Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 2: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. On today's episode of
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema, We're going to discuss what's kind of
Speaker 2: a Rare Beast? A goofy horror comedy that manages to
Speaker 2: avoid being too self aware and takes itself its genre
Speaker 2: and the films it inspired it seriously enough to maintain
Speaker 2: a certain air of creepiness, seriousness, and indeed horror, while
Speaker 2: still being ridiculous and hilarious and fun. It is nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight's Killer Clowns from Outer Space.
Speaker 3: I think I'd agree with all of that, except I
Speaker 3: don't know if a film can be more self aware
Speaker 3: than Killer Clowns. This seems like the ultimate kind of
Speaker 3: meta exercise.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it depends how you exactly consider too
Speaker 2: self aware in a film. For me, when a film
Speaker 2: becomes too self aware, it's like things begin to fall apart,
Speaker 2: you know, like.
Speaker 3: Not taking the plot seriously.
Speaker 2: I mean right where it becomes too much of a joke,
Speaker 2: to where you can see the joke and the performances
Speaker 2: you can feel the joke and the writing in the
Speaker 2: way that just again makes things fall apart. And sometimes
Speaker 2: I've you know, there's some obvious examples of that in
Speaker 2: more recent films you could point to, but I mean
Speaker 2: there are also some older films that have a cult
Speaker 2: following that I've tried to get into, and I just
Speaker 2: find that, like, oh, this was just one big joke
Speaker 2: for everybody, Like if the villain can't be taken seriously,
Speaker 2: if if everybody's if it's just too much of a party.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that can be fun, but it
Speaker 2: can it can make the narrative itself fall apart.
Speaker 3: Oh no, well, I agree with exactly what you're talking
Speaker 3: about there. Yeah, an effective parody does still have to
Speaker 3: function as a story, and some parodies are, you know,
Speaker 3: so self conscious that they just they stop even trying
Speaker 3: to be a function story. They're just doing the jokes,
Speaker 3: and that becomes less engaging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is one that this is one of
Speaker 2: those films that I don't think I'd ever actually sat
Speaker 2: down and watched it all the way through start to finish.
Speaker 2: I recall it airing on cable back in the nineties
Speaker 2: and early two thousands and watching you know, parts of
Speaker 2: it on late and probably something like USA Up All Night,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure where exactly it was airing. Maybe
Speaker 2: it aired on Sci Fi Channel as well. You know,
Speaker 2: it fits a number of those molds. It was also
Speaker 2: originally released theatrically, apparently didn't do that well, but has
Speaker 2: enjoyed a long life via home media, apparently more than
Speaker 2: making back. It's I think one point eight million dollar
Speaker 2: budget over the course of time. But as the filmmakers
Speaker 2: have said in interviews, it's one of those things where
Speaker 2: they've they've wanted to do a follow up, but studios
Speaker 2: aren't really interested in a movie that's going to make
Speaker 2: you know, millions and millions of dollars over the course
Speaker 2: of like three decades. They want something that's going to
Speaker 2: make that much money in one weekend. And so, for
Speaker 2: various reas, we have yet to fully cinematically return to
Speaker 2: the universe of the Killer Clown.
Speaker 3: I don't. I mean, on one hand, I would like
Speaker 3: to trust them, but on the other hand, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I would like what this movie
Speaker 3: would look like if it was made today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there. The closest thing that we have is
Speaker 2: there was a recent video game that came out, Killer
Speaker 2: Clowns from Outer Space. The game came out in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. It's one of those asymmetrical survival horror games,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like the Friday the Thirteenth game.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think some of the same people worked
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. They also made a Texas Chainsaw Mamasacre game,
Speaker 3: which I've played one time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have not played this one. It's one of
Speaker 2: those my machine can't handle it. But I looked at
Speaker 2: the stills and it looks pretty cool. It looks like
Speaker 2: a lot of work went into maintaining the vibe of
Speaker 2: the original picture. But I also agree with you on
Speaker 2: the idea of like a modern clown remake or even
Speaker 2: a sequel, Like even if the Kyoto brothers were just
Speaker 2: all the way involved, it seems like there would be
Speaker 2: a tendency to like lean into like nastier territory or
Speaker 2: just I don't know, like, how would you maintain the
Speaker 2: perfection that you have in this film right? At any rate,
Speaker 2: there remains talk of a sequel, and I've recently read
Speaker 2: that Ryan Gosling has been attached as a producer for
Speaker 2: a potential remake so we'll see. We'll see. So what
Speaker 2: we have here is pretty singular in many respects. It's
Speaker 2: essentially a kind of Invaders from Mars the Blob plot,
Speaker 2: but with clowns from outer space, and they are killer
Speaker 2: clowns of course, and it is presented in PG thirteen forms.
