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yendiKiller Klowns from Outer Space
There's high concept, and then there's high concept. Any fool can come up with the idea that clowns are evil men who kill children; that's just a fictionalization of the lives of folks like John Wayne Gacy and Karl Rove*. The idea of the clown as monster isn't that much more impressive, as we're all already familiar with Stephen King's It**.
But making clowns into evil aliens harvesting humans for food, and then taking all the props and jokes associated with clowns and making those into objects of evil as well? Now that takes genius.
Like all great evil clown movies, this one starts with teenagers making out at the local secluded spot. Surprisingly, the two crazy kids, Mike and Debbie, turn out to be the heroes of this movie, and not the initial victims. While making out (in an inflated raft in the back of his car, because that's what all the cool kids do), they see a shooting star come plummeting to earth. Mike wants to get back to the important business of losing his virginity, but Debbie is curious, so they set out to investigate it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (at least, back at the small farm near where the meteor landed), a local farmer wanders out to check out the chaos. Instead of finding a big smoking crater, he finds a circus tent that has mysteriously sprung up out of nowhere. Naturally, instead of thinking there's something weird here, he sees a great chance to perpetuate hick farmer stereotypes**** and to scope free tickets! Once his dog vanishes, he figures out that something's wrong, but it's not until a deformed-looking klown (I'll use the movie spelling from now on) pops out and zaps him with a ray gun that he realizes just how wrong it is.
Soon enough, Debbie and Mike get to the tent, and they, too, decide to investigate it. They find lots of weird stuff, like giant balls of electricity and bad '80s synth background music*****, and eventually come across giant mounds of cotton candy. Naturally, they reach in and grab a handful, only to find that the cotton candy is wrapped around a dead farmer! That just ain't sanitary. They make a run for it, but a klown manages to hit them with a popcorn gun, and as they run away (trailing popcorn), the klowns build a balloon dog and use it to track them.
Really. I couldn't make this up in a million years.
I should pause to mention the other characters we've met during the opening moments. There's the obnoxious and stupid town sheriff (played by the late, great John Vernon), his smarter deputy (Dave, who just happens to be Debbie's ex-boyfriend), and the Terenzi Brothers. The Terenzis are two idiots who drive an ice-cream truck that just happens to have a big clown head on it. If most things about Killer Klowns from Outer Space are bad in a deliberately cheesy way, these guys are bad in a "poorly written, poorly acted" way. They're the only characters who I actually wanted to see die. Alas, I walked away disappointed on that front.
Back to the town.The kids make it there and try to tell the cops what's going on, but somehow, their story about evil alien klowns isn't believed. Go figure. The deputy and Mike head to the woods to check stuff out, and Debbie heads home to shower.
The next chunk of the movie is basically the "klowns murder folks using weird variations on circus gimmicks" section. And it's the reason I love this film. My favorites:
• A guy comes across a Punch and Judy style show in the middle of nowhere, and watches as the male puppet attempts to seduce the female one. When the female pulls out a ray gun and zaps the other puppet out of existence, he laughs, until the gun gets pointed at him.
• A little klown on a trike pulls up to a biker bar and gets his bike trashed by a tough biker. The klown pulls out some boxing gloves, and the biker lets the wimpy-looking klown get the first punch. Alas, this klown's punch knocks the biker's head off******.
• A klown shows up at the door of a scantily-clad woman claiming to be a pizza delivery klown. As she stands there, trying to remember if she ordered a pizza, a smaller klown pops out of the box and zaps her.
• Another klown mimes driving a car (and somehow gets real headlights), and runs a guy off the road.
• And my favorite one is the shadow puppet. A klown mesmerizes a bunch of folks at a bus stop with his impressive hand shadows, moving from birds and rabbits to Washington Crossing the Delaware to a dinosaur. . . whose eyes suddenly glow red as it reaches out from the wall and swallows the entire group of onlookers!
During most of this time, by the way, Debbie has been taking a shower. Seriously. She's in the shower for at least twenty minutes of screen time, although I should caution folks that this is a no-nudity movie, so the shower is just a way to keep her occupied while the rest of the town gets turned into cotton candy.
