Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Killer Klowns from Outer Space
MGM (May 27, 1988)
Director: Stephen Chiodo
Cast: Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, John Vernon, Michael Siegel

View the trailer


There are a few key ingredients to making a successful horror movie:

• Always have horny, about-to-have-sex teens be the first to find the monster/alien/Michael Jackson/demon/whatever.
• Instead of continuing to have sex, said teens must drop everything and investigate a weird noise/light/whatever.
• Said investigative teens get killed (and thus validating the maxim that having sex in a horror movie is akin to a Sicilian kiss of death), and thus begins a rampage of blood and carnage.
• Repeat if necessary.

Oh yeah, and:

• Clowns are fucking creepy.

Fortunately, the trailer to Killer Klowns from Outer Space has all of this, and all is good. At least at first. However, unfortunately, the about halfway through the trailer, it stops showing things in chronological order and begins showing things as a sort of montage, splitting time between the Killer Klowns and the Scully-esque, pragmatic sherrif. It's not that this is necessarily a bad thing, per se. It's just that in my movie trailers, I prefer it when things continue on in an ordered fashion.

But that's only a triffle of a complaint in what is, for the most part, a very solid trailer. The Klowns are apropriately creepy in a low budget sort of way, and their antics toe the line between being scary and wacky. This is symbolically paralleled by pulsating electric guitar rifs accompanying the trailer. The result leaves the viewer with an odd feeling, like the kind I got Friday when I woke up naked and upside down in the backseat of a Passat after a hard night of binge drinking. Needless to say, the trailer is effective in being affective. Or something like that.

Another minor complaint with the trailer is that it leaves things unresolved at the end. It's one thing for a trailer to withhold the ending, but it's another thing altogether to withhold any clues as to what the hell we can expect to happen. The trailer has no hero to save the day (unless you count Sherrif Skeptical), and there appears to be nothing that can stop the Klowns. So, playing Devil's Advocate, what's my motivation to see the movie?

Well, for one there's the "krazy" plot and the state-of-the-art 1988 special effects. And then there's the, uh... okay, there's not much besides that. But despite the fact that, on paper, this movie trailer sucks, it's actually pretty entertaining. Especially if you're on some kind of mind-altering substance, since that allows the viewer to be on the same wavelength as the director. So relax, take a seat, crack open a beer/vial of crack* and enjoy this fun, mindless romp.



*Note: I am not actually recommending anyone take crack. It is a horrible drug and is a scurge to society. However, beer is great, and I recommend it to everyone, regardless of age or infirmity. Bottom's up!