Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Killer Klowns From Outer Space

0:04 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb. What do we have for you here today? Do we have a spooky one? Yes, we have a spooky one, but it's also a really fun one. And honestly, intentionally funny one. It originally aired 10-3-2025. It is the 1988 horror comedy creature feature Killer Clowns from Outer Space. It's a whole lot of fun. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:31 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

0:41 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

0:45 And this is Joe McCormick.

0:46 On today's episode of Weird House Cinema, we're going to discuss what's kind of a rare beast, a goofy horror comedy that manages to avoid being too self-aware, um, It takes itself, its genre, and the films that inspired it seriously enough to maintain a certain air of creepiness, seriousness, and indeed horror, while still being ridiculous and hilarious and fun.

1:09 It is 1988's Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

1:13 I think I'd agree with all of that, except I don't know if a film can be more self-aware than Killer Clowns. This seems like the ultimate kind of meta exercise.

1:23 Well, I guess it depends how you exactly consider too self-aware in a film. Because for me, when a film becomes too self-aware, it's like things begin to fall apart, you know?

1:33 Oh, okay. It's like.

1:35 not taking the plot seriously.

1:37 I mean, where it becomes too much of an, of a joke to where you can see the joke and the performances, you can feel the joke and the writing in the way that just, again, makes things fall apart. Um, and, and sometimes I've, uh, you know, there's some obvious examples of that in more recent films you could point to, but I mean, there are also some older films that have a cult following that I've tried to get into, uh, And I just find that like, oh, this was just one big joke for everybody. Like if the villain can't be taken seriously, if everybody's if it's just too much of a party. I mean, I guess that can be fun, but it can it can make the narrative itself fall apart.

2:13 Oh, no.

2:13 Well, I agree with exactly what you're talking about there.

2:16 Yeah.

2:17 An effective parody does still have to function as a story. And some parodies are. you know, so self-conscious that they just they stop even trying to be a functional story. They're just doing the jokes and that becomes less engaging.

2:33 Yeah.

2:34 So this is one that this is one of those films that I don't think I'd ever actually sat down and watched it all the way through start to finish. I recall it airing on cable back in the 90s and early 2000s and watching, you know, parts of it on on late night, probably something like USA up all night, but I'm not sure where exactly it was airing. Maybe it aired on Sci-Fi Channel as well. It fits a number of those molds. It was also originally released theatrically, apparently didn't do that well, but has enjoyed a long life via home media. Apparently more than making back, it's I think $ 1. 8 million budget over the course of time.

3:11 But as the filmmakers have said in interviews, it's one of those things where they've They've wanted to do a follow up, but studios aren't really interested in a movie that's going to make, you know, millions and millions of dollars over the course of like three decades. They want something that's going to make that much money in one weekend.

3:27 And so for various reasons, we have yet to fully cinematically return to the universe of the killer clown. Oh, I don't.

3:37 I mean, on one hand, I would like to trust them. But on the other hand, I'm like, I don't know if I would like what this movie would look like if it was made today.

3:46 Yeah, yeah. The closest thing that we have is there was a recent video game that came out. Killer Clowns from Outer Space, the game, came out in 2024. It's one of those asymmetrical survival horror games, you know, kind of like the Friday the 13th game. In fact, I think some of the same people worked on it.

4:04 That makes sense. They also made a Texas Chainsaw Massacre game, which I've played one time.

4:10 Yeah. I have not played this one. It's one of those, my machine can't handle it. But I looked at the stills, and it looks pretty cool. It looks like a lot of work went into maintaining the vibe of the original picture. But I also agree with you on the idea of a modern clown remake, or even a sequel. Even if the Kyoto Brothers were just all the way involved... it seems like there would be a tendency to lean into nastier territory or just, I don't know, how would you maintain the perfection that you have in this film, right?

4:45 At any rate, there remains talk of a sequel, and I've recently read that Ryan Gosling has been attached as a producer for a potential remake, so we'll see. So what we have here is pretty singular in many respects. It's essentially a kind of Invaders from Mars, the blob plot, but with clowns from outer space. And they're killer clowns, of course. And it is presented in PG-13 form. It's a hard PG-13. It's a hard PG-13. The clowns are frightening.

5:19 There's certainly some adult humor sprinkled throughout that doesn't go too hard, but also some of it hasn't aged all that well and was maybe a little tasteless back in the day as well. Um, but, uh, yeah, for my money, this film stands out for a number of reasons. So, uh, it's a goofy horror comedy that balances like the late eighties goofiness and the monster horror quite well. So it, like I say, it doesn't become a complete farce and the creatures are all really convincing, look amazing. It really has the, I don't know how many, I don't know if you can relate to this or listeners can, but it reminds me a lot of mad magazine movie parodies from back in the day.

6:02 Yes, in multiple ways, with the slight ugliness of the caricature in the way the clowns are realized visually. The comedic sensibility of the gags is very Mad Magazine. What is that I'm recognizing? On one hand, it's not a dry humor. It's a very juicy, wet humor.

6:25 Mm-hmm.

6:26 But also it goes a little bit hard as we were saying, it's a little bit more adult than you might expect in some areas.

6:33 Yeah. Yeah.

6:34 Like I'm reminded specifically when, uh, when Robocop two came out, I, I don't think I was able to watch Robocop two yet, but I had a mad magazine that had the parody of Robocop two in it. And of course it was loaded with gags. It's very much, you know, comedy and satire, but at the same time, like, Robocop looked pretty cool in some of the, in many of the drawings. So did the, uh, the nemesis of Robocop too. And so that comic, I just have a strong memory of it, uh, you know, impressing me in a couple of ways. Like it was funny, it was goofy, but also, uh, I was like, wow, you know, there's still robots battling each other.

7:10 I'll take it. Let's see what else, uh, we'll get into a lot of this when we get into the plot more, but, um, I, I, We've already talked about it. It's PG-13, so it's kind of a hard PG-13. But in terms of a late 80s, nearly 90s monster movie that features college student characters, this film's not nearly as tasteless as it could have been. And it's also not really gory. It has no nudity, despite the inclusion of the genre standard shower scene.

7:40 Which is notable in several respects, not just for having no nudity.

7:44 Right.

7:45 But overall, I think it's just the big thing about Killer Clowns from Outer Space is just the absolute commitment to the bit. You know, this was clearly their vision for this picture. Earth has been invaded by clowns from outer space. Aliens that are clowns. Clowns that are aliens. As this film actually explores humanity's knowledge of clowns and clowning traditions, we're talking from ancient Egypt through gesture traditions around the world through 20th century circus times. All of this was inspired, perhaps, by Earth's ancient alien first contact with clowns from outer space.

8:22 They do, in fact, mention this in dialogue.

8:24 Yeah.

8:25 At least as a suggestion by a character who is not an expert.

8:31 We don't know what his major is.

8:32 Speculating.

8:33 We don't know what his major is. Yeah. But yeah, these aliens are not disguised as clowns. They are clowns. Clowns are a species. Human clowns are unknowingly disguised as clowns from outer space.

8:49 That theory is a wonderful little garnish on the feast that is this film.

8:56 Yeah.

8:56 Yeah.

8:57 It's an idea that to a certain extent is later explored in a different way and to a different degree in horror writer Thomas Ligotti's 1990 story, The Last Feast of Harlequin.

9:07 Oh, I haven't read that one.

9:08 Oh, it's creepy. And it has clowns. So if you want a creepy clown read, I recommend that one. All right. Elevator pitch for this one. I mean, this is one of those films where the title alone tells you everything you need to know. It's Killer Clowns from Outer Space. What else do you need to say?

9:23 Do you know why they chose to spell clowns with a K in the title?

9:28 I don't know offhand. I guess it just it looks funny. It really clown is funny because the word clown is funny because it has that hard K kind of sound.

9:37 Right.

9:37 And so just go ahead and give it a K.

9:39 Fair enough.

9:40 Yeah.

9:41 All right, let's go ahead and listen to just a little bit of trailer audio here.

9:48 It was a night like any other night. Then something happened. You see that? Something different.

10:05 It's not shooting a star. Why here?

10:11 Why now?

10:14 Why clowns?

10:26 Killer clowns from outer space.

10:40 Killer clowns from outer space.

10:43 It's crazy. All right.

10:52 As of this recording, Killer Clowns from Outer Space is streamable on Tubi and Amazon Prime here in the States, but is generally just widely available in all formats. Shout Factory put out a really nice-looking steelbook edition, and it's, I think, still available, loaded with extras. Again, this one has enjoyed a very long life as home media, and so different editions, I think, have come out over the years.

