jackaracker123 Chances are, if you're not from any part of the UK, you won't enjoy this film.The humorous exchange of dialogue between characters is nuanced by realistic siutations; of which many Britons may have encountered in real life. It's so well done and the acting is superb for the most part, it's bound to give you a few laughs, and some of the one liners from certain characters are hilarious.Whilst some of the characters and jokes are cheesy, it plays off well given the discord of joyful yet sinister thematics. The soundtrack complements the film extremely well, and the almost Kubrickian cinematography blends with the cheap effects and soundtrack to create a feverish dream of a film.On the subject of cheap effects, the practical gore effects are actually fantastic, the Punch and Judy scene was great, so was the "they dont like it up 'em" scene. If you're a typical Brit who enjoys good humour and horror, give this a watch, it's almost a bloody masterpiece.

Cinema_Fan Funny Man the Harlequin from the deep bowels of the earth, waiting for his calling in this exceedingly surreal fantasy horror of the B-movie genre. Concerning the obnoxious Taylor family, victims of the modern age with their indifference to each other let along anyone else. With father and mothers little habit and with their young son and teenage daughter left to their own devises, and their lucky win, at the time, via a poker game, of the family home, in the English countryside, of one Callum Chance (Christopher Lee). A win that will have this unexpected family playing more than the joker for their lives. Simon Sprackling, both director and writer of this very British movie, has a humour that delivers wit and slapstick that is all very bizarre and horrific, and English.Shock and startle, this is what Funny Man does best, and with his touch of poetic justice, he delivers a blend of fiery retribution and with his fearsome and disturbing looks. Funny Man will deal you your fate on the spin of the wheel of fortune. His justice is all sift, callous, graphic and controlled.This movie is low key, but at the same time high on imagination with an exceptionally amusing script, albeit the delivery and sarcasms from Funny Man himself, and its visual persona. Enough in fact to bring several highly fictitious individual characters together, such as the malice ridden Hard Man, played here by Yorkshire born Chris Walker, the dippy hippie George Morton as the Crap Puppeteer, and the wonderful Pauline Black as the Psychic Commando. Ms Black is more commonly known as the singer with The Selector, formed during the late 1970's and emerging from the Two Tone movement in late 1970's and early 1980's Britain, with such bands as The Specials, Madness, The Beat and Bad Manners. Here she plays a Caribbean type voodoo superwoman who can generate a blaster type gun from her arm, and boy, does she know how to use it. But the best is yet to come, with these vagabonds we have the superb Thelma Fudd, played with zest by Scottish born Rhona Cameron, an amusing 3-D variant on the Velma character from the Scooby Doo cartoon franchise, fantastic parody right down to the thickset-rimmed spec's, haircut, attitude and short orange shirt, fantastic.With its opposing members, each from varying social backgrounds, they just cannot seem, or just do not want to, get along. With this in mind, do these victims actually deserve their fate? If fate had turned down the right road, with compassion, respect and understanding, then maybe social indifference's, apathy and intolerance would have surfaced another day, but no, the fool of fools, the court jester, the Funny Man was called, called to cull these misfits and tyrants of social decay and decadence. Just deserts for just causes.This is a British movie through and through, with its heavy accents, cast and with Simon Sprackling being nominated the International Fantasy Film Award by Fantasporto during 1995 for Best Film. Its no wonder really, as the cinematography, by Tom Ingle, is both interesting and along with Simon Sprackling's script and overall direction of macabre horror makes Funny Man seriously horrific and at the same time funny, man.

aelthric As long as you get the original UK uncut VHS version this film it is a treat for those who appreciate a very typically British sense of humour.The film presents us with at least 8 loathsome stereotypes who are humorously dispatched by our anti-hero Funnyman.In the full version of the film (not available in the US as I found to my cost when I ordered the DVD from some place in Chicago) the violent scenes are a campy gore fest accompanied by suitably humorous music, in the cutting down of those scenes for the US market much of the humour is lost to the cutting room floor.Unfortunately it seems that the authorities responsible for censoring movies in the US find the humour a little TOO violent for American Sensibilities (Something that I am sure many Americans would disagree with had they been given the opportunity to see this film in its entirety).This is a cult movie of the first order, not everybody's taste in comedy (which is what gives it its cult movie status) but certainly a movie that is unworthy of deletion and unworthy of the philistine cutting room in the US censors office.Like the comment on the VHS and DVD cover of Funnyman says "He's cheeky and he's cruel" and sometimes cruelty is involved in humour to deny that is to deny humour of which this film is Jammed packed full from the very simple humour of slapstick to the more cerebral humour of irony, farce and parody.If you are going to venture a rental or a buy, make sure that you go for the uncut / uncensored version it is infinitely more funny.This is a film that works well if you are familiar with Britain and British culture, if you don't know who Jimmy Saville is or are so out of touch with Britain that you think any of the accents employed by the characters were "Cockney" (Which none of them were) then clearly you will not understand the gags or parodies and can be forgiven for your lack of appreciation for them.Additional Background Information of Interest:Whether or not Simon Sprackling based the Funny Man character on an old English legend is not known but people who view this film should be aware that there was a real life funny man counterpart in history, his name was "Thomas Skelton" (Tom Fool) and he was the Jester and Sheriff to the Pennington family.Legend has it that Thomas would often be seen sitting at a tree on the roadway waiting for travellers to go by, he would then engage them in conversation and decide whether or not he liked them, the unfortunate travellers that Tom decided he didn't like he directed towards the local marshes and quicksands where they would meet their grizzly fates.Thomas Skelton (Tom Fool) died around 1600 and gave the phrase "Tomfoolery" to the English language even being cited as the inspiration behind the Jester in Shakespeares King Lear.Today Mucaster Castle in Cumbria claims to be the home of Thomas's Ghost who is apparently every bit as mischievous today as he always was.I would rather like to think that the inspiration for Funny Man came from this ancient legend than from some Hollywood garbage, something others unfamiliar with the legend might find hard to believe, but life did exist before Hollywood and Hollywood is NOT the ONLY source of inspiration to those with access to other cultural sources.Thomas Skelton was the original Psychotic Jester predating "Freddie Krugger" by a mere 400+ years and predating the USA by a mere 200.

Skutter-2 An awful, nearly impossible to watch and deservedly obscure piece of excrement. There us nothing more tedious and hard to sit through than bad comedy and this film is a perfect example of that. The whole victims die by some ironic means of death somehow appropriate to whatever personality traits they have displayed (Usually just the one, as with most movies of this ilk the characters are completely one dimensional) shtick was old a long time before this film was made. Still, it trots out that routine without any real originality, skill, wit or aplomb as the various annoying characters are killed one by one. The funny man the films half arsed British attempt at a Freddy Kruger type character is pretty lame and none of his jokes are remotely funny.With type of movie the individual scenes can sometimes be amusing even if there is only enough plot to provide a pretext for a series of killings (This film doesn't even go that far, stuff just happens) but they are all so badly staged, nonsensical and at times incoherent that they are hard to sit through. Most the scenes are needlessly protracted and are like a long, rambling joke with a bad punch line that would have been disappointing if the joke had been a quarter the length. Some of the stuff in the movie, like the bits with the Jamaican voodoo woman, or whatever the hell she was supposed to be, going underneath he house were almost entertaining in a WTF kind of way but again it was all so tediously protracted and badly staged that I was just waiting for it to end.I like to watch bad horror movies and whimsical over the top humour, which I gather this movie was trying for but this movie was a train wreck. Just because something isn't meant to be taken seriously doesn't mean it can't be crap.