Killjoy 1 & 2: Deliverance from Evil (2000-2)

 

Director(s): Craig Ross (Killjoy) / Tammi Sutton (Killjoy 2)

Screenplay(s): Carl Washington (Killjoy) / Douglas Snaffer and ammi Sutton (Killjoy 2)

Cast(s):

Killjoy: Ángel Vargas as Killjoy The Demonic Clown; Vera Yell as Jada; Lee Marks as Jamal; D. Austin as Monique; Jamal Grimes as Michael; William L. Johnson as Lorenzo; Corey Hampton as "T-Bone"; Rani Goulant as "Baby Boy"; Napiera Groves as Kahara; Arthur Burghardt as the Homeless Man

Killjoy 2: Trent Haaga as Killjoy; Charles Austin as Nic Gordon; Logan Alexander as Lieutenant Harris Redding; Debbie Rochon as Denise Martinez; Nicole Pulliam as Cecile “Ce-Ce” Washington; Choice Skinner as Raymond “Ray-Ray” Martin; Olimpia Fernandez as Charlotte Davis; Jermaine Cheeseborough as Eddie Jasper; Tammi Sutton as Lilly; Rhonda Claerbaut as Kadja Boszo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

The original Killjoy, the only one of the franchise I had ever seen over years, was one of many low to micro-budget horror films I picked on for that reason. A lot has changed over the years with my tastes in cinema, and Killjoy is interesting, from Full Moon Pictures and Charles Band, as a film made by a black filmmaker making a horror film set around a black cast, which should not be the immediate thing to pick up from in a review on the film aside from the fact, with mostly white directors and productions making the most well known horror films at this time into the Millennium, you get here a minority voice when even the horror genre did not feel as well representated as it probably should have always been. This story opens with a young man named Michael whom, asking a woman named Jada out, gets brutalised by her boyfriend Lorenzo and his gang. They do not suspect him to practice occult arts and try to bring forth the titular Killjoy, a homicidal clown figure. Michael neither expected to be killed by Lorenzo, who takes him to the woods to scare him, only to realise too late his gun was still loaded.

Killjoy is an odd one to try to review as, over seventy minutes, you cannot really elaborate on its premise, where the ominous creepy clown arrives a year late to bump off Lorenzo and his friends in an ice cream truck with a dimensional wormhole in the back. This is insanely economical in getting to the chase in the beginning, getting through the plot with little chaff, and concluding in a short running time. Set around Jada being under threat from this spectre, despite having long split from Lorenzo, this still has a personality, just in terms of being an early digital 2000s film, such as the vaporwave Windows 95 synth score if disarming for a horror film, or how Killjoy's opening gambit, in an ice cream truck that sells bootleg Sonic the Hedgehog headed lollies, is to drive up to Lorenzo's friends and offer them special weed. Effectively, this character is inspired by Freddy Krueger if not preying on people in dreams, able to wander in real life and taking people into the ice cream truck. Said truck sends them to a scary warehouse out of dimension where he can kill you in a variety of ways with wisecracks following. It cannot really do the elaborate effects of the Elm Street franchise, though this presents the warning to never smoke a random joint you find lodged in a chain link fence, or you will be lit up in many ways than one, and at its short length, there is no time to mood building. Thankfully you do get, in its swift length, Ángel Vargas as Killjoy, someone who brings energy to the proceedings because he decided to swing for the fences with the performance, plus a subversion of a genre trope of a no bullshit elder sage who cuts past being mocked for his supernatural warning to the leads by just providing them the truth psychically.

Sadly with Killjoy 2, a lot of this established lore goes out the window, and it feels more disappointing for me because a) this is a female filmmaker, again which should not need to be pointed out barring how at the time female filmmakers even in genre cinema were more a minority voice, and as someone who has come to admire micro-budget films, I have to respect anyone who tries to make a film. This is especially the case as a film where J. R. Bookwalter, a director of this field behind the likes of The Dead Next Door (1989), helped as a co-producer. Nonetheless, I have to admit I was not taken by this sequel, which promises a more elaborate premise, a group of criminals, petty thieves alongside a few women, including a sex worker caught for soliciting and a psychologically traumatised woman who was done for pyromania, who are taken by two police under orders to help construct a house to compensate for their crimes. You can also see a semblance of a very interesting premise as one of these criminals had cocaine planted on his by two white cops, a semblance of a political critique if there ever was one.

All minor demeanour figures, regardless, find themselves stuck in the woods with just the two cops sent to keep an eye on figures who double their number, a logic gap not of concern when the guys are goofing about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and getting condoms thinking they can seduce the female officer. Things go south when, after the car breaks down, someone is shot by a local thinking they are trespassing, by the director herself playing a hillbilly stereotype with a shotgun. In the chaos afterwards, Killjoy is summoned presuming he could heal him only to cause bloodshot, despite the warning of the voodoo priestess they wander into the home of. Killjoy is abruptly introduced after said priestess introduces him for the first time in the dialogue, and it is here that the film feels very disconnected from the original, sadly as much because Ángel Vargas is not here to reprise the role.  Whilst the new actor Trent Haaga does a good chicken impression and tries, what they established with the character in the first film is lost, and the sequel in general is a significant step down from before. Barring one scene where chattering teeth are used to gruesome effect off-screen in a wooden outhouse, there is a film here which feels too restrained to fully embrace a chaotic tone, trying to tell a story which is less interesting than if it had jettisoned it.

As her first film, thankfully Tammi Sutton would continue to direct and produce after this production, which in mind to how IMDB can be challenged for accuracy, was a film shot in only eight days¹. That does not necessarily equal a film can falter, but in this case struggles there is the sense they could not get much onscreen barring the essentials, and what they were able to create was material which did not win me over. Craig Ross Jr., the director of the first film, directed other films and television, never returning to the franchise as did Angel Vargas, never returning to the Killjoy role whilst Trent Haaga would reprise the role in sequels. There is a significant gap where the franchise was put on ice by Full Moon, taking to 2010 with Killjoy 3. This leaves this as a double bill of the early version of the character, before a reboot in many ways, from the 2010s onwards. Killjoy would come dormant for those eight years before the additional sequels would fully immerse this as part of the many franchise that Full Moon Entertainment would have under their belt; truthfully, Killjoy 2, if I still had any of the venom of my younger self, would replace the first film as one I once had on a "Worst List", but I do not even feel that way inclined anymore, only disappointed it did not appeal to me whatsoever, wishing what is here over rewatches will grow on me in spite of that initial disappointment so I can be able to appreciate it. Killjoy is an economically put together film which does not have the lurid weirdness of other micro-budget films, but I can appreciate for what it does, accomplished and tries, so I find the long time to reach it with happiness.  

=====

1) IMDB's trivia page for Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil.