In my lexicon of terrible horror movies, "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" is really as bad as they get. The acting is over-the-top, the script is so corny it harkens back to the days of "The Blob" (the main title even features a song about Killer Klowns, written just for the film), and the main villains of the story are as bad as the title suggests. Cotton candy cocoons and ray guns galore, this film is certainly a fun hour and a half romp for those who love their 80's horror movies like they love their nachos: Cheesy.
In an homage to Irvin Yeaworth's "The Blob", the film opens on a lover's lane with several couples making out in the back of cars, because that's what couples do at these places, when a giant meteor streaks across the sky. It just so happens to land few miles from this location. What was the meteor exactly? A circus tent, discovered by a man living in a cabin deep in the woods. Inside the tent are giant extraterrestrial clowns that are wrapping humans in cotton candy cocoons and drinking their blood through silly straws of death. I kid you not, this is the plot of the film. Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer) and his girlfriend Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder) team up with her ex-boyfriend police officer guy, Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson) and find a way to stop these Klowns from killing off the population of the entire town and eventually, taking over the world. Along for the ride are the ice cream selling, horny Terenzi brothers, Rich and Paul. Officer Curtis Mooney (legendary actor John Vernon) ignores all reports of deaths and chaos and laughs it off as teenagers running rampant.
If you order from Amecci's during October, this is actually how your pizza is delivered
When I was re-watching this film for the purposes of this review, my sister pointed out something very interesting that I hadn't picked up on before: there are only two police officers on duty for the entire town, which is usually what happens in these films. John Vernon plays the a-hole, youth hating Mooney with awesome grumpiness that creates serious dis-like for his character. However, it isn't in the sense of Marcia Gay Harden's character in "The Mist", in which the character is just so vile and nasty that all we have for her is hatred and the hopes that she'll die a horrible death. I love hating officer Mooney; the scene in which he locks up one of the clowns in jail is an absolute blast, playing the fool and thinking that the clown is just another college kid in a suit.
I must make a point to speak on the acting in this film because it's absolutely terrible. Grant Cramer is so bad as Mike that it's absolutely hilarious anytime he spouts off some line in reaction to any act committed by one of the klowns. At times, it's so over-the-top, that Cramer is purposefully winking at the audience through his performance or a line of dialogue. My favorite Mike line is again, a reaction, after he and Officer Dave witness an event involving a crowd of about half a dozen people, a clown, and a shadow puppet. Cramer reacts with a profanity played in just the right amount of shock that it gets me every single time.
Well this certainly isn't going to end well
The design of the clowns themselves is pretty terrifying and cartoonish. This film is obviously supposed to be a live action cartoon and certainly does have a cartoon-like feel throughout with its slapstick/horror combinations of clowns, silly score by composer John Massari, and just all around crazy script that includes gags like "knocking blocks off" and killer popcorn. I'm not joking, killer popcorn. My favorite set piece in the entire film involves the clowns arriving at an amusement park and getting out of a clown car, one after the next, after the next. It's hilarious and then becomes terrifyingly bad all in one second.
The 80's were certainly a bizarre decade giving us some of the most bizarre combinations of scifi horror elements that had ever been thought. A few days ago, I featured "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" as the pick of the day and in my review for that film, I spoke about how weird it was. "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" takes the cake in every way possible. The set pieces, characters, script, and actors all done specifically to be over-the-top. It is a film that takes clowns, something already pretty scary, and makes them 7 foot tall extraterrestrial killers that want to drink our blood. For those who know what they're getting into, it is a fun B-movie romp that makes for a good time. This one is highly recommended.
3/10
Rated PG-13
Directed by Stephen Chiodo
Written by Stephen Chiodo, Edward Chiodo (uncredited), and Charles Chiodo
Runtime - 88 minutes
5.8 of 10 stars on IMDb
75% on Rotten Tomatoes
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