Out of the Dark

The phone sex line was for fantasy… now it’s for murder!

I was surfing On-Demand the other night to find a free horror movie to watch, lazily buttoning around in my usual lackluster manner… until I happened upon Out of the Dark. I could barely believe my eyes: cult stars Karen Black, Budd Cort and frickin’ Divine starring in a film about a slasher in a clown mask with a taste for phone sex girls! Where has this movie been all my life?!

I pressed play and settled back into the lazy boy with a big shit-eating grin on my face. Within the first few minutes some lady’s bare jugs were bouncing across my flat panel TV in larger-than-life-size glory, and I felt like I had struck cheesy horror B-movie gold.

Bobo is one seriously messed up clown, a few rings short of a three ring circus. He’s into self-mutilation and talking dirty, slicing his nipples in masochistic masturbatory bliss while making regular death threats over the phone to the sex girls at “Suite Nothings”. The ladies get a little creeped out, but not too bad… until one by one, they begin meeting grisly deaths!

The first half hour was awesome, but then I started noticing that the killings were a little, well, dead. Not very creative, and not very gory. Downright boring, to be honest. Then Karen Black mysteriously disappeared about halfway through the movie, which didn’t help at all. It was kind of like the writer just plain forgot her character existed. Bud Cort turned in a cheesy but very brief appearance. And Divine was onscreen for only a few moments, playing a startlingly straight role. I learned later that this was Divine’s last role before his untimely passing, which is a little sad.

My initial excitement was slowly getting strangled to death like one of the doomed phone sex girls until it finally breathed its last breath during the last 30 minutes of the movie, which sadly devolves into clichés like “They got the wrong guy!” and “Boo! I’m not actually dead!”. All in all, what started out as a pleasant surprise that I felt lucky to stumble across ended up stumbling unpleasantly, which isn’t very surprising given how obscure this film has managed to remain despite its B-movie star-power. Maybe if I was one of those unlucky folks who are truly terrified of clowns I would have liked this one better…

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Posted in: Horror Movies »  by: Morbidementia

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