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The Clown at Midnight by Jerry Whorebach 09/03/2006, 1:46am PDT
European-financed slasher flick from 1998 that tries to slip American teens a little culture along with their fake blood and simulated sex. Basically that one episode of Seinfeld where Elaine and her friends are menaced by an insane suitor dressed as Pagliacci, stretched out to feature length. Stars a bunch of college drama students as... a bunch of college drama students, tasked by their teacher (craggy, husky-voiced Margot Kidder) with fixing up an old opera house where a terrible murder was committed.

The man who donated the building to the city, kindly old Mr. Carruthers (Christopher Plummer), spends five minutes explaining how the place is haunted and then disappears until the end, when he's revealed to be the killer - even though it obviously wasn't Plummer himself running around murdering kids under Pagliacci's rather light makeup. In addition to the killer clown, the film also features another crazy guy dressed as Pagliacci who also lives in the building's secret tunnels but isn't really relevant to the plot, and one of the students keeps putting on the clown suit for no obvious reason. This pays off(?) in the end with a climactic showdown between two clowns, followed shortly by another battle between the survivor of the first clownfight and a third clown.

The film's one redeeming feature may be the way French director Jean Pellerin has each of his student stereotypes try to defend themselves in a character-specific fashion before dying ironically by similar means. For example, the jock tries to tackle his way out of a murder and inadvertently launches himself off a roof, while the Afro-American girl picks up a handy spear and chucks it at her attacker, only to be herself impaled by another of the opera house's many spears.

Summary: Negative, although fans of musical montage may enjoy the various repair and cleanup sequences.
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The Clown at Midnight by Jerry Whorebach 09/03/2006, 1:46am PDT NEW
 
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