The tyranist's thoughts
I'm already trying to block this one out.
When we picked this up in the video rental palace and read the back, I instantly knew that it would essentially be a remake of one of my little favorites, Popcorn. Of course, they thought they were one-upping that great Jill Schoelen film by using an opera instead of a snuff film, but how far can you one-up something when your featured villain is a clown?
Don't get me wrong. Clowns are damn scary. But he appeared so little in this one that it didn't make much of a difference.
So a bunch of kids in a theatre class, along with their teacher, have obtained the use of an old opera hall. On the day they come along to fix it up, one of them happens to bring along the daughter of the diva that was murdered there so many years ago. Well, the death and mayhem start up.
Really, the plot is solid as it was borrowed from Popcorn with the only real problems being in how it was delivered and the fact that they completely messed up the resolution of the movie. I'm not going to give that away for you, but let me just say that unexpected does not mean good.
The movie isn't all bad, I just prefer the first incarnation. You may really dig on this one, especially if you are into the whole opera based horror thing.

Rish's Reviews
I'm blown away that tyranist did not a) attack this movie more, or b) attack me for picking it. It was absolutely awful, and I am fully to blame for renting this movie. It doesn't matter that it had Christopher Plummer in it, a fine actor, or that I thought the idea of a homicidal clown (or better, a homicidal GHOST clown) was a brilliant idea. I should have avoided this film like a jug of green milk.
And boy, was it terrible. Tyranist will probably say in his review that it ripped off Popcorn, but I wonder if the creators of Clown at Midnight had ever seen ANY horror movies, let alone that one.
I don't know where to begin, so perhaps I'll only say that poor Margot Kidder did the best she could with what was given her, and was one of the few highpoints the flick could manage. The main girl (who looked vaguely familiar, in a list-of-movies-to-avoid sort of way) seemed to be a cringing, whining, completely unlikeable character, and the fact that we knew within the first minute she would survive didn't help. The spastically gay character was so outlandish and beyond-stereotypical that there's probably not a man, woman, or child that he wouldn't offend. As a matter of fact, most of the characters were hard to like.
I wonder what true Horror filmmakers would say if I asked them which is scarier, seeing characters we like in danger or characters we don't like in danger. I think they'd say that for the audience to respond to a frightening situation, they have to invest themselves in the characters, perhaps projecting themselves onto the would-be victims, thus really being afraid for them. I may be thinking too hard here, but think about one of my favourite horror films of late, The Sixth Sense . . . part of what made that film so scary was the innocence and empathy of the Haley Joel Osment character. The scenes with him tormented are almost unbearable to watch, mostly because we have so much emotional involvement in the character. In movies like The Clown At Midnight, the teenagers are all so obnoxious, poorly-written, and personality-free that we find ourselves rooting FOR the killer, perhaps projecting that emotional association onto the murderer, rather than his prey.
Sorry, I'm starting to sound like a critic again, rather than a fan.
This movie sucked, kids. ‘Nuff said.
Posted: July 1st, 2002