Funny Man

In the mid-nineties, Christopher Lee faced a serious financial crisis. His pension funds failed, his country house encountered plumbing problems, and some dues were to be paid. He had no other solution but playing in a stupid film that left him ashamed for all the rest of his life. Ten years after, Mr. Lee still has nightmares about that film, and restlessly fights for all copies being destroyed. Alas, some perverse folks recently released it in DVD format. Well, time to be serious. "Funny Man" is one of the worst films I have ever seen. There's nothing redeeming about it. Screenplay is non-existent, without any kind of narrative logic. Also, and some puzzling for a film with such a title, "Funny Man" actually has nothing funny, unless you are quirky enough for laughing at people having atrocious deaths for no valid reasons. The Funny Man himself is annoying and I often thought he was the one in the film really deserving to die. So please support Mr. Lee. Don't buy, don't rent, don't watch "Funny Man". Don't tell your friends about it. Just forget it. I did already.

If there's one thing I've learned from reading the other reviews around here, it's definitely that "Funny Man" is the type of film that you either praise into the heavens or hate with a passion; there doesn't appear to be a middle way. Personally I'm tempted to unite with the hate crew, but that is preeminently because the fan-boys are exaggeratedly enthusiast without using real arguments. They merely just claim that "Funny Man" is awesomely hilarious; period. I even encountered some reviews where people dreadfully stated that the adversaries of this movie simply "don't get" the type of humor. See, I really hate that… What exactly is there to "get"? It's a cheesy and low-budgeted 90's horror movie about an ugly jester killing off uninteresting characters whilst firing off lousy and wannabe clever one-liners, so it's fairly safe to say there's absolutely nothing specific "to get" here. I'll be the first to admit that "Funny Man" also contains a handful of ingenious elements and mildly amusing gags. The main problem, however, are the bad ratios. For every brief flash of inventiveness, there's an intolerably large amount of tedious sequences. For every effective joke, there's literally a truckload of embarrassingly lame and painfully misplaced farces. After approximately 50 minutes of running time, you've pretty much seen and heard about as much as any normal person can take and the last half hour is practically unendurable to sit through. "Funny Man" is probably the most atypical British horror movie I've seen. Traditionally speaking, British genre movies implement a distinct and easy recognizable sense of humor, but this one is as vulgar and insipid as any random amateur US trash production. Most likely more than half of the entire budget was spent on convincing the almighty Christopher Lee to make a cameo appearance among an extended cast of untalented nobodies. Lee briefly pops up at the beginning of the film and portrays a sinister guy in a white suit who gambles his ancestral house in a game of poker and loses it to a sleazy drug-addicted record producer. The joke's on him – literally – because Christopher forgot to mention anything about the psychopathic buffoon living there. The Funny Man quickly disposes of the producer's family and eagerly awaits the next shipment of brainless victims to waste. They arrive in the form of a van filled with dimwits looking like runaways from a canceled Scooby-Doo episode. Some of the killing scenes are amusing and imaginatively repellent (like the duck hunting and puppet theater), but the majority of them are plain dull and overlong. The Jester may sound like a potentially cool new horror icon, but he's actually rather uninspired and boring. His appearance seems to be based on Jack Nicholson in "Batman" mixed with a "Killer Klown from Outer Space", with the stand-up comedian talents of Chucky the Good Guy Doll or maybe even Freddy Kruger in the later installments of "Nightmare on Elm Street". He has no bizarre background or occult myth attached to him and even the house he operates in doesn't have a morbid history. Well, there we have the problem… "Funny Man" is a movie without depth. Get that?

If your mansion house needs haunting, just call... the Funnyman. Undecided about whether it's a comedy or a horror, it tries to be both and ends up neither.

The Jester would scare the pants off you if you were eight years old. However, you're not eight any more. Freddy Kruger dressed as Mr Claypole is less scary than Mr Claypole dressed as... er... Mr Claypole.

There is some witty banter, a few funny exchanges of dialogue and some top-drawer 'just nodding' acting. The Club Sexy sequence (up until 'Hardman' meets his end) is the highlight of the film.

With the Jesters big rubber head, I'm reminded of Bo' Selecta – Series 3. Just like Bo' Selecta – Series 3 it could've been good… but it's not.

A truly brilliant movie. The Monty Python Meets Hammer Horror caption explains it well. The brutish killings and murder make it truly a masterpiece. Two thumbs up.

I didn't know what to expect from this film when I watched it, but I was vastly amused. If you like the Monty Python variety of British comedy, and the Nightmare on Elm Street type of horror, you should check this movie out. It doesn't really make sense or have any sort of real plot, but hey, what the hell does? Overall, an amusing horror film, made me laugh more than a few times.