The Clown Murders
The DEADLY Tears of A Clown....OF MURDER!!!
Charlie-Guy who left this town to do something, then came back for some reason. Realizes he's still in love with Alison, and her farmhouse, so comes up with a brilliant plan to save both.
Ollie-Played by John Candy. One of John's early movie roles. Here he plays a poor guy who gets picked on all the time cause he likes to eat. I'm sure Mr. Candy wasn't typecasted in anyway.
Peter-Jumpy lawyer guy who helps Charlie with his stupid plan.
Rosie-This is a guy. Yes, a guy named Rosie. I think the name left him bitter cause he's a major asshole throughout the movie.
Phillip Sutherland-Rich dude who scooped up Alison when Charlie left. Is going to knock down Alison's farmhouse to build condos. Of course.
Alison Sutherland-Former squeeze of Charlie's. When he stormed out of her life, she decided to find a guy who could buy her things. Kinda regrets it now.
Mr. Harrison-Nice and kind farmhand who works on Alison's farm. Or so you think...
Tom-Quiet kid who has a mean streak. You think he's the one going around killing people, mainly cause he gets great joy out of cutting chicken's heads off.
"The Clown Murders" is a 1975 film that features John Candy back in the day before he was well known on SCTV. Even though he didn't look that big in this movie, I'm guessing he was cast cause his character called for him to eat. A lot. Throughout the movie.

As a fellow fat guy, I get kinda upset when movies make fun of the friendly guy who likes to eat every now and then. And then to see John Candy, who died cause of complications with his weight, playing a guy who is picked on cause of his love for food, well, this movie was mighty uncomfortable. But thankfully, his character gets justice when he gets the one and only sex scene in the movie. Yes, John Candy has a sex scene. And about damn time a fat guy gets one! Score one for us fatties!!

Truth be told, I have no idea what was going in the beginning. The best I can piece together is a game of polo is going on with some rich people and Charlie arrives in town after being gone for a few years or whatever. Charlie's friends Peter, Rosie, and Ollie (John Candy), are all happy to see him. Charlie finds out that his ex-girlfriend Alison married rich dude Phillip, who is one of the rich guys playing in the polo match. Charlie longs for Alison, but she reacts to him like fish on dry land: flops around with gills a-fluttering.

Later, Phillip is playing poker and Ollie is in charge with getting the Halloween costumes for the Halloween party coming up. When the four friends get together at the end of the night, Charlie finds out that Phillip is going to sell Alison's farmhouse to build some condos on it. Charlie still likes the place and doesn't want to see it go. He hears that Phillip can't sign the papers to tear down the place unless Alison is there for some odd reason. So this sends signals to Charlie and he decides to hide her somewhere until the midnight deadline has passed and they can't tear down the house. For some odd reason, everyone else goes along with it, thinking it's a joke of sorts.

So Ollie changes all the costumes to clown costumes so 30 drunk rich people can go around and scare the shit out of the townsfolk. Oh, and so when Phillip says it was some people dressed as clowns, it'll make it that much harder to figure out who did it.

The night arrives and when Phillip (who is dressed as a knight for some reason) and Alison leave the party, Rosie, Peter, and Charlie run around like goofy clowns, basically terrorizing them to no end. Then Charlie chloroforms Alison and Rosie knocks out Phillip. They take Alison back to Peter's weekend house (Why do people need weekend houses? Do their regular 5 day a week houses make them think of work or something? I get beach houses, but weekend houses?) to hide her there. Charlie wanted to hide her at Alison's farmhouse because he has a secret agenda that only him and Dick Cheney know about. But Peter insists on his lil' weekend house, so be it.
The 70's was obviously good for John Candy
"I don't mean to go on a rant but I think as Director of Photography we should focus more on the horses than the player..."
Oh no! I've seen Final Destination! LOOK OUT!!
I'm a sad clown...
Oh boy. Look out. Things are getting wacky. Gosh golly.
At the weekend house, Rosie hears on the radio that Phillip got in touch with the police and is considering it a kidnaping (DUH!), so everyone else freaks out and run to Charlie. Charlie is all like "If we just went to Alison's farmhouse...". Peter gets scared the most cause he's a successful lawyer and tries to make a run for it. Rosie chases him while Peter hightails it out of there, with Ollie on the hood of the car. (He was eating. HAHA funny, yeah yeah.)

