Gingerclown (2013)

Imagine a strange, curious species of extraterrestrial that wanted to reach out to the human race and express their interest in mutual exchange. Imagine that species knew nothing more about us than a box set of the most popular American ‘80s movies. And imagine that species stubbornly insisted on communicating in the medium of film. They’d probably make something like Gingerclown. But in this case, it’s not aliens from another planet. It’s just Hungarians. I don’t know much about Hungary. They have a ridiculously overcomplicated language and they’re somewhere in Europe. Also, they gave us Gingerclown.

Gingerclown is about a nerd and a pretty, popular blonde with a heart of gold who both get chased by drunken jocks into a haunted amusement park after dark. Eventually the jocks follow. They all discover the park really is haunted. Not by ghosts, but by a host of surreal monster puppets. With their true and pure hearts, just maybe our hero and heroine will get out alive and in love.

Right away you know something’s up when you hear the jocks talking. The dialogue is stilted and suspiciously obsessed with balls. The actors’ delivery veers between the bizarre cadences of ‘Biff’ (da-duh-da-pause-da-duh-pause-da-da) and a straight-up Eurotrash accent. Those varsity jackets aren’t fooling anyone! Nor is placing the amusement park behind the Hollywood sign.

Your suspicions that all is not right with Gingerclown are confirmed when you actually meet the clown. He isn’t ginger or a clown. He’s a big, lumbering troll. And the creatures in the amusement park with him aren’t clowns, either. They’re big, lumbering cyclopes, giant, lumbering spiders, and other weird stuff. It’s like they inherited a swimming pool of old latex from a deceased relative and moulded these things before they ever had a script. They’re actually really cool-looking creatures. They just don’t make any sense.

The nerd and the bimbo, as protagonists, don’t do much protaging. They stumble from one odd creature to another, interact in a variety of surreal conversations and activities, until they stumble to the next creature. Probably my favorite of these surreal conversations is when the bimbo, near the end of the film, tells the Gingerclown, “You’re not a clown at all, are you?” 

Gingerclown is—it’s like someone dumped Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Revenge of the Nerds, and Legend in a compost heap on a Hungarian onion farm and they all kinda decayed over the decades into this. In the same way, it’s kinda like looking at our own culture in a funhouse mirror. It’s weird and briefly amusing.

With the production value of a decent Full Moon flick and much less common sense, Gingerclown is an interesting plunge down the rabbit hole. I won’t say it’s good. But I will say it offers a unique experience. On that alone, I recommend it.