I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

REMEMBER YOU CAN'T HAVE SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER




Killjoy 1-3 (2000, 2002, 2010)

Let's talk briefly about the lack of ethnic diversity in horror. I say brief because, for some reason, they still do not get enough great parts in today's horror genre, and no matter what I say or how I say it someone's gonna think I am prejudiced or, (duh) reverse prejudiced. I am particularly disturbed that there is a genre called urban horror, I kind of find that offensive and I'm not African American. Other horror genres have labels (such as Asian horror), but those movies are foreign and simply refer to the countries they come from. 

I guess I'm wondering why horror is not just that - horror. The need to scare and be scared is not limited to certain races and certainly by now in this society this discrepancy should be corrected. Curious, I looked up on one site called The Urban Daily to see what was considered good horror movies with AA actors or actresses in them.

There was House On Haunted Hill (1999) with the gonna-be-gorgeous-forever Taye Diggs, yes he was great. Other than that, there were only a couple they could mention that had an AA actor/actress and not necessarily in horror films. They were actually listing 13 movies that they SURVIVED in, not necessarily starred in. That's... not good. 

I tried to think of one and came up with Jada Pinkett in Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) where both she and CCH Pounder not only had solid roles in the movie, but Jada becomes the heroine who saves the world and survives at the end. 

George Romero broke all the rules with his 1968 Night Of The Living Dead, having Duane Jones play the main character (and Tony Todd in the 1990 remake), bossing the others around, even striking a 'white' woman - but unfortunately despite this great addition to horror history the attitude toward race did not change much as the years went on. Look at Somebody Help Me 1 & 2 - although they technically are TV movies, they're still described the same way - urban horror. They're in a cabin alone aren't they? How is that urban?

If I have missed some really important ones, that's my fibro fog brain covering stuff up again but I think we can agree that there is really not an even representation of all the races of our Country. It's getting better, but the fact that they still make a scary movie with mostly AA actors and call it 'urban horror' is just... wrong.

So, I guess I have to talk about the 'urban horror' Killjoy movies. Made by Full Moon, they had made the first two, and then the third eight years later when the company attempted to revive several movie franchises (which, to be frank, they really REALLY shouldn't have). I saw they made another in 2012 but thankfully (so far) it is not available to stream. So here we go and yeah, it's gonna be short 'cause there isn't much to them and they repeat themselves pretty closely and remember, all language and descriptions are from the film itself, not my interpretation so... yeah:

Killjoy (2000): A loner named Michael likes a girl named Jada. But Jada goes with a gangster named Lorenzo and his boys T-Bone and Baby Boy. They beat the crap out of Michael on a regular basis. Michael attempts in his bungling way some voodoo with a clown doll he calls Killjoy but it doesn't work - at least not in time. Michael is grabbed by the thugs and they're messing around, pretending they're going to shoot him and darn it, the gun WAS loaded so Michael dies.

Skip ahead skip ahead and Jada is with someone else and so is Lorenzo. While Lorenzo is, uh, busy with his girl his boys go for ice cream (WTH?). The clown in the truck says he's got drugs so they climb in. Ah geez. They suddenly find themselves in a warehouse somewhere and try to find their way out - but Baby Boy gets squished against the wall by the ice cream truck. T-Bone finds a blunt and smokes it - but then it smokes him. Sorry folks, that's as good as this gets. Lorenzo goes to find his boys, finds the clown instead and fills him full of lead - which the clown absorbs and returns the favor, killing Lorenzo.

Then a homeless man comes into the picture, all full of voodoo wisdom. He gets Jada and two of her friends together to defeat the dumbass clown. Sorry, but this was really REALLY stupidly offensive. The power of love is the only thing to defeat the clown since Michael loved Jada. Uh huh. And monkeys might fly out of my butt. Whoa, that was a flashback.

So they fight, they win, they lose, they win again, and finally Killjoy is defeated thanks to some stinky homeless guy who disappears when it's all over. The movie description says that means he was an angel. Uh huh. Black angels are stinky hobos? Is there anything that can put a positive spin on that? It ends with Jada and her boyfriend doing the nasty until the boyfriend turns into Killjoy. The end. Not.



Killjoy 2: Deliverance From Evil (2002): Lather, rinse, repeat. This time it's about delinquents being taken to a detention center where they work their time off. Of course, they break down where there's no cell phone reception because apparently cell phones only work if you're not in trouble and are near a Starbucks. The group of young people (Do you REALLY care what their names are?) grumble about the primitive conditions but then again they really didn't have it so great anyway - what do they have to complain about? Oh yeah, they're slated to die.