Before we can head to the final act, of course, we have to kill off the disbelieving sheriff. A klown enters the station, and the sheriff attempts to arrest him*******. The klown plays a whole bunch of tricks on him (fake hands that can't be cuffed, water-squirting flowers, et cetera), and eventually, the sheriff gets mad and attempts to apply the classy interrogation techniques he learned from his friends at the LAPD. The klown doesn't like this, and pulls out one of those party blowers. Instead of shooting a normal stream of paper, it shoots one with little fingers on it that strangle the sheriff. I need a few of these, myself.
Later, we get to see even more indignities heaped upon him, as his deputy comes back to find that the klown is now using the sheriff like a ventriloquist's dummy, with his hand shoved into the ex-sheriff's back. The deputy shoots the klown, to no avail -- but, just as things look completely hopeless, he fires one last shot, hitting the klown in its shiny red nose. And lo and behold, the klown's head explodes! Yes, the weak spot on all klowns is their extremely visible and prominent red nose!
By this time, pretty much everyone in town has been cocooned, and the klowns drive down the street, sucking the cotton candy cocoons into their giant parade float.
And at this point, Debbie finally comes out of the shower. However, some of those popcorn kernels she got hit with in the opening moments were stuck to her clothing, and when she opens the hamper, they've mutated into mini-klowns, which attempt to attack her! She runs to the window, but there are a bunch of firemen klowns with a trampoline waiting below (because, well, they knew she'd try to escape that way?). They come inside and corner her, but for some reason, they just put her in a balloon instead of the murderous cotton candy, and take her away.
So, the four survivors -- Mike, Dave, and the Terenzi Brothers -- set out to rescue her. The klowns make their way to the local amusement park, where the security guard attempts to stop them. They whip out their secret weapon -- cream pies********! They all throw their pies at him, but instead of looking like a reject from the video for "Fight For Your Right (To Party),", the guard melts as the pies hit him, and a tiny klown puts a giant cherry on the pile of goo that used to be the guard.
The heroes make it to the park and do some klown fighting (and don't get me started on the scene in which the Terenzis are almost seduced by two klowns in drag, using balloons in place of breasts). Dave and Mike eventually rescue Debbie, but they're soon trapped by klowns inside the alien ship, and only a timely rescue by the Terenzis and their clown-headed ice-cream van saves them. But, just when you think you've seen it all, a giant marionette klown is lowered from the ceiling!
The puppet clown grabs the van and chucks it across the room, presumably killing the brothers in a fiery explosion. Debbie and Mike make it out, but Dave is trapped on the ship as it takes off, and the giant klown grabs Dave and lifts him into the air to eat him. Dave grabs his badge and stabs the klown in its nose, leading to the entire ship exploding.
Debbie and Mike watch from the ground, mourning for their friend, when, all of a sudden, a klown car falls from the sky! And Dave and the Terenzis are inside! See, the Terenzis hid inside the freezer compartment of their truck when it was thrown, and Dave just, well, got lucky. Don't ask too many questions, okay?
I adore this movie. It's eighteen flavors of bad, but with a title like Killer Klowns from Outer Space, it's not meant to be anything but. The f/x are the star of the show, with some wonderfully innovative kills using some original gimmicks. The alien klowns themselves are also well designed, showing lots of variety and coming across as simultaneously familiar and alien throughout.
The writing and directing aren't exactly put to any major test here (not that I really need a good, solid explanation for why alien klowns who want to eat us somehow use every gimmick employed by normal clowns on this planet), but the movie moves along quickly enough, and if the extemely '80s score gets annoying after a while, that's a small price to pay. The cast (which includes a brief appearance for Christopher Titus, long before he became an irrelevant stand-up comic and Fox sitcom has-been) is average at best, but it's hard to believe that even De Niro would put much effort into a movie with this title.
Let's face it. If you're the kind of person who would enjoy a movie called Killer Klowns from Outer Space, you already know it. This movie lives up to every expectation set by the title, and is a must-have for fans of goofy horror movies.
*Okay, which is more likely? That Karl Rove dresses up as a clown and murders young children, or that Karl Rove doesn't?
