Let's face it, clowns are just about the creepiest things to be found on this earth. No normal adult would ever smear makeup all over his face, dress up in some ridiculous outfit that even Liberace wouldn't wear and go out in public. And they're mimes, which makes them pure evil in my book. That silent laughter bit isn't funny, and that whole bucket-throwing shtick was old about a hundred years ago. I say we wait until these freakish buffoons are all crammed together in their little cars and wipe them out. Why am I ranting about clowns? Well, obviously, All Hallows' Eve features a killer clown, one who has gone even farther down the path of evil than John Wayne Gacy.

Even so, All Hallows' Eve is an underrated little horror film with quite a memorable killer.

It all starts with a videotape, which little Timmy discovers when he dumps out his bag of Halloween candy on the table. Now, when I was a kid, I watched what people put in my bag, wanting to know who was giving me fruit instead of the good stuff, but Timmy has no idea where the tape came from. Unfortunately, babysitter Sarah (Katie Maguire) gives in to Timmy's and his sister's demand to watch the thing. It appears to be some kind of unnamed horror anthology featuring a sinister clown doing unnamable things to people. It's just the kind of thing to get under the skin of horror novices like Sarah and the kids.

After watching the first of the video's three stories, Sarah finally shuffles the kids off to bed, but she continues to watch in an effort to convince herself that what seems increasingly real is not in fact real at all. That, of course, is a big mistake.

The middle of the three anthology stories is pretty darn weird and barely features the clown, but the first and third are pretty good examples of your typical slasher fare. Two of them look like drive-in shlock from the 1970s, so I was surprised to learn that all three scenes came from recent other films made by director Damien Leone. They do have that old-school look and feel to them, though, and that's a plus in my book.

All Hallows' Eve doesn't deliver any surprises, but I enjoyed it. The director wasn't shy about using blood and gore, and Mike Giannelli puts in a memorable performance as Art the Clown. He's even more sick, twisted, and evil than your average killer clown, and that makes All Hallows' Eve eminently worthy of a spot in your Halloween week horror movie rotation.