11:18 I mean, it's really at home where people have grown to love I'm honestly not sure about other media that has explored the killer clown universe beyond the recent video game, but it seems like you could have a lot of like comic book crossovers here. It seems like killer clowns, aliens versus predator, like they're a crossover absolutely should happen there because you can get the, you know, you have ancient alien visitors. You have, you could have a hybrid where you have like a xenomorph clown hybrid. Like what does that look like? I mean, there's so, there's so many places you could go with.

11:51 Can I suggest something that is more, I would say, tonally and thematically already aligned with killer clowns. You can have Robocop versus Terminator. You can have alien versus predator and you can have killer clowns versus critters.

12:06 There you go.

12:07 Right.

12:07 It seems like a perfect fit.

12:09 Yes.

12:09 For a number of reasons. So, and that really leads us into, into our discussion of the people behind this picture, because the main like driving creative force here. is, of course, the Chiodo brothers. This is Stephen Chiodo, Charles Chiodo, and Edward Chiodo. I'm going to basically talk about them as a trio, but if you get into the credits, Stephen, born 1954, is credited as director, one of the writers and the producer, or one of the producers. Charles, born 1952, is credited as writer, producer, production designer, clown designs, and also plays the role of Clownzilla. You'll find out what that is later if you haven't seen it. And then Edward has a writer-producer credit, and he was born in 1960.

12:54 So these guys, before they were filmmakers in their own right, they had worked on special effects for a number of things, right?

13:02 Yeah, absolutely. They were already an established effects team, and they're still around as an established effects team. They continue to work, even though they haven't really come back and done any kind of like a full feature film in the same way. as killer clowns from outer space. But yeah, an American trio of special effects siblings who specialize in clay modeling, creature creation, stop motion, animatronics, you know, so many of those nice, you know, rub the fur practical effects that we love in films like this.

13:35 Totally.

13:35 And do I understand correctly that they originally intended to include some stop motion effects in Killer Clowns, but they weren't able to, and that's why... The clownzilla effect, I think, was originally going to be a stop-motion creature, but ended up being a man in a suit.

13:54 Yeah, that's my understanding. So we were going to get some stop-motion, and they've done a lot of stop-motion over the years, including, I understand, some bits for The Simpsons here and there.

14:03 But, to be clear, I'm not trying to diminish the clown effects by referring to them as a guy in a suit. Because they are more than just a person in a suit with makeup. There is some puppetry involved in the clowns, right?

14:17 Yes.

14:17 Yeah, the clowns that we get in the film are, as we'll be talking about time and time again here, they just look amazing. Just wonderful practical effects. I mean, the way that the heads have been sculpted and fabricated, painted, and then manipulated in a way that they just completely come to life. Like the movements of the mouth, the eyes. Oh, my goodness. the eyes of these things, I guess it's, you know, it's, it's, you don't have to worry about uncanny Valley with a creature like this, that is already supposed to be uncanny, but man, uh, pretty much in every shot, these clowns absolutely feel like living creatures.

14:52 Yeah.

14:52 So the Kyoto brothers, other credits include of course, 1986 is critters, which we've covered on the show before. And that's why a critters killer clowns crossover would be wonderful, even though that would be a lot of K sounds in the title.

15:06 Yeah.

15:07 They apparently also did the 6,000 Sucks commercial for 1987's RoboCop.

15:12 Yeah, that's right. The car that is constantly being advertised in the RoboCop universe and gets six miles to the gallon.

15:20 Let's see. Of course, they did 88's Critters 2 as well as UHF the same year. They did some effects in that. They did effects work in 91's Critters 3. They did 1991's Ernest Scared Stupid. This is a film that I think a lot of us remember from our childhoods. in part because the monster effects, the trolls in that movie, are extremely creepy and convincing and share a certain resemblance to the creatures in this film, though despite rumors that they're the same sculpts, like repainted, that appears to not be the case. Just, I think, a similar design aesthetic.

15:57 I can't remember if we've talked about this on the show before, but that is a film I remember very vividly for Being one of those things that was just supposed to be funny and a kid's movie, but actually scared me when I was a kid.

16:10 Yeah. Yeah.

16:11 I don't remember how scary I found it, but I remember liking it a lot more. Like I was still at the point where I was obviously down for earnest movies.

16:18 Yeah.

16:19 Like I wasn't, no one dragged me into an earnest movie kicking and screaming. But then I was like, oh man, I could tell like this is hitting harder than I had. I think these things were like taking kids' souls.

16:29 Turning them into wood, I recall.

16:31 Is that right? I think that's right. That's one we may come back to in the future. Let's see. They also worked on 92's Critters 4, 97's Turbo, a Power Rangers movie. They did some work in 2003's Elf, Team America, World Police in 2004. And they even had their hands in 2021's Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which is a very delightful film. I saw that one in the theater with my kid. Hmm. They also did makeup on the Monsters Horror Anthology series from 88 through 90, which did indeed have some tremendous monster makeup effects. And like I said earlier, they've done stop motion segments on The Simpsons as well. They've remained very active in film and TV, but again, have yet to truly follow up on The

17:16 Killer Clowns from Outer Space with a sequel or spiritual successor.

17:20 Okay, wait a minute. I'm going to revise my earlier recommendation of killer clowns versus critters. What about killer clowns versus the Power Rangers? That's already in their skill set.

17:31 I could see that matchup maybe working, yeah.

17:34 You know, magic wand to make my clown grow.

17:37 Yeah, yeah.

17:37 I mean, we do get a giant clown. That's the kind of thing we could battle a giant robot, for sure. We do get into Kaiju territory. So, Steve in Kyoto has... claimed that the initial inspiration for the series occurred when he was driving on a mountain road and looked over and saw a clown driving next to him. A clown where there shouldn't be a clown. Sounds horrifying to me.

18:01 And I think we get a sense of that in the film. There's actually a scene in the movie that seems to allude to this encounter, perhaps an encounter from another world. They also cite strong influences from 50s and 60s sci-fi horror monster movies, which totally makes sense. Mad Magazine, which lines up with what I already said, as well as Looney Tunes, which is perfectly believable. And they've stressed in interviews that it was also an essential ingredient that the actors treat the threat itself, the threat of the killer clowns, as absolutely serious and threatening, despite the heavy comic veneer to everything. So again, I think that's what the sense I get is that that's absolutely key to this movie working, is that the clowns are legitimately funny, Um,

18:48 but also grotesque. And also there's a strong sense of life and death here. Like they are frightening.

18:55 Yeah, that's right. Especially I think in the scenes where they're like menacing children and stuff, it's like, uh, those are the least funny and the most actually, uh, threatening scenes. I think, fortunately, though, the movie is kind of gentle in that regard in that we never actually see a child harmed.

19:11 Right, right.

19:12 You know, that always gets averted somehow. But the threat is kind of looming, and that emphasizes the less funny aspects.

19:28 All right, let's get into the cast here a bit. All right, starting at the top, we have the character Mike Tobacco. presumably a realistic name, played by Grant Kramer, born 1961.

19:41 This is one of our main two guys in the film. Mike and Dave are the main two guys, and the main lady in the film is Debbie. But Mike here, he's a real cut-up.

19:51 Yeah, and it's a mixed bag, as the character is full of terrible dated jokes, for the most part. I think we're supposed to like him more than I found myself liking him. I never hated him. I was never like, the clowns can't kill this guy fast enough. But... I don't think I liked him as much as I was supposed to.

20:11 Yeah, exactly how we're supposed to receive him was a little difficult for me to read. I found myself thinking that the, that essentially Debbie's other boyfriend, Dave was more likable of the two characters.

20:24 Yeah, absolutely. It's like, come on, Debbie, you can do better than this guy. And, and he's right here. Like why, why aren't you with officer Dave? Uh, but anyway, none of this is Grant Kramer's fault. Um, you know, perfectly fine here. He was, uh, His first film credit was 1980s New Year's Evil, followed by the 1984 sex comedy Hard Bodies. And his subsequent credits are a bit scattered.

20:45 And he produced a number of projects as well. He reprised his role as a vocal talent in that recent Killer Clowns video game.

20:53 OK, I agree. Probably dare not go watch the 1984 sex comedy Hard Bodies, but I'm curious about it because it shares a name with the gym in Burn After Reading.

21:06 Oh, yeah.

21:06 Remember that? Richard Jenkins repeatedly just talking about their workplace by name saying, like, we can't have this material here at Hard Bodies.

21:14 Yeah.

21:17 All right. Well, we mentioned Debbie already. Debbie Stone is played by Suzanne Snyder, born 1962. American actress with some great genre film credentials. She has an uncredited cheerleader role in 1984's The Last Starfighter, which we've talked about on the show. She's in 85's Weird Science, 86's Night of the Creeps.

21:37 Oh. Yeah, yeah.

21:39 And also 1988's Return of the Living Dead 2. And then this glorious picture.

21:45 You know, I love the original Return of the Living Dead, but I've never watched the sequel. I've heard it's kind of Looney Tunes.