**And why, exactly, is a gender-neutral pronoun applied to an evil monster that manifests itself as male throughout the entire novel? Why not Stephen King's Him?***
***Or Stephen King's He. Depending on whether it's a subject or object.
****Seriously. Dialogue here includes stuff like, "Well, I'll be greased and fried," and (talking to his dog), "Did you see that little ole sky doggie zip down there, Pooh?"
*****Okay, that's the soundtrack.
******Yes, I criticized this form of death when I reviewed Jason Takes Manhattan, but this movie isn't even pretending to be realistic.
*******Because being a klown really should be illegal.
********No, not those kinds of cream pies. These Klowns don't have time to think about sex.
There's high concept, and then there's high concept. Any fool can come up with the idea that clowns are evil men who kill children; that's just a fictionalization of the lives of folks like John Wayne Gacy and Karl Rove*. The idea of the clown as monster isn't that much more impressive, as we're all already familiar with Stephen King's It**.
But making clowns into evil aliens harvesting humans for food, and then taking all the props and jokes associated with clowns and making those into objects of evil as well? Now that takes genius.
Like all great evil clown movies, this one starts with teenagers making out at the local secluded spot. Surprisingly, the two crazy kids, Mike and Debbie, turn out to be the heroes of this movie, and not the initial victims. While making out (in an inflated raft in the back of his car, because that's what all the cool kids do), they see a shooting star come plummeting to earth. Mike wants to get back to the important business of losing his virginity, but Debbie is curious, so they set out to investigate it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (at least, back at the small farm near where the meteor landed), a local farmer wanders out to check out the chaos. Instead of finding a big smoking crater, he finds a circus tent that has mysteriously sprung up out of nowhere. Naturally, instead of thinking there's something weird here, he sees a great chance to perpetuate hick farmer stereotypes**** and to scope free tickets! Once his dog vanishes, he figures out that something's wrong, but it's not until a deformed-looking klown (I'll use the movie spelling from now on) pops out and zaps him with a ray gun that he realizes just how wrong it is.
Soon enough, Debbie and Mike get to the tent, and they, too, decide to investigate it. They find lots of weird stuff, like giant balls of electricity and bad '80s synth background music*****, and eventually come across giant mounds of cotton candy. Naturally, they reach in and grab a handful, only to find that the cotton candy is wrapped around a dead farmer! That just ain't sanitary. They make a run for it, but a klown manages to hit them with a popcorn gun, and as they run away (trailing popcorn), the klowns build a balloon dog and use it to track them.
Really. I couldn't make this up in a million years.
I should pause to mention the other characters we've met during the opening moments. There's the obnoxious and stupid town sheriff (played by the late, great John Vernon), his smarter deputy (Dave, who just happens to be Debbie's ex-boyfriend), and the Terenzi Brothers. The Terenzis are two idiots who drive an ice-cream truck that just happens to have a big clown head on it. If most things about Killer Klowns from Outer Space are bad in a deliberately cheesy way, these guys are bad in a "poorly written, poorly acted" way. They're the only characters who I actually wanted to see die. Alas, I walked away disappointed on that front.
Back to the town.The kids make it there and try to tell the cops what's going on, but somehow, their story about evil alien klowns isn't believed. Go figure. The deputy and Mike head to the woods to check stuff out, and Debbie heads home to shower.
The next chunk of the movie is basically the "klowns murder folks using weird variations on circus gimmicks" section. And it's the reason I love this film. My favorites:
• A guy comes across a Punch and Judy style show in the middle of nowhere, and watches as the male puppet attempts to seduce the female one. When the female pulls out a ray gun and zaps the other puppet out of existence, he laughs, until the gun gets pointed at him.
• A little klown on a trike pulls up to a biker bar and gets his bike trashed by a tough biker. The klown pulls out some boxing gloves, and the biker lets the wimpy-looking klown get the first punch. Alas, this klown's punch knocks the biker's head off******.
• A klown shows up at the door of a scantily-clad woman claiming to be a pizza delivery klown. As she stands there, trying to remember if she ordered a pizza, a smaller klown pops out of the box and zaps her.
• Another klown mimes driving a car (and somehow gets real headlights), and runs a guy off the road.
