The Clown at Midnight (1998)

A Disappointing Continuation

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The Clown at Midnight tells the story of teen Kate Williams (Sarah Lessaz) who recently discovered she was adopted, her real mother an opera singer named Lorraine Sedgewick (Vicki Marentette) having been brutally stabbed to death supposedly by a jealous lover after a performance of Pagliacci, a tragic play about a lovesick clown. Kate has been having very vivid nightmares & hallucinations but life goes on as they say... Seven college students including Kate have signed up to help clean up the old Walker Theatre which the head of drama Ms. Gibby (Margot Kidder) has had a grant to reopen, it's not long before Kate is getting freaked out because the Walker is the very theatre where her mom was murdered by a psychotic in a clown costume & he's on the prowl again as he locks the theatre up & begins to kill the teens off one-by-one...This Canadian production was directed by Jean Pellerin & guess what? It's rubbish. The script by Kenneth J. Hall seems to take itself very seriously & has all the usual clichés, the teens keep splitting up for trivial reasons, the killers motives are thin to say the least, it's utterly predictable & it doesn't come together that well at the end either. How many more dull, lifeless films about annoying American teens do we need? There is a distinct lack of gore, in fact this is one of the driest slashers I've seen & considering it was made in 1998 when special effects were very advanced there's no excuse, it wouldn't be so bad if the character's made up for it but they don't because their all rubbish & the dialogue is poor too. Then there's the generic run down theatre location which is just a bore of a setting & not used to any great effect at all. You know it's over 40 minutes before the clown kills someone, that's 40 minutes of dullsville I'd rather be doing something fun like watching paint dry. Then there's the confused ending in which three people end up dressed exactly the same as the clown, why? For a start why did George go back & get dressed like the clown when he could have been saving Kate? Why did he need to dress as the clown anyway? It's pointless. Then there's the none too shocking revelation that the initial suspect didn't do it, wow what a surprise. He claimed he was trying to help them, yeah right & he did a good job didn't he as 5 people were killed & I didn't see him anywhere frankly until the pathetic twist ending which is so obvious it's embarrassing. You know who the killer is the very first time he appears on screen it's that obvious. To make matters even worse the only half decent looking cast member Liz Crawford is the first to be killed, although it takes a while to get there...Director Pellerin does nothing to liven things up, the films well made & professional but very dull, flat & lifeless. The stalk scenes are poor, it's not scary, there's no tension as it's all so clichéd & obvious & there isn't even any decent gore in it either. You know slasher films have moved on since 1978 when Halloween came out but you'd never have guessed it watching Clown at Midnight. The violence & gore is tame with no imagination to the kills, someone gets a spear through the stomach, someone is strangled, someone is thrown off the roof, someone is electrocuted, someone is impaled on what looks like spikes although I don't know why someone would keep a load of spikes under a trap door on a theatre stage & someone is decapitated, seen it all before & done better as well.Technically the film is pretty good actually & the best thing that can be said about it overall is that it's well made with decent production values. Filmed in the real life Walker Theatre in Winnipeg in Canada. The acting isn't anything special but it's alright, I didn't like anyone particularly but Liz Crawford was quite hot & she gets her top off as well. I take it Chirstopher Plummer & Margot Kidder need the money to agree to appear in this.Clown at Midnight is a dull slasher film with a low body count, next to no gore, annoying teen character's & a very predictable twist ending which I predicted within 30 minutes, poor all round then really. There are many good slashers out there you really shouldn't be wasting your time or money on this.

"The Clown at Midnight" is a pretty bad movie; plain and simple. It had potential to be a relatively decent horror film, especially if you're someone like me that finds clowns to be creepy and unnerving. In fact, the ONE good part about this film is that the Clown is actually scary looking and menacing. He is one of the creepier clowns that I have ever seen portrayed in a film. But despite this one "diamond in the rough", the rest of this movie is all down-hill. The acting is atrocious! I cannot stand the work of James Duval playing "George". He is far too hokey and is not convincing at all. You can't acknowledge him as his portrayed character; he just comes across as a really poor actor instead. I have always liked Tatyana Ali (she portrays "Monica"), and although she's really cute, she certainly is not a top-notch actress. And I'm afraid that all of the other young actors and actresses that portray the teenagers in this film fall along the same lines as James Duval; they're not convincing one bit, and they give some of the poorest acting performances out there. But the worst part has to be the fact that Margot Kidder and Chris Plummer are in "The Clown at Midnight". Don't get me wrong; these two acting veterans give the ONLY two worthwhile performances in this film! This can be expected, because both are terrific performers in their own right. The sad part is seeing two people that we widely loved in other roles (Margot Kidder in the "Superman" movies and of course Plummer in "The Sound of Music") at a point in their careers where they're stuck doing cheap horror flicks. Why is it that some great veterans like Kidder and Plummer fall into this pit? It just seems that they deserve to have better. I also think that the Clown offs his victims too easily. Without getting into specifics, for fear of spoilers, the Clown comes across as being nearly "invincible". Each time that he confronts one of his victims, you know that they're going to die, and quickly, and without much of a struggle. Yes, it is a common horror-movie lover's ability to be able to predict the upcoming death of a character, but "The Clown at Midnight" makes it too easy. C'mon, at least give us a bit of a tease here. Why do the victims have to die so easily at the hands of the Clown? The deaths are dull, despite the fact that they're gruesome, because there's virtually no struggle or chase to make the viewer's heart race. The Clown simply has his way with each victim, and then it's suddenly over. As the director, Jean Pellerin needs to have a bit more respect for his viewers, and give us something to work with if we're going to get a kick out of this film. So with the exceptions of the creepy clown, along with Kidder and Plummer, I was really disappointed in "The Clown at Midnight". Maybe I'm somewhat at fault for setting my expectations too high, but I guess I just thought that this film should have been better. If a director is able to devise such a disturbing clown, and if he has the bonus of having two veteran actors in his grasp, he should be able to make a bit more out of the tools that he has to work with. I'd rate "The Clown at Midnight" a 3 out of 10.

the clown at midnight is a story about a teenage girl that is going to help clean up an old opera house with her 7 friends even though her mother was murdered in that same opera house 15 years ago once a couple of the student drop the ones left get suspicious and try to escape the masked killer and some of them are murdered in the most slaughteress way, they then try to open the doors and get out alive, this movie is filled with some of todays actors like (sarah lassez),(elizabeth crawford), (ryan bittle), and ( tatyana ali) this movie is a movie not to miss and will have u wondering who will get slaughtered in the most gruesome way. 10/10

Last horror films Don´t scary me but this it do it.I watch the film after the midnight with my friends and when the film finish we have fright.This strange but films like SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT... don´t make fright and others like the clown at midnight produce it. SENTENCE FOR THE CLOWN AT MIDNIGHT:Excellent Horror Film