21:52 Yeah, they're definitely the sequels that I'm familiar with, mostly by box art. I know Return of the Living Dead 2 has, you know, kind of cool box art. And then Living Dead 3's big selling point, I think, is Sexy Zombie. That's the one that, like, Sexy Zombie is in the forefront. But I never actually watched it. Anyway, Snyder, she had a number of subsequent TV roles and included appearances on In the Heat of the Night, Jake and the Fat Man, Seinfeld, and Homicide Life on the Street.

22:24 And she also reprised her role as a vocal talent in the Killer Clowns from Outer Space video game.

22:29 She's great in this. She brings a very good straight delivery of dialogue that is funny.

22:37 Yes, I agree.

22:39 She's not hamming it up in a way.

22:41 That is good. Absolutely.

22:43 Yeah.

22:44 As we'll discuss, she spends a lot of screen time taking a shower. But, you know, we'll break that down when we get into the plot.

22:52 All right.

22:52 Well, let's talk about Officer Dave Hanson, then played by John Allen Nelson, born 1959. Yeah, this character is Debbie's ex-boyfriend and current local cop. Nelson's TV credits go back to 1983, but, uh, in, I believe 1989, he starred in death stalker and the warriors from hell. This is a barbarian movie. He is the lead in it. Um, uh, this one I think has been riffed before, uh, a lot of regular mainstream mainstream TV work from this guy followed, but he also pops up in 2009 feast three.

23:25 I might've seen that death stalker movie or maybe not. I don't recall, but he, uh, I don't know, this guy doesn't read barbarian to me.

23:33 Well, no, you have two different basic types of barbarian. You have the muscle-bound barbarian, and then you have your leaner barbarian. And I think Deathstalker tends to be your leaner barbarian in different installments.

23:45 More of the rogue than the fighter.

23:47 Yeah, or he's more finesse. He's putting more into dex than strength.

23:52 Right, okay. I would say the same thing about Nelson here that I would say about Snyder in the role of Debbie. Both of them do a great job of straight delivery of funny dialogue that if they'd been winking a little bit more wouldn't have been as good.

24:06 Right. Okay, now let's get to the main human antagonist of the picture, and that is Officer Curtis Mooney. Played by the great John Vernon, who lived 1932 through 2005. Yes, it is the Dean from 1978's Animal House.

24:23 Oh, boy.

24:24 The guy who puts them on double secret probation.

24:26 Yes.

24:27 And he's playing essentially the same character here, but as a cop, like with a gun. Yeah.

24:33 I mean, Vernon really found a later career niche for himself as no-nonsense hard-ass. Like more than that, I would say that's being too generous. Like a lot of the characters he played are just outright malicious.

24:47 The guy who hates the youth.

24:49 He hates the youth and he's going to do everything within his powers given to him by his position or his job to go after them. And also maybe go a little more as well, a little harder.

25:01 This is the character archetype that is, I think, hilariously parodied in the Simpsons episode where Homer goes back to college because the dean is super cool.

25:10 Yes.

25:12 Yeah.

25:12 Yeah.

25:13 There's also a Futurama episode that parodies this where Bender goes to college. And yeah, it's it's become such a staple. But, you know, it all really begins with John Vernon's performance in that film. And again, he plays a similar sort of character here. Just, you know, a hard ass that hates everybody. The talented actor, the Canadian actor with filming TV credits going back to the 50s. And his pre-Animal House credits include some voice work for Marvel animated series in the 1960s. He voiced Iron Man and would later do some Marvel voices on much later animated series. He debuted on Broadway in 64. He starred in the Canadian crime series Wojcik from 66 to 68, which I've never seen, but I'm to understand was highly thought of at the time.

26:02 It was like a new sensation on television. canadian television he soon crossed over into american film with roles in hitchcock's topaz in 69 dirty harry in 71 he plays the mayor he pops up in 76 as the outlaw josie wales he followed up on animal house with its 13 episode tv spinoff delta house.

26:26 Haven't seen it but i don't have high hopes.

26:29 Other credits include 1980s Herbie Goes Bananas, 82's Airplane 2, the 83 horror movie Curtains. Oh, and he's also in an Ernest movie, 1987's Ernest Goes to Camp. I think that might have been the first full-fledged Ernest movie. That's one I definitely saw. I don't think I saw that one. He's also in 87's Blue Monkey. Um, let's see, there's a 1977 killer cat movie called The Uncanny, and he's also in the 1974 provocative surrealist comedy Sweet Movie.

27:01 I just had to look up The Uncanny to see, wait, have I seen this? I honestly don't recall.

27:06 Yeah, it's not one that I think I'm familiar with.

27:10 It's like a, it's an anthology film, right? That has a cat as the villain.

27:15 Yeah. Yep. Yep.

27:17 Seems to be the case.

27:18 Yeah.

27:19 We have different times. You know, this might, did I, maybe, maybe I did watch part of this.

27:24 Yeah.

27:25 Yeah. It feels very familiar. Because we do, we have Peter Cushing in at least one segment. Maybe.

27:31 Donald Pleasance and Ray Milland.

27:33 You know, I think maybe I did watch one of, we did watch one segment from this for one of our horror episodes in the past.

27:42 I think we did.

27:43 Our horror anthology series. Yeah.

27:45 It's got Samantha Egger, too. think we've seen this.

27:49 Yeah yeah the segment that vernon is in is hollywood 1936 this is the segment that has samantha agger donald pleasance uh and john vernon.

28:00 Uh it's maddening when i get into the state where i can't remember if i've seen a film but i really think i have and now i've got to go back and watch it to figure out if i've already watched it.

28:10 I mean, I don't remember for sure, but there's no way that John Vernon gets out of this movie without being eaten by a cat, right?

28:17 Oh, he's got, yeah.

28:18 Yeah.

28:18 Chomp, chomp. Fancy feast.

28:21 So anyway, yeah. Terrific character actor. Great at this sort of role. And there's tremendous sin killer clowns from outer space. All right. We have the Terenzi brothers as characters in this. There are comic relief characters. I would say they only hold up as limitedly funny characters. I had to chuckle at maybe one or two things that they do. And they are played by the comedy team, Siegel and Lacasse.

28:48 This was an actual like comedy duo of the time. That's Peter Lacasse, who lived 1959 through 2020. And then Michael S. Siegel. Michael S. Siegel, I think, ultimately went on to do more things. He got involved in like UK film and theater projects when he moved over there. And he's done some video game voice acting, including the recent Robocop Rogue City game.

29:11 These guys occupy a strange niche in that they are the character archetypes who would normally be the comic relief in an otherwise not funny film. But this is a funny film. And I found their comedy bits some of the most failed attempts to be funny in this otherwise funny film.

29:31 Absolutely.

29:31 Yeah. Yeah.

29:34 The times they succeed in being humorous, for my money anyway, are just smaller. moments and not like the hard gag moments they're going for with these two.

29:43 Yeah.

29:44 All right. One more actor we're going to mention here, and that is Royal Dano, who lived 1922 through 1994, playing the character Farmer Gene Green. Quirky American character actor with credits going back to 1943. His credits include 1956's Moby Dick, in which he plays the prophetic Elijah. This is the character that warns our central characters that they are doomed if they go on this ship.

30:11 Oh, before they get on the Pequod, yeah.

30:15 Let's see, he's in a 72 TV movie titled Moon of the Wolf. He's in 74's Messiah of Evil. 76 is The Outlaw Josie Wales. 83 is Something Wicked This Way Comes. 83's The Right Stuff, 87's House 2, 87's Ghoulies 2, 1990's Spaced Invaders, and 1993's The Dark Half. He also has a slew of TV credits, including one episode of Night Gallery. Clearly a talented actor with a great folksy vibe. And he just goes ahead and just hams it up all the way here. Just absolutely amped up to 11. This is a fun little role.

30:54 Spaced invaders is a film that I loved when I was a kid. I think I rented it from the video store and I ended up watching it many times. Uh, also a comedy science fiction film with some, you know, zany Martians who come to earth by accident and they end up running around on Halloween night. Everybody thinks that their kids in costumes while they're trying to take over the world. Haven't seen it many years, probably doesn't hold up very well, but I loved it when I was a kid. And, This guy plays the exact same character in that movie that he does in this one.

31:28 Oh, wow. And they're so close together, too. It's like it's almost too close together for it to have for for that to have been influenced by this. I don't know.

31:35 Yeah.

31:37 But the character that he plays is kind of like it's basically the trope that you see in the blob. He's the. Like the good-natured folksy guy who just happens to run afoul of the alien menace.

31:48 Darnation. He's a farmer whose meteor has landed on his property, and now he's going to be rich.

