The Clown At Midnight is one of these bland 90's slashers sporting all the genretypical clichés, adding nothing new in particular to the genre; except for a clown killer that is. Director Jean Pellerin has mainly done hard rock and metal music videos for acts like Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, and Metallica, except for a few genre movies: 1997's science fiction Laserhawk and a couple of action thrillers.

With a Hallmark, Tv-movie feel to the opening scene, we witness a clown murdering an actress in an opera house, after she's had hot, cheesy sex with her lover. A couple of decades later, a young adopted woman by the name Kate (Sarah Lassez ), enters the same theatre for refurbishing as part of a school programme. It turns out the murdered woman was her mother, and the introvert, overly worried Kate gets psychotic visions of the murder and is generally uncomfortable during the whole film. Apart from Kate, the group consists of characteristically different teenagers: The homosexual guy, a football jock and his bitchy, hot girlfriend Walnut. A female enthusiast of the supernatural expressing the obligatory post-Scream, selfconscious reflections, while the mystery unfolds, making the viewer even more conscious of the film's lack of originality. We also have a young, strong black woman (Tatyana Ali) supporting Kate in her emotional crisis, and the mystery tough guy, lone wolf George (James Duval) who tells Walnut that he'd "rather be a psycho than a prom queen", as reason for chasing a rat in the theatre to feed his snake with.

The clean-up of the theatre is overviewed by the owner Mr. Caruthers (Christopher Plummer) who, after having met the young enthusiasts, walks into a dressing room and promises a clown friend sitting in the back that he'll take care of everything. One by one the characters are killed by a person dressed as a clown who is actually scary looking.

One part of the film has two terrible R&B pop montages within a timeframe of 20 minutes, especially one of the montages has hilariously bad editing: One scene has two characters fighting an imitated sword fight, with lines like "you know you want it", then we cut over to a sex scene between the football guy and Walnut, while the audio from the swordfight continues. Cheesy stuff that didn't work at all!

The film was entertaining in all it's stupidity, though it was a little below mediocre in it's passively anonymous execution, and at times poor directorial choices. I can't say it comes recommended.

4 out of 10

- Reviewed by Lars S.B. Andersen