No exaggeration, I know at least a million people who suffer from Coulrophobia or at the very least, are scared of clowns.
I can understand that. Clowns can be especially creepy. In dark lighting, doing those silent magic tricks with that painted grin on their face, trying desperately to impress and fascinate you. Yeah, I guess they can be scary. But I’m not scared of them, really. I’m more terrified of real things. Things like Daddy Longs Legs, moths, bats, Medusa from Jason and The Argonauts…REAL things.
But Clowns? Not really. Not even if you spell them “klowns”.
You’re probably guessing then, by now, that I’m going to be indifferent towards this movie. You’ve read the opening paragraphs and thought to yourself “This doesn’t sound like Johnny’s bag, man. He didn’t get this movie because it featured really unscary clowns. Sorry fans, klowns. He is going to dislike the fact that it was so low budget that they ran out of money towards the end of production and instead of finding themselves in a beautifully designed space craft, the cast just look like they are running around a darkened school gymnasium with a few random primary coloured props lying around”.
And you’d be DEAD WRONG! You’ve just summed up just about everything I LOVE about this movie, you silly sausage.
Westlife like pie...
The film is about these clowns, right? Sorry, klowns. And they’re from outer space, okay? And they kill people. Now with all that revealed, you can understand the subtle meanings in the film’s title.
The klowns (yas! I got it right that time!) land on Earth in a space ship designed exactly like a circus tent and within five minutes they are discovered. There’s no hanging round in this script. None of that unnecessary character or tension building drivel that films such as Super 8 or War Of The Worlds thrive on. Boom! You’re straight into the story within five minutes. Characters as two dimensional as the paper of the script they were written on and to be killed off unspectacularly.
KKFOS features some of the most unfrightening deaths you could possibly imagine. With instruments of torture such as “the popcorn gun” or being smothered by a “cotton candy ray”, the SAW series this is not. I don’t recall a single ounce of blood onscreen. If there is any blood, it’s much less than you’d witness from a Ric Flair head wound on a televised Saturday afternoon wrestling match.
Then there are the titular clowns (godammit!). Sorry, klowns. With their huge, ridiculous looking stupid suits and badly mechanicalised faces. Completely unterrifying, unbelievably unhorrifying and unconvincingly menacing . And all the more iconic for it! Causing a slight stir of mayhem by running around the tiny town of Crescent Cove, hitting hapless victims with silly string and balloon animals, they wouldn’t seem too out of place in a Benny Hill sketch set on Blackpool beach. Chasing around and trying to harvest and terrify a cast that comprise of the truly wonderful and adorable Suzanne Snyder (Weird Science, Return Of The Living Dead part 2) to the utterly atrocious and unfunny Terenzi brothers (Michael Siegal and Peter Licassi, who never had acting careers afterwards unsurprisingly), but they’re all part of the fun. They’re all part of something special. Everyone is in on the joke.
This is a deliberately terrible film. A trashy and pointless straight to video B-movie horror comedy shot on a shoestring budget. The beauty to behold is that everyone involved knows and loves that. It’s bad, cheap and funny for all the wrong reasons (or all the RIGHT reasons in my book). The title music (which plays on the opening AND end credits) is worth the admission fee alone. It’s not in the least bit scary. And I’m sure I know at least half a million courlophobics out there would agree. No exaggeration.
That’s why it gets a huge thumbs up from me and AndyErupts.com.
