Jill Robinson (Itonia Salchek) has returned to her small town home after spending time away studying, so she can catch up with her parents, who work at the local bank. But when she arrives, she is alarmed to discover nobody has seen them for a few days, and though she meets an old schoolfriend at the diner, the reception she is receiving from the other townsfolk is frosty to say the least. She knows why: her father was forced to foreclose on many properties in the area, he was only doing his job but the residents now carry a huge grudge against him. When she does arrive at her old farmhouse home, it's even worse than she feared...
Bill Rebane is a rural filmmaker who started working in the nineteen-sixties, and despite various setbacks from operating on a low budget was still producing projects well into the twenty-first century. His most famous film is probably The Giant Spider Invasion, a typically shoddy science fiction would-be epic that had a habit of cropping up on television stations around the globe to underwhelm viewers, but about ten years later he had recruited the assistance of cult performer Tiny Tim, who he had met at a carnival and proposed he star in a horror movie. He could even get to sing some of his songs and dress up in his own makeup and costumes.
Tiny Tim was himself best known for his hit record Tiptoe Through the Tulips, which he accompanied his falsetto with on ukulele; he also was married on live television to a teenage fan (the marriage lasted less than a decade) and won enormous ratings in the process. He would never be as famous again, but he loved to perform the popular songs of the nineteen-twenties and had an encyclopedic knowledge of them, his shows taking the form of part singing, part lecture. But here he was called upon to act, and while he was never going to give Daniel Day Lewis sleepless nights, he did have more of a memorable presence in this than anyone else on the screen.
That included leading lady Salchek, who became the focus of belated interest probably thanks to her willingness to take her clothes off for the camera, which is the sort of behaviour that can win you attention, but subsequently - like, nanoseconds after the film was released – seemed to vanish from the face of the Earth. As far as anyone knows, there is no trace of her, offering a strange relationship between audience and actress when we have seen her in such exploitative scenes, but will never know how she felt about performing them. We do know that Peter Krause, later of TV drama Six Feet Under, was the second most famous person in this, though Rebane did not deign to give him a character name for the closing credits (he's called Scott in the dialogue).
Anyway, Scott is the man Jill wants to be with now she's back, albeit briefly, much to the chagrin of childhood friend Gary (Dean West) who is the brother of Mervo the Clown, played by Tiny Tim. Though top-billed, until the end he did not have much to do but lurk in the background of scenes and generally act creepily, which was surprisingly effective seeing as how he committed to the role with some dedication. He was more or less, Tiny Tim through and through, but with a sinister twist, and you could imagine him fitting in with a Tim Burton movie had he enjoyed an upswing in popularity (or luck) in his final years - he sang the theme song, too, all about his character. Other than his novelty value, which was considerable, this was a slasher flick so the easily-guessable murderer has a habit of hanging his victims upside down and cutting their throats, presented in such a way that Rebane appeared to be dismissing his backers with, "You wanted violence, fine. Hope you're happy now!" Tiny Tim remains the best reason to watch. Music by George Daugherty (loud synths).
