Is there anything scarier than vengeful clown ghosts…?
Just in time for spooky season, PhD candidate Billie Anderson joins Jeff and Sarah to help make sense of the bizarre disability revenge fantasy film, Clowns in the Woods (2021). A rare example of disability film made by a predominantly disabled production team, Clowns in the Woods is a low budget film about a disabled man of indeterminable age who, after being bullied to death, teams up with a group of clowns to get revenge.
This episode we get one of our first opportunities to determine whether or not the disability-heavy cast and crew is enough for the film to fare well on the Invalid Culture scale.
Listen at…
Grading the Film
As always, this film is reviewed with scores recorded in four main categories, with 1 being the best and 5 being the worst. Like the game of golf, the lower the score the better.
How accurate is the representation?
Jeff – 2 / 5
Sarah – 2.5 / 5
Billie – 4 / 5
Total – 8.5 / 15
How difficult was it to watch the movie?
Jeff – 2 / 5
Sarah – 2 / 5
Billie – 2.5 / 5
Total – 6.5 / 15
How often were things unintentionally funny?
Jeff – 4 / 5
Sarah – 3.5 / 5
Billie – 2 / 5
Total – 7.5 / 15
How far back has it put disabled people?
Jeff – 1 / 5
Sarah – 2 / 5
Billie – 4 / 5
Total – 7 / 15
The Verdict
A crime may have been committed
Transcript – Part 1
[Episode begins with the trailer for Clowns in the Woods, leading into the theme song, Arguing with Strangers on the Internet by Mvll Crimes]
Jeff:
Welcome back to another. In fact, the last well sort of last episode of Inval Culture of this season. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and I am joined as always by my co victim, Sarah Currie. How you doing Sarah?
sar:
Mahalo. It’s Busker Fest this week. So this movie is well timed.
Jeff:
Yeah, very well timed, which is weird, but Busker Fest is usually in the summer, but it’s totally October right now.
sar:
Oh, that’s right. It’s Halloween next week, ladies and gentlemen. And the clowns from Busker Fest are still here. They’re outside my apartment as we speak.
Jeff:
It just turns out Buskers are the main people of Kitchener Waterloo.
sar:
That’s right.
Jeff:
That’s all it is. It’s predominantly bus clears in that city. We are not alone though. We have someone I’ve been wanting to bring on the pod for a while, not just because I like to torture my grad students. We are joined by Billie Anderson. How you doing, Billie?
Billie:
I’m doing fantastic.
Jeff:
Okay, so now I know you very well. Of course you were in the first class I taught at King’s so I’ve known you for a while. But for those who do not know you, who is Billie Anderson right now?
Billie:
I’m a grad student right now. For the past five years I’ve been a grad student. I am a self-proclaimed bad film lover, so this is kind of a week for me. I feel I call myself that because I am really easy to please. It’s really hard for me to dislike a movie. I think the thought of somebody putting the effort into making a movie makes me really excited and so I enjoy everything and that’s probably my biggest trait is just that at all times of day I’m watching a movie and I love it. I love everything about it.
sar:
That goes really well with Jeff actually, because at all times of day he is constantly restlessly trying to come up with films that will make you like film less.
Jeff:
Yeah. I am single handedly trying to kill Hollywood.
sar:
He’s trying.
Jeff:
I’m doing the Lord’s work over here. So this month is of course Halloween and therefore we thought it would be fun to do a spooky, scary movie, but not actually a good one. Instead, we decided to go back to the hollowed halls of Tubi where I, several years ago, found a miraculous film dubbed Clowns in the Woods. Now, have any of you guys heard of this film before this? This is the OG for all of you.
Billie:
Yep. Fully new. Never even come across it in my hours spent scrolling through Tubi.
sar:
Really? They don’t even advertise this one on the freebie site. Damn.
