Post a Comment On: A Nod to Nothing

The Last Circus is on tonight at the Trylon! Get tickets while you can. Kyle and I went last week, and if you don't mind a spoiler, I'll sum it up for you. Kid's dad is a clown. He gets drafted, in his clown suit, during the Spanish Civil War at the end of the 1930s for the wrong side. So after killing people with a machete, he gets put in a work camp building a giant church/cross the size of one of the twin towers where they can store all the skulls of those who died during the war in caves beneath the cross. The kid visits his dad and says he too wants to be a clown, a happy clown. His father tells him he can't be a happy clown, only the sad clown, because he hasn't had a childhood...unless...revenge! Revenge will make him a happy clown! Kid gets revenge by blowing up a bunch of people in the caves and getting a bunch of people killed and inadvertently putting out the eye of a general before escaping. Cut to years later. Kid joins the circus as an adult as the sad clown. The happy clown is a sadistic asshat who beats his girlfriend and likes to kick the shit out of people for fun. The girlfriend likes the sad clown and hangs with him, which leads to clown on clown smack down that puts the sad clown in the hospital. When he learns the girlfriend is going back to the happy clown, he gets out of bed with his broken ribs, heads to the circus, and bashes in the happy clown's face with a trumpet until he looks like The Joker. Obviously the police don't like this. So the happy clown flees into the woods where animals fall down through the roof of his shelter and he can eat them raw and naked. Everyone is naked. Him and the animals. One day a boar falls through the roof and chases him. But he's saved by a hunter, who turns out to be the one-eyed general, who recognizes him. He forces him to act like a dog and fetch birds in his mouth. He acts like a dog so well that he bites Franco in the hand, so they decide to put him down. While waiting his execution on the general's property, he goes mad, and uses an iron and chemicals and boxes of Christmas decorations to burn/maim/bleach/accessorize himself into a happier revenge clown. He kills various folks and wanders into the city armed with large weapons to hunt down girlfriend beating happy clown. Terrorists blow up the general, lest we forget this is a historical piece. He finds the girlfriend, now working burlesque instead of as a ribbon dancer for the circus, and takes her to the giant cross where all the circus animals are hidden. Happy clown gets the police and chases him down. Sad clown, happy clown, and ribbon dancer girlfriend all chase each other to the top of the cross for hand-to-hand fighting. Circus friends get their act together and pull up the rocket motorcycle daredevil's improved-fuel motorcycle. He jumps to save them! And blows up against the side of the cross. Shooting from the police! Hand to hand fighting between the clowns! All is lost! But there's a bolt of cloth, and ribbon dancer abused girlfriend who may or may not love mutilated sad clown wraps the cloth around her and jumps. It's beautiful! She spins. She spins! She Spins!!! Until the cloth ends and she snaps her back and dies, hanging a good distance off the ground. The cops take the clowns to the paddy wagon where sad clown bursts into maniacal tears and happy clown bursts into maniacal laughter. Obviously I'm skipping some of the important bits like mutilated happy clown wearing a beard to a children's party so they can't see his teeth through his face, but I don't want to spoil the whole thing. The trailer is below, but first, if you dare, Raphael's Balada de la trompeta (Ballad of the Sad Trumpet) - don't let it drive you insane as it did the sad clown. The trailer - I'm pretty sure this is NSFW: