Does anyone fondly remember the last gasps of the first-wave slashers?

I fail to see how anyone could - the late '80s and early '90s must be considered a low point in the history of the horror film, as the then-predominant slasher genre degenerated into cliches, repetition and lame 'humorous' killers. Out of this festering cesspool sprang Simon Sprackling's Funny Man. Its British pedigree only proves that the boys across the pond can make films as dissatisfying as their American brethren.

The plot of Funny Man is straight out of stock (a bunch of people in a creepy house being picked off one by one) and the characters are one-dimensional prats - several of them aren't even given names, being instead identified by a character trait (i.e. Crap Puppeteer). The only note of interest - indeed, the only thing in which the filmmakers seemed to have had any interest - is its title character, a psychotic supernatural imp who looks like a jester that got caught in a fire. An interesting villain can forgive a lot of sins in the average slasher film. The Funnyman, though, is not going to get anything forgiven.

Rather, the Funnyman is punch-pressed straight from the Freddy Krueger mold. You know which Krueger I'm taking about. Not the vicious Krueger who sucked Johnny Depp into a bed and growled, "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" The Funnyman is modeled, like so many others, after the famous and influential later version of Krueger. In other words, the crap Krueger, the one who killed Breckin Meyer with a goddamn Nintendo Power Glove in Freddy's Dead. This means that the Funnyman specializes in pointlessly ornate death scenes and has a laugh line ready for every murder. Be still, my beating heart.

Granted, the Funnyman isn't the worst example of this godforsaken type I've seen. The Tanqueray-dry Britishness in his sense of humo(u)r helps; it's cheeky rather than overbearing, inspiring grunts and the occasional titter rather than groans, and I'll admit a sneaking affection for his tagline ("Sorted!").

The kill scenes also aren't too bad, and they're certainly heavy on the red stuff; my favorite involves a woman getting her brain blown out of her head in one piece (with her eyes still attached, no less). The problem with the character arises in the scenes prior to the kill-and-a-quip bits. After all, one can't just string together a series of brutal murders and call it a proper film (unless you're Alan Clarke), and once you get past the money shots, Funny Man is pretty paltry.