31:55 Yeah. All right. And then finally, the music. The music's really fun here. The composer is John Massari, born 1957. He worked a lot in TV and film over the years. Also scored the Lorenzo Lama Snake Eater movies. And I would say the general vibe for Killer Klowns from Outer Space is John Carpenter-esque synth that is occasionally quite suspenseful and very John Carpenter-y. But then you also have plenty of circus music whimsy sprinkled in there as well.

32:24 Yeah, that's right. But then also, of course, a major musical texture here is the rock music from the Dickies. Because right at the beginning of the movie, we get that opening theme song. which if you did not already know, this is one of those movies like the Flash Gordon film that is not a musical, but does have an original rock theme song that says the title of the movie in the lyrics and describes the plot in the lyrics.

32:52 That's right.

32:53 Yeah.

32:53 Killer Clowns from Outer Space performed by the Dickies. Not a band I was super familiar with, but they've been around for a long time and they seem to have a strong following. American pop punk band, or I guess you'd just call them a punk band, but I've also seen pop punk or humor punk thrown in there. Active still today, based out of L.A., headed up by vocalist Leonard Graves Phillips, who also has writing production credit on this song. And it's also worth pointing out that noted film composer and frequent Steven Soderbergh and Nicholas Winding Refn collaborator Cliff Martinez was their drummer at the time. And so presumably listening to The Killer Clowns from Outer Space, we're hearing Cliff Martinez on drums.

33:38 Yeah, I think so.

33:39 Yeah.

33:40 The same year he would have composed the score for Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape. So an interesting little bit of film score trivia there. But the song The Killer Clowns from Outer Space was released the same year on an EP from the Dickies with the same title.

33:57 That EP also includes a pretty amazing cover. It's a cover of a song. originally from the Jetsons, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon that's played on the show, the Jetsons by a, an in show, uh, like teen idol named, I think, uh, screaming jet or jet screamer or something like that. Uh, and the song is called E-P-O-P-O-R-K-A-A. It's E-P-O-P-O-R-K-A-A. I love you.

34:25 And the Dickies cover is excellent. I think.

34:28 Yeah.

34:29 This song is really fun. I mean, It should be noted, as with the score, there's enough circus music in there that it is going to maybe annoy you a bit. I mean, that's the thing about circus music. But it's a really fun track. Some of the lyrics include the likes of everybody's running when the circus comes into their towns.

34:46 Everybody's gunning for the likes of the killer clowns. Or this one's really this one gets a bit hard here. See a rubber nose on a painted face bringing genocide to the human race. Yeah, it's almost getting into almost like Misfits territory with the lyrics on that one.

35:04 Yeah, yeah.

35:04 Oh, it reminds me of the lyrics of Astro Zombies.

35:06 Yeah, yeah.

35:16 So the main Killer Clown song plays while we get a montage of nightlife in the movie's setting, which is this California town called Crescent Cove. So we see teenagers hanging out at a circus themed restaurant called Big Top Burger. The youth are surveyed with evident disgust here by a cop named Officer Mooney. This is, again, the character played by John Vernon. Mooney's just looking around at these kids and he would clearly love to arrest all of these long hairs, but he is outnumbered. So he gets his coffee and he drives off in his squad car looking frustrated and fuming. Next thing we see is a young guy with blonde hair and glasses carrying some groceries on the sidewalk. He's drinking a beer in a can that's

36:02 just labeled BEER in all caps with nothing else. And he sort of hides his open container as he goes through a crosswalk in front of Mooney's car. And Mooney grumbles. Just looking at this kid makes him furious, but then he moves on. This guy, by the way, is a minor character named Bob, played by Christopher Titus. And after they go their separate ways, Bob says, cops. But next, we're going to check in at the local Lover's Lane.

36:29 It's Makeout Point. So all the youths here are parking, listening to the radio, drinking beer, stargazing, and smooching.

36:37 Yeah, and it's one of those movies where I think they're all clearly well into their late 20s.

36:41 Yes. And in this scene, we meet a lot of the young characters who at first I was assuming we would follow many of these characters for the rest of the film. But no, mainly just our primary two characters here, Mike Tobacco and Debbie Stone. They're going steady. They're hanging out in their car.

37:01 They're drinking.

37:02 But while everybody else here is drinking beer for some reason, they're having champagne. I don't know if is here's a question. Did you read Mike as like a rich or preppy guy? He's sort of dressed in a preppy way. He's got this sweater on with a collared shirt underneath, and they're drinking champagne while everybody else is not. Is that what we were supposed to take from this?

37:26 I had not put that together till just now. Maybe that's what they were going for. But yeah, I don't know. His character, yeah, about the only thing I really get out of it is that, yeah, he is a cut up. And he also is kind of he's a cool kid, but he's also still friends with the weird kids.

37:44 Yeah.

37:45 So he's a transitional character in that regard.

37:47 That's right.

37:48 Yeah.

37:48 And then, of course, Debbie we meet in the scene is depicted as very earnest and good hearted. She's got that final girl energy. We also in the scene meet the Terenzi brothers, Paul and Rich, who are friends of Mike's from school. These are zany, low-level hustlers who make money running an ice cream truck. And their truck has a giant clown head on top called Jojo the Ice Cream Clown. So when these brothers show up, they cause a major ruckus at the lover's lane by pulling up in their truck and yelling at everybody through their loudspeaker.

38:24 Their ice cream slogans have a lot of vulgar double entendre based around the concept of licking. And they also try to upsell the frozen treats by, there's one who's doing his routine in the microphone and he keeps humping the air while he's listing the ice creams.

38:39 Yeah, their entire business model seems to revolve around selling ice cream at night and setting their sights on the local make-out place as like where the prime business is going to be for buying a bunch of fudgesicles and stuff.

38:53 Yeah, yeah.

38:54 The Terenzi brothers are, after this, they're driven away from the car park area after being brutally heckled and pelted with beer cans and other trash. They're not popular.

39:04 No.

39:05 But then after watching all this happen, Mike tells Debbie, whenever I want to have a good time, I call Rich and Paul. A night out with those guys is a total adventure.

39:18 What?

39:19 I mean, he just knows them. That's, I guess, all we really need to take away from this.

39:23 But we don't get the sense that there's that much adventurous about them. I don't know. Maybe it depends on what you call an adventure.

39:29 They just.

39:30 Seem like guys who are always trying to work some sort of scam.

39:33 Yeah, they're making poor choices.

39:34 Yeah.

39:36 Like, do they do they run the ice cream truck during the day? Like, or are they maybe some sort of weird scam where they're like, we know a guy who runs an ice cream truck, but he doesn't run it at night. We could rent it from him. And sell ice cream to teenagers and college students at night and thinking that's a great idea. That would make sense.

39:55 Wait, I think later that they do say the ice cream truck is rented, right?

39:58 Oh, well, they do. That's right. That's right. So maybe that's what's going on. They can only use it at night.

40:03 Because they say, you know, like, use the ice cream truck to ram the killer clown. And they're like, I can't. It's a rental.

40:10 Anyway.

40:11 So Mike and Debbie lie out in the back of their car looking at the stars when suddenly a huge bright object streaks across the night sky. What was that? Was it a comet? Debbie wants to go see where it landed, and Mike takes some convincing, but she talks him into it. We also cut to somewhere else nearby on a farm where an old codger, this is Gene Green, played by Royal Dano, is sitting out on his porch with his bloodhound Pooh, and he watches the light pass right overhead and And this guy is full of oddball rural colloquialism. He's like, well, I'll be hornswoggled. You see that there, Sky Guppy, zip on by? Sky Guppy? Is that a saying?

40:53 I don't know. I mean, I trust him.

40:56 So Green determines the object was Halley's Comet. And he also decides to go find the crash site, reasoning that somehow this will make him filthy rich. So he grabs his lantern and shovel and he heads out into the woods. However, when he comes upon the landing site, it is not an impact crater, but a circus tent. And he's talking to his dog. He says, well, I'll be greased and fried.

41:21 What's the circus doing out here? I love the circus. Come on, maybe we can get us some free passes.

41:27 Oh man, it's really, it's adorable. This guy loves circuses so much, but of course he's so dimmed. This guy's clearly going to get it.

41:37 Yeah, but the scene takes a turn. So the farmer goes to investigate the tent, and he determines that there is something peculiar about this circus. Where's the ticket booth? Here we also get our first clown stalking scene, first in silhouette through the side of the tent. So the guy is creeping along, and then there's a clown-shaped shadow following him, which for a second you could mistake as being his shadow. And then you realize, like, oh, no way, that's a clown. There's something in here kind of like the Charlie Chaplin mirror gag.

