By Geno McGahee
“I hope you rot in hell. I’m glad you died that night!” – Scott Valentine (John Murray)
I’m a huge fan of micro-budget horror. I love the raw look, imperfect execution and incredible heart that go into films like these. As I watched LAUGHTER, I immediately had DEMON SUMMER flashbacks. I haven’t seen a film like this in a long time and I was immediately stoked. This is the sort of film that most viewers wouldn’t understand and would immediately shut it off when they saw the production value, but those that keep it on and get it, will enjoy this flick.
Going into LAUGHTER, I wasn’t expecting to like it that much. Clown killers are incredibly overdone but the film got moving and it didn’t bother me that yet another clown is on a killing spree. Written and Directed by Adam Dunning, LAUGHTER begins with three friends planning a prank and if you know anything about horror, you know that planning a prank is not a good thing. Joey (Rocky Petroziello), Chris (Kris Marconi) and Brian (Sam Rovin) just want to scare their group and begin by telling a campfire story about a killer clown that has a mask permanently attached to his face. This sets up a prank with Joey running in on the group in costume only to get beaten to death by the group’s jerk/bully, Mike (Tim Merli). This puts them in a situation and they must make a decision. They decided to follow the road of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and bury Joey and pretend that they didn’t see him. That will be a grave mistake!
Joey’s father, Scott Valentine (John Murray), goes to the police station and deals with Detective Peter Barretta (Robert Storm) and the meeting doesn’t go well. Valentine is heated because the death of his son is not being looked into as he expects and Barretta seems to find some amusement in the anger of a grieving father. I really liked Scott Valentine. Sure, he had his shortcomings. He was drunk and abusive to his son, but he had a good heart. He didn’t deserve to be (spoiler) burned alive.
I also want to mention that Robert Storm was a stand out in this flick. I thought his performance was hilarious. When he gets fired up, he really shines. I would have liked to see him go ape shit a little more in this.
Those involved in the cover up of the death of Joey begin to start hearing his voice and a clown appears and begins killing them off one by one. He doesn’t accept apologies either and kills them in very gruesome ways. I began to be reminded of another micro-budget flick: SCARECROW. I also began to think back to the Hollywood Video days when they carried low to no budget horror films. I would rent them weekly…how I miss those days.
The murders continue and Detective Barretta and Detective Verra (Mark Colby SR.) are on the case. Colby SR does a respectable job in the role. It was also nice to see that Gruesome Hertzogg (Scott Geiter) made his way into a horror flick as a radio personality. Hertzogg does some great podcasts and horror reviews and it was pretty amusing to hear him in the role of a DJ.
LAUGHTER is a micro-budget slasher that has all the problems that a micro-budget film usually has, BUT it has all of the things that make a special micro-budget film special. The acting, overall, is pretty bad, camera shaky (seemed all hand-held) and the audio isn’t very good, but the story is good, entertainment value is high and there is a lot of heart rolled into this film. If you are like me (and I’m rather strange…so maybe there aren’t many like me), this will take you back to a time when the movies from Brain Damage and the other similar companies’ films were all over the shelves at the video stores and every Friday, I would pick up a couple and enjoy. I highly recommend this film to the true horror fans out there that understand that the low budget/indie films are what the genre was built on.
Rating: 7/10
