The Clown Murders

In THE CLOWN MURDERS, a prank goes wrong, resulting in madness and death.

While this may sound exciting, don't get your hopes up. This is an unexciting, non-entertaining, and fairly silly movie. Worst of all, it commits the unpardonable sin of being extremely boring. The viewer will wait, pray, beg for something, anything even remotely interesting to happen. All for naught.

It takes until the midway point of the movie for the maniac to -finally- put on the clown mask and get down to business. By the time anyone meets their maker, you'll be ready for death yourself!

Astonishingly, the final 10 minutes are pretty intense. If only the other 86 minutes had been this good it might have been endurable!

Co-stars John Candy as Otis. Beware the Otis "love scene"!...

Another early film role for a then-unknown John Candy in this psychological drama/horror film about a kidnapping prank gone horribly wrong. If you're expecting Candy to be funny, look elsewhere. His character is a pathetic wuss who is caught in the middle of the situation, but his acting is pretty good in a non-comedic role. The film itself is decent, but goes in several directions, throughout.

A group of young professionals decides to play a practical joke on one of their ex-girlfriends who married a rich man who is about to close a major real estate deal.They will kidnap her and mess up the deal.But the joke becomes deadly serious when someone gets killed."The Clown Murders" is a boring thriller with John Candy and Lawrence Dane of "Rituals" fame.It's basically a hostage drama with 10 minutes of slasher in the finale.The killer wears clown costume and the scene in the barn is pretty eerie,but the action is slow and dull.If you liked "Straw Dogs" or "Death Weekend" you may give this one a look,but don't expect too much.5 clowns out of 10.

The only reason why this dud of a film hasn't disappeared into complete obscurity just yet is because it features an early role of John Candy; - the proudly Canadian actor/comedian who would become very popular throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, and die at the far too young age of 43. Fans of John Candy shouldn't bother to track down "The Clown Murders", though. In fact, nobody should bother to track it down, because it's one of the single most boring, uneventful and inept thrillers of the entire 70s decade. Four pathetic losers, including Candy, joke about kidnapping their attractive friend Alisson, simply because they can't accept that she's now married to a successful businessman and busy selling the farming estate where they all played whilst growing up. They execute their plan during a Halloween party, dressed as clowns, and lock her up in her own farm. The opening sequences and character introductions were already tedious, but the actual kidnapping and hostage situation are downright dreadful. Absolutely nothing happens, except for arguing between the four losers mutually and shots of John Candy shoving fast-food down his throat. The plot promised another mysterious clown killer coming after them, but he only pops up during the finale and doesn't do a lot of murdering, neither. One to avoid at all costs, that's the only sane and righteous recommendation I can make.

John Candy does not do an extremely good job here. This film is one that was made to be forgotten. It is dull and slow. It takes about a half hour to finally get into the main theme of the film and it is still very slow until the final half hour. That is mainly when the horror elements and murders begin to take place. The only reason to see this film is because it stars John Candy. He does an okay job of acting, I guess, but the story itself does little to hold your interest. It bores you and indulges you with a hard to follow story of characters that all seem to turn on each other for no apparent reason in the end. Now, this film is really, really slow and could put the world's biggest insomniac to sleep. But, the final parts of the movie are worth waiting for. See this film if you are a John Candy fan. THE CLOWN MURDERS: 3/5.