Killjoy 3 (2010)

Movie Info

Stop by for dinner with Killjoy and Punchy

Summoned by a professor (Darrow Igus), Killjoy (Trent Haaga) decides three is better than one and creates Punchy (Al Burke), Freakshow (Tai Chan Ngo), and Batty Boop (Victoria De Mare) to join him in his killer fun.  When the professor refuses Killjoy’s offer of revenge, Killjoy is trapped until the professor’s students Sandy (Jessica Whitaker), Rojer (Michael Quentin Miles), Erica (Olivia Dawn York), and Zilla (Spiral Jackson) unwittingly release him from a magic mirror.  Now, Killjoy is on the hunt, and Sandy, Rojer, Erica, and Zilla may not be able to escape Killjoy and his gang’s evil games.

Directed by John Lechago, Killjoy 3 is a Full Moon Entertainment low-budget horror movie.  Following Killjoy 2:  Deliverance from Evil in 2002, the film was shot in China and released straight-to-video in 2010.

I got the Killjoy series as part of a collection of the Puppet Master series.  I have a love-hate relationship with Full Moon pictures.  I love their cheesiness and the fact that they have so many titles that in college you could watch a different Full Moon movie every weekend and never run out, but a hate in that most of them are cringe-worthy bad in both acting and visuals.  While Killjoy 3 is no piece of art, it does show a slight improvement over the previous entries…emphasize slight.

Why am I just a bad Harley Quinn?

The movie (like most of the Full Moon features) doesn’t really take itself too seriously, but also is trying to mimic other more popular films.  Killjoy has always tried to be a Freddy Krueger type by cracking jokes and being goofy.  Most of the jokes fall flat, but a few more hit in this movie.  In addition to Killjoy you have some fun with other clowns that Killjoy creates (I kind of like the Zilla character psychoanalyzing Punchy), but the movie completely collapses at the end by trying to wrap it up quickly…and it was only half “built” to begin with.

The cast is what you’d expect from a low-budget straight-to-video horror film, but once again, it is a step above some of the actors from the previous entry.  Trent Haaga is a better Killjoy than the first Killjoy (Ángel Vargas) and he is slightly less annoying in this outing.  The addition of more clowns helps and all three have their moments.  Victoria De Mare just does her best Harley Quinn imitation most of the movie, but it does spice up a rather dull picture.  The rest of the cast is pretty dispensable, but I do commend Spiral Jackson who at least gives dimension to the usually generic “big guy” character of a horror movie.

Baby clown attack!

The movie looks cheap and has cheap sets.  This adds to the humdrum set-up of the story and the actors and really brings any chance of the movie being good down.  If the movie had worked on being more stylized and edgy, it would have probably failed as well, but cheap visuals in a short, sweet, and to the point horror film probably was the best decision.

Killjoy 3 improves on the Killjoy format, but there wasn’t much to improve on to begin with.  The first movie is awful, the second film is awful (but maybe a bit better), and this film is average at best.  Killer clowns should be scary but Killjoy proves you can have multiple killer clowns who aren’t scary or funny.  The best part of the whole Killjoy series is that the attempts to build a mythos around Killjoy in which “everyone knows Killjoy” is a common theme in the movies…when in reality, no one knows Killjoy.  It is like “fetch”; quit trying to make it a thing.  Killjoy 3 was followed by Killjoy Goes to Hell in 2012.

Related Links:

Killjoy (2000)

Killjoy 2:  Deliverance from Evil (2002)