Movie Review: Sloppy the Psychotic (2012)

Send in the clowns...unless he's a recovering alcoholic who, once he falls off the wagon, goes on a killing spree that would make Jack the Ripper say WTF, bro?

Sloppy the Clown is Mike, a down on his luck guy who lives with his folks. The "Clean and Sober" signs everywhere indicate that because of a drinking problem, Mike has hit a bit of a rough patch while chasing his dreams. Fortunately, he does have the job he's always wanted: a performing clown. Much to his father's chagrin, Mike is very good at his job. That is until he man-handles a young child while she draws a picture that basically says clowns suck.

Of course, Mike is fired and when he arrives home, he leaps off the wagon and drowns his sorrows in what looks like peppermint schnapps. When he wakes up the next morning, there's a dead chick in bed with him. Slowly his memory returns, assaulting him with visions of rough sex and murder. So...drinking not only makes him an asshole but releases a psychotic rage. But a little dead-girl-in-mah-bed won't stop him from posting freelance clown for hire signs all over town.

Over the next day or so, Mike liquors himself up, dresses in his Sloppy costume, and begins murdering the people that pissed him off: the boss that fired him; some local yahoo that embarrassed him; the mom of the clown-hating kid. But eventually that's not enough. Mike's rage boils over onto anyone unlucky enough to cross his path, or hire him for a party.

The pacing on this movie was like a snail on Ambien, at first. Documenting Mike's every move, from brushing his teeth to putting on his clown make-up, was unnecessary. Hearing his dad yell at him about getting a real job was enough to let us know Mike's circumstances. Once he started drinking, though, things picked up. I actually became interested in how Mike's life would progress, or falter, and it was fun to watch him spiral into self-destruction.

But for the last 30 minutes, I got the feeling that the creators realized they only had so many feet of film left to use so they had to accelerate Mike's psychosis to beyond comprehension. Suddenly he's slaughtering handicapped people with the unfortunate timing of their care taker slipping into a friend's house to get high while, inexplicably, having the strength to knock each other down with a small dog turd. Then he moves on to a birthday party where he kills all the kids with Ajax on the cake, and if that didn't get them fast enough, he crushed their skulls or rammed fence posts into their backs.

And that doesn't even cover cooking his victims and serving them to his next clients/victims. What? Sloppy is a perfect name because his culinary skills and devolving psychosis are an absolute mess.

The audio is terrible. One minute I had the volume turned up to 25 so I could hear the dialogue and the next I had to run and get cotton gauze to clean up the blood rushing out of my ears when the music kicked in. I'm guessing the writer/director/cinematographer/star had enough on his plate so delegated the sound to someone who is completely deaf.

I know it seems that I rag on the acting a lot in these low budget films. And I'm going to do it again for Sloppy. It's just awful. People, just because you can recruit your parents, friends, aunts, uncles, neighbors, nieces and nephews for your film doesn't mean you should. Yes, you can probably pay them in Diet Dr. Pepper and JuJu Bees but is the low quality product really worth it just so you can get your movie 'out there'?

I didn't think so.

1 (out of 5) Hatchets