Review by Tristan Bishop
If you’re a horror fan advancing in years you may remember the dark days of the early-to-mid nineties, where genre product was at its lowest ebb since the late 1940s. The late 80s comedy horror craze had run its course, and before (love it or hate it) Wes Craven’s Scream revitalised horror with big budgets, teen superstars and a soupçon of intelligence, we were forced to contend with the absolute dregs – with films such as Dr Giggles and the godawful British Funnyman (surely a career low for Christopher Lee?) being the only choices in the new releases.
Oddly enough when I first read the synopsis for Stitches, a brand new Irish attempt at comedy horror, somewhere in the long-forgotten depths of my memory a Stygian bell began to sound and I wondered why I was experiencing such dread – of course, the plot reminded me a lot of the aforementioned Funnyman. But, I reasoned, we are twenty years on now, those days are (hopefully) gone forever, and, well, after the torture porn epidemic and with ongoing global austerity, maybe we could do with a few laughs anyway?
Stitches sees the comedian Ross Noble in his first screen role in this Irish production as the titular character: a grubby, offensive clown who has sex in full costume and lives in a grotty caravan. He has been booked to play at a ten year old’s birthday party, but it doesn’t go very well – in fact the kids are so unamused that they turn the tables on Stitches, culminating in a shoelace-tying prank that goes horribly wrong, ending with an extremely dead clown with a kitchen knife through his face (he’ll need more than ‘stitches’ after that, lemme tell ya). Tom is understandably a little disturbed by these proceedings, and even more so when, spying through a telescope in his tree house, he observes not only the sparsely attended clown’s funeral, but also a late night creepy ritual by the ‘clown society’ which appears to involve some kind of black magic…
We flash forward 6 years – Tom is now a nervous teenager about to celebrate his 17th birthday in a quiet manner, but, in true horror tradition, with the ‘help’ of his enthusiastic friends it turns into a massive, messy teen party. But amongst all the drinking, snogging and drama, someone has come back to take his revenge on the kids who killed him…
So you will by now have realised that Stitches isn’t going to win any awards for originality. Nor will it be winning any awards for subtlety – Stitches is a film which is crude, tasteless and doesn’t really care. Although some attempt is made at engaging our sympathies with the lead character and the girl he has always had a crush on, all the teen drama is really just filler until Stitches the zombie clown goes on his killing spree – and what a spree it is! In fact, this homage to the 80s slasher showcases some of the more inventive gore effects I have seen in recent years (and most of them physical too, aside from a couple of instances of dodgy CGI); I will admit that, although unmoved and unamused when the clown was off-screen, these sequences made me laugh like a drain. I could have done without the wisecracks after the kills however, which almost always fall flat (although in a way this adds to the retro charm).
Speaking of which, I found Ross Noble a more than slightly odd bit of casting – I’ve been lucky enough to catch a few of the man’s live shows, in which he more often than not jettisons any prepared material and riffs off of the crowd, often to hilariously surreal effect, so it’s odd to see him a role without that much dialogue or energy. He does look convincingly grimy, bulky and threatening, however, and is the best thing amongst a capable but rather dull young cast (who at least genuinely look teenage – unlike the 30-something school kids of the 80s slashers). The film does have a couple of other areas of charm too – The whole bit about painted eggs embodying a clown’s soul (which is what enables Stitches to return from the grave) is a wonderful piece of hokum, and, surprisingly, comes from a real life custom (although in reality the eggs are smashed when a clown dies). The music is also very impressive, with some songs with an almost 60s psychedelic feel providing a breath of fresh air from the usual identikit emo that filmmakers associate with teens.
Stitches, then, is not big or clever (or even remotely scary, unless you really really don’t like clowns), but it pitches itself perfectly as a post-pub movie with some great sick laughs; it’s a film that you could watch with a bunch of talkative friends without missing any major plot points.
Stitches is available now on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray from Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment. It comes to Region 1 on April 2nd, from Dark Sky Films.