By Oliver Longden
Clowns; the number one entertainment career of choice for serial killers, potential serial killers and people who just hate children. Whether you’re afraid of clowns like many normal people or sexually attracted to them as I am, there’s no mistaking the fact that a clown in its natural environment is about as funny as a long weekend with Michael Gove whispering right wing nothings in your ear while he gently spoons you in an uncomfortably small bunk bed. When professional clown John Wayne Gacy turned out to have a nasty habit of raping and murdering children it didn’t come as a surprise so much as a confirmation of everything people always suspected about the greasepaint and confetti brigade. Clowns are and always have been fucking horrifying.
The clowns in Killer Klowns from Outer Space aren’t all that scary when compared to the Joker, the clown from IT, Patch Adams and every single real life clown you’ve ever seen. Unlike real world clowns (and Patch Adams) they are actually quite funny. The Killer Klowns of the title are aliens who have come down to Earth in a space ship shaped like a big top and go on a circus themed rampage across small town America. Along the way there are horrific parodies of all manner of traditional clown acts, from the tiny clown car to the old custard pie to the kisser. A small group of misfits struggles to fight against the clowns whilst waving their arms about and delivering performances I might charitably describe as extremely enthusiastic.
Killer Klowns is a good time movie that only occasionally tries to be a horror film. It has become a cult classic in the 25 years since it was released simply because it feels a lot like a movie about murderous space clowns ought to feel. If you spent five minutes sketching out the sort of things you might expect to find in a film about psychotic clowns from space the chances are you’d come up with at least half the things that are in Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This is a film that’s on the same wavelength as its audience. It’s a movie that wants you to relax, have a few beers, have a few more beers and finish that bottle of Pernod some weirdo abandoned at your last party. You’re here to have fun and fun will be provided. It might make you cringe on occasion but that’s all part of the raucous cacophony of hoopla that is Killer Klowns from Outer Space. It helps that the film starts out on a strong footing with a bouncy title track written by goofy LA punks The Dickies. It’s enormously infectious and really sets the tone of the film nicely.
The directors and writers of Killer Klowns, the Chiodo brothers are more famously known as special effects people being responsible for the creature design of Critters (surely about twenty minutes work with a tribble and some false teeth) as well as working on Team America: World Police with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Their background shows; the special effects are a masterclass in doing a little with even less, pure joy to a relentless CGI hating luddite like myself. The performances range from hammy to downright ludicrous which fits the material like a glove. There’s a particularly nice turn from perennial film arsehole John Vernon (Dirty Harry, Animal House) playing the town’s ridiculously angry sheriff. It’s a character who would be wildly unbelievable were he not being played by John Vernon, a man who could have played Lassie in a way that made people want to punch her right in her stupid dog face. There aren’t too many other names you’re likely to recognise although there are some faces that might be hauntingly familiar from minor roles in the background of television shows like CSI Miami.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space is not a film that deserves to be remembered because it is particularly influential. It’s not well acted or well directed, and the special effects aren’t even particularly good. The design of the Klowns themselves aren’t all that impressive and the sets towards the end of the film are little more than cardboard shapes on a black sound stage that evoke the weird impressionist non-sets in the third series of the 1960s Batman. The film comes from a long line of light-hearted B-movie shockers like The Ape Man and Bucket of Blood that trade more on chutzpah than technical sophistication. It’s just one of those low budget films that simply works because it isn’t trying too hard. In a world where Michael Bay feels it necessary to bore the shit out an audience for more than two and half hours to tell the story of some robots who really want to punch some other robots, films like Killer Klowns from Outer Space are starting to feel like lost classics. Killer Klowns from Outer Space land on Earth, fuck shit up, the end. What’s not to like?
