Ker-azee Killer Klowns Cause Chaos! (Movie only) (Killer Klowns from Outer Space (DVD))

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Killer Klowns from Outer Space (DVD)
Date:	03/01/07 (262 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very funny

Disadvantages: Low budget and not for younger children

Christmas and New Year can be a frustrating time for movie buffs. Most of the films on TV I’ve seen already and the constant Yuletide theme that runs through the majority of scheduling adds a contrived slant to most of the material on offer. The best way to deal with this, I’ve found, is to seek out those films that have nothing to do with the seasonal festivities at all and I’ve discovered some little gems using this strategy. Possibly the best of all is a 1988 curio called “Killer Klowns From Outer Space”. Apart from having one of THE best movie titles I’ve ever come across, the movie itself is a low-budget masterpiece worthy of an hour and a half of most people’s viewing time.

Set in the sleepy American Town of Crescent Cove, a comet shoots over the surrounding woods and lands in a blaze of light. As the locals hunt down the mysterious object, it soon appears that the comet is, in fact, a space ship that looks just like a circus tent. Manned by aliens that look remarkably like clowns, the new arrivals find their ship has been infiltrated by two teenagers, Mike Tobacco and Debbie Stone. Barely having escaped in tact despite being shot by a gun that fires popcorn (the reason for this becomes apparent later in the plot), the teenagers find and tell the police about the sinister miscreants who, in the meantime, have descended on the town to reap mischief. Blasting the local population with ray guns that ensnare the town’s people in cotton candy-like cocoons, somehow the Klowns must be stopped before everybody gets wiped out!

As you can tell from the plot, the movie is distinctly tongue-in-cheek. Directed by Stephen Chiodo with Charles and Edward Chiodo writing the screenplay, this is an early directorial work from the man who designed and supervised the critter aliens in the movie “Critters” from 1986. With a low budget and an unknown cast (apart from John Vernon playing Curtis Mooney, the cynical cop), the heroes of the piece are very definitely the Killer Klowns. With a passing resemblance to the earlier “Gremlins”, certainly in terms of outlandish plot line and masochistically appealing creatures, the collection of mainly very tall Klowns charge about the cheaply assembled sets conflicting all manner of circus-related misfortune on the rest of the cast with their plastic toy guns and grinning, alien speak. Where the ingenuity of the screenplay lies is the remarkably imaginative shenanigans the Klowns get up to including blowing up balloons in the shape of a dog which duly turns into a live sniffer dog; a Punch and Judy show in which one of the puppets gets blasted with a ray gun by the other one and a shadow puppet show that ends with the innocent onlookers getting eaten by the shadow! Needless to say, there are some obvious plot holes like how the Klowns seem to understand English despite being hostile visitors from another planet and why they reserve the fate of enclosing one of the lead characters in a plastic ball rather than killing and cocooning them like everyone else. Still, it’s all good fun even if the town’s people are meant to be being systematically killed and stowed for nefarious purposes revealed towards the finale although hardly difficult to work out.

The acting is as you would expect from a B-movie like this. John Allen Nelson is wooden as Dave Hansen – the good cop; John Vernon is a little too cynical playing the only other cop in the movie. With everything falling apart around him and the police switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree, Vernon is resolutely unconvinced that all of the reports of killer clowns is anything other than a hoax in which the whole of the town is involved although this is neatly brought to a halt when a large Klown confronts him in the station, sealing his fate in another inventive twist. Grant Kramer (Mike Tobacco) and Suzanne Snyder (Debbie Stone) juggle with the thin script with Michael Siegel and Pete Licassi providing the intended comic relief as the ice-cream van driving Terenzi brothers. Despite its 15 rating and notional horror theme, the movie script is so bad; it’s hilarious with numerous quotable pearlers to keep most age groups laughing. Just two examples are: Mike Tobacco: “It was a space ship. And there was these things, these killer clowns, and they shot popcorn at us! We barely got away!” and the cynical Curtis Mooney: “Killer clowns, from outer space. Holy shit!”

With virtually no budget for special effects (the $2million went on production), the movie makers have been remarkably creative in both the Klown creations and the imaginative stunts and effects that the movie boasts. The Klowns themselves look particularly ugly with grotesque faces, large rubber hands and traditional, colourful clown costumes. Some of the sets are about as basic as any movie would stand and still retain credibility and I loved the inside of the spaceship and the clownesque creativity behind many of the set pieces. Perhaps the high point of the comedy is when one of the Klowns beckons to a young girl to leave her mother and the restaurant in which they are eating. With a finger curled towards him and a bent over stance to lure the girl across, the grinning Klown looks on with a large mallet hidden behind his back, ready to bring the youngster to a cartoon end.

With a run time of 88 minutes and a warbling, 80’s synthesizer-based musical score, “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” is a classic of low budget, sci-fi horror cum comedy in the mould of “Critters”, “Ghoulies” and all of those other odd-ball alien-invasion-on-a-small-scale movies. It’s a little gory at times and the intention is that most of the cast gets bumped off in a variety of ways so it’s not really for kids although teenagers will probably find it cool and horror aficionados will adore this one. This was a real gem in my seasonal viewing schedule and highly recommended if you prefer more off-the-wall movie productions. Terrible script, wooden acting, cheap sets but great Klowns and a wildly creative hour and a half make this one movie you won’t forget!

Thanks for reading

Mara

DVD available at Amazon from £4.24

Trailer at http://www.movie-list.net/classics/killer-klowns-f rom-outer-space.mov

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