MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*
Had it not been for one IMDB reviewer, I would not have guessed that this flick, with a title suggesting a routine "evil clown" horror flick, was an installment in BC Fourteen's nutty space-opus. I'm not sure whether or not this was a good thing, though.
TICKLES plays like its author had binge-watched all of the "Hannibal Lecter" films, for half of the film is wasted as Princess Kali makes three trips to a futuristic prison to converse with an inmate dressed like a grotesque clown, Tickles. He appears to be purely mortal, though the script says nothing about what crimes he committed or why the guards allow him to remain dressed as a clown. Kali's mission: Doctor Jekyll thinks that Tickles is the only living being possessed of a "sociopath gene." Jekyll thinks that if the Allies can harvest this genetic material from Tickles, they can weaponize it against the Illuminati and end the Allies' long war with the evil aliens. But the good guys can't just beat up Tickles and take his genes, because supposedly anesthetizing the subject will mess up the experiment. So for half the film Fourteen gives viewers stupid talking-heads scenes in which Kali talks with Tickles, who keeps sexualizing her even though she's in a heavy space suit.
Other parts of the film consist of romantic drivelings between Kali and her lover Van Helsing, or of unimaginative cussing by Bigfoot. Toward the last half-hour of the flick, Fourteen somehow breaks out of prison and pilots his way into deep space. There he crosses paths with Van Helsing and blasts him to smithereens. Oh, no, will the poor princess be deprived of her lover? Ah, it's ok: Jekyll knows how to clone the deceased clone, and in no time it's back to status quo, except that Tickles makes contact with the Illuminati through their agent Crowley.
Other points of (meager) interest: so far it's the first film in the series that contains so little action that it's subcombative. Fourteen tosses in a Nietzsche quote at the movie's opening, which might be a little impressive if it wasn't the SAME EFFING QUOTE that EVERYTHING ELSE USES. There's a brief convo between Bigfoot and a werewolf that suggests a possible uprising of a "beast world," and that sounds more interesting than anything in this total dud.
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