Out of the Dark - 1989

Here's a rare treat.  From me to you.  A time when I am not writing a lot and you get a rare Saturday update on this here blog thing.  Out of the Dark.  From the director of Cyborg 3: The Recycler.

I put this on my Amazon queue cause I was on there, and the dumb cover of a killer clown caught my eye.  Hovering my mouse over, I see that this is not a newer film, the year is 1989, and when I click for more info I get a treat, as Karen Black is in this one.  Well, it don't take much more than that.  Officially added to my queue.  With my short ass attention span these days it also gets bumped into the "watch sooner rather than later" category, because horror, and because Karen Black.

Wikipedia tells me this is an "erotic horror comedy."  Is it?  I certainly see how they could say that, although it was not my thought as I watched it over the last two days.  Starring Karen Lorre as Jo Ann, an upbeat woman who gets employment at a phone-sex call line, where Karen Black is the boss and her co-workers are all similarly young, fun, sweet women.

Soon enough, the calls they're receiving at the place are getting weirder at the same time that the first call girl turns up dead.  The girl was walking her dog, and a dude in a clown mask appears and smacks her with a baseball bat.  We get this and several other kills in the movie, and having the plot of the film overlap with a sex phone line, we also get a bit of nice nudity.

It's all well and good, and for a film where I was expecting very little, it actually entertained more than I was expecting.  They do a good job of having the right amount of characters, the right amount of kills, and the right amount of other things happening to keep the momentum going.  This movie thankfully does not become a game of "waiting for the next kill" like so many other films.

So many of these movies are interchangeable feeling, and this one doesn't specifically stand out.  I will say that a lot of people who are afraid of clowns seem to have put this on lists of "the creepiest clown movies" and I suppose it probably is.  To me, it felt above average, and it also felt late 80's.  It's funny, cause I can really fucking tell dude.  I can tell it's late.  Cause of the specific boundaries it pushes, because it has a level of self-awareness.  Once you know what to look for...  Obvious.  Yo.

Rating.  I am currently waffling between 3.5-4 stars.  I feel like I've given out a ton of 3.5 star ratings recently.  So hell with it, I'll give this a B movie 4 star review.