42:07 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love the colors here. And I think the film's already doing a great job invoking a surrealistic, comedic menace in the clowns. And as a sidebar here, I think this is one of the things the film does just so well. So scary clowns are obviously a dime a dozen nowadays. And even at this point, when Killer Clowns from Outer Space came out, we'd already had multiple movies with sinister clowns in them. And Stephen King's It, the novel, was a fairly recent bestseller. And, you know, there will be many more scary clowns to come.

42:41 But the thing about scary clowns in horror is that their clownness is very often only skin deep or grease paint deep. And underneath, we usually get either human cruelty or supernatural menace. And I don't want to dismiss all of that out of hand. You know, that can be a lot of fun still and be very terrifying. Pennywise, the dancing clown, is one of the best. And he totally fits this mold. clown on the outside, but it's just an illusion, just a face that's worn by an extra-dimensional menace.

43:11 Yeah, with Pennywise, obviously, it's a way of salting the meat for the creature, right? Because it is a creature that thrives on fear. He savors the fear of his victims. And the clown disguise kind of heightens the ambiguity and the tension. It increases the tension because you don't know what to make of it. A clown is supposed to be a funny and non-threatening thing, but obviously this is one that is causing you fear. And that mismatch actually makes him more frightening.

43:41 Right.

43:41 But there will come a point where it's like the mask is drawn away.

43:46 Yeah.

43:47 And the monster is revealed and the clownness is gone. But I think there's something admirable in a case like this movie where the clown-ness goes absolutely all the way to the bone. I'd venture to guess that maybe some incarnations of the Joker in comic books land in this area. But Killer Clowns from Outer Space definitely does. At no point is the mask of the clown removed to reveal some horror beneath. Again, they do not become clowns. They are clowns. Clowns are a species in this movie. They don't paint themselves to become what they're presented as. Like everything that they do on a biological or civilizational level is clowning.

44:25 I think that's right.

44:28 Yeah.

44:28 Yeah.

44:30 Uh, so in this scene, uh, yeah, you're right. We, we do get our first taste of that. So the farmer's dog disappears. I think a hole appears in the side of the circus tent and the big net comes out. Um, And then the farmer turns around and his dog's gone. And this part's actually kind of sad. But anyway, he gets enraged and he starts shouting at the tent that he will tear it apart with his bare hands. But then when he grabs one of the ropes surrounding the tent, it sends a huge jolt of electricity through him. And he says, like, holy smokes, this thing is wired. And then, uh-oh, here comes our first full view of one of the movie's clowns. Um, how can we describe the look generally?

45:15 The different clowns have somewhat different features, but they are basically humanoid in shape, but with distorted features and proportions generally somewhat larger than a human, but not much larger or have some parts of their body with larger than normal proportions to the others, like a big head, big face, big hands and feet.

45:37 Yeah.

45:37 Like kind of like, um, like a grotesque, um, version of like an old man's features underneath, but also like a troll or an ogre's features.

45:48 Yeah.

45:48 You know, everything very exaggerated.

45:51 Of course, clown clothes and makeup with pale white skin, generally candy colored hair and big red noses. And then, yeah, like you're saying, there are these hints of monstrousness, the skin while made to look like a clown. It's got that, that makeup look, the grease paint look is also cool. texturally craggy it looks kind of rough and suggests a reptilian nature underneath or maybe like ancient skin also the mouth on the first guy we see is huge with lots of glistening teeth inside.

46:24 Yeah yeah like it's sort of a cannibal morph or something you know like extra large mouth for consuming things.

46:32 So the clown approaches and the farmer is confused. And then the clown says something in his alien clown language, which we hear many times in the film, then pulls out a ray gun and appears to cook the farmer alive with it.

46:46 That went about as well as we knew it would for this poor farmer.

46:50 So next thing, we go to the police station, where we get some drama between the two main cop characters in the film. There is Mooney, the seething law-and-order maniac we met earlier, and a younger, more even-tempered cop named Dave Hansen, played by John Allen Nelson. The basic conflict in the scene is that Mooney has arrested two college guys dressed like they're headed to a Bauhaus concert. He detained them, I think, for the crime of walking through the park in goth makeup. Maybe it was another open container issue. I don't recall. But Dave Hanson is trying to calm the situation and get Mooney to take it easy.

47:28 But Mooney won't be stopped. He's freaking out and screaming like, it's scum like you that are killing this town. And he hauls the guys away for booking. But apparently these two cops have some bad blood between them. Dave doesn't like Mooney personally. beating people up and raging around like a psycho and mooney doesn't like dave i think for being young yeah or maybe for being weak maybe he's like you know you're not you're not tough enough on them.

47:56 Yeah it quickly becomes clear that mooney is a terrible cop he's a would-be local tyrant who thinks the job is all about cracking heads and again vernon is the perfect guy to play this hard ass.

48:07 Yeah So our farmer guy already got microwaved by the clowns. But now we got to have another visit to the circus tent. So Debbie and Mike are they were also going to go look for where the shooting star landed. And they end up tromping through the woods with Mike doing a lot of kind of cringy comedy routines as they go until they finally come across the circus tent. Debbie, once they get there, Debbie is hesitant. But Mike is full steam ahead. And he leads them inside where, wouldn't you know it, this is not a circus tent, but an interstellar starship with pervasive decorative circus themes. And again, all through this, Mike is just doing this running comedy act to impress Debbie, most of which is super cringeworthy.

48:53 Yeah, yeah. But this spaceship, man, looks amazing.

48:57 Yeah.

48:57 So inside the spaceship, they find a bunch of funhouse style corridors with wacky color schemes and angles. There is a portal that leads to a giant reactor room that really looks like it belongs on the Death Star. I think because of just the vertical depth of it, it's this giant chasm or shaft, but it is bathed in pink and purple light, and then at the core of this chamber is a giant crystal ball that is arcing like a Tesla coil.

49:26 Yeah, I love this scene. The matte painting, special effects combo here looks really good. It really didn't even need to look this cool and clowny at the same time, but it does. And I guess, you know, also drives home that we're dealing with an advanced civilization here. Like, they're somewhere on the Kardashev scale. The Kardashev clown scale.

49:48 I'm not sure how that differs from your standard Kardashev scale. But they're on there. They have advanced technology, but they're clowning to the max.

49:56 They don't have Dyson spheres. They have Dyson balloons.

49:59 Yes, there you go.

50:09 Uh, so, uh, anyway, they, you know, they're starting to get the idea that something's a little weird here. I think Debbie says, this is no fun house, no circus either. Uh, so Mike and Debbie realized that the shooting star they saw was actually an alien ship and they are now inside it. Uh, so they hear some approaching footsteps and they duck into a different room to hide. This room is the cotton candy room, which we will visit again a couple of times in the film. And this is a giant room. filled with fog swirling around the floor and large pink, almost testicular kind of boluses hanging off of hooks on metal racks with rows and rows of rack space going up to the ceiling. And these pink bulbs,

50:55 these hanging dangling bulbs are supposed to be cotton candy.

50:59 Yes.

51:00 Which, you know, we did some episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on cotton candy a while back. And You know, as we discussed there, like cotton candy is just intrinsically bound to the idea of circus and fair and outdoor spectacle. So it makes sense that it would be associated with clowns. But as we'll discuss, the cotton candy here that the clowns are using must not be true cotton candy because they can do things that cotton candy is completely incapable of doing. It really seems to be more like a spider silk.

51:29 Yeah.

51:30 Yeah, that's right. But Mike does not catch on to it. to the spider silk elements here. He first says, look at this place. Smells like candy. I don't know where we were before, but this looks like a cotton candy factory to me. This must be where they hang it up to dry before they ship it out.

51:48 What?

51:50 Uh, and Debbie says, I don't believe in UFOs, but if they do exist, we're then we're trapped in one right now. Uh, but Mike doesn't seem to agree. He gives her the old, you know, come on, there's gotta be a logical explanation for this. And to which Debbie replies, uh, I don't remember exactly how she gets here, but she says nobody stores cotton candy like this. And she's right. Yeah, again, we did core episodes on cotton candy. Cotton candy is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs moisture from the air and it will lose its fluffiness and turn into sticky goop. Look at all the fog in that room. That is a high humidity room. You cannot hang cotton candy like that.

52:29 Yeah, absolutely.

52:31 However, Mike decides he's got to prove that debbie is being silly and demonstrate that this is definitely normal cotton candy and not sinister outer space cotton candy so he rips out a chunk of the nearest bulb revealing underneath the wet bloody skinless face of a man so it in fact is not just cotton candy these are cocoons made out of a cotton candy like substance which again is a terrible idea by the way and they appear to dissolve your flesh It.

53:03 Looks pretty grim. Looks pretty grim.

53:04 Yeah.

53:05 So Mike and Debbie are interrupted when a clown comes in to hang up a new bulb. And by the way, just side note, in the middle of the room, there is a giant popcorn machine. It's just swirling popcorn.

53:16 Yeah.

