A slasher that heads into tickle torture porn territory!

Exploitation, horror humor, and homoeroticism are all trademarks of director Pete Jacelone’s horror films (see my blog covering many of them here), and he brings a taste of each to his psychosexual slasher THE LUNATIC’ler…as you can see from this pic.

Following his film The Pogo Project, which is a disturbingly graphic look at the killing techniques of real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy, THE LUNATIC’ler is the perfect segue back to more mainstream horror. Sure, the killer clown here is equally pervy, but he tickle tortures young men to death, bringing a campy tone that makes it much easier to have fun with. It’s feels like a gayer, white Killjoy at times.

In an opening scene that has a very uncomfortable pedo edge to it, we see a failed clown (played by b-movie king Edward X. Young) fighting with his girlfriend. When she leaves the room, he strips off her young son’s shirt and tickle tortures him in a way that walks a very blurred line between affectionate and creepy.

Years later, the boy has grown up to be an artist…portrayed by director Pete Jacelone! While painting in the woods, the artist has a nasty encounter with a handful of young men. Suddenly, the artist seems to be controlled by an alter ego—an evil clown. This evil clown persona leads him to hunt down each of the young men…and tickle them with a feather until they literally die from laughter!

While there’s an underlying dark element to the artist character’s story, the kills are campy and played for laughs—obviously—and are definitely the highlight of the film. Even though a feather is the weapon of choice, other more damaging tools are used as well, so there is some gore.

The clown is perfectly eerie, especially because he doesn’t talk. And while his teasing and taunting of the boys is reminiscent of iconic slasher tormentors like Freddy, Leprechaun, and Chucky, his more humorous evil actions are negated by signs of repressed homosexuality that take the kills into the sexual assault zone as well. He strips the boys to their underwear. He ties them up. He feels their bodies, touches their nipples, and grabs their crotches. And if you have a foot fetish, things get virtually X-rated.

Oh yeah. This clown has issues. If you want to go deeper than the simple slasher premise, there’s a bit of an Elm Street 2 closeted killer scenario playing out here. The clown is the artist’s id, acting upon the desires of the artist with the erotic foreplay, but then self-loathing takes over, so the clown destroys the objects of those feelings. All the victims are boys…except one. The main girl (yes, there’s a female in the film) is a friend of all the boys, but she wants a man, so she’s trying to score with the artist.

However, when she finally gets him alone and makes a move on him, he pushes her away…and out comes the clown to kill her. She becomes the clown’s ultimate must-kill target, perhaps because she’s both a reminder of his disinterest in women and she’s the love interest of the main boy. On top of that, a momma’s boy subplot plays out and is used by the clown to further fuck with the artist’s head.

All “psycho” analysis aside, the final scene has the clown and the main boy battle it out in a slapstick sendup of Mortal Kombat style fighting games, complete with interspersed clips of the video game the boy plays throughout the movie—a clear reminder that THE LUNATIC’ler is, at heart, a fun, darkly comic b-movie film perfectly suited for party viewing…especially if it’s a big gay party. Speaking of, here’s a big gay at a party…

It’s me in a Boys, Bear & Scares sandwich, at the New York City premiere of THE LUNATIC’ler with two of the stars. These guys get all the best funny lines in the film. Not to mention, I found actor Ben Akaezuwa—on the right with the glasses—to be such a cutie that I was too nervous to even look at him, let alone put an arm around him.