Jeff:
Now I’m assuming that most of you are probably also not seeing clowns in the woods, but don’t worry, we are going to leave you a full rundown. So from the box clowns in the wood, allegedly this law description clowns in the woods is Marcus is a young man with a disability who is bullied and dies when a vicious prank goes wrong. He then comes back from the grave as a killer clown to exact revenge on those who have wronged him. He is guided by other killer clowns who have their own slapstick methods of causing death and destruction. One of Marcus’s few friends in life was his neighbor, Amy, a lesbian college student with a big heart. As the death’s pile up, Amy is determined to learn the deadliest secret behind the recent wave of murders, not realizing that she may be putting herself and her loved ones in danger.
sar:
One of my beefs with the premise and there’s a lot, but if I were to pick a specific beef I have with the premise, it’s that, especially based on the news cycle for the last 10 or so years with the amount of especially teenage girls, I’m thinking of Vancouver, I’m thinking of Maine, I’m thinking of wherever Skylar Neese was from these girls as teenagers we’re actually horrendously bullied to death, right? That’s the cultural climate. So then this film wants to have that as its premise and then spoilers, they have the main character hit by a car escaping noogies instead. So it felt like they had a lot of bravado about I want to have my disabled character bullied to death, and then they didn’t want to go through with it. We had the little pissy car wreck and the bullying was noogie, which for those who don’t know is making a fist and rubbing it against your skull. And I couldn’t help but think, why is this what pushes the whole plot forward? I’m already lost. I didn’t love that.
Billie:
It was a really specific artistic choice to, I felt like it was trying to absolve the bullies of something, of bullying, but then they continued it any way post death. So it was a really weird, it was that moment where Marcus is hit by the car made me laugh so hard because it came truly out of nowhere, didn’t fit into and also didn’t matter. It truly didn’t matter for the rest of the movie how he died because he wasn’t going to death
sar:
After some truly soft core bullying. It’s more accurate to say he was killed in a freak accident.
Jeff:
Yeah, I’m going to say, so I had read this description before I watched the movie and when they started gang beating him on the ground,
sar:
Right
Jeff:
I thought he was going to die. Then I was like, right, they’re going to beat him to death and like, wow, what a way to start a horror movie.
sar:
That’s when the noogies came out.
Jeff:
Yeah. They were like, no, let’s have him kiss a dog, run away and get hit by a car with a driver who did not seem super concerned about the fact that he was a little concerned, but not completely concerned that he had just murdered someone.
Billie:
No, he didn’t even say, I don’t even think he said a single word.
Jeff:
No, he didn’t. He just held his head in his hands and seemed surprised. Yeah, quality acting. Quality acting. Now this film, if you haven’t seen it, is fairly low budget, and by that I mean extremely low budget. It is an indie film in every way that you could define an indie film.
sar:
This film was done for 30 bucks on a Diet Coke. Honest to God.
Jeff:
I think it was actually closer to 30,000, but you’re not actually far off.
sar:
Incredible.
Jeff:
But who is involved in it actually really matters because I think it might change a little bit about how we think about the film. So this film was written directed and stars Adrian Esposito. Now Esposito is a filmmaker who identifies as having Asperger’s. He is based in Rochester, New York, and he’s been making predominantly documentaries. He’s made some narrative films, but mostly documentaries. His films mostly focus on developmental disability. He tries to feature disabled actors in his film, and this film allegedly has many disabled actors in it as well. Most notably Esposito did a film that harassed my email inbox for many years called Diffability of Hollywood. This was a documentary about representations of disability in film, which whoever it was that produced, it was like, oh, Jeff Preston, you’re a media representation disability guy. You want this film? Please watch this film. So many emails. It was a documentary that featured interviews that Johnny Knoxville, of course, of jackass fame, but also of the Ringer fame. Of course. Hell yeah. Great movie. And also Danny Woodburn, who is, I believe it’s Seinfeld in this film, Adrian Esposito plays the main leader of the Killer Clowns Roscoe.
sar:
Okay. Was that the yellow clown? Because I was listening for them to call each other names and I don’t think they do because you told me he was the lead clown. Okay,
Jeff:
They call him Roscoe once. Yeah, he is the one that has this. You always know it’s Roscoe if it’s the clown that’s moving back and forth as he talks, he has this NPC video game character.
sar:
Oh, I think he was going for a kind of phantasmagorious evil.
Jeff:
Yes, he was.
sar:
A seriality thing, but he didn’t tell the other clowns that they were going for Phantasmagoria, so the other ones just stood there
Jeff:
And he is like dodging and weaving like a street fighter character.
sar:
I would have appreciated if Esposito is listening to this, taking notes, if you guys called each other by your names a little bit more.
Jeff:
Yeah, or like name tags maybe…
sar:
That would’ve been helpful.
