Circus Jerks

This article debuted last year on The Classical Mess, a newsletter I was creating on Substack until I found out they were giving money to bad people.

The ghastly villains in Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988) are authentic grotesques rendered in mountains of what appears to be rubber and latex. They’re also not in the same league as actual clowns, who, for a variety of reasons, strike much deeper fear in our hearts. One assumes the filmmakers didn’t use human beings in greasepaint for Killer Klowns because they were trying to create something “wacky,” not the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of harlequin invasion movies.

Yes, we see these monsters land their giant intergalactic carnival tent somewhere in California, where they start shooting people with popcorn guns and entombing them in cotton candy. The thirty-somethings playing the teenage couple who witness all this don’t know what to do because the script never gave them parents. Our heroes, Debbie and Mike, go to the cops and convince Deputy Dave Hanson to help them investigate all this clown malarky. A bit of drama is squeezed out of the fact Debbie and Dave used to date. That’s the emotional component of the space clown movie.

Despite a fertile concept and some very unique special effects, Killer Klowns From Outer Space is a middling affair. The actors can’t commit to playing this as seriously as Jaws or as broadly as “Mr. Ed.” This lack of conviction deflates the humor like last week’s birthday balloons. Soon we’re trapped in our own figurative glob of cotton candy.

At least the clowns look good. That’s where all the money went, which we know because the producers cancelled a Soupy Sales cameo after learning the price of his plane ticket. Imagine being Soupy Sales and getting that phone call. Hey, imagine having to make that phone call. On par with death by alien circus jerks.