• And my favorite one is the shadow puppet. A klown mesmerizes a bunch of folks at a bus stop with his impressive hand shadows, moving from birds and rabbits to Washington Crossing the Delaware to a dinosaur. . . whose eyes suddenly glow red as it reaches out from the wall and swallows the entire group of onlookers!
During most of this time, by the way, Debbie has been taking a shower. Seriously. She's in the shower for at least twenty minutes of screen time, although I should caution folks that this is a no-nudity movie, so the shower is just a way to keep her occupied while the rest of the town gets turned into cotton candy.
Before we can head to the final act, of course, we have to kill off the disbelieving sheriff. A klown enters the station, and the sheriff attempts to arrest him*******. The klown plays a whole bunch of tricks on him (fake hands that can't be cuffed, water-squirting flowers, et cetera), and eventually, the sheriff gets mad and attempts to apply the classy interrogation techniques he learned from his friends at the LAPD. The klown doesn't like this, and pulls out one of those party blowers. Instead of shooting a normal stream of paper, it shoots one with little fingers on it that strangle the sheriff. I need a few of these, myself.
Later, we get to see even more indignities heaped upon him, as his deputy comes back to find that the klown is now using the sheriff like a ventriloquist's dummy, with his hand shoved into the ex-sheriff's back. The deputy shoots the klown, to no avail -- but, just as things look completely hopeless, he fires one last shot, hitting the klown in its shiny red nose. And lo and behold, the klown's head explodes! Yes, the weak spot on all klowns is their extremely visible and prominent red nose!
By this time, pretty much everyone in town has been cocooned, and the klowns drive down the street, sucking the cotton candy cocoons into their giant parade float.
And at this point, Debbie finally comes out of the shower. However, some of those popcorn kernels she got hit with in the opening moments were stuck to her clothing, and when she opens the hamper, they've mutated into mini-klowns, which attempt to attack her! She runs to the window, but there are a bunch of firemen klowns with a trampoline waiting below (because, well, they knew she'd try to escape that way?). They come inside and corner her, but for some reason, they just put her in a balloon instead of the murderous cotton candy, and take her away.
So, the four survivors -- Mike, Dave, and the Terenzi Brothers -- set out to rescue her. The klowns make their way to the local amusement park, where the security guard attempts to stop them. They whip out their secret weapon -- cream pies********! They all throw their pies at him, but instead of looking like a reject from the video for "Fight For Your Right (To Party),", the guard melts as the pies hit him, and a tiny klown puts a giant cherry on the pile of goo that used to be the guard.
The heroes make it to the park and do some klown fighting (and don't get me started on the scene in which the Terenzis are almost seduced by two klowns in drag, using balloons in place of breasts). Dave and Mike eventually rescue Debbie, but they're soon trapped by klowns inside the alien ship, and only a timely rescue by the Terenzis and their clown-headed ice-cream van saves them. But, just when you think you've seen it all, a giant marionette klown is lowered from the ceiling!
The puppet clown grabs the van and chucks it across the room, presumably killing the brothers in a fiery explosion. Debbie and Mike make it out, but Dave is trapped on the ship as it takes off, and the giant klown grabs Dave and lifts him into the air to eat him. Dave grabs his badge and stabs the klown in its nose, leading to the entire ship exploding.
Debbie and Mike watch from the ground, mourning for their friend, when, all of a sudden, a klown car falls from the sky! And Dave and the Terenzis are inside! See, the Terenzis hid inside the freezer compartment of their truck when it was thrown, and Dave just, well, got lucky. Don't ask too many questions, okay?
I adore this movie. It's eighteen flavors of bad, but with a title like Killer Klowns from Outer Space, it's not meant to be anything but. The f/x are the star of the show, with some wonderfully innovative kills using some original gimmicks. The alien klowns themselves are also well designed, showing lots of variety and coming across as simultaneously familiar and alien throughout.