Jeff:
And I will tell you, the other clowns do in fact have names you might not have known, but they fully do. Another interesting thing to know is that this film was inspired by the 2016 clown sighted phenomenon. So if you’ll remember back in 2016, people were seeing clowns all of a sudden everywhere people had all these theories about what was happening. These videos were everywhere, all over the United States, and apparently Esposito saw this and thought, I could make a movie out of this. I should make a story based on this, which I think is kind of interesting. Myself, when I read this, I had forgotten that this was a thing. Covid has eliminated any piece of history that happened really pre 2020. So I was like Clowns. Oh yeah, that was like a meme back in the nineties. No, it was 2016.
sar:
Well, I also think it kind of falls victim to whenever somebody makes a meme film insofar as by the time it’s actually written, produced, shot post-production marketed and actually comes out, a lot of people are over it. A lot of people were talking about this with that Slenderman film that came out a solid six or seven years after nobody was playing that game anymore. This film, who cares? Five or six years after the clown thing died down?
Jeff:
Yeah, no idea. I had no idea that that was it. I did not catch that reference at all.
sar:
So I feel like if the meme is already experiencing its heyday, it’s kind of already too late. You have to have your hand on the pulse kind of anticipating this meme.
Billie:
I also think that something that this one missed that was so important to the popularity of people seeing clowns is that they were just randomly seeing them. They would be on walks and they would just see a clown, and that is very scary. Whereas in this, it was very targeted. The clowns were seeking specific people out for specific reasons. That’s true, and that kind of misses the scary element of the meme.
sar:
That’s true. You lose the Chris Hansen-ness of it all.
Jeff:
Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Which gets to a question that I want us to delve into deeper later, which is this even a horror movie, but that’s a whole other question. Debatable. The other thing that we should know, two other things we should know about Esposito number one on ru morgue.com right website title. It is noted that quote with the collaboration of co-director Kurt Markham, the film uses his life experiences bring a unique perspective with hopes of resonating with many people facing similar challenges. So this film is in a way autobiographical. It is apparently a bit of a fantasy film about esposito’s experiences being bullied when he was younger, and then he gets to play out this kind of fantasy of what if I just, the dog ran into the car and then clowns killed everyone that wronged me. It is also suggested elsewhere on the line that all of the clowns are also played by disabled actors that all of them are also disabled.
sar:
My problem with the retributive plot lot is again, it wasn’t really retribution. If anything, he should have been going after the driver of the car,
Jeff:
Right? Well, yes, and there were other people that catch some strays, like the Amy’s girlfriend was killed for reasons. But anyways, okay, let’s put a pin in that. The other thing we need to know about Esposito, he does have another film coming, a film that actually stars one of our characters from this film. It is called Special Needs Revolt. It is being made with the support of trauma entertainment, which is this movie is so trauma in life so many ways. So that makes a ton of sense. And it is a film that features the dystopian future where disabled people rise up against their racist dictator. And so this idea of disabled people and other oppressed groups being kind of bound in struggle, this seems to be something that SB Zito is really interested in. It’s post-production allegedly at the moment. It did successfully raise the money it wanted. It has a bigger budget than this film, and as I said, trauma entertainment is supporting the production of it. So it actually might get a wider release than this one, which is kind of exciting.
sar:
It would honest to God be difficult to have a lower budget than this. You would have to be honestly trying.
Jeff:
Yeah, I mean as I was watching it, I was like, I wonder how much it would cost me to refilm if I filmed it myself with an iPhone. I wonder.
sar:
I’m [retty sure you could do this entire thing for 200 bucks.
Billie:
Yeah, the biggest expense would be the clown makeup,
sar:
Maybe
Jeff:
The paper machete head.
Billie:
Yeah. You could also just find somebody that already have, they already are into clowning. Maybe they just want to be in a movie.
Jeff:
I first let make sure that no one in my life is into clowning, so it would be hard for me if you’re a friend of mine and you’re a clown, call me so that I could block you on every platform.
sar:
We’re not friends anymore.
Jeff:
No, it’s over.
sar:
It’s over.
Jeff:
It is completely over. Now. As you were watching this movie, you probably were like, oh, I know that person. No, you probably weren’t because almost everyone in this film have not really done anything else. Our main character, Marcus the Bully, is played by Dalton Latta. This is his first role. He does appear to identify as autistic in interviews and such, so we’re going to say he’s autistic. If you’re not Dalton, people think tomorrow. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m going to apologize, but if you’re not, that’s fine. He hasn’t done really anything else. Our staff neighbor, Amy, the lesbian college student is played by Rosalyn Meyer. They have the biggest resume, I would say, which kind of shows. I would say Amy was probably the closest to an actor.
sar:
She was a standout, yea.
