WHAT Is the DEAL With Your Grandparents?

 

The late Len Lasser had an acting career that spanned 60 years, but it's hard for most to see his picture and not scream a few oft-repeated Seinfeld lines. Raise your hand if you knew that he also starred as a (possibly) homicidal grandpa in an '80s horror film.

Hellooooooo

Quick Plot: Siblings Lynn and David are left orphaned after their father's passing, having lost their mysterious mother long before. They're sent to live with their enthusiastic grandparents and before you can pull out your best Uncle Leo impersonation, bodies start piling up around them. 

David is suspicious. First, there's the mysterious woman who seems to keep showing up wherever David goes. Since she's played by scream queen Brinke Stevens, he is, of course, right. 

Lynn is a bit distracted. As the older, hotter sibling, she's subject to being sexually harassed (and then, let's face it, assaulted) by a local meathead...who she then agrees to date, because, you know, the '80s?

Grandmother's House is yet another horror film that I had never heard of until the glory of Tubi. It's an odd duck, which is obviously something I welcome in the genre, particularly when it includes my absolute favorite underused element: villainous senior citizens. Grandmother's House is more The Visit than Rabid Grannies, with the horror coming down to the inability of children (okay, teenagers) to have their voices heard by adult authorities. 

Directed by Escape From Witch Mountain's Peter Radar, Grandmother's House doesn't fit your image of a 1988 horror flick. It has an impish mystery vibe about itself that genuinely keeps you guessing as to exactly what's at play. That's not to say this is a light-hearted PG romp. Axe murders and incest have their weight, but if your finale features a showdown between an eighth grader and AARP member, you tend to stand out. 

High Points

Considering its time of production, Grandmother's House seems to be so refreshingly DIFFERENT from what it would have neighbored on video store shelves that watching today, I genuinely had no idea where it might go

Low Points

Boy is it uncomfortable to stomach watching high schooler Lynn be ogled and forcefully (and nonconsensually kissed) by a jerk in a public pool, but it's even worse to see that the consequence of such an action is that you're now dating (though at least there's some comfort in seeing said jerk get a shotgun blast to his stomach). When you add in a last minute revelation regarding another female character's abuse, Grandmother's House's ick factor can't be fully ignored

Lessons Learned

To know geese is to fear geese

You can always count on kids to find trouble on a farm

Keep your cracker jacks or baseball games: nothing tastes better in the swim meet spectator stands than jarred pickles

Rent/Bury/Buy

Grandmother's House isn't a revelation or lost '80s treasure, but it's a surprising little tale that genuinely feels unique, both for its time and in general for the genre. Break out your bowl of hard candy and give it a try.

Send in the (Dead) Clowns

When asked to name my favorite zombies on film, I usually don’t have to think hard (useful because I’m asked this question every time I go to the post office). To toss out a few:

-the ballerina zombie in Day of the Dead

-Fido

-the Hari Krishna in Dawn of the Dead

-the clown in Zombieland

-the clown in Land of the Dead

-the clown in Day of the Dead

and you’ve noticed the pattern! Like most human beings with any sense of what’s right and wrong, I have a minor case of coulrophobia. Typically, this enhances certain movie watching experiences, making the stangulation in Poltergeist all the more horrifying or the titular Killer Klowns From Outer Space strangely scary, despite also being ridiculous (and awesome).

Hence, when I spot a title like “Dead Clowns”, there’s really no possible reason I’m NOT going to watch it.

Quick Plot: Hurricane Jacob is heading into Port Emmet with a vengeance as the soft-spoken townspeople prepare their homes for torrential rain and high speed winds. Such a storm hasn’t been seen since 50 years earlier, when poor weather conditions and a drunk driver caused a passing circus to plummet into the sea. Most of the casualties were clowns, which of course, is pretty fabulous (I mean tragic, right, tragic).

This story is relayed twice, which is vital in making up about 80% of the dialogue in the entire film. Dead Clowns, a microbudgeted release that found its way into Lions Gate’s apparently large clown wing (as witnessed by the trailers on this DVD, three of which were for similarly themed films), isn’t an awful movie by any means. Sure, it’s clearly saving its pennies in just about every scene, but at the same time, the gore is decent, acting...passable, and dialogue not painful...mostly because there’s so little of it.

See, nothing really happens to anybody worth knowing in Dead Clowns. Seriously. The most interesting person onscreen is scream queen Brinke Stevens, whose richly deep voice sets up almost eerie possibilities. 

Unfortunately, she meets her blurry end far too early, leaving us with a random assortment of shy soon-to-be victims, including a dude in a wheelchair with no discernible personality outside of being in a wheelchair, a busty blond with no discernible personality outside of being busty and blond, a pair of goth kid murderers whose bark is worse than their bite, and in a true cinematic crime, a wasted Debbie Rochon who sports an unflattering Christmas sweater and spends the entire film hiding and saying absolutely nothing. NOTHING! Maybe the lovely Ms. Rochon had strep throat during the week of filming. 

High Points

Putting aside a few of the overused songs, Steven Sessions’ instrumental score is quite good, filled with clever circus homages at just the right time (including a clown-getting-into-the-canon worthy drumroll played as a character fights a knife slowly heading towards her eyeball)

Low Points

95 minutes isn’t a long running time for most films, but considering Dead Clowns has no actual story or protagonist and about 25 minutes are spread out footage of hurricane winds hitting palm trees, there really wasn’t much to keep us driving towards the anticlimactic finale

A lesson to all filmmakers from someone who used to play with a camera as a teenager: slowly zooming in for an extreme closeup during an intense monologue will make it seem as though you’re a teenager that plays with a camera

Lessons Learned

If you’re in a horror movie situation, just throw out your cell phone. Seriously, have you ever seen it actually help anyone?

Being buried at sea for thirty years will do nothing to fade the brightness of your primary colored pants and hair

Just because the lights don’t work doesn’t mean you won’t get fuzzy reception on your television set

It’s so effin awesome to comb brains out of your hair

Rent/Bury/Buy

There are few people who I would recommend Dead Clowns to, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t recommend it. The zombies have a slightly Fulci-esque look that’s executed with skill, something that automatically makes Dead Clowns better than a good deal of the straight-to-DVD undead cinema lurking in your Netflix queue. The film has a ridiculous amount of problems and shouldn’t be shown to those with budgetary standards, but hey, I’ve seen worse, and when you add up the intrigue of Sessions’ score, Stevens' voice, and the basic neatness of zombie clowns, someone like me isn’t too disappointed.