53:17 We'll learn more about that popcorn later.

53:19 But Mike and Debbie are discovered and they bolt for the exit and the clown gives chase, bringing along a popcorn gun. This is a big gun that shoots popcorn that kind of flies through the air after them as they run. The popcorn does hit Debbie and Mike just as they escape the tent, but it doesn't kill them.

53:38 And I really wasn't sure what the popcorn was supposed to do at this point, but they do come back to that.

53:42 Yeah.

53:43 Uh, so Debbie's like popcorn. Why popcorn? And then Mike says, because they're clowns. That's why. Also after this, Mike and Debbie, like they, they run away. Uh, and when the clowns follow them outside the tent, they make a balloon animal dog that helps them track the humans.

54:01 Yes.

54:02 And it's barking and, roughing.

54:03 You know. Yeah, total Looney Tunes moment.

54:06 Right.

54:06 So there's a chase through the woods, but Debbie and Mike get away in their car. And also they, you know, there's some fighting in the car. Like, you know, you end up with a clown on the hood of the car, of course, trying to reach through the windshield. But they get away. And then while escaping the scene, they talk about what to do next. Mike thinks they can't tell anyone because of how crazy the story sounds. But Debbie says she has a friend who works for the police and he will believe them. She knows it. Meanwhile, we watch the clowns slowly waddling toward the city limits.

54:37 Oh, no.

54:38 And this will be the beginning of a lot of the movie is just going to be little scenes of the clowns doing various clowning, clowning activities and circus related activities within the city against the citizens, all of which end in people being caught and cocooned.

54:55 Yeah.

54:56 All acts that are at once malicious and pure clowning. And at times it's hard to figure out exactly what the MO is. Are they entertaining to put their victims at ease before they get them and cocoon them for later? Or is there something else? Is there just something about them where they must entertain people as well? I don't know.

55:17 They are clowns after all.

55:19 I really like the moment where the clown tries to blend in by pretending to be a motorized Halloween decoration outside the drugstore.

55:27 That's smart. That's stealthy.

55:28 Yeah.

55:29 So the friend that Debbie was talking about is Dave Hanson, the nicer cop from earlier. So Debbie and Mike, they get to the police station and they try to explain to him what they saw. But in the middle of explaining the killer clown popcorn conspiracy, Mooney wanders in and he's like, oh, this is a load of hogwash. And Mooney says to Mike, he says, I know you, you little fart. You hang out with the Terenzi brothers. And Mooney concludes that these clowns they're talking about are a Terenzi brothers stunt to sell ice cream. Makes sense. So much to Mooney's derision, Dave agrees to go with Mike and Debbie to check out the circus tent and see for himself. Now, we eventually learn here that Dave is

56:15 Debbie's ex-boyfriend and he is still in love with her, still carrying a torch for her. And because he still cares about her, he takes this kind of paternalistic tone and tells her that she can't come back to the ship. He's dropping her off at home. And Mike and Debbie have a little moment talking to each other before Mike is going to get back in the car and go with Dave up to the tent. And he's worried. He's like, I didn't know he was your ex-boyfriend. He's going to shoot me when we get up there. And Debbie tells Mike, don't worry about Dave. It's those clowns you got to worry about.

56:47 Yeah.

56:51 So let's talk about some of the general clown antics in town.

56:54 Yeah, because it basically becomes that for a while. Just one clown antic and kill after another.

57:01 One I liked is the puppet show in the gazebo with a single audience member. And I was genuinely laughing out loud about how this guy is just at first he's scoffing and rolling his eyes at a puppet show that he is choosing to watch alone.

57:18 Yeah, yeah, he's like, wow, what is this crap? But then he's drawn in by the raw honesty of this two-puppet performance, and one of the puppets draws a laser gun of some sort, ray gun, and zaps the other puppet, making that puppet completely evaporate.

57:35 Yeah, and then the guy's like, what? And then, of course, the gun gets turned on him, but zaps him into a cotton candy cocoon.

57:42 Yeah, so this is where we learn this is what they're doing. They zap people this way, The ray gun like spins them around and then they're in this cotton candy cocoon that can then be collected later, harvested.

57:54 We also get a lot of drugstore antics. We saw the clown going to the drugstore earlier. So once inside, the clown wanders around clumsily knocking things over. The drugstore clerk is extremely nervous and bothered by this. And eventually the clown starts cotton candy-fying everybody in the store. But they're also like playing with the product, spraying themselves with shaving cream and sneezing in the baby powder.

58:19 They can't resist a good site guy like that. They got to go for it.

58:22 We also get a pizza delivery clown gag. I think that this is supposed to be a Carl Hunga style like pornographic movie set up or like, oh, here's the pizza delivery guy here. And the lady's answering the door in her nightgown.

58:39 But instead of wine.

58:40 Yeah.

58:40 With a glass of wine. But instead, it's a clown delivering the pizza. And then the pizza box opens and inside there are more clowns.

58:49 This actress, by the way, is Carla Sue Kroll. This is our only credit, though. But this gag, this was hilarious. So clearly we need to do another similar bit with another clown delivery.

58:59 Yeah, basically the same setup. But instead now it's an older lady who opens the door. And the clown at the door has a box of Valentine cotton candy. Or not cotton candy. sorry valentine like chocolates box you know um in a heart shape and she she turns and i guess is talking to her husband and she's like oh you know oh phil you got this for me and of course the clown there is ready to cotton candy them once again.

59:25 They have a great deal of cultural knowledge of our planet. They do. They did a lot of research. Maybe they were on the dark side of the moon for a while before they made their trip.

59:35 They've been studying us, watching our TV. Yeah. So after dropping Debbie off, Dave and Mike head up to check out the spaceship tent. But when they arrive, there's nothing there. Just a big hole in the ground, huh? Well, here Dave gets mad and he places Mike under arrest. Another antic that is going on in town is the whole biker versus clown scene, which is very inspired. There's like a massive congregation of bikers hanging out in an alley outside a building that is covered in graffiti. By the way, I paused it to just read what some of the graffiti is. Some of it's biker slogans, but other stuff is like one graffito just says Jimi Hendrix. Another one says beer.

1:00:22 Yeah.

1:00:22 Or one says no, but no, but what does that even mean? I don't know.

1:00:25 Maybe I don't want to. That's a, that's a biker thing. I actually looked that up. I think it means basically like, I will not give you a ride on my bike unless I find you sexually attractive.

1:00:36 Oh, okay.

1:00:37 But anyway, so yeah, all the bikers are hanging out being rowdy and then a single clown rides up to them on a bicycle with training wheels. I think this is the sort of, it's implied the childlike clown thing.

1:00:50 Yeah, this is the little guy of the group that may be a young clown.

1:00:55 Yeah.

1:00:56 So he rides up on his little bicycle with training wheels, and then there's one big, gross, drooling, mean biker, the biker bully, who approaches this little clown and starts bullying him. He asks if he can ride his bicycle, and the little clown shakes his head, and then the bully smashes the clown's bicycle while all his friends cheer. And then you really feel sad for the clown here.

1:01:19 Yeah.

1:01:20 He cries a little bit. It's so sad. He's just a little guy.

1:01:23 And then one of the other bikers watching this is like, yeah, he should have let the man ride his bike. But then the clown manifests boxing gloves and puts his hands up and he starts dancing around and cutely saying something in the alien clown language. It sounds a bit like Scooby-Doo saying, put up your dukes, and then he punches the biker's head off into a trash can.

1:01:48 Yeah, fatality.

1:01:51 Back at the Big Top Burger, we get one of the actually creepier scenes in the movie where there is a clown outside the restaurant playing peekaboo with a child through the window and trying to lure her outside while holding a giant cartoon mallet behind his back. But fortunately, before the girl can make it outside to her clown doom, her scolding mother yanks her back to the table to finish her hamburger.

1:02:14 Yeah, definitely very creepy sequence. Clown looked amazing. The music was very evocative here. Yeah, like in that mallet, you know, obviously a comedic mallet, but what's it going to do? Like what kind of awful clown technology does it have? So relieved when this did not come to fruition.

1:02:30 I think we never see the mallet used in the film. So we don't know about that one.

1:02:35 We're just left to imagine.

1:02:37 Also somewhere in here, there is the thing that we really had a question about. There's a scene where there is a dude driving along a dark highway and he gets run off the road over the edge of a bridge by a clown driving what I took to be an invisible car. So I was trying at first to think like, this doesn't seem clown related. Like so many of the other attacks and gags are what's the deal here.

1:03:01 But then I was thinking maybe it's supposed to be miming because it's You know, clowns and mimes have some overlap and mimes interact with invisible objects. That's part of clowning. I've never really seen an invisible car gag from a mime.

