Michael Delahoyde, PhD

Professor of English

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

KILLER CLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)

Summary:
Cheesy but good and funny sci-fi flick in which alien clowns land in a small town. Their spaceship comes designed like a big-top circus, they spin their victims into cotton candy web sacs and just generally provoke general mayhem.

There’s no real plot to speak of, save for a love triangle between the town hero (Grant Cramer) and the town sheriff (John Allen Nelson; also known as the first Warren Lockridge from the daytime soap opera Santa Barbara) for the town sweetheart (Suzanne Snyder) and the fact that they must all team up to stop the invasion.

For their part, the alien clowns behave much like clowns should, in a manner that is both humorous and scary. We see the clowns popping up out of small cars and making balloon animals and shadow puppets. Perhaps the only really scary scene is one at a restaurant where a little girl is almost lured outside by a clown with a beckoning finger. She doesn’t get to see, but the audience sees, the oversize mallet it’s hiding behind its back.

Probably the movie that has the most fun with the clown universe as we know it.


Evil Clown Films