Out of the Dark (1989) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 16

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This killer clown is not from outer space, but Los Angeles.

Out of the Dark offers up a semi-comical approach to the common slasher film. But it ends up being a convoluted mix between the odd characters, absurd storyline, and glamorous semi-nude models.

Before Viewing

Someone is killing beautiful women that appear to work at a sex phone service. And one of the suspects turns out to be a photographer that’s been taking racy photos of them. The police seem to be concerned if it might also be one of the callers tracking down the girls. It’s up to the photographer to get the evidence and prove his innocence. It’s a film that looks like a hot music video crossed with a slasher film. It’s Out of the Dark!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

The film opens with an unknown, creepy caller to a Los Angeles based phone sex line. He speaks with Jo Ann (Karen Witter) who laughs about his “short fuse” with her co-workers after the call. Camille (Starr Andreeff) is introduced as a new hire by owner Ruth (Karen Black) and warmly welcomed by the other girls. On the walk home that night, Jo Ann is confronted in the park by a man in a clown mask who pantomimes playing baseball with her, before beating her to death with a bat. The next morning Detective Meyers (Tracey Walter) and Detective McDonald (Silvana Gallardo) show up at the scene to investigate the body where they find a card for photographer Kevin (Cameron Dye) on her body.

Kevin provides headshots, and other boudoir photography for the girls, due to his dating of Kristi (Lynn Danielson), one of the employees of Suite Nothings, a phone fantasy company. Leaving their offices, Barbara (Karen Mayo-Chandler) and Camille bump into creep accountant David (Bud Cort) who also has an office on their floor. Barbara gives Camille a ride home on her scooter. As Barbara leaves her friend’s apartment, a clown-masked assailant follows her ramming her moped. The clown, identifying himself as Bobo, kills an onlooker with a shovel and then strangles Barbara on a lawn.

Ruth is again notified to come identify the body. Her young daughter wonders if the call was her daddy who has left. The police come to question Kevin again, but Kristi provides an alibi for him (even though she was not with him the previous night). Meyers believes Kevin is guilty based on all of his priors, and tries to convince Kristi of the same. A rival photographer, Dennis (Geoffrey Lewis), who has been spying on Kevin, approaches him–drunk and upset about losing a high profile job to his protege. At the scene of Barbara’s murder, Kevin finds a piece of mirror from a car–which seems like a clue.

The Detectives want to trick the killer clown into showing up at the Suite Nothing’s office. They gather at the office and reroute calls to Camille at her house, where a police officer stands guard outside. Bobo calls the fantasy line, but puts on a tape recorded speech. He knows specific things about Camille. The Detectives listening in realize that Camille is in trouble but it’s too late. When they arrive at her place the police officer has been killed and she has been strangled. Bobo was caught on a video camera that Camille had running, but no further details emerge.

Kevin picks Kristi up from her office the next day and they discover a car belonging to David has a broken side mirror, to which the piece Kevin found fits perfectly. They sneak into David’s office that night and find a hidden stash of pornography and kinky sexual devices. David catches Kristi coming out of the office, but she makes a lame excuse about looking for him and leaves. Kevin and Kristi stay that night at a seedy motel to avoid being followed. The have passionate sex. The next morning a call girl working the area is found dead by the manager (Paul Bartel) in room #13.

Kevin is brought into police headquarters for questioning, while Kristi investigates David’s office again–finding a trophy from one of the girls that was killed. She confronts the accountant when he returns and he chases her into the street where he is hit by a car and killed. The newspaper reports the case closed, and Meyers is suspended. Kristi and Kevin take the vacation they’ve talked about to a remote desert cabin. While getting blankets out of the car, Kristi discovers the clown mask in the trunk and confronts Kevin. He snaps and asks her to kill him. She does shoot him, but only after he attacks her, but it’s not enough. As he comes for her again, a shotgun blast from Meyers blows him out the window, where he dies.

“You know what they do to killer clowns? They send them to f***ing funny farm.” – Bobo

Out of the Dark is a low-budget film, trying to come off as a higher-budget film. It has a great idea for horror film, but ends up being neither scary nor suspenseful. The high concept for the film, with phone sex operators being stalked and killed by a creepy killer in a clown mask has a lot of potential. It checks off the boxes for many elements of 80s horror: mysterious killer, unique situations, sexy women, T&A, and multiple homicides. However it ends up falling a little flat.

