Pauline Black

(In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) No one will ever mistake Funny Man for a good movie, but to recognize its value fairly, it does have the undeniable advantage of being so weird as to be compelling. The barebones plotting (a man moves into a house he just won at cards from Christopher Lee and discovered that it’s haunted by a jester-looking monster who slaughters everyone in sight) is just an excuse for eerie visuals, taking a jester archetype to its goriest extreme. There are plenty of stretched latex, slime, gore and overdone sound effects in the over-the-top death sequences, and the result isn’t disgusting as much as it’s surreal and far more imaginative than death sequences in tamer horror films. There’s clearly an intention to go all-out here, taking advantage of the jester figure to straddle a thin line between extreme horror and frazzled comedy. (Keep an eye out for a visual reference to Scooby Doo’s Velma.)  Lee barely has more than a cameo, but it’s a good cameo. Tim James has a lot more to do as the Jester (occasionally addressing the audience). Among the victims, Pauline Black does make a stronger impression than other actors as a “psychic commando.”  Witty and self-aware, Funny Man is a bit of a surprise — it’s not as well-known as many staider horror films of the era, but it has a confirmed loopiness that keeps it interesting long after it should have become repetitive. I’m not completely uncomfortable placing it in the same rough category as the Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson films of the 1990s, although there’s clearly a noticeable gap in quality between the two. Still, Funny Man is much better than its direct-to-video pedigree may suggest.