Billie:
The amount of screen time she had. She also kind of felt like the main character.
Jeff:
Yes. I don’t disagree. Yeah, absolutely. Marcus’s friend Dan is played by Nolan Tier, I think is how the name is pronounced. It’s like Pierce with a T tier. This was Nolan’s first role and as a result of his time in this film, he has now been elevated to be the star of Esposito’s new film, which is marketed as Nolan Tier being the first disabled action star, I believe is how they’re framing the name or actually start with Down syndrome, which I mean, I have questions about that. I don’t know that you can maybe make that claim necessarily, but I also think that Nolan tier is kind of a rad dude. So fine.
sar:
Interesting.
Jeff:
Now we of course have our opinions about this film and they are completely invalid. So we go to other people and the real people that write about film to try to get a grasp on what the critics think. Now, it was actually quite difficult to find anything written about this movie, as you could probably imagine, but I did find a couple things. There was one review in particular that I wanted us to talk about. This was a fairly long review by a user called Mrs. Gills, which I do not know if they’re a clown. They I think identify as a woman or they have a blog called Mrs. Gig. Cool. They wrote a review of this film and spoiler alert, they did not like it. They thought that it was really bad. But there’s one part in particular that I want to read for the review for us about. So Mrs. Gig’s writes, well, I don’t know what to say about this one. Mr. Esposito makes it clear, remarkable the materials of his movie that he is on the spectrum. So he is doing that representation thing, yada, yada. Too long, didn’t read. If I don’t like this movie even a little, I’m giving ammunition to the blue check marks on social media to scream that I am a bid and I deserve to be canceled and have my life ruined.
sar:
We are back to the cancellation bullshit. Let’s go.
Jeff:
I brought this just for you, Sarah.
sar:
Let’s go. We can have this argument again, I’m going to give Billie the first crack.
Billie:
I guess the issue there is what the reviewer has a problem with. Do they have a problem with the fact that the person making the movie is disabled then yeah, I’m happy to cancel you. Sure. Whatever you want, you’re asking for it. But if it’s with the content, I mean, yeah, art is subjective at that point. It doesn’t really matter who made it, whether or not you like it, you can have an opinion. So I think it’s just a weird approach to highlight that feature just as like, am I supposed to like this because a disabled person made it? Well, I don’t is a very weird approach to a review.
Jeff:
Yeah, I will note that the review does go on to explain that they do not the movies that they think it’s badly made, which I think is very fair. Apologies Mr. Esposito, it’s not a very good movie in that sense. But I also will note that I don’t believe Mrs. Les has been canceled.
sar:
I’ve seen no evidence to date of Mrs. Giggles being widely canceled in the cultural forum. But I think saying a big qualifier like cultural forum or even something smaller like Twitter or X or I don’t know, Facebook Horror Enthusiasts group, et cetera, kind of gets to the crux of the problem. And we were talking about this when we were debating the value of special unit as a contribution to disability culture. Because when you cross, okay, if you’re with me in the air now, I am drawing in the air a triangle and my triangle is parody as a genre or a cultural movement, and then humor as a filmic genre and all of the pastiche and everything that goes into good humor, good parody, et cetera. And then on the third prong, I have identity politics. And when you have that trifecta, it becomes less about the efficacy or the cinematography or the writing of the film itself and more about where you see yourself within that triangle in my mind, so if I were to give Mrs Giggles the benefit of a doubt, I would say she feels that parody as a movement and humor as a genre were not well done for her.
And all she has on the triangle is the identity politics, and she’s feeling this big push that the triangle doesn’t work if she feels the material isn’t good enough or worse yet is offensive something like special unit, but she feels she has to like it as a result of being in that matrix. And I am here to tell you Mrs. Giggles, you are not required to something just because it’s representative of your culture, right? Because within cultures, there’s subcultures and sub genres and all of these little intricate things in the matrices that we make that makes film fun and makes genre fun and makes film theory fun because you’re allowed to dislike within your volumes and volumes of, I totally agree with you that I don’t think this would be my standout piece of disability culture and that in itself is a good enough reason to not like something. And I think what she’s getting at is that she wants to like it to feel representative of or that something there is better than nothing at all. But the problem with that argument is that when the something there is doing more damage than it creates for people who need that peace there, you actually don’t want that because it becomes a destructive force in that triangle. I don’t think this movie rises to the level of destructive force, but that’s debatable, right?
