THE FUNTIME SHOW

With evil clowns seemingly all the rage at the moment, it's good to see a new production putting a spin on the concept. The talented team at Optic Nerve Productions, makers of the award-winning short TORMENTED, have lived up to the promise of their previous work and now present us with a long-form piece called THE FUNTIME SHOW.

Coming in at under ten minutes, THE TORMENTED nevertheless indicated that Mark & Tracy Smith would be more than capable of handling the rigours and demands of a feature movie. THE FUNTIME SHOW isn't quite that, but it's a clever take on familiar themes and imagery, and a promising stepping stone on the path to greater achievement.

The film makes inventive use of earlier Optic Nerve shorts - and indeed, a nerve seems to have been touched, judging by an on-screen rant towards the close that seems to use the central character as a mouthpiece for the frustrations of the production team! The logistics bring us a combination of new footage with mixed-in excerpts from older work, the entire enterprise running for an hour but feeling pretty seamless and substantial. There's a lot happening beneath the surface too - the major fright figure, 'Mr Sunshine', comes loaded with complexities and 'issues', and deceptively so too. At face value he's a masked, deranged Pierrot with a line in non-stop patter and a larger-than-life air - but as the story progresses, you may find yourself wondering with increasing anxiety about this menacing antagonist's background. Why has Mr Sunshine adopted such a guise? Why set up such an elaborate charade (not only the 'fake gameshow' heart of the piece, but presumably creating the film inserts, devising a costume and false identity, plus setting up an invitational site amid the murkier fringes of the internet to lure the unwary, thereby playing on a double meaning of the term 'web'). And all masterminded, evidently, as a means of exercising a deep-seated hatred of 21st century culture (or lack of). It's the unexplained, the unanswered, the obfuscated, that so impresses here - how long has Mr Sunshine harboured such a gnawing, nagging viewpoint concerning 'reality TV' and similar transient fare? What has driven him to these excesses? Why take revenge on randomly-selected strangers as opposed to more specific targets? The clown's outburst concerning personal failure in gaining attention for his short movies, and resultant inability to get a foot on the ladder of feature production, may well speak volumes about Mark and Tracy themselves - while the extraordinary 'silhouette' scene that starkly and bravely concludes proceedings, contrasting with the brash riot of colour we've hitherto been offered, answers one or two questions about Mr Sunshine's activities while in turn posing a dozen more.

THE FUNTIME SHOW posits that internet thrillseekers and self-promoters are provided with an avenue to fame, fortune, and above all, attention. How right Andy Warhol was. Permitted to apply online for a place in a quiz broadcast, the selected participants materialise in the studio with no knowledge of how they were transported there (though we are given a few sinister insights in a creepy green-hued night-vision sequence), to be confronted by their monstrously full-on bewigged and red-nosed host. Mr Sunshine gets very picky about who asks the questions and who answers, and becomes tellingly upset when a contestant constantly fails to refer to the film clips by their correct titles! The makers even contrive to include an interactive 'photo identification' aspect at one point, so you can join in from the discomfort of your sofa - it's not quite A CLOCKWORK ORANGE or THE PARALLAX VIEW, but then again few are. We are also shown scenes from Optic Nerve's 'zombies in the woods' gutchomper THE LAST WALK HOME, social media pick-up item STRANGER (starring Mark and Tracy but making a point of not revealing their faces, instead offering an unusual series of visuals and close-ups) and THE EFFIGY, the most professional of the shorts in standalone form, featuring a deadly woollen idol purchased from a trinket emporium and equipped with the warning never to remove its facial hood...

THE FUNTIME SHOW has an aura of originality about it - if it has antecedents, they are obscure or underappreciated ones (Herschell Gordon Lewis' gory gameshow swansong THE UH-OH SHOW, perhaps; while Mr Sunshine initially plays as though sharing kinship with the broad, raucous FUNNY MAN and his ilk, or possibly PSYCHOVILLE's bitter 'Mr. Jelly', at least prior to the closing revelations), and its clever lacing-in of existing footage to boost the running time exhibits skills in editing and assembly, as well as a keen awareness of the current movie marketplace and its rapacious appetite for feature product. As with TORMENTED, there's more than sufficient evidence here that the Smith partnership are ready to take that next step up.