Speaker 3: So you know it's not hard PG thirteen.
Speaker 2: It's a hard PG thirteen Like the clowns are frightening.
Speaker 2: There's certainly some adult humor sprinkled throughout that doesn't go
Speaker 2: too hard, but also some of it hasn't aged all
Speaker 2: that well, was maybe a little tasteless back in the
Speaker 2: day as well. But yeah, for my money, this film
Speaker 2: stands out for a number of reasons. So it's a
Speaker 2: goofy horror comedy that balances like the late eighties goofiness
Speaker 2: and the monster horror quite well. So, like I say,
Speaker 2: it doesn't become a complete farce, and the creatures are
Speaker 2: all really convincing, look amazing. It really has the I
Speaker 2: don't know how many I don't know if you can
Speaker 2: relate to this or listeners can, but it reminds me
Speaker 2: a lot of Mad Magazine movie parodies from back of
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 3: Yes, in multiple ways, with the slight ugliness of the caricature,
Speaker 3: in the way the clowns are realized visually, the comedic
Speaker 3: sensibility of the gags is very Mad Magazine And what
Speaker 3: is that I'm recognizing there is On one hand, it's
Speaker 3: not a dry humor. It's like a it's a very juicy,
Speaker 3: wet humor. But also it goes a little bit hard.
Speaker 3: As we were saying, it's a little bit more adult
Speaker 3: than you might expect in some areas.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like I'm reminded specifically when when RoboCop two
Speaker 2: came out. I don't think I was able to watch
Speaker 2: RoboCop two yet, but I had a Mad Magazine that
Speaker 2: had the parody of RoboCop two in it, and of
Speaker 2: course it was loaded with gags. It's very much, you know,
Speaker 2: comedy and satire. But at the same time, like RoboCop
Speaker 2: looked pretty cool in some of the in many of
Speaker 2: the drawings, so did the nemesis of RoboCop two, and
Speaker 2: so that comic I just have a strong memory of it,
Speaker 2: you know, impressing me in a couple of ways, Like
Speaker 2: it was funny, it was goofy, but also I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: you know, there's still robots battling each other. I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Let's see what else. We'll get into a lot of
Speaker 2: this when we get into the plot more. But we've
Speaker 2: already talked about it. It's PG thirteen, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of a hard PG thirteen. But in terms of like
Speaker 2: a late eighties, like nearly nineties monster movie that features
Speaker 2: like college student characters, this film's not nearly as tasteless
Speaker 2: as it could have been, and it's not really gory.
Speaker 2: Has no nudity, despite the inclusion of the genre standard
Speaker 2: shower scene.
Speaker 3: Which is notable in several respects, not just for having
Speaker 3: no nudity.
Speaker 2: Right, but overall. I think it's just the big thing
Speaker 2: about killer clowns from outer space is just the absolute
Speaker 2: commitment to the bit. You know, this was clearly their
Speaker 2: vision for this picture. Earth has been invaded by clowns
Speaker 2: from outer space, aliens that are clowns, clowns that are aliens,
Speaker 2: as this film actually explores humanity's knowledge of clowns and
Speaker 2: clowning traditions. We're talking from ancient Egypt, through gesture traditions
Speaker 2: around the world through twentieth century Circus times. All of
Speaker 2: this was inspired, perhaps by Earth's ancient alien first contact
Speaker 2: with clowns from outer space.
