Out of the Dark (1988)

Life at the LA phone sex, I am sorry “phone fantasy”, hotline of Ruth Wilson (Karen Black) is good: Ruth is genuinely nice to her girls, business is buzzing, and the girls seem to be having quite a time making fun of their customers. That is, until a madman in a clown costume calling himself Bobo starts to kill them off in bizarre and increasingly improbable ways. Unfortunately, the cop concerned with the serial killings isn’t the glorious Detective Langella (Divine in a pretty funny cameo in full film detective regalia including a moustache) but the rather less exalted Lt. Meyers (Tracey Walter) who is bad at his job even by horror movie cop standards. Just wait until he manages to come up with a stake-out that gets a woman and one of his cops killed!

Meyers starts suspecting photographer Kevin Silvers (Cameron Dye) – tasked to make glamour shots of the phone sex ladies for a magazine article for some reason - early on, but he’s of course more into threatening his suspects and ranting at them instead of committing to anything like an actual investigation, so this guy’s not gonna find out either way. The photographer at least insists on his innocence, roping his phone sex worker girlfriend Kristi (Lynn Danielson-Rosenthal) into various attempts to prove other peoples’ guilt. And it’s not as if there aren’t a variety of sleazebags and weirdoes around who might dress up as a murderous clown. Geoffrey Lewis, Bud Cort – there are character actors aplenty for this sort of thing around.

Even if it weren’t as entertaining as it is, Michael Schroeder’s Out of the Dark would still be a very interesting film, seeing as it seems to stand at a point just before the Cinemax-style “erotic thriller” truly happened, clearly demonstrating quite a few of that genre’s sleazy sensibilities. However, where a lot of the later erotic thrillers mostly put the off-screen sex of the noir on the screen and ramp it up until it buries everything else under silicone breasts, to my feeling, Out of the Dark comes to its sleaze and nudity by way of the giallo while integrating a nice slab of slasher elements as well as a sense of genuine fun.

That kinship to the giallo brings with it quite a bit of visual style; this is never blandly shot but full of clever little flourishes in the use of light (often artificial and blue, of course), clever little moments of suspense, and so on. The plot and most of the kills are absolutely preposterous, mind you, but then, they are not supposed to be anything but. In fact, the film often shows quite a bit of glee over its own weirdness, with Bobo not just wearing the clown mask but actually putting all kinds of efforts into being a decidedly evil clown. Particularly joyful is the scene in which Bobo is finally unmasked, granting us great put-down lines like “No extra business in Bobo’s act!” (which happens not to work as useful armour against a shotgun blast), as well as useful musings about what they do to killer clowns.

In general, the film seems to have a blast with its cast of weirdoes, sex workers, and thriller movie cliché characters. Better still, and not terribly typical for a genre that’s very much about showing tits and dead female bodies, Out of the Dark seems to genuinely like its female characters, and enjoy the humour they use to distance themselves from what must be a pretty dispiriting job. There’s no moralizing bone in the film’s body. Of course, the killings are still filmed to be enjoyable – it is supposed to be a fun, sleazy horror flick after all - but this one very clearly isn’t working off anybody’s problems with women.

The cast of character actors, soap opera actresses and playmates is a joy to watch, providing good natured humour, choice overacting (I’m particularly partial to Divine’s cameo, as well as the scene where the killer finally shows their true colours) and generally likeable presences even when blouses and shirts stay on. Even when the plot isn’t particularly riveting, it’s always fun to spend time with the characters and whatever the film comes up with for them to do or say next.


So, if you’re not afraid of a bit of sleaze, you just might find yourself enjoying Out of the Dark as much as I did.