Jeff:
Yeah. Perhaps. I think one of the things that really frustrates me about these, I think this statement seems to be made, and we’ve seen it made a lot this season where people are like, I’m going to say I don’t like this movie, and you’re going to say that I’m a big hit for not liking it. And I think that it mistakes the belief that disabled people or any other sort of identity politician group will immediately discard any sort of criticism. But then on the inverse, I really wonder, do these people really believe the world works this way? Because if it does, then how do you explain Peter butter Falcon not winning every Oscar in the world, but then how do you justify the Oscars not being canceled for not awarding Peter Butter Falcon with every award? And a lot of you are going to say, oh, but Jeff, what about Coda? I mean it’s a non-disabled girl that’s the star of that movie. But anyways, I mean Coda literally child of not a deaf people movie anyways,
Billie:
But also leaning on that there are so many bigger movies that have come out that people have had issues with Coda.
sar:
That’s true.
Billie:
And those people have not been canceled for not liking. I was just going to say to pick a movie made by a group of friends that you had to scroll on to be defined to say that you’re going to be canceled for not liking it, it just feels really unfounded that you’re looking for something to be upset about, that you’re looking, you’re seeking out movies of this caliber made by specific groups of people looking for something not to learn. Sure.
Jeff:
If Mrs. Gales is only reviewing disabled movies and they hate every single one they watch, then yeah, maybe we actually have a point of conversation that is not what their blog is. It is just random movies and stuff. So yeah, I don’t think the hoards are coming for you, and I think that it really reflects a complete misunderstanding of what cancel culture is and what unquote SJWs are trying to do. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t outliers, and it isn’t to say that…
sar:
Right.
Jeff:
People don’t get unjustly socially destroyed,
sar:
But
Jeff:
But it does say, you can say, I don’t like the movie Clowns in the Woods, and you’re not going to get canceled because I think all three of us are probably going to say something kind of like that over the next 45 minutes, and I don’t think any of us are going to face any consequences.
Billie:
I also wonder, this movie’s not trying to make a statement about being disabled. Maybe that’s a misinterpretation on my behalf, but I don’t feel like this movie’s trying to say, I dunno. It’s definitely trying to say Don’t bully obviously, because then you’ll get hit by a car and become a clown. But I don’t think it’s trying to say everyone should be a better person, which is what a lot of biopics about disabled people. You should be a nice person. And so this feels like a weird movie to say that about when it’s not trying, it’s a clown movie. It’s a movie about a specific person at a specific time. It’s not a movie about progressing disability rights in any capacity across the globe.
sar:
And to both of you, I say yes, but because I think the interesting part of the argument, I think what Mrs. Giggles is trying to get at and would make a more interesting argument than a B-movie that’s obviously not good is if I came on a disability podcast and I said to Jeff, I don’t like Crip Camp. Let me tell you why that’s more interesting. Because the triangle is a lot more debatable. It’s universally beloved by disability culture. It is often taught in classes. It’s in the Level one seminar, it’s on the ma comp tests. It is accepted as a core material. So then if we’re looking at stuff that’s not obviously terrible B movies and we take cultural artifacts that we’ve accepted as Representative Capital R, I think that’s what she’s talking about, and she’s chosen a really bad film to do this argument.
But it’s an interesting argument, and we did it a little bit with Special unit because we were asking questions, why can Bill Burr do a joke like this? But when this cast does a similar one, we hate it and it’s because we’ve acculturated who gets to say what, right? So if I’m on Twitter, if I’m on disability Twitter, a lot of you are, and I say, I don’t like disability visibility, the book, I thought that the editing wasn’t good. I thought that the stories were too generic. That is not what I think, but if I said that on disability Twitter, that would cause some fucking problems. You probably laughed while I was saying it because I would spend the rest of my day getting flamed online for not liking something by Alice Wong because Alice Wong is universally beloved in the community. Just like Crip Camp is beloved, we have all of these signals that make it kind of this larger than life artifact that is free from critique. Clowns in the Woods is not free from critique, but something like Crypt Camp kind of is. So if we make that debate about whether or not you’re allowed as a disabled theorist to dislike that film, I think that’s what Mrs. Giggles is talking about.