When an old lady and some kids spot Peter and Rosie fighting, they realize they have to listen to Charlie now and go to Alison's farmhouse. They head there and we see some mysterious person was in the house, but he left when the kidnappers showed up. We're suppose to suspect it's Tom, this crazy and quiet farmhand who likes to cut off the heads of chickens and electrocute sleeping Mexicans (seriously). I'll go ahead and sorta ruin it for you now by saying it isn't Tom. But I won't say who it is quite yet.
Hahaha, it's John Candy! And he's eating!! On the hood of a car!! Ohh...what a hoot.
The Cowboys vs The Clowns War of '75 is hardly talked about these days.
Gallahger decides to kick his act up a notch.
Our Mystery Man finds a spare Clown mask in the back of the gang's car and puts it on cause he thinks masked killers are cool (Hm, this is way before Halloween and Friday the 13th. Interesting) and just kinda stalks our gang of hoodlums.

Slowly Rosie starts going insane. And by slowly, I mean he suddenly picks up a rifle and starts making threats of killing everyone, including Alison. He picks on Ollie some more cause all Ollie cares about is doughnuts. Charlie is upstairs with Alison when Rosie goes berserk and things get worse when Peter decides to start shooting out the speakers in the barn because they started blaring some type of nursery rhyme song.

Charlie decides he's gonna go stop Peter, but doesn't trust Rosie alone with Alison, so he locks Ollie in the room with Alison. This makes things worse for Ollie when Rosie makes jokes about Ollie raping Alison. Charlie goes to stop Peter and he hears a whispering voice tell him weird ass shit like "Brenda and Susan wants to talk to you." Who the fuck is Brenda and Susan? I dunno, but the Mystery Man jumps up out of nowhere to throw an ax into Charlie's face. Charlie blocks it in time and he gets chased all over the place by Mystery Man. Finally, Charlie makes it outside, but Mystery Man turns on the electric fence, so Charlie is trapped. Despite all his rage, he's still just a rat in a cage.

This makes Rosie even more crazier and tells Peter to go get Ollie. Peter does and discovers something shocking. Ollie is getting it on with Alison!! Peter doesn't believe this is happening (neither could I, how often does the fat dude get laid?) and tells Rosie this. Rosie freaks out and barges into the room. He grabs Ollie, drags him outside, then hog ties him. Peter comes up with another brilliant plan: tell Rosie that Alison wants him next! I'm not sure if Alison is on in this plan or if Peter doesn't care if she gets brutally raped by a crazy drunk dude who is probably seething with STD's. Anyway, Rosie falls for it and he runs upstairs, where Alison disrobes for Rosie. I guess her pubes are green or something cause he freaks out and runs away.
John Wayne Gacy stalks his next victim.
She just wants to see if his boobs are bigger than hers.
"Dahh...uhhh...uhh....those....wow....I GOTTA GO CLEAN UP NOW!!"
Charlie is trying to get Ollie to untie himself so he can turn the fence off. Mystery Man somehow secretly ends up back in the house and he strangles Rosie. Then he runs upstairs and shoots Peter all Oswald style. Charlie desperately needs Ollie's help but he's too busy crying about losing his virginity or cause he's hungry or cause Peter got shot. I wasn't sure. Eventually, Ollie gets to the gun and when a guy runs out after Ollie, he panics and shoots. Turns out it was Rosie. This really freaks Ollie out.

Upstairs, Mystery Man turns his sights onto Alison, but she gets the best of him when she stabs him in the hand. Much liked a kicked dog, he runs away yelping. Then...it becomes the next day. The police somehow know to go to the farmhouse and there they find Alison consoling Ollie, with Charlie looking like "I didn't mean to get Rosie and Peter killed...but I'm glad cause they were annoying as fuck". Charlie turns himself in, Alison brushes off Phillip, and we find out who the Mystery Man is.

Nope, not Tom. It was...Mr. HARRISON!!! WHA??? Yeah, I dunno why he was the killer. But they show him with a bandaged hand, so he must be the killer. I think the writer of this film seen one too many Scooby-Doo episodes.
Anthony Hopkins stars in the Broadway Production of "Fidder On The Roof"!
This movie had several pretty good ideas going for it, and I give it a little props for being an early serial killer wearing a mask movie, but it was just so slow and boring. And the polo scene was like 10 minutes long. You can't open your murder/kidnaping film with a 10 minute polo scene. That's like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" opening up with a 20 minute scene of two stoners playing Pong. And I'm glad the fat guy got some booty. Gives the rest of us some hope.
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