1:03:15 Yeah, yeah. This segment made a lot more sense when I read that bit about one of the Kyoto brothers being inspired by a supposed encounter with a clown driving on a mountain road. Write what you know, right?

1:03:28 Exactly.

1:03:29 Meanwhile, Officer Dave, with Mike handcuffed in the back of his squad car, comes across the lover's lane from earlier. And all the cars now appear to be abandoned. It's dark and quiet here. And he investigates further and finds nobody around. All the cars are just filled with cobwebs of cotton candy. And so I think that's all the convincing Dave needs. He goes back and he uncoffs Mike.

1:03:51 He's like, OK, I believe you clowns.

1:03:53 Yeah.

1:03:53 Yeah. The cotton candy cobwebs are just really convincing here, too. Like it's everything's just bright pink and colorful, but is also legitimately uncanny and creepy.

1:04:03 Now, there's some more police business. There's a scene where we're at the police station and Mooney is reading a magazine, laughing to himself, laughing like it's a humor magazine or something. Maybe he's reading Copy of Mad. But then we see him turn a page and it's a gun catalog. What's he laughing at? But then the clown calls start coming in on the phone. The phones are ringing off the hooks with clown-related complaints. He's like, oh, really? The clowns took your wife away in a balloon? And Mooney is angry.

1:04:37 He does not like this nonsense. And he says, if they want to play games, they're messing with the wrong guy. So he resolves to ignore all of the phones that are ringing in the police station.

1:04:48 Yeah, to the perfection of his terrible job as a cop, actively ignoring dangerous situations going on while also just being a tyrannical bully.

1:04:58 Now, meanwhile, we got the beginning of you alluded to this earlier, Rob, the the famous shower scene, not famous for the reasons many shower scenes are famous.

1:05:09 That's right. It is a shower scene that does seem to go on forever. I got a sense of this when I watched it through the first time in its entirety. But then I saw some folks referencing this online, saying it's the longest cinematic shower of all time. I don't know about that. I couldn't find some stats on that.

1:05:26 But again, it is remarkable, first of all, in that it is a very PG-13 shower scene. We get full arm nudity. We almost see an armpit. That's about it.

1:05:37 Yeah.

1:05:38 It's even tamer than the full bikini shower scene from Piranha Mandir. We watched a while back. And it indeed goes on a while. So I had to clock it. I got out my stopwatch. Multiple scenes and nearly 12 minutes of screen time take place between the beginning and the end of Debbie's actual shower. And that's just when the water turns off. It is a full 18 plus minutes of screen time before we see her fully out of the shower. and dressed but still in the bathroom.

1:06:11 Yeah that's right so it's not all that much screen time but it just spans a lot of the film you get this feeling it like it starts in the middle of the movie and then you're like into the third act by the time.

1:06:24 It's over yeah i guess screen time is maybe not the right discrete because it's yeah we're not actually watching the full thing but we we keep coming back to it that's the duration of this shower within the pacing of this movie um And yeah, I mean, in reality, a 12 minute or even an 18 minute shower, not unreasonable, but within the context of a film's pacing, that's one long shower. I mean, I think the shower scene in psycho, the most famous shower scene of all is something like a minute long, less than a minute even.

1:06:54 Yeah.

1:06:55 And that one's pivotal to the plot.

1:06:57 But in that one, at least you're not like cutting away to multiple other subplots.

1:07:01 Yeah.

1:07:01 That's the thing. We cut away to just multiple subplots.

1:07:05 So, uh, First of all, what's happening here, let's talk about. So further developments during the span of the shower. Within Debbie's house, there are developments on the popcorn subplot. So we eventually find out that the popcorn does do something. I think it's understood to be the larval form of the clown beings. Was that how you understood it?

1:07:28 Yeah, because the popcorn we see is crawling around on the tiles of the bathroom floor, like little larval creatures. So I think this is the larval form of the clown life form. What's the next phase in their development? I think we're about to find out.

1:07:46 That's right. And we see this, by the way, because Debbie still has the popcorn stuck to her clothes, which are on the bathroom floor. So we see the popcorn kernels kind of squirming around.

1:07:55 Yeah, which got blasted onto her by the clown guns.

1:07:57 That's right. Yeah. So they're like little caterpillars. And then much later, once she's out of the shower, the popcorn appears to have metamorphosed into baby monster clowns. which are each like a little demon clown head with a mohawk on top of a snake-like spine.

1:08:16 Yeah, yeah. So I think it goes basically free-moving popcorn larva to juvenile clown snake and then to adult clown form. And then I think we might assume that the killer clown from outer space is kind of like certain reptiles that keep growing throughout their entire life because they seem to just get taller and taller.

1:08:37 Yeah, that's right. Now, these creatures, the snake like creatures attack Debbie in the bathroom, but she escapes, though she is later she escapes only to be menaced by fully grown adult clowns all around her, which ambush her and then prevent her escape from her apartment. There's one part where she's trying to get out and she runs to the window and looks down and there are a bunch of clowns holding a tramp. like firemen.

1:09:02 Also worth noting that those snake clowns, they're also like Jack in the Boxes. Because again, there's nothing about the clowns, their biology or their life cycle or their culture and civilization that is not clowning to its heart.

1:09:16 Yes.

1:09:17 So she's eventually captured and put inside a balloon, like we heard about on the phone. Before that, we cut away to different kinds of clown horror and subplots going on. We get a bit more with Mike and Dave in the car. Dave is kind of rambling about, I think Mike tries to apologize. He's like, look, man, I didn't want to, you know, cause any weirdness with you and Debbie. Uh, and Dave is like, the problem is me. Obviously she goes for laughs, not stability.

1:09:54 Yeah. But Mike's like, yeah, you got me. He doesn't contest this.

1:10:01 And there's more clown horror. There is the clown puppet show where a clown shows up on a sidewalk and starts doing a, oh, not just a puppet show, a shadow puppet show. He's doing shadow puppetry for a group of elderly people at a bus stop. It begins cute and then gets increasingly absurd. One of the hand shadows he does is a detailed outline of Washington crossing the Delaware.

1:10:24 Yep.

1:10:25 Legitimately hilarious.

1:10:26 Yeah.

1:10:27 And then the shadow puppet turns into a big Tyrannosaurus Rex head with glowing eyes, and it eats all the old people, and that somehow shrinks them, which allows the clown to put them in a suitcase full of popcorn.

1:10:39 There you go.

1:10:40 So Mike and Dave witness part of this bus stop attack from Dave's squad car, and after this, they split up. Dave heads to the police station, and Mike goes to recruit his friends, the Terenzi brothers, the guys with the ice cream truck.

1:10:54 I think.

1:10:55 The idea is.

1:10:55 They're going to drive around, maybe warning people to stay away from clowns on the megaphone. But first, they've got to go rescue Debbie. Also, back at the police station, which is only manned by Mooney at this point, a clown appears at the station while Mooney is sitting at his desk, smoking a cigar and ignoring all of the ringing telephones. The clown offers him a bouquet, but it's a trick bouquet that squirts his face with water. And that makes Mooney very mad. he attempts to arrest the clown, but encounters difficulties, including detachable clown hands that come off with the handcuffs. And, uh, so he tries to, he does end up jailing the clown in the cell next to the two goth guys from earlier. Uh, when Dave

1:11:40 later arrives at the police station, he finds that the clown has cocooned the unfortunate prisoners and has turned Mooney into a ventriloquist dummy. So he's got the little red cherry cheeks and the, some blood running from the corners of his mouth that make it resemble the little like block mouth that operates on a, on a ventriloquist puppet.

1:12:00 Yeah.

1:12:00 Oh my God. This, this scene is, his is terrifying.

1:12:04 The clown makes John Vernon talk and he says, don't worry, Dave, all we want to do is kill you.

1:12:10 And then he, the clown lets this grotesque ventriloquist dummy like collapse onto the table. And as he does, so like, withdraws his now blood-slicked clown hand from the back of Mooney and then just kind of like flicks the blood off just to really cinch it here. Yeah, terrifying.

1:12:31 So it's a showdown between Dave and the clown. And so the clown is approaching. Dave starts firing his service revolver at the clown, but the clown appears invulnerable until Dave discovers the clown's only weakness, the nose, shooting them in the red blood bulbous nose causes the nose to explode in a burst of confetti, and then the clown turns into a spinning sequined Christmas ornament, and then that explodes with pink fireworks. Is that about right?

1:13:03 I think so, yeah. I mean, you could basically say the trick is you shoot him in the face, which works with a lot of things. But in this case, it is the nose. The nose holds all their power.

1:13:13 That's right. It's their Achilles nose.

1:13:16 Yeah.

1:13:17 Uh, also Dave manages to get a call into the state police to request help with their, their killer clown issue. And the state police are like, okay, we're on the way. What, what's the police code for killer clowns?