Things get... weird. And that's never good in a horror movie 'cause it means they really didn't have a clear script before they started filming. I mean they find a cabin, and a white redneck female (remember I'm using their words) who shoots one without warning so she's shot dead. Sounds fair. The shot teenager is taken back to the van but there's no medical kit. Looking for help they find ANOTHER cabin (should have found this one first) with a voodoo mambo (priestess) and my eyes started to really hurt from rolling so much. 

Her name is Kadja and gives them this barely intelligible speech on how their friend will live if he WANTS to live. Whaaa? Screw it. Luckily (or written into the script just now) one of the girls has a grandmother who told her about Killjoy and that she can raise him to help the wounded boy. Umm, wasn't he for vengeance? I don't remember him being the spirit of first aid. So they do their own mumbo jumbo without the mambo's help.

And they start to die and that's a good thing - it means the movie will be over soon. One dies in an outhouse (no comment). Killjoy is back... and he's now white. I mean under the makeup. Why? Pffft... never mind. He impales the next kid on a water pump for absolutely no reason. The already wounded kid is dead 'cause the mambo says he didn't want to stay. Smartest kid in the movie. The next one kills himself with his own knife. 

Now the mambo decides to help (NOW?). But mambo does not necessarily mean smart, and she's the next to go. Now we've got three, let's get this finished. Killjoy is vanquished BY HOLY WATER. Okay, I'm not even going to try to explain that one. It melts his head (didn't know he was a vampire) and he's dead. Again. Not. The remaining three are taken away by a ranger and since they thought this was the last one there's no setup for a third but...

Killjoy 3 aka Killjoy's Revenge (2010): Like some other horror franchises, they kind of give up trying to make it scary and inject it instead with a ton of silly (a la Chucky films) and stupid to try and revive interest in a killer clown. Yeesh. This time Killjoy is 'summoned' by a guy who uses his own blood and Killjoy uses it to make minions (kind of like Demon Knight) called Punchy (the sad clown copy), Freakshow (copying Kuato in Total Recall but with an obvious plastic doll glued to him) and Batty Boop (she's naked but with so much body paint it really isn't an issue). Oh, and all four are obviously white under the makeup. The guy making the pact breaks it before its finished so Killjoy is pissed.

So we've got college kids (mixed races this time) staying at a professor's house while he's out of town because that's what happens in no college with no professor ever. There are four so how long could it take to kill them? Actually only 78 minutes, although it seems much longer. One kid finds a package on the doorstep and so of course they open it - it's an uglier than hell mirror. They promptly hang it up because that's what no college kid would do ever. So of course it makes perfect sense for this movie. We're not going to ask where the mirror came from, okay?

The mirror is, of course, a direct line to wherever Killjoy is in this movie (sort of looks like his bedroom to me). One falls in, gets the crap beat out of him before he can get out. Not dead? Damn. Oh but now there's a barrier over the house so none of them can leave so... what? Why should anything make sense?

So one gets captured, Killjoy shows up and tells them if they don't come through the mirror, he'll kill the captured one. Meh. Oh, like I said, this one is played for laughs so we see some interaction between Killjoy and his, uh, creations - the naked one was badgering him and he said she was acting like a queen and she tells him 'Well you dress like one.' Ha. That was not laughter, I just needed to breathe.

So the idiots do it and each try to convince the dummy clowns to their side by various means too stupid to print. And the professor comes home, sees the mirror and, grabbing some ancient book because in this movie Killjoy isn't just a stupid doll brought to life by voodoo, but an ancient demon (of course) who's secret name (is it Rumpelstiltskin?) will defeat it and send it back to.... uh... wherever.

The professor comes back with a secret ancient book (with Killjoy on the cover - uh, wasn't he supposed to be a demon of another name?) and goes into the mirror. Like the true gentleman he is, he allows Killjoy to murder a couple of the students before he steps up. Nice of him. It is revealed that he is Michael's (From the original, remember?) father and is looking for revenge for his son. Killjoy convinces him that he is made of the souls he takes, and Michael appears to his father and tells him he loves him. Awww. Then Killjoy whacks his head off with a giant mallet. I almost applauded.

This time Killjoy is destroyed with salt (Salt? Holy water? Try acid next time idiots!) when the two remaining alive start laughing at him and distract him - but not without him killing one of them first. The one left alive gets back through the looking glass but can't stop laughing - all the way to the insane asylum where, we presume, she spends her life (or at least the time until they made the fourth one). The freakin' end.

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