediah), Isaac C Singleton Jr (Big), Douglas Farrell (Little), Darcy DeMoss (Myrtle), Rufus Dorsey (Miles Anderson), Sarah French (Britney), and Ron Russell (Minister McFadden)
Director: Minh Collins
Sadie Katz is often the best thing about the otherwise terrible slasher flicks she keeps showing up in, but if she keeps this up, her name on the credits may end up being a warning sign for folks to stay away. In Clown Fear, which she is also the co-screenwriter along with the director Minh Collins, she is joined by three leading ladies—among whom she is the only one that displays decent comedic timing and the ability to utter her lines in a natural manner.
Ms Katz plays Carlee, who is with her three bridesmaids in Las Vegas for her marriage to the bewilderingly smarmy Thomas Ferguson. In this early part of the movie, it is clearly meant to be comedic, but oh my, all the cast members that aren’t named Sadie Katz look, utter their lines, and shuffle around on the set like they are desperately wishing that they had picked another job in order to pay the rent that month. The marriage didn’t happen, and the four ladies end up in this place called Clown Town… where everyone loves to dress up in clown make up and torture, even kill, outsiders for fun.
The plot is actually pretty interesting, as it’s a take on the whole hillbillies from hell trope with clown make-up to the wazoo, and the kills, when they happen, are pretty good too. However, the acting is really subpar, dragging down an otherwise interesting and possibly serviceable movie. I physically cringe each time someone delivers a supposedly humorous one-liner in a way that is usually reserved for actors in the grip of stage fright or trying to hold back a big burst of intestinal gas. Death scenes are also ruined by wooden under-acting. The bad acting kills this movie.
Wait, is that Randy Wayne showing up halfway into the movie? That guy will really appear in anything, or maybe they have some blackmail material to force him to show up here, heh. Then again, he was in Hellraiser: Judgment, so…
Clown Fear has the potential to be one of the better clown flicks capitalizing on the popularity of It, but really, the acting on the whole is so bad that it’s not even funny. This one has lots of potential, but such potential will remain a fever dream.