Speaker 3: They do, in fact mention this in dialogue. Yeah, at
Speaker 3: least as a suggestion by a character who is not
Speaker 3: an expert.
Speaker 2: So, but we don't know what his major speculating, We
Speaker 2: don't know what his major is. Yeah, but but yeah,
Speaker 2: these these aliens are not disguised as clowns. They are clowns.
Speaker 2: Clowns are a species. Human clowns are unknowingly disguised as
Speaker 2: clowns from outer space.
Speaker 3: That theory is a wonderful little garnish on the feast
Speaker 3: that is this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, It's an idea that, to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: is later explored in a different way, into a different
Speaker 2: degree in horror writer Thomas Leggatti's nineteen ninety story The
Speaker 2: Last Feast of Harlequin.
Speaker 3: Oh, I haven't read that one.
Speaker 2: Oh it's creepy and it has clowns. So if you
Speaker 2: want a creepy clown read I recommend that one. All right,
Speaker 2: elevator pitch for this one. I mean, this is one
Speaker 2: of those films where the title alone tells you everything
Speaker 2: you need to know. It's killer clowns from outer space.
Speaker 2: What else do you need to say.
Speaker 3: Do you know why they chose to spell clowns with
Speaker 3: a K in the title?
Speaker 2: I don't know offhand. I guess it just it looks funny. Uh,
Speaker 2: it really clown is funny because the word found clown
Speaker 2: is funny because it has that hardca kind of sound, right,
Speaker 2: and so just go ahead and give it a K.
Speaker 3: Fair enough?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and listen to just
Speaker 2: a little bit of trailer audio here.
Speaker 4: It was a night like any other night. Then something happened,
Speaker 4: you see that, something different. It's still shooting star. Why here?
Speaker 5: Why now? Why clowns? Killer clowns, Killer Clowns from outer Space?
Speaker 2: It's crazy, all right. As of this recording, Killer Clowns
Speaker 2: from Outer Space is streamable on to the and Amazon
Speaker 2: Prime here in the States, but is generally just widely
Speaker 2: available in all formats. Shout Factory put out a really
Speaker 2: nice looking steel book edition and it's i think still
Speaker 2: available loaded with extras. Again, this one has enjoyed a
Speaker 2: very long life as home media, and so different editions
Speaker 2: I think have come out over the years, and I
Speaker 2: mean it's really at home where people have grown to
Speaker 2: love it. I'm honestly not sure about other media that
Speaker 2: has explored the Killer clown universe beyond the recent video game.
Speaker 2: It seems like you could have a lot of like
Speaker 2: comic book crossovers here. It seems like Killer Clowns Aliens
Speaker 2: versus Predator, like the crossover absolutely should happen there because
Speaker 2: you can get the you know, you have ancient alien visitors,
Speaker 2: you have you could have a hybrid where you have
Speaker 2: like a xenomorph clown hybrid. Like what does that look like?
Speaker 2: I mean, there's there's so many places you could go
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 3: Can I suggest something that is more I would say
Speaker 3: tonally and thematically already aligned with Killer Clowns. You can
Speaker 3: have RoboCop versus Terminator, you can have Alien versus Predator,
Speaker 3: and you can have Killer Clowns versus Critters.
Speaker 2: There you go, right, crites, it seems like a perfect fit, yes,
Speaker 2: for a number of reasons. So, and that really leads
Speaker 2: us into into our discussion of the people behind this picture,
Speaker 2: because the main like driving creative force here is of
Speaker 2: course the Kyoto brothers. This is Stephen Kyoto, Charles Kyoto,
Speaker 2: and Edward Kyoto. I'm gonna basically talk about them as
Speaker 2: a trio. But if you get into the credits, Steven
Speaker 2: born nineteen fifty four is credited as director, one of
Speaker 2: the writers, and the producer or one of the producers.
