100 Tears (2007)

Excellent but underrated film

Admirable film.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

For a personal standpoint, I've personally heard about this film multiple, multiple times - Hearing mixed reviews, mostly either saying this film is just flat out awful, or that this movie is actually decent. The film overall just follows two journalists who're after a story that'll succeed heavily for them. They end up following the story of the alleged "Teardrop killer" or in this case the antagonized clown killer we also follow. From there on out, both Mark and Jen find out more and more of this clown. Firstly, this film took the interesting approach of a story; This film however prevailed that to be a bit pointless. This story isn't the worst possible one out there, but for the most part it's showcasing cliché aspects. There's been countless films about detectives following cases leading to more than they bargained for, this time, now, we have a gore-hound film following such. The journalist characters we follow aren't the worst pair, it could be much, much worse. I found Mark to be a likable, goofy guy - though at times he turns a performance of being funny at either the most ineffective times, if not, it's just ineffective in general. Admittedly however there are times he lightens the mood, or simply prevails. Jen is a typical bad-ass, independent - like chick who's so involved in her work to where she leads some of the stupidest decisions - Once again seen plentiful times. The acting in this film, for a considerable "micro- budget" horror flick? It is what it is, there are some really low points throughout I feel, especially through the detectives; However that's what's to be expected through these fun little films, know what you're getting into. The gore in this movie is the absolute lead, however. It's a decent display of absolute carnage through random characters; Literally. This film throws the most random, unnecessary display of people who're there just for the sake of dying. There'll be parts of the film you see quite literally a minute to two of a random person getting slaughtered, said random person literally has no point of being there, was never mentioned, and shall never be seen again. For what's displayed, the kills weren't the most creative; Though that wouldn't be fair at all, judging by the fact we have a clown with a novelty-sized cleaver. As the body count rises, the deaths grow less, and less intriguing, I feel. However the film takes that and flips it completely around through the closing run-time, delivering the concluding intriguing, back to unique-like kills. The pacing of the film is another displayed topic that gets flipped - The beginning of the film paced decently, around the middle to closing thirty minutes it grows slower, and slower, focusing more upon the story, of which, as said, feels overly-done and clichéd. However around the end we get a more quicker, perhaps even rushed feel; The ending feels rushed compared to the rest of the movie. There are a few ordeals that happen that just happened for the sake of the viewer to be pulled back in for a split second, it felt. In conclusion, the hype. Is it all there? Is this the goriest, most disgusting NC-17 film? No. I've seen another film by the title "Sweatshop" (2011) that, to me, proved more effective. This film follows like it - Clichéd, pointless plot that is there just for the excuse of killing masses. 100 Tears follows closely, however took the unique - like approach of delivering a story; As said many times said story is clichéd, and really does nothing for me personally. Fumbled dialog, acting flaws to a minor degree, all masked by a clown with a story .. and a massive cleaver. Would I recommend watching this film? Despite this review sounding as if I'm hating on it - I don't. I WOULD however watching this film. On an overall spectrum view of this film, the hype is a letdown. On a spectrum view upon a gore-hound, this film delivered. If you're looking for carnage, 100 tears delivers. If you're looking for minor - slight comedy? 100 tears delivers. However if you're looking for something totally new? You won't find it here.

Two tabloid reporters, Jennifer Stevenson (Georgia Chris) and Mark Webb (writer/producer Joe Davison) are wanting to be taken seriously as journalists and begin investigating a serial murderer known as "The Teardrop Killer," who has been hacking up people over a 20 year period but has somehow managed to elude the police all that time by hiding out in an abandoned building's cellar. Jennifer and Mark piece the clues together, which lead them to a flea-bag circus (which seems to be right in the middle of some junkyard) and revelation that the psycho is actually an obese, jilted clown named Gurdy (Jack Amos) who murdered a few people decades earlier before disappearing. Also disappearing around the same time was Gurdy's lover Tracey (Leslie Crytzer), who has successfully managed to change her name and live in the same small town along with her and Gurdy's whorish cutter daughter Christine (Raine Brown) for two decades without being detected. Other characters include a dwarf and bartender who know the clown's whereabouts and a pair of ineffectual police detectives (Kibwe Dorsey and Rod Grant), as well as various victims (a real estate agent, partying teens, etc.) who show up just long enough to get killed.This very low-budget film (shot on digital) excels at one thing and one thing only - gore. Heck, during the first fifteen alone the body count has already reached double digits as the clown killer goes around a halfway house hacking up anyone he can get his hands on with a huge meat cleaver. There are cut off limbs, slashings, decapitations, guts spilling out all over the floor, a head getting stomped in and blood literally gushing out all over the place. These scenes are actually pretty entertaining and well done. Unfortunately after the first fifteen minutes of almost non-stop carnage, the film then tries to add the plot and deal more with characters and this is where it starts to come apart. In fact, 100 TEARS seems to falter any time it isn't being gory. The entire mid-section of the film is slow-moving, tedious and badly written, with uneven performances and a sense of humor primarily centered around farts and bowel movements. The ending is also rather sloppy, and the overdone gore scenes themselves start growing tiresome and monotonous after awhile.A good point of comparison might be with Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE (aka BRAINDEAD), which has even more gore than this one but also managed to be entertaining and fun when it wasn't being disgusting. Jackson's film is also much more clever and inventive when it comes to creating new and original gore scenes, while the kills in this one - bloody as they may be - aren't particularly clever. Though in this film's defense, it only had a 75K budget while DEAD ALIVE's was 3 million, so I guess they did a good job cramming as much blood and gore in as possible. It's just too bad the other areas of the film aren't quite as strong. From a technical standpoint (cinematography, score, sound, editing, etc.), it's pretty uneven, though again not bad for the budget.So if you're looking simply for gore and a high body count, then this will satiate your blood lust. However, if you're looking for a scary or otherwise good horror film, you'll probably find less to like here.

I loved the concept of this movie, but the low budget and half-assed acting was harsh on this title.I had a feeling going into this film that I wasn't going to enjoy it at all, but I was actually quite entertained. I would really enjoy seeing this movie remade with a bigger budget and some actors that can actually show emotion.The only showing of acting passion was from the character that played the killers daughter, she really portrayed the part well. Other than one actor, the rest of the cast was pretty slow and ineffective.All in all, I think this movie is worth the watch if you enjoy gore, but if you're looking for acting, I wouldn't waste your time.

This is a pretty average horror/slasher movie. I grant the makers they squeezed in a lot of kills and especially fans of decapitations and guts will like it. The movie is about a serial killer in a clowns outfit who slashes people by the dozen with his hack-axe. Two detectives are on the hunt for the "teardrop killer" who leaves bloody tears behind on the murder scenes and got a back story they slowly unfold. Its like two plots running along each other... Clown slashes people with some entertaining ideas (liked the wheelchair down the stairs shot) and the detectives uncover the story with real bad acting. Basically the movie should have concentrated on the gore because this is where its strong side lies... the acting is real bad, the music is annoying (always the same hardcore techno over the kills and one music sounds a lot like being taken directly out of Hellraiser). The pseudo plot will bore the gore hounds to death and especially fails of bad acting and inconsistency. "100 tears" is rather for the trash/splatter fans but I guess because the director couldn't decide which way to go this one will soon be forgotten. And BTW... the closing scene sucks and like in many movies made me think they didn't know how to get out of their scripts mess.