SICK

This week's slasher is SICK...literally! It's Sick Insane Clown Killer, or "SICK". Get it? Well anyway, let's watch this crapfest!! Prepare for massive, clowny SPOILERS!!!

The very first scene nearly made me shut the DVD off. Oh, don't worry, it wasn't horrible like The Sorority or anything...it was a blank screen. I restarted the movie, and now there's a woman in pink. She's having a fight with someone named Bill, who pulls out a knife and stabs her to death.

Oh, wait, she's not dead. She asks "Billy" what he's doing, and the camera pans down to answer her question. Billy has apparently cut a vertical slash into her torso, and is eating her alive. Nice guy, that Billy.

The title comes up, and we hear a guy discussing a party that weekend. He whips out a guest list, which saves me the trouble of having to tell one generic victim after another. The names are Roger, Beth, Mark, Susan and Tracy. The guy crosses out two names, puts check marks next to two, and circles the last one, Tracy. Oh, and the guy's name is Brandon, as a co-worker helpfully enters his office to tell me.

The co-worker tells Brandon that he needs him to do some extra work that very weekend, which doesn't make Brandon too happy. When the co-worker tries to tell him that he has important work too, we see a flash of the guy dressing like a woman. Uhhhh...huh?

Brandon refuses to do the work, and tells the other guy off. Then he jogs to the elevator. When it doesn't arrive fast enough, he races for the stairs. Boy, this guy REALLY likes weekends!

Oops. It turns out that his "date" for the party doesn't know she's his date yet. Because this is a movie, Tracy eventually says yes to his invitation. A brief flashback reveals that Tracy's boyfriend recently left her for another guy. Apparently the film is going to keep doing these weird, quick flashbacks whenever the script feels like it.

A montage shows Brandon and his friends packing for the weekend. When they finish, and Tracy still hasn't arrived, Brandon reluctantly agrees that they should get going. Tracy watches them from her car, parked a short distance away. Just before they drive off, Tracy pulls up and decides to go along anyway. Yippee.

There's a pointless driving montage, followed by a dog barking at a bird, followed by even more driving. They finally stop, at a pool hall called Madden's Lounge. While Mark and Brandon watch their dates enter the restroom, a hooker propositions the two guys. Tracy and Susan return, and the hooker scurries away. After ordering drinks from a Weeble, the 2 couples watch another couple have a spat. Mark and Brandon bet on whether or not the girls will ask the distraught woman to tag along.

She does.

The journey resumes, and the new girl, Denise, tells them that she met the guy while hitching for a ride. He acted creepy, and she refused to travel with him any further. She wonders aloud if he might follow them, like a stalker. Hmmmmm....

At the house, the girls bond over relationship woes. I suppose if these women were better actors, this scene might be somewhat amusing. To tell the truth, I've seen porn with better acting. AND dialogue!

That night, they all sit around a fire and tell scary stories. Denise tells a scary story about a town where children keep vanishing. The main suspect is a hospital worker who dresses like a clown to entertain sick kids. When a giant shoe print is found outside one child's house, the clown is questioned, but later released.

According to her story, the townsfolk form a posse to find the clown. They tie him to a tree, and torture the guy, eventually beating him until he dies.. When they return to town, they discover that the kid lied about the entire incident. The clown disappears, but not before killing the child and forcing her parents to eat her remains, before killing them as well. The story ends with Brandon jumping into the clearing, hoping too scare them all by wearing a clown mask.

Everyone leaves, except for Mark and Susan. Susan starts asking questions about Brandon, because she finds him to be creepy. Mark says that Brandon was a friend from school, but that they had only recently become friends again. He seems to not know much about Brandon. Hmmmmm.....oh, and did I mention that Denise is mysteriously missing?

Tracy forgives Brandon for his prank and even lets him give her a massage. This is quickly veering into science fiction. During this scene, Mark and Susan have a spat over Denise being attractive, as well as crazy-acting. Inside, Brandon's massage turns on Tracy, and they decide to take it to the next level. Denise watches them, as she just so happens to be right outside their window.

In the middle of the night, Tracy goes downstairs to get a bottle of water from the fridge, and Denise sneaks up and scares her. She grabs the bottle from Tracy's hand, but thanks her for picking her up on the road earlier. Talk about mixed messages!

Susan wakes up after hearing someone calling her name. She slips on a robe to explore the house, and a shadowy hand sloooowly reaches for the woman. The scene ends with Susan making a gasping sound, but we don't see what happens to her.

Brandon gets up too, and finds Denise sitting in the dark kitchen, smoking a cigarette. He bums one off of her, and Denise seduces him into having kitchen-sex. Is this horror, or a softcore porn flick?

The next morning, Tracy finds the fridge filled with creepy dolls and a threatening note. They all accuse each other of placing the dolls there, but no one 'fesses up. Denise even suggests that it might be the handiwork of her jealous, insane lover. Tracy starts packing, and when she and Brandon start to argue, Mark announces that Susan has disappeared.

After Brandon tries to persuade Tracy not to leave, Denise claims that she saw Susan walking near the river. They decide to delay leaving, so that they can search for Susan first. Before they start out, they hear a weird, distorted howl-scream. Tracy nearly decides to stay at the house, but when she hears another scream, she changes her mind. The 2 guys ask her to get Denise, but now she's gone as well. They all agree that she seems pretty suspicious at this point.

In the house, they find another threatening-looking doll. They all talk about how weird Denise is, but Brandon's the only one who doesn't agree. They find her smoking behind a tree, and she tells them that when she saw Susan leave, she made statements about her marriage being on the rocks. No one believes her. Oh, and Denise also claims that when she heard the weird shrieks coming from the woods that she also heard someone talking nearby.

