Mächte des Grauens (1988)

Mächte des Grauens: Directed by Michael Schroeder. With Karen Lorre, Lynn Danielson-Rosenthal, Karen Black, Starr Andreeff. Beautiful young women who work at the offices of a phone-sex company are being stalked by a psychopathic killer.

“Someone calling himself Bobo makes short creepy calls to a u0026quot;phone fantasyu0026quot; line. One of the women working there walks home alone through a park, and encounters a man wearing a slightly over-sized clown head mask. She doesnu0026#39;t make the connection to the called named Bobo, for some reason. They play mimed baseball together, and then he kills her with the baseball bat saying u0026quot;youu0026#39;re out!u0026quot;u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eA wisecracking killer clown is stalking the women of the phone sex line. How original (sarcasm).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003ePolice suspicion falls on Kevin – the boyfriend of one of the phone sex workers. He is also in charge of photographing the other women, and he had worked for the estranged husband of the operator of the phone sex company. There are a number of other suspects for the audience, including ones played by character actors Bud Cort and Geoffrey Lewis (the estranged husband) but heu0026#39;s really the only one the police pursue. There are a lot of other character actors in the movie like a detective played by Tracey Walter, and a gratuitous Tab Hunter cameo.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMore of the women from the company are killed. Thereu0026#39;s some gratuitous nudity, though relatively little overall. One scene is a slow-motion photoshoot with a smoke machine and colored lights, set to instrumental music, like a bad 80s music video. Lame. Some of the murders are not particularly graphic, though there are some scenes featuring some blood.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere are some rather stupid scenes, like the fact the characters twice enter Bud Cortu0026#39;s office just after he has left, twice bump the lights, and twice the blinking lights are noticed by Cort. At another point, a character has an alibi for a murder (though it is one heu0026#39;d used before), but inexplicably rushes away blowing the alibi, only to be caught shortly thereafter. Youu0026#39;d expect for a character to have a good motivation to blow an alibi, but this one doesnu0026#39;t.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eActor Divine shows up towards the end as a male (!) police detective whou0026#39;d been mentioned a few times throughout the film. The film itself is dedicated to his memory.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe ending of the movie is practically stolen right out of John Carpenteru0026#39;s Halloween (1978), though I think itu0026#39;s safe to say at this point there wonu0026#39;t be a sequel for Out of the Dark. If anything, a prequel, not a sequel, was hinted at by brief mentions of murders the clown committed while working for the circus prior to the events of this movie.”