Speaker 2: Charles born fifty two is credited as writer, producer, production designer,
Speaker 2: clown designs and also plays the role of clown Zilla.
Speaker 2: You'll find out what that is later if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it. And then Edward has a writer producer credit,
Speaker 2: and he was born in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 3: So these guys, before they were filmmakers in their own right,
Speaker 3: they had worked on special effects for a number of things, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, they were already an established effects team. And
Speaker 2: they're still around as an established effects team. They can
Speaker 2: continue to work even though they haven't really come back
Speaker 2: and done any kind of like a full feature film
Speaker 2: in the same way as Killer It Clowns from Outer Space.
Speaker 2: But yeah, an American trio special effects siblings who specialize
Speaker 2: in clay modeling, creature creation, stop motion animatronics, you know,
Speaker 2: so many of those nice, you know, rub the fur
Speaker 2: practical effects that we love in films like.
Speaker 3: This totally And do I understand correctly that they originally
Speaker 3: intended to include some stop motion effects in Killer Clowns,
Speaker 3: but they weren't able to, and that's why the clown
Speaker 3: Zilla effect. Yeah, I think it's like was originally going
Speaker 3: to be a stop motion creature but ended up being
Speaker 3: a man in a suit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my understanding. Yeah, that was gonna so we
Speaker 2: were going to get some stop motion, and they've done
Speaker 2: a lot of stop motion over the years, including him
Speaker 2: to understand some bits for the Simpsons here and there.
Speaker 3: But to be clear, I'm not trying to diminish the
Speaker 3: clown effects by referring to them as a guy in
Speaker 3: a suit, because they are more than just a person
Speaker 3: in a suit with like makeup.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 3: There is some puppetry involved in the clowns, right, Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the clowns that we get in the film.
Speaker 2: As we'll be talking about time and time again here,
Speaker 2: they just look amazing, just wonderful practical effects. I mean
Speaker 2: the way that the heads have been sculpted and fabricaded,
Speaker 2: painted and then manipulated in a way that they just
Speaker 2: completely come to life, Like the movements of the mouth,
Speaker 2: the eyes, oh my goodness, the eyes of these things.
Speaker 2: I guess it's you know, it's it's you don't have
Speaker 2: to worry about Uncanny Valley with a creature like this
Speaker 2: that is already supposed to be uncanny, but man, pretty
Speaker 2: much in every shot, these clowns absolutely feel like living creatures. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so the Kyoto Brothers. Other credits include, of course, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six's Critters, which we've covered on the show before,
Speaker 2: and that's why a Critter's killer Clown's crossover would be wonderful,
Speaker 2: even though that would be a lot of k sounds
Speaker 2: in the title. Yeah. They apparently also did the six
Speaker 2: thousand sucks commercial for nineteen eighty seven's RoboCop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, the car that is constantly being advertised
Speaker 3: in the RoboCop universe and gets six miles to the gallon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see. Of course they did eighty eight Critters too,
Speaker 2: as well as UHF the same year. They did some
Speaker 2: effects in that. They did effects work in ninety one's three.
Speaker 2: They did nineteen ninety one's Earnest Scared Stupid. This is
Speaker 2: a film that I think a lot of us remember
Speaker 2: from our childhoods, in part because the monster effects. The
Speaker 2: trolls in that movie are extremely creepy and convincing and
Speaker 2: share a certain resemblance to the creatures in this film.
Speaker 2: Though despite rumors that they're the same sculpts like repainted.
Speaker 2: That appears to not be the case, just I think
Speaker 2: a similar design aesthetic.