Brandon grabs his gun from the car, they leave a note in case Susan returns, and they all start hiking through tghe woods. Denise leaves to pee, and brings a piece of Susan's clothing back with her, to show to the others. She "found" it.

As they start to really worry, we see Susan tied to a tree. The person who took her is brandishing an axe and wearing a clown mask over his face. Damn, I guess that eliminates Denise as a suspect. The killer taunts her with a tongue twister, then lets out a weird roar.

When they hear the roar, the quartet start arguing. It leads up to Brandon slapping Denise, and Tracy sees that maybe he's not the nice, shy person he presents himself as. They all find a "doll corpse" nailed to a tree, covered in what might be blood. Denise thinks it's "George", they guy she fought with back at the bar, and they all hurry to get back to the cabin. Along the way, they miss seeing another "doll corpse" in the grass. Susan is seen crying, as the killer starts caressing her with the edge of his axe.

Back home, they find the note gone, and Susan's clothes laid out on a bed, as if she were still in them. At the collar of the shirt is a doll's head. Brandon then announces that the phones are dead. Even the cell phones don't work. When the car doesn't start, they find the wires in the engine broken, and another doll left for them to discover.

Brandon decides to go out to the shed, to see if any engine parts can be found to fix the car. When they unlock the shed, they find blood and dismembered body parts everywhere. Many of the parts are stripped of any flesh, implying that they've been there for awhile, possibly years.

Mark announces that he intends to look for his wife once more, before night falls. Brandon suggests that he and Tracy should stay at the house, so Mark takes Denise along with him. Hey, wasn't he convinced that she was a psycho, not even ten minutes ago?

As Mark and Denise wander through the woods, they hear an axe striking wood. Denise tells him that she made up the stories about the psycho boyfriend to piss off Brandon and Tracy. Brandon and Tracy, meanwhile, realize that most of the stuff with the dolls and the notes happened during times when Denise had mysteriously wandered off.

Denise gets Mark to admit that his marriage was in trouble, then she seduces him. While they have sex in the woods, the chopping continues. Then we see Susan again, either unconscious or dead, still tied to the tree. The clown taunts her once more, then beheads her with the axe.

As night comes, Brandon decides to see if he can find a CB radio to reach the authorities with. Denise and Mark split up after having sex, to "cover more ground", AKA, to get Mark killed faster. Brandon finds the radio, and uses it to call for help, and finally gets a response. He gives the person on the other end his address, but it looks like it's the killer he's talking to, given that the mystery man's home is "serial killer-y".

Mark finds more doll parts while looking for Susan, and the killer is watching him from a nearby hiding place. Mark finds the killer's lair, filled with corpses, candles and guts everywhere. His quick search also reveals the clown costume. He finds Susan propped up against a tree, then escapes before the killer can grab him. In the distance, Denise sees Mark finding the corpse, and runs away.

She gets back to the house, and tells Brandon and Tracy that she thinks that Mark killed Susan. Neither one buys her story, and Brandon pulls the gun, ordering her to sit. They tie her up, then Brandon leaves to find Mark.

The clown follows Mark, waiting for him to get tired. Denise tries to convince Tracy that Brandon isn't telling her the truth, and even tells her that she seduced Mark. When Brandon returns, he convinces Tracy that Denise is messing with her head, then the CB starts up. A man claiming to be the sheriff tells them that he got their call, but that it might be awhile before he can rescue them.

Mark stumbles in, then keels over. The axe is stuck deep between his shoulder blades. Before anyone can really react to this, there is a knock at the door. The person claims to be the local sheriff, but they insist on seeing him at the window first. To no one's surprise, the face at the window is a clown.

Tracy goes hysterical, and Brandon tries to calm her down. They get started on boarding up the doors and windows, and the killer cuts the lights, leaving them screaming in the dark. Brandon gets a flashlight, lights several candles, then hears a door open. They stay in the barricaded room until Brandon tells them to create a diversion, so he can escape and get help.

Brandon runs through the woods in the dark, then stops a few feet away to light a cigarette. The girls then see 2 doors rattle at the same time, and at one of the doors, a hand waves Susan's severed head around.

The next morning, Tracy wakes up to find Denise sitting next to her, holding a gun. Denise leaves to go to the bathroom, and Tracy hears her scream the moment she leaves. Then Brandon shows up and embraces Tracy, telling her that it's over. From behind, a white glove taps her on the shoulder, and Tracy sees that Brandon was in cahoots with the clown the entire time.

The clown is revealed to be Billy, the unseen killer from the first scene. He's Denise's uncle, and they, along with Brandon, enjoy luring unsuspecting people to the woods, so that they can murder and eat them. Uncle Billy drags Tracy away for that nights' "dinner", then we see a final scene back at Brandon's office, where he invites some clients to spend the weekend at his cabin. THE END

Eh. The cool-looking demonic clown on the DVD and the menu screen is not in the film, and the body count's a little low, but I've seen worse. I hope that some of the other clown-related slashers on my list have a little more scary stuff, though. This was pretty slow, and the revelations at the end seemed kind of tacked-on, as if the writer wasn't sure how he wanted the film to end. 2 killer trees out of 5.

This week, watching SICK, I learned:
-that not all clowns are scary
-that the cooler the killer looks on the DVD, the lamer he will look when you put said DVD into a player...
-all you need to make a slasher movie is a half-baked script, and your friends as actors. Yeesh.

Well, my next endeavor is called The Summer of the Massacre. Gosh, I wonder what it's about? With such a mysterious title and all, it's a real brain-stumper. See you next week!