The film starts as many of the genre do, by setting up the premise and serving up a murder by the creepy killer in the first reel. It then creates the impression that Kevin is the prime suspect. However it is only because the Detective wants him to be the suspect. Meyers seems so eager to close the case and beat his rival Langella, that the film makes him look sloppy. He’s also played by Tracey Walter who was often cast as dim or dumb character. So at this point the audience thinks Kevin can’t be the killer because he’s dating one of the girls. The film then introduces Dennis, who is a disheveled, drunk, ex-pornography photographer who is spying on Kevin. He’s creepy, the killer’s demeanor. He’s Ruth’s ex-husband, there’s motive. But he seems a little old, and has a total of three scenes in the film. Finally, introduce the creepy accountant who works down the hall. David Stringer played by Bud Cort fits the bill even better. The girls think he’s creepy. He’s got a weird hidden fetish. And Cort often plays weird and off-beat characters, even playing the new proprietor of the Bates Motel in a 1987 TV film of the same name. This guy’s it! Except, he’s not. When confronted by Kristi, he folds like a house of cards. This leaves Kevin as the main suspect, again, as there are no other men in the film (apart from the police and the hotel manager). The only alternative would have been for a new character to pop up as the killer, which i snot unheard of in 80s horror cinema.

So Kevin gets confronted, and he admits that he’s the killer. He relates a strange story about having been in the circus which broke up. Apparently people kept dying. Was this supposed to be Kevin admitting to killing them? Is this even real? The backstory related by Ruth and Dennis earlier in the film said that Kevin was a protege of Dennis’s until he became a better photographer and got better jobs. So if there was a circus, it might have been when he was a teen. Or perhaps Kevin is just plain crazy. He supposedly is also the killer of the hookers that Detective Langella was investigating. But it’s okay, since in the end he thinks the love Kristi has for him (and their being together) can “kill this side” of him. There’s too much confusion for the audience by the end of the film to feel “good” about this reveal. Additionally, Detective Meyer just happens to show up at this remote cabin at the proper moment. It’s unclear how he would even know about this place, plus he was suspended from the force (presumably for harassing Kevin). The end of the film just ruins a lot of the better vibes that the first two thirds do to set things up.

The film does start with some beautiful shots. The attack in MacArthur Park at night by the lake has a nice look to it. And Kevin’s photo shoot with Barbara is like a soft-core music video with all sorts of smoke and sexiness. But for every glitzy, 80s styled moment there’s an equal, if not greater, number of shots that are too dark, ill composed, or just banal. These eclectic moments are what make the film seem like a low-budget film. Even the use of character actors with cult followings can’t help out. They do make for an interesting and assorted cast with the likes of Karen Black (Burnt Offerings), Geoffrey Lewis (Night of The Comet), and Paul Bartel (Piranha, Chopping Mall, and also a producer of this film). But in the long run they (along with Divine) also make the film feel like more of a B-movie than it should have been. Maybe the production ran out of money part way through filming, or there were problems with the script. Who knows?

Out of the Dark feels like a perfect film to show up on Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Elvira’s Movie Macabre. It has a slightly perverted sense of humor about it and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Plenty of horror films from the time do the same thing. But this film doesn’t fully commit to the absurdity that it knows it has. It wants to create bizarre characters, and absurd situations, but also show a lot of flashy T&A and create a stunning whodunnit. It’s a great example of how much having an unbalanced tone can affect the final project.

Assorted Musings

• Camille mentions in her interview that she has voiced Ookla the Mok on “The Barbarians.” This is a real cartoon character, voiced by Henry Corden, on the Saturday Morning cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian. It’s unsure why this specific, real character was referenced in this film.
• This was the final role for actor and drag queen Divine (as Detective Langella). Best known for his roles in John Waters films such as Mondo Trasho and Pink Flamingos, Divine presented here as a butch cop, rather than his normal flamboyant female.
• When Bobo is chasing Barbara in his car, there are no less than three different license plates that are seen on the car (982 RUM, 849 ASB, & HGD 555). Later when the same looking car with a broken mirror is staked out (and turns out to be David’s), it has yet a fourth tag on it: PJR 159. That’s a lot of continuity errors, and just a hint as to other, bigger production issues.