KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)

DIRECTED by Stephen Chiodo.

SCREENPLAY by Charles Chiodo and Stephen Chiodo.

STARRING  - Grant Cramer as Mike Tobacco, Suzanne Snyder as Debbie Stone,  John Allen Nelson as Dave Hansen, John Vernon as Curtis Mooney,  Michael S. Siegel as Rich Terenzi,  Peter Licassi as Paul Terenzi,  Royal Dano as Gene Green,  Charles Chiodo as Jojo the Klownzilla.

PLOT - In the small town of Crescent Cove, Teenagers Mike Tobacco and Debbie Stone are parked up in Lovers Lane when they witness a U.F.O. landing in the forest. Going to investigate they find that the alien ship resembles a circus big top. Venturing inside they discover a large mansize candyfloss. Thinking it to be edible to humans they pull at the floss only to find trapped inside it the corpse of a local farmer - Gene Green (who beat Mike and Debbie to the spaceship) - suddenly a pair of grotesque looking alien clowns appear and try to zap the couple with thier candyfloss gun. The pair escape into the forest.

Arriving back in town the couple try to alert the local police. Cop Dave Hansen accompanys the couple into the forest but the spacecraft has mysteriously disappeared.  Dave accuses the pair of trying to waste police time and takes them back into town, however when they arrive there they find that the killer clowns are on the rampage.

The clowns are killing the citizens of Crescent Grove in a series of increasingly bizzare ways, turning thier corpses into candyfloss and drinking thier blood. Chaos and anarchy rip the small town apart and worse is yet to come...for waiting in the heart of the clown's spaceship is the largest, most viscious clown of all...Klownzilla.

TAGLINE - IN SPACE NO ONE CAN EAT ICE-CREAM !

PERFORMANCES  - As this movie is a high camp tribute to 50's B-movies given an 80's twist then the performances reflect this. All the characters are slightly dialled up, not in an O.T.T. way but there's definitely a sense of heightened reality to everything.

The main protaganists Mike and Debbie (Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder) are your typical high school teenagers that we usually see in this type of film (from The Blob onwards) given an 80's makeover. Mike gets to share the film's heroic moments with police officer Dave (John Allen Nelson), whilst Debbie doesn't get much to do but be menaced by the alien clowns. This reflects the style of the 50's movies - women where little more than damsels in distress in most of these films and Debbie's role in the film reflects this. Snyder does a good enough job but her role is limited.

Mike and Dave get the most to do and also get the most character development. Dave the cop used to be Debbie's boyfriend, a position that Mike now occupys. Dave still harbours feelings for Debbie and strongly disapproves of Mike. As a result of this Dave's judgement is clouded at the beginning of the film and he misuses his powers as a law enforcer to make life difficult for Mike. The two men overcome thier differences over the course of the film as they are forced to work together to stop the killer clowns. By the film's end, they appear to be firm friends. Cramer and Nelson play these scenes well and the rivalry and tension between them is believable.

Something I noticed at the end of the movie - as Mike, Debbie and Dave embrace, Debbie kisses both of them. Maybe Mike and Dave's newfound friendship is going to have to go down a new route...threesome anybody ?

We also get a brilliantly O.T.T. cameo by veteran character actor Royal Dano playing a grizzled redneck farmer. He's only in it for the first five minutes but recieves top billing in the credits. Just shows that he was the most famous actor there.

A quick mention must go to Michael S. Siegel and Peter Licassi playing the Terenzi brothers. Whilst theres nothing wrong with thier acting, the Terenzi brothers just didn't work for me. They're supposed to be the "comic relief" characters, which would be fine if the rest of the film was played straight but it isn't - it's already a comedy. So therefore the inclusion of these characters seems to be overegging the mix a bit. I just found them a bit irritating if I'm being honest. Sorry.

SFX  - The Chiodo brothers are known for thier warped cartoonish visual style (they've worked with Tim Burton and also did the creature effects in the Critters movies). That distinctive style carries over into this movie, particularly in the design of the various Killer Klowns themselves...

They manage to perfectly straddle that line between being creepy and being catoonishly funny.

The "baby" clowns are great. They look like demonic jack-in-a-box's...

We also get Klownzilla - the bloated giant clown alien leader (actually its scriptwriter Charles Chiodo in the suit). Like the other Killer Klowns, the Klownzilla suit has decent facial animatronics which bring the character to life nicely...

Apart from the actual clowns themselves we get some cheesy 80's style laser effects for the candyfloss gun...

Mmmm....neon candyfloss.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - Various people get killed in a variety of inventive ways in this movie but there's very little in the way of gore (a biker gets his head punched clean off his shoulders in one scene but even then there's no actual blood). It's all about maintaining the cartoony style - this film is meant to be a live action cartoon and the styleised violence reflects this.

Perhaps the most conventionally gruesome thing is the candyfloss. Especially when we can see the victim's dead flayed face staring out at us...

I really like some of the inventive kills in this movie. You get the acid/custard pie scene where the clowns pelt a security guard with custard pies which then dissolve him into a pile of goo...

There's also the shadow puppet scene where one of the Killer Klowns entertains a group of townsfolk, eventually he makes his hands into a "Dinosaur puppet" which then chomps the unsuspecting victims to death...

One dead cop gets turned into a ventriloquist's dummy in a very macabre scene...

To be fair he did kind of have it coming.

RATING - Killer Klowns From Outer Space is a fun 80's update of classic sci-fi tropes. Whilst not all of it's comedy works and bits of it have dated, it still holds up as being inventive, stylish and ghoulishly macabre. 

I'm giving it 4 corpse flavoured candyflosses out of 5. Its a cult classic and a Coulrophobe's worst nightmare.

POSTER/VHS/DVD ART -