Jeff:
Maybe I will say I think there’s also a huge difference though between saying I didn’t think that Crypto Camp did a great job of showing exactly how the disability rights movement came. I thought that they editorialized how disability rights movement came to be in the United States. I don’t think they’re getting canceled for that statement. I think if you’re like, I don’t want to see disabled people on my tv, you’re going to cancel for that statement. And so it’s about what you’re saying. I think. Now having said that, I agree with you that you could go after Alice Wong, you’re going to get flamed, but getting canceled as well. You might have a rough day on the timeline, but probably people will move on to something else, right? This is a little different. I think that could
sar:
Be true. I think it also depends who’s saying it. I think me absolutely too, as a very abled presenting young academic said, I think Crip Camp’s useless people would definitely cancel me. They’d say, you’re a garbage theorist, also a garbage person. Also take back everything you’ve ever published. If Jeff Preston, professor of a disability studies department and very visibly disabled said, I don’t like Crip Camp has a very different experience of saying that out loud,
Jeff:
Maybe. Yeah, no, I don’t disagree. Privilege is great.
Billie:
I also wonder where do you go from here? I don’t think nobody’s going to cancel this person for posting this, but maybe if they did say the list of things that you mentioned, maybe if they did say those things about Crip Camp or about Alice Wong and then they wanted to continue in the field of film or in the field of disability studies, then maybe sure. Cancellation would be the answer. But yeah, they’re also just a level of, we have spent five minutes discussing this review and then nobody is ever going to read it again. So it matters why you’re saying it. What’s the purpose? What are you getting out of saying that? What is this person getting out of saying it about this specific movie too that just feels so misplaced?
sar:
Billie, can you explain why people are petty on the internet?
Jeff:
You have two minutes. I think it’s because we’re all anonymous, especially have anonymous. Great answer. I solved it. Everyone. Speaking of anonymous, I don’t like real critiques because I know that the best opinions are found from anonymous users.
sar:
That’s true.
Jeff:
And so let’s take a little look at what people on the internet actually have to say about this that aren’t writing on blogs, but are leaving reviews on things like Amazon and IMDB.
sar:
Mrs. Giggles was a totally legitimate critic, and I will not stand for this erasure.
Jeff:
Yeah. Oh, no. Totally legitimate. Which is why I don’t care what they have to say.
sar:
Fair enough. Alright. Fair.
Jeff:
I want the illegitimate critics. Okay, so let’s go to IMDB, and this pairs nicely with the Mrs. Clayhills comment, sort of IMDB user packets. Gadgets, I think is how you’d pronounce their name.
Gadgets gave this a one out of 10 titled terrible, just terrible. And they say quote, okay, so the movie, sorry, there are typos in this. I’m g going to soldier through. I apologize. Okay. And I quote, okay, so the movie, one fat Man being bullied and eventually ended up dead, ran over by a truck. Now, he had been seeing clowns before he died, not your normally cuddly run around and laugh clowns. Oh no, these are the meanest clowns ever, or so we are made to think. It then goes on to lament quote, DSET Trump, obviously, because his is the fault for everything wrong in the world, crazy leftists should not really be allowed near a camera.
sar:
The math is bad, but he came to the right conclusion.
Jeff:
Is Trump responsible for anything in this film?
Billie:
I think the landlord is wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
Jeff:
Yeah, he’s wearing a MAGA hat. Yes.
sar:
The landlord was the really funny kind of Republican standby character.
Jeff:
Yeah, he wasn’t, he had the mag hat on. He was also wearing the wife beater shirt, the A shirt, the coveralls with the suspenders, and that’s
sar:
Right.
Jeff:
Yeah.
sar:
He had a working man’s job, blue collar. He had the accent,
Jeff:
But he knew his law as well. For instance, he didn’t like that he had a lesbian tenant, but he knew he wasn’t allowed to evict her.
sar:
He goes, I can’t evict you for that, but I wish I could.
Billie:
I do think it would’ve been a much more interesting movie had he been the one driving the car that hit Marcus.
Jeff:
Oh, yeah. Interesting.
sar:
That would’ve been a good twist.
Billie:
He would’ve had to change so little about the rest of the plot beyond hiring an additional person to hit him, and also then that review would make more sense.
Jeff:
Yeah, right. Yeah. Then the MAGA guy would be responsible.
Billie:
Yeah,
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. It’s an interesting one. I always find it funny when people complain about MAGA people being portrayed badly in films, and it’s like, well, maybe if you weren’t life you are, then people wouldn’t represent you this way.
sar:
I also hate looking in the mirror, but it’s for different reasons.