1:13:29 Oh, I don't know. You gotta get up a new one for that.

1:13:32 So while Mike and the Trenzy brothers are on the way to pick up Debbie, they encounter a. giant mechanized human harvesting operation where the clowns are parading through the streets of the city, surrounded by confetti and streamers, with a giant vacuum cleaner machine that sucks up all of the people who have been pre-wrapped in cotton candy.

1:13:54 Yeah, it's a full-blown parade here. Reminds me a lot of a very similar scene that we get in 1987's Masters of the Universe when Skeletor rolls into town.

1:14:04 Somewhat recalls also the harvesting imagery in War of the Worlds, but obviously here it is clown-themed.

1:14:11 Yes, yes.

1:14:12 Anyway, by the time Mike and the brothers arrive at Debbie's apartment, she's already been placed inside the balloon and attached to a clown car, which drives away. So Mike and the brothers, and then also Dave arrives in his squad car, and they all give chase, but they lose track of the car. Oh, I think the Terenzi brothers, like, They pull over because there's a police car behind them, maybe.

1:14:36 Is that what happens?

1:14:38 So they end up losing the clown car. But they figure out where it's going. Where are these clowns headed with Debbie? Well, if you were a clown, where would you go? The amusement park, obviously.

1:14:49 That's right. That's where they feel at home. That's where they can blend in.

1:14:52 So when we see the clowns arrive, we pack multiple gags into the same scene where the clowns show up at the amusement park and there's a security guard there. we first of all get many clowns climbing out of a single tiny clown car while the guard watches.

1:15:07 Yeah.

1:15:08 And then they also produce like banana cream pies and the guards like, what you going to do with those pies? And of course they give him pies to the face, but Oh, the pies are some kind of corrosive material. You know, they're, they're lie pies or something. And they melt the guard into this pile of whipped cream basically and And then as the clowns walk past his melted form, the little clown puts a cherry on top. Aw.

1:15:36 It's the dedication to the art form.

1:15:39 So our heroes arrive on scene to the rescue and they head into the funhouse for the final showdown. And while they're exploring the clown's lair, here's where we get to the curious exchange we talked about earlier. Dave is saying, where do the clowns come from? Why are they here? Why are they clowns? And Mike says, they're not clowns, some kind of animal from another world that just look like clowns. And then this is suddenly dawning on him.

1:16:04 He says, Dave, maybe they're the ancient astronauts, you know, that came to our planet centuries ago. And our idea of clowns comes from them.

1:16:13 Yes, absolutely. That's 100% it. That's 100% it. I love it.

1:16:18 They built the pyramids.

1:16:19 Had to be.

1:16:20 No other explanations.

1:16:21 Everything in our clowning cultures, which again, not to get too deep here, there are clowning cultures around the world and they go back a very long way. What if they're all based on something we observed when these ancient alien creatures came to our world and did clowning?

1:16:39 One of the Terenzi brothers says, how come they're not funny? But they are funny.

1:16:43 Terenzi brothers, they are funny. You might not know funny when you see it, but they are.

1:16:48 And then the other one says, how come they're not funny? The other one says, maybe they're from a dying planet. Anyway, at some point our heroes become separated and the Terenzi brothers fall into a ball pit where they are later seduced by clowns in wigs that have made themselves appear buxom with the aid of balloons.

1:17:12 Okay. I'm just going to put a pin in this one and trying to figure out how this factors into the clown life cycle.

1:17:17 Yeah.

1:17:19 Meanwhile, Mike and Dave, they find the cotton candy storage room and then while hiding, they watch a clown drink blood from one of their cocooned victims through a silly straw.

1:17:31 Yes.

1:17:33 This makes me wonder, what is the origin of silly straws? When do we get the first silly straws?

1:17:38 Hmm. Well, there's definitely, I think, material requirements for that. But of course, this would have been something we observed long ago. when the killer clowns visited our world in ancient times.

1:17:49 So we got the idea for silly straws from their visits to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

1:17:54 Yeah, it would just be a long time. I mean, I guess you could have made a glass silly straw at some point before you could make a plastic one. We'll have to roll out an invention episode on the straw and figure that out. That would be fun. I'm actually down for that.

1:18:07 Anyway, so they eventually find Debbie inside the balloon and Dave shoots the balloon to release her. But the sound draws the attention of the clowns. And this leads into a big chase scene where they're running around the spaceship, the funhouse corridors. There's a good silly firehouse pole gag where they they like slide down a pole and then they hop off at one level before going down all the way. And Dave comes down after them and he's like, why didn't you go any lower? And then we just see a giant Sarlacc mouth at the bottom of the pole.

1:18:37 He says, oh, good reason. But eventually they get cornered by clowns in a big fun house room full of wacky painted blocks and furniture. And how are they going to escape? The clowns are crowding in, menacing them. And then it's the Terenzi brothers to the rescue. I don't recall how they got out of the clown seduction situation.

1:18:59 Maybe that's never revealed.

1:19:00 Yeah, it seems like they were done for, but they, I don't know, they loved their way out of it, I guess.

1:19:04 Yeah. So they crash through the wall in their ice cream truck. Now, remember, the ice cream truck had a giant clown on top. And so they get on the loudspeaker, and they say, I am the great and powerful Jojo. You will obey my command. And this does seem to work. It temporarily hypnotizes the clowns, and they stand frozen in awe at their giant clown god. So this buys some time for our other heroes to run out of the middle of the room to safety, but... This leads into the final, final showdown, which is the lowering from the ceiling of a gigantic clown on marionette strings. And what do we call this? Is this the king clown or clownzilla?

1:19:51 I think in the credits it's referred to as clownzilla. But yeah, we might think of it as kind of a ruler of the bunch or just maybe the largest. I don't know. Like I have this theory that these clowns grow throughout their life. And so some of them are just extra huge.

1:20:06 I would say it is a cross between a clown of monstrous size and Bowser from Mario. Do you notice the Bowser-like shape and movements?

1:20:15 Yeah, like if you could remove the grease paint from this face, which you can't because it's the clown's face. Yeah, you would have an even more monstrous inhuman skull for this creature.

1:20:27 So the giant clown attacks. It grabs and hurls the ice cream truck across the room, seemingly with the Terenzi bros inside. So I was like, well, they're dead now. And then Dave distracts Clownzilla while Mike and Debbie run outside through a hole in the wall. Outside, the state police are arriving and Dave is cornered. So it seems like he's done for because Clownzilla picks him up in his giant hand as if to bite his head off.

1:20:53 And meanwhile, the big top clown spaceship is taking off into the sky. And Dave is there in the monster clown's hand. How is he going to survive this? What's going to happen? The solution is pretty ingenious. He takes the police badge off of his shirt, which I guess is held in place by a safety pin, and uses the pin to pop the nose. Pop the nose on the big.

1:21:18 This super clown is actually quite fragile. I mean, if just a pin prick on the nose completely destroys it. And not only the clownzilla, but also destroys the entire ship. which maybe is only powered by the magic of the Clownzilla.

1:21:35 I don't know.

1:21:35 That's a weakness in the design, I would say.

1:21:37 I would say so as well. It seems like even a very primitive prey culture would be able to overcome you, potentially. That's just one well-placed arrow, and they're victorious.

1:21:49 So the entire spaceship explodes in fireworks. It seems like Dave's got to be dead, right? But somehow, no, a clown car falls out of the sky... And Dave emerges from it unhurt. Also, somehow the Terenzi brothers are fine. They emerge from the same car eating popsicles. So basically all the main characters are okay. And we get our final stinger of the heroes looking up into the sky.

1:22:13 And Debbie says, do you think it's over? And then pies fall on their faces.

1:22:17 Presumably these are not acid clown pies like we saw earlier. I think this is just supposed to be a goofy send up of that sort of keep watching the skies ending that we get. in a lot of those old fifties and sixties movies, where it's like, is there something else out there? Is it the end? And, you know, we get a little philosophic in our victory at the end and here, you know, it's just one more reason for a nice clown gag to close it all out.

1:22:40 Bravo.

1:22:44 All right. Killer clowns from outer space. Like I say, commendable. There are some other films in the horror comedy industry, genre from this time period that I also really love, Terror Vision being one of them, but it's really hard to think of anything quite like Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

1:23:02 It does stand alone.

1:23:04 Absolutely. And hey, everybody loves a clown.

1:23:07 Eep, op, ork, uh-uh.

1:23:11 All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and close out this, our first full-fledged October episode of Weird House Cinema for this October season, but we have more October selections to come. So stay tuned. We'll have Weird House Cinema every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Friday is our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. If you want to keep up with all the films that we've covered over the years and sometimes get a peek ahead at what comes up next, go to letterboxd.com Our account there is Weird House. Search us, find us, look at that list. And yeah, wherever you

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1:23:54 Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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