100 Tears

Attention all splatter enthusiasts, thy day of deliverance is at hand! Gurdy the clown (Jack Amos) has arisen to cause enough bloody mayhem to drown you! 100 TEARS is the tale of Gurdy and his gore-drenched trail of vengeance against... well, everyone! The opening scene alone is worth its weight in entrails!

TEARS also stars Raine Brown, who redeems herself for having been in the impossibly inept floater known as WOODS OF EVIL. Here, she shines with maniacal glee, giving an utterly insane performance!

So, if your tastes run toward the ultra-gory / funny, and eeevil, homicidal clowns are your delight, then look no further than this micro-budgeted bloodbath!...

This is a pretty average horror/slasher movie. I grant the makers they squeezed in a lot of kills and especially fans of decapitations and guts will like it. The movie is about a serial killer in a clowns outfit who slashes people by the dozen with his hack-axe. Two detectives are on the hunt for the "teardrop killer" who leaves bloody tears behind on the murder scenes and got a back story they slowly unfold. Its like two plots running along each other... Clown slashes people with some entertaining ideas (liked the wheelchair down the stairs shot) and the detectives uncover the story with real bad acting. Basically the movie should have concentrated on the gore because this is where its strong side lies... the acting is real bad, the music is annoying (always the same hardcore techno over the kills and one music sounds a lot like being taken directly out of Hellraiser). The pseudo plot will bore the gore hounds to death and especially fails of bad acting and inconsistency. "100 tears" is rather for the trash/splatter fans but I guess because the director couldn't decide which way to go this one will soon be forgotten. And BTW... the closing scene sucks and like in many movies made me think they didn't know how to get out of their scripts mess.

I first saw this in 2008 on a dvd which I own.

I remember the dvd seller guy persuading me to buy it n describing how scary n gory the movie is.

Revisited it recently but on a fast forwarding mode.

Apart from the gore there is nothing redeeming about this low budget movie.

There is absolutely no tension n the scare is zero. Plus there is zero nudity.

I found the chase sequence involving the dwarf very funny.

At times the movie gets very very monotonous n tedious.

Some of the scenes are shot in too much darkness n the grindhouse/grainy look doesn't help at all.

This doesn't need a sequel or a prequel.

An over-sized meat cleaver being swung by an over-sized clown...

An overly low ended "Thud" is followed by an over-sized spray of blood..

All set to an overly goofy carnival organ soundtrack...

If this is interesting to you, then you might want to check out "100 Tears" for an evening of over the (big) top indie horror fun. Marcus Roch directs this strait to video opus to great effect, and never under-estimates the power of splatter. Sure, it's silly and even down right corny, but in this context it seems to work quite well. I think all would-be low budget horror producers should take a gander at "100 Tears", and take a few notes along the way. The film never tries to take itself too seriously, and that's what makes it stand out in a sea of indie crap being peddled on the unknowing public. It is hard to produce a "Realistic" story when you are working with next to no money, so why not make a film that uses that fact to it's advantage? The acting is stiff but watchable (minus the wonderful comic timing of Joe Davison) and the cinematography / lighting scheme are weak but tolerable. These down sides are over looked because the film simply entertains, and you become a part of this twisted world thanks (in part) to a wacky soundtrack by "The Voodoo Organist". Probably not for everyone, but none the less a gruesomely goofy viewing experience.

Like another reviewer pointed out, this style of splatter probably has its roots in Germany, with directors like Andreas Schnaas, Olaf Ittenbach and Timo Rose. Both when it comes to the style of the gore and the way of making a script I would say. The gore is great and they have really tried making a serious plot, but ended up with a plot that is very unrealistic, and to say it plainly, stupid.

Let me explain by giving you the basics of the story. It is about two tabloid journalists writing an article about serial killers and trying to track down a serial killer wearing clown make up. So far it sounds OK, right? But the thing is the clown has killed over 160 people over a period of over 20 years, he has done nothing to cover his tracks and it takes the journalists a couple of days to figure out that the killings has always occurred in the vicinity of a circus. By some really lousy detective work they manage to track down the killer in a week or so, which the FBI has tried for 20 years!

I would compare this movie to Brian Paulins films, which also are German-style American splatter. They suffer from the same faults of bad story and bad acting, but makes up for it when it comes to the gore. And really, that is what is important here, right? I mean, sure I can enjoy deep relational dramas or clever social commentary, but when I watch a movie like 100 tears, I expect decapitation, torture, blood and guts. Watching a movie like this one for the story would make as much sense as watching a porno for the story. And the gore is great. Loads of blood and intestines throughout the whole movie. And the fx are good too for a low budget movie. But it becomes a little monotonous as the killer almost always uses the huge meat cleaver or whatever the weapon is supposed to be.

Also, the soundtrack is most of the times pretty good. The soundtrack includes weird but good music by The voodoo organist and Voltaire, which I would not be able to define the genre of and a dark hardcore song, which also is good. One complaint here is that the movie could have used some more songs, instead of re-using the same over and over again. So, monotony is sadly something that spoils the good parts of this movie a little on several levels. But not that much. When it comes to the soundtrack it's really a very minor complaint.

Well, that's my take on it. Turn off your brain for a while and enjoy the gore. And if that isn't your cup of blood, stay away from this one.