Jeff:
Yeah, yeah, it’s fair. That’s fair. Yeah, so he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it. I also just love the notion of cuddly run around and laugh clowns, which I would never describe a clown in that way. Disgusting.
sar:
Who would be the left? Would Jennifer Ledge the B-list? Jennifer Coolidge that they have playing Amy? She would be the leftist in the context of this film. Right. The most far leaning, I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I’m accessing microfiche on my MacBook Air.
Jeff:
I think he means Esposito. I think he believes that the people that made this film are leftists with an agenda, which is to make Trump look bad.
sar:
Oh, he thinks the left are the crazy clowns. That’s actually more interesting than if it was,
Jeff:
Well, he says that leftist shouldn’t be near a camera, so he takes to, the people who made the film are these leftists who have an agenda, I believe, which I also find hilarious because I don’t fully know what the left agenda is of this film.
sar:
If the left agenda was represented by Jennifer Ledge, the agenda is allyship, and I actually love the kind of positionality he accidentally puts the clowns in being this kind of centrist wasteland where there’s murder and craziness abound. If you choose to instead put the clowns in the leftmost position, I suppose that makes Amy and the brother the centrist, but they are the best possible centrist because they’re really just there to help. They don’t really, they help the clowns. They kind of try to help the landlord. They’re definitely helping both brothers. They’re just there as this force of good,
Billie:
And also the landlord feels actually maybe a little bit more centrist than the bullies did.
sar:
Yeah, yeah,
Jeff:
Oh fully agree.
sar:
Pretty much okay with everything as long as he was getting his rent
Jeff:
And that they weren’t lesbians. He doesn’t like gay people.
sar:
He didn’t like the lesbians. He just said, I don’t like that.
Billie:
No, and he was also clearly a disability ally because I don’t think he said anything about his other tenant being disabled,
Jeff:
But Marcus, no, he didn’t want his hard time was the implication.
sar:
He calls him weird, I think, but he’s weird. His house is literally full of clown shit. I would be disturbed.
Jeff:
Now, the film is also beloved, however, by several people. So again, I don’t know what it is about this movie, but it has drawn out some of the most typo reviews I’ve ever read, so I’m going to really struggle through this. I apologize. So IMD v user, Loeb Banks gave this a nine out of 10 with the title, incredible exclamation mark. It reads Not perfect, but close, much better than most out of Hollywood. Keeps you stuck in your chair for the whole movie. Some excellent spares that come out of nowhere hoping for a sequel. Brilliant.
Billie:
Interesting. What do you think, Billie? I would love to pick this person’s brain and say, what is perfect to you on a night where you’re sitting down and putting something fun on? What is that and how does that relate to this movie?
Jeff:
Right. Yeah. What’s the 10?
sar:
The Handycam cinematography for sure.
Jeff:
Love that part. The part when action is happening, but it wasn’t framed right, so you can’t see it. I really liked that part.
sar:
I think at least part of that was for special effects budget, because all of the actual violence is just off to the right.
Jeff:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. I do. I feel like Lobe is single handedly owned Hollywood, though much better than most out of Hollywood. Hollywood will punching air right
sar:
Now, this movie, great. Made great probably accidental use of bonnets theory of Blind space due to the fact that their handycam could not accommodate the amount of special effects and things they wanted off of people’s limbs. To the extent of the script writing and for horror, I actually love bonnets Blind Space combined with stuff like Skin Inc or Blair Witch Project. I think it’s really well done in those films. I think in this film, it’s either a really clever parody of found footage that I didn’t quite pick up on at the time, and I’m just now reflecting. Maybe they’re making fun of found footage, but I don’t think they are.
Jeff:
No, I don’t think so.
sar:
I think it’s just bad cinematography and not knowing how to do physical SFX.
Jeff:
Yeah, and aggressive use of filters. Aggressive use of filters.
Billie:
Yeah, very like 20, 20 14 pink Instagram posts on the latter half of the movie. It was very pink. It was all very pink.
Jeff:
So pink. Yeah.
sar:
That was kind of giving, I’m digging a little deeper here. In fan footage, kind of like, what’s it called? Pandemic. It was a little bit Poughkeepsie tapes where they filmed pretty much that entire thing in Off Blue for no other reason than I think it’ll look cooler
Billie:
With Blue. There’s something like, it could be very cloudy outside, and so everything is very blue, but with pink, it’s like that’s a very, I’m going to remember that because it’s a very specific artistic choice.
sar:
Well, were they only using pink in the franchise?
