Nerdly » HorRHIFFic 2024: ‘All Clowns Are Bastards’ Review

28th Feb2024

HorRHIFFic 2024: ‘All Clowns Are Bastards’ Review

by Phil Wheat

Stars: Frédéric Stromenger, Kristina Kostiv, Mara Luka, Corinna Bergmann, Robin Czerny, Nicolas Dinkel, Luis Huayna, Marion Alessandra Becker, Nora Ökten | Written and Directed by Erik Weise

If you had asked me to name my favourite killer clown movie a few days ago I would’ve said the original 90s TV version of Stephen King’s It; or the Brian Dennehy starring biopic To Catch a Killer, which told the true story of the pursuit of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Now? It HAS to be All Clowns Are Bastards.

Why? Well writer/director Erik Weise has not only crafted a killer clown movie but also a romantic love story, a fourth-wall-breaking comedy and what – to me – feels like a modern-day take on the classic Troma movies of the 80s and early 90s.

All Clowns Are Bastards follows the man-eating killer clown Mitchell (Frédéric Stromenger), who kidnaps his latest victim, Dennis, and holds him hostage in what looks to be an allotment whilst he slowly but surely carves him up and removes his organs to feast on! However, one day Elena (Kristina Kostiv) walks into his life and Mitchell becomes smitten, falling in love so hard that he adopts a trait of hers that does not correspond to his kind. He becomes vegan. That he harms not only himself but also his killer clown family, is something he doesn’t know yet…

If you can’t tell, All Clowns Are Bastards plays things for laughs. A lot. The film comes replete with ridiculous on-screen graphics, a narrator that explains the film’s plot holes and, at one point, even covers over some audio issues, and subsequent ADR, by POINTING THEM OUT(!). The film even overplays the foley, exaggerating sounds to an absurd extreme.

And that’s the thing. All Clowns Are Bastards is less a horror film, or a romantic drama and more an absurdist comedy. A brilliantly absurd comedy. But is really feels like no one is playing the film for laughs. In fact, Mitchell and his killer clown family are rather dour, and Mitchell’s interactions with his barely-staying-alive victim Dennis are poignant. Well until Mitchell has no further use for his living meat market when he turns vegan.

Vegan. To some that’s almost a word as bad as the phrase “killer clown,” and Weise knows this, making Elena’s vegan roommate Tommy the kind of militant vegan that the stereotype is made of. Being vegan is so bad in All Clowns Are Bastards that, eventually, things come to a head, as Mitchell’s family fight to “save” Mitchell from veganism and return him to his cannibal killer clown ways, sacrificing everything Mitchell wants in the process. But it’s not all about Mitchell, Elena has her issues too – she’s tired of manipulating men treating her badly, so much so that she’s not as invested in the relationship with Mitchell as he is, which will have implications down the line.

What’s intriguing about All Clowns Are Bastards is that the more Mitchell battles with his feelings, Weise turns down the laughs and the film takes turns into a dark look at love, loss and what it takes to be a clown/human. Not that the absurd humour ever goes away but it feels like everyone involved knew when to play up the drama rather than the laughs, to give the film’s ultimate conclusion a more poignant and dramatic impact. Whilst the film looks like it’s set to end on a dour note, Weise throws in wonderfully human moments between clown and vegan, and clown and possible victim that provides at least some semblance of hope in a world filled with cannibal killer clowns!