Heckle Review (2022) Worth Watching?

It’s a low rent British horror movie about a stand-up comedian who is heckled one night at a show only for the incident to snowball into a deadly affair.

Heckle was directed by Martyn Pick and stars Clark Gable III, Steve Guttenberg (Lavalantula and The Boys From Brazil) and Toyah Willcox (The Ghosts Of Borley Rectory and Doll House).

Some jokes kill

Combes (Sharto Copley doppelganger) plays divorced stand up comedian, Joe Johnson, who has just received a big break in the form of a starring role in a biopic about infamous comedian, Ray Kelly (played by Gutenberg). Just when things seem to be looking up for him, a heckler in the audience of one of his stand up sets mocks Johnson and puts him in a state of unease. Unfortunately for Joe and his companions for the evening, his heckler is also a psychotic stalker out for revenge.

Unfortunately, Heckle’s intriguing premise never picks up steam, and it suffers from severe pacing and tone issues all the way into a “twist” ending that is entirely undeserved, poorly set up, and honestly doesn’t make any sense. Not even Steve Guttenberg (easily the most famous face amongst the cast) could elevate this film. In fact, Steve is honestly pretty bad as Ray Kelly, an abusive, bombastic, alcoholic, inflated ego of a comedian that didn’t deserve to be worshiped by his fans or his fellow comedians. Sadly, he is still the most dynamic actor in this entire dismal slog of a film.

If you enjoy hopelessly bad low budget horror films just for the sake of making fun of them, then perhaps you can give this film a go. Especially if you want to make a drinking game out of this mess or something. (Maybe you could even make a themed drink? The Heckler: 1 shot whiskey, a heavy pour of coke and a hefty dash of bitters. Add despair and disappointment to taste) All jokes aside, I cannot in good faith recommend this trainwreck of a film. Heckle can’t seem to decide if it wants to be a horror comedy that isn’t funny, or a straight slasher with awful gore and unimaginative kills. This struggle between tone makes for an awkward watch punctuated by poor acting on every actor’s part. To the cast’s credit, they are working with an absolute mess of a script that Meryl Streep herself couldn’t save.