Jeff:
Yes. When they were in the clown space.
sar:
So I’m actually in favor of that as psychedelic and ridiculous as it is because it is a good scene setter, kind of like how everybody was constantly mocking, breaking bad about the Santana filter that they would put on Mexico. Every single Mexico scene.
Jeff:
We all know that Mexico with yellow, it just is
Billie:
When you cross the border. That’s just what happens. And now we know that when you enter the clown universe, whatever.
Jeff:
Yeah, the clown verse, it’s pink,
sar:
That’s cannon.
Billie:
If I wake up one day and I’m like, I don’t know where I am, but it’s pink, I’ll be clowns around.
sar:
That’s deep lore.
Jeff:
I don’t want to get canceled by the radical left by saying this, but is clown world pink because all the clowns were gay?
Billie:
Oh, interesting.
Jeff:
Okay.
sar:
That could bring back the homophobia point that we were confused about
Billie:
And also why the neighbor is such an ally, because she knows that everybody in the clown universe, she’s okay with clowns for that reason.
Jeff:
Right. Oh, interesting. Okay. Okay. We got somewhere. Right on the back of that unhinged theory, we have one of my favorite reviews I’ve ever read for a film buckle up. So this is what comes from letterbox user Les BI have no idea if this is real or not. I’m going to just preface that this might be a hundred percent real. This might be someone taking the piss. I don’t know. Les B scored this at five star, and this is what they had to say. Love this film. Me and my son always find ourselves coming back to this when it’s raining, and we want a lazy night in. My only gripe is that the film’s initial protagonist, Marcus does not get enough screen time. That aside, Adrian Esposito needs to become a household name. His depiction of mental illness in the film never fails to bring me to tears. Truly a film of all time, five out of five,
sar:
Where was the mental illness in this film?
Jeff:
Incredible.
sar:
Is it the clowns? Are we doing the mental illness, equal violence arguments?
Jeff:
I have so many questions for you about this. Yes.
Billie:
My favorite part of that review is the Truly a Film of All Time.
Jeff:
Yeah. It truly is a film of all time.
Billie:
It’s a movie. It’s a movie.
sar:
She’s Not Wrong. That was the most accurate part of the whole review. This is a film of all time.
Jeff:
Of all time
sar:
Of all time.
Jeff:
One question for Les B is number one, how many times have you watched this film with your son? And question B has CAS been called yet?
sar:
How old is her son?
Jeff:
Undefined, but there is no way this is legal.
sar:
Yeah. Okay. I’ll give you that.
Jeff:
If you could be 18, and I would still say, take this child away.
sar:
Yeah. This is kind of fucked up.
Jeff:
This is absolutely child abuse.
Billie:
I mean, she’s not wrong in that, that Marcus needs more screen time for a lot of reasons, just because I believe he’s the main character, and so he should get more screen time, but also because we know nothing about him beyond the fact that he likes clowns. So I mean, yeah. That is the best part of any of the reviews that you’ve read is the first time somebody’s agreed with us on something.
Jeff:
Yeah, so I think when they said mental illness, I think they meant intellectual disability, but they didn’t know the word that was proper, and they were like, oh, mental. It’s a brain injury. It’s a brain illness, mental illness.
sar:
That’s interesting. And then that does start the argument over. Every mental illness expert gets asked, oh, is a SD part of that? And I would say, yes, but would I call it that outside of a field consideration? No. So that’s where the lines start to get a little blurry. I know basically nothing about id, I didn’t have to qualify in that at all. That’s something I would ask Pamela about, but where do we draw that line? I don’t know. Probably we should have been asking Les b.
Jeff:
Les B knows exactly what’s happening here. I really hope that Les and Lobeck find each other because they clearly see something in this film that no one else. And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Either way, please take a second. If you haven’t to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you’re using, tell a friend, and better yet, do you want to be a victim on the podcast? Go on to our website, invalid culture.com. Submit your name. We would love to terrorize you with a bad movie. Have a bad movie of your own that you think that we should watch. Again, jump on our website, invalid culture.com, submit it, and we would love to watch the trash. Be sure to tune in again next week for part two where we will start to dig into the movie and find out whether or not it wins the coveted Jerry Lewis seal of approval.
[Mvll Crimes song “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet” plays out the remainder of the episode]
