Mr. Jingles (2006)

On recent trip upstate to visit my sister, we relived one of our favorite pasttimes -- picking out crappy-looking horror movies from Blockbuster and watching them aided by copious amounts of wine. I started at "Z" and she started at "A" and we both had to pick a movie before we met in the middle.

I picked Mr. Jingles, much to my sister's chagrin, as she is terrified of clowns. The DVD cover is actually pretty scary-looking and I was looking for some scary-clown fun, like a low-budget IT.

On the contrary, I'm pretty sure I could have made this movie in my neighborhood with my dad's old video camera. This was seriously the most terrible acting and cinematography I have seen in a LONG time. Mr. Jingles is some deranged serial killer who kills this girl's family and consequently sends her off to a mental hospital.

Mr. Jingles (called this because he has some bells that sound like Santa's reindeer) stalks the family of three through their house, offing them with this two paltry little axes. Seriously though, I probably could have created better death scenes with a couple of butter knives and some ketchup. It was SO FAKE. But a police officer shoots Mr. Jingles and we assume his reign is over.
So this poor girl spends something like 7 years in the mental hospital before she's released to the care of her aunt and her stoner cousins. Immediately after she leaves the hospital, she's ready to meet boys and party (either her treatment was great, or completely ineffective) Luckily, her aunt is called out of town for business and the party is ON.

Sadly, one of her goth cousins and his weirdo friends have different plans. To commemorate the "anniversary" of Mr. Jingles's "rampage" (which I can so far count as a mere two deaths), they're going to dress up like Mr. Jingles and scare their poor cousin. So they head out to the cemetary, and oh noes, someone has beat them to the punch and is running around as Mr. Jingles! The token chubby Marilyn Manson-wannabe dresses up anyway, however, they all never make it to the actual "scare" as the real (?) Mr. Jingles returns to complete his killing "spree" (which now appears to involve a few more bodies than before)

Geez, this movie was terrible. The Mr. Jingles in the movie looks nothing like the one on the cover -- he looks more like a Ronald McDonald on crack. I love a crappy B-movie as much as the next devoted horror fan, but there was no value here -- cinematic, scary, or otherwise.

Grade: F (the part in IT where the clown turns into a bug -- complete waste of an opportunity to utilize a scary clown to it's full potential)