TERROR ON TOUR (1986)

By guest Schlocker Jim

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: Someone dressed up like one of the members of the band The Clowns is running around killing hookers and groupies like its going out of style. The Kiss Army has been alerted to the situation and is standing by awaiting further orders.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• OK, so are these guys supposed to be lampooning Kiss by having the band named “The Clowns” or is this a serious critique of the state of rock in the beginning of the decade? I’m kidding.
• How in the living fuck did Gene Simmons not sue the leotard-constricted balls off of this movie?
• Very minor research reveals that this is a real band called The Names hailing from Rockford, Illinois. The same town Cheap Trick is from – and Bun E. Carlos didn’t have them murdered why exactly?
• If this movie is over an hour, the editor should be shot.
• I can understand the makeup and the theatrics, but why the Gene Shalit afro wigs?
• Phantom of the Opera masks as well. Glad they’re not over doing it.
• Hmm. Now they’re decapitating mannequins and stabbing topless women on stage. This is dangerously close to The Undead in “Phantom of the Paradise,” and well, pretty much every tour Alice Cooper ever did.
• When one of the Clowns throws a woman’s severed arm into the crowd, the guy who catches it I’m pretty sure was Quiet Riot’s Kevin DuBrow. (RIP)
• This girl is way too timid to be dealing drugs.
• Wah-wah pedal, wacka-wacka music in a heavy metal movie? This film was truly ahead of its time. However it was only about five minutes ahead. Rimshot!
• This is the worst band camaraderie I have ever seen.

That is very close to being a total rip-off of Eric Carr’s (RIP) makeup.

• Such flagrant drug use at this after show! What if some kids see this?
• A willing groupie tells one of the Clowns that they are better than The Beatles and The Kinks. I can guaran-god damn-tee you that they have never heard that before.
• It’s a good thing that these assholes are in a band because they have absolutely no game whatsoever.
• Oh for fuck’s sake – they gave away who the killer is by terribly executing an over-the-shoulder shot while he put on the band’s makeup.
• The Clowns have a secret “blood room,” yet they announce it to everyone within ear-shot.
• I think that all of these extras really were drunk and high.
• There’s been 3 murders at this party so far, but things don’t really get out of hand until the guests start a food fight.
• This cop really can’t understand the concept of a groupie. “What do you mean you took a girl into a private room and you don’t even know her name?”
• The manager is walking around in a t-shirt that says “Maniac.” Red herring? I shan’t say.
• The drummer’s sex scene is abysmal. The physics of it are disgusting, his pillow talk is an insult to the living and the dead, and the scene is scored to something that sounds exactly like Rupert fucking Holmes’ “Escape – The Pina Colada Song.”
• Even these Clowns have a power ballad. Eccch.
• Do you ever think when you see an actor who is so awful, that he can’t talk correctly in real life?
• It is next to impossible to take these Clowns seriously when they are in full regalia.
• OK, I’m calling in the Milli Vanilli Bullshit Factor. When the bass player stops playing to pick up a machete and cut off a mannequin’s head, you can clearly still hear the bass playing in the song.
• Hiyo! The girl the cops were using as an informant gets stabbed in the stummy, and her final dying act is to rip off the killer’s Link Hayes afro wig to show us that the killer is………….the manager!
• They’re really going with the “all those women were dirty and filthy” angle for the killer’s justification?
• Holy shit. The killer runs on stage to finish off killing Herb, starts screaming “Stop!’ to the audience – and that’s it. Freeze-frame – roll credits.

Scare Volume: Beethoven heard more.

Gore Volume: Minor bloodshed, some stabbings and a throat slash.

Nudity Volume: Plenty of boobage, and thankfully no naked clowns.

Best Kill: Probably the bullshit ones on stage that involved mannequins.

Best Scene: I’d probably have to watch it again, but I’m pretty sure there weren’t any.

Worst Scene: By far, the very ending with the freeze frame shot of the manager screaming at the crowd. I don’t know why to this day I still get mad at awful movies that have endings so abrupt you can tell the filmmakers had no idea what to do with it and just stopped making the movie.

I truly hope these people are all dead now.

Second Best Lyric: “Man, they ate it up like flies having their first piece of shit in years.” – I don’t know what my score for this will be yet, but that line made sure that it has at least one star.

How ’bout the Tunes: I wonder if in the early planning days of MTV, that the powers that were thought of the fact that sometimes the visuals could actually make the music worse.

Band Rating: The only rock I wish were present in this movie would have been one heavy enough to crush these jizz-bag Clowns under. Shit Sandwich!

Overall: Bad. Really bad. Not the kind of bad that makes you question humanity, but somewhere closer to wondering how a producer thought he could make money off of something like this. Further minor research into this movie revealed that it was filmed in only 7 days. That was a shock – with the attention to production, the Oscar worthy acting, and tight editing, I would have thought 8 days for sure.

Score: 1 Shit-starved Fly (out of 10)