The writing and directing aren't exactly put to any major test here (not that I really need a good, solid explanation for why alien klowns who want to eat us somehow use every gimmick employed by normal clowns on this planet), but the movie moves along quickly enough, and if the extemely '80s score gets annoying after a while, that's a small price to pay. The cast (which includes a brief appearance for Christopher Titus, long before he became an irrelevant stand-up comic and Fox sitcom has-been) is average at best, but it's hard to believe that even De Niro would put much effort into a movie with this title.
Let's face it. If you're the kind of person who would enjoy a movie called Killer Klowns from Outer Space, you already know it. This movie lives up to every expectation set by the title, and is a must-have for fans of goofy horror movies.
*Okay, which is more likely? That Karl Rove dresses up as a clown and murders young children, or that Karl Rove doesn't?
**And why, exactly, is a gender-neutral pronoun applied to an evil monster that manifests itself as male throughout the entire novel? Why not Stephen King's Him?***
***Or Stephen King's He. Depending on whether it's a subject or object.
****Seriously. Dialogue here includes stuff like, "Well, I'll be greased and fried," and (talking to his dog), "Did you see that little ole sky doggie zip down there, Pooh?"
*****Okay, that's the soundtrack.
******Yes, I criticized this form of death when I reviewed Jason Takes Manhattan, but this movie isn't even pretending to be realistic.
*******Because being a klown really should be illegal.
********No, not those kinds of cream pies. These Klowns don't have time to think about sex.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 01:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 01:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 01:26 am (UTC)I mean.
What did I miss? There's a reason you're saying "him", right? Right? Because I miss things sometimes.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 01:30 am (UTC)in which I out myself as a TOTAL geek...
Date: 2007-04-06 03:39 am (UTC)As we stumble against my favorite book... Though I will add in one of the few times we're inside Its head, It indicated it chose the clown avatar to ATTRACT children, not scare the shit out of them. I always found that funny.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 01:49 am (UTC)Truth in advertising: The title is the entire movie.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 03:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 02:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 02:43 am (UTC)I honestly think maybe King was just being perverse, by giving one of his longest single novels as short a title as possible. (It's not like he could've called it A.) Just a theory, but I like it.
Those clowns may not have time, but what about THESE?
Date: 2007-04-06 02:59 am (UTC)Re: Those clowns may not have time, but what about THESE?
Date: 2007-04-06 03:52 am (UTC)Re: Those clowns may not have time, but what about THESE?
Date: 2007-04-06 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 03:16 am (UTC)Wait... there's more?
I swear I've seen this one a dozen times from the middle outward, but never caught the opening. Loved it, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 03:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 03:40 am (UTC)Team America is considered essentially their movie though... well other than songs, acting and writing... but everything else... that's all them.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 11:25 am (UTC)I often refer to this movie whenever the subject of movie titles comes up, because this is one case where the title tells you everything you need to know about the movie. Once, in the early/mid 90s, I was channel surfing with a girl in the wee hours of the morning, when we came across this movie. "Cool, Killer Klowns from Outer Space!" said I. "What's it about?" she asked. "There are these clowns, see … from outer space … and, ummm, they kill people…"
And my favorite one is the shadow puppet. A klown mesmerizes a bunch of folks at a bus stop with his impressive hand shadows, moving from birds and rabbits to Washington Crossing the Delaware to a dinosaur… whose eyes suddenly glow red as it reaches out from the wall and swallows the entire group of onlookers!
Repeated for emphasis.
(not that I really need a good, solid explanation for why alien klowns who want to eat us somehow use every gimmick employed by normal clowns on this planet)
It's been a while since I've seen this movie, but doesn't one of the characters speculate that the Killer Klowns may have come to Earth before (implying that our clown traditions may have their source in old memories of previous invasions)?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 05:01 pm (UTC)but the typical clown costumery is a parody of 17th century Cavalier fashions (large buttons, slashed & puffed sleeves, ruffed collars, etc.), intended to show that the clowns were horribly out-of-style (and provide a mocking dig at 18th century folks who wished for a return to the way things were before the Civil War).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 12:33 pm (UTC)(no clowns though)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 01:31 pm (UTC)***Or Stephen King's He. Depending on whether it's a subject or object. '
well, it is also pregnant in the book.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-06 07:19 pm (UTC)"Bother me, bother me. Knock your block off."
Best scene EVER.