Speaker 3: I can't remember if we've talked about this on the
Speaker 3: show before, but that is a film I remember very
Speaker 3: vividly for being one of those things that was just
Speaker 3: supposed to be funny and the kid's movie, but actually
Speaker 3: scared me when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember how scary I found it,
Speaker 2: but I remember liking it a lot more like I
Speaker 2: was still at the point where I was obviously down
Speaker 2: for earnest movies. Yeah, Like I wasn't. No one dragged
Speaker 2: me into an earnest movie kicking and screaming. But then
Speaker 2: I was like, oh man, I could tell, like this
Speaker 2: is hitting harder than I had. I think these things
Speaker 2: were like taking kids, turning them into wood. I recall
Speaker 2: is that. I think that's right. That's one we may
Speaker 2: come back to in the future. Let's see. They also
Speaker 2: worked on ninety two's Critters, four ninety seven's Turbo, a
Speaker 2: Power Rangers movie. They did some work in two thousand
Speaker 2: and three's Elf Team America World Police in two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, and they even had their hands in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one's Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which is
Speaker 2: a very delightful film. I saw that one in the
Speaker 2: theater with my kid. They also did makeup on the
Speaker 2: Monsters Horror anthology series from eighty eight through ninety, which
Speaker 2: did indeed have some tremendous monster makeup effects. And like
Speaker 2: I said earlier, they've done stop motion segments on The
Speaker 2: Simpsons as well. They've remained very active in film and TV,
Speaker 2: but again have yet to truly follow up on the
Speaker 2: Killer Clowns from Outer Space with a sequel or spiritual successor.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait a minute, I'm going to revise my earlier
Speaker 3: recommendation of Killer Clowns versus critters. What about Killer Clowns
Speaker 3: versus the Power Rangers. That's already there a skill set.
Speaker 2: I could see that matchup maybe working.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know magic wand to make my clown grow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean we do get a giant clown.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of thing that could battle a giant
Speaker 2: robot for sure. We could do get into to Kaiju territory.
Speaker 2: So Stephen Kyoto has claimed that the initial inspiration for
Speaker 2: the series occurred when he was driving on a mountain
Speaker 2: road and looked over and saw a clown driving next
Speaker 2: to him. A clown where there shouldn't be a clown
Speaker 2: sounds horrifying to me. It sounds like it, and I
Speaker 2: think we get a sense of that in the film.
Speaker 2: There's actually a scene in the movie that seems to
Speaker 2: allude to this encounter, perhaps an encounter from another world.
Speaker 2: They also cite strong influences from fifties and sixties sci
Speaker 2: fi horror monster movies, which totally makes sense Mad Magazine,
Speaker 2: which lines up with what I already said, as well
Speaker 2: as Looney Tunes, which is perfectly believable, and they've stressed
Speaker 2: in interviews that it was also an essential ingredient, ingredient
Speaker 2: that the actors treat the threat itself, the threat of
Speaker 2: the killer clowns, as absolutely serious and threatening, despite the
Speaker 2: heavy comic veneer to everything. So again, I think that's
Speaker 2: what the sense I get is that that's absolutely key
Speaker 2: to this movie working, is that the clowns are legitimately
Speaker 2: funny but also grotesque, and also there's a strong sense
Speaker 2: of life and death here, like they are frightening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, especially I think in the scenes where
Speaker 3: they're like menacing children, and stuff that's like, those are
Speaker 3: the least funny and the most actually threatening. I think,
Speaker 3: fortunately though, the movie is kind of gentle in that regard,
Speaker 3: and that we never actually see a child harmed, you know,
Speaker 3: that always gets averted somehow. But the threat is kind
Speaker 3: of looming, and that emphasizes the less funny aspects.
Speaker 2: Let's get into the cast here a bit, all right.
Speaker 2: Starting at the top, we have the character Mike Tobacco,
Speaker 2: presumably a realistic name, played by Grant Kramer born in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 3: This is one of our main two guys in the film.
Speaker 3: Mike and Dave are the main two guys, and the
Speaker 3: main lady in the film is Debbie. But Mike here
Speaker 3: is a He's a real cut up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a mixed bag. It's the character is
Speaker 2: full of terrible dated jokes. For the most part. I
Speaker 2: think we're supposed to like him more than I found
Speaker 2: myself liking him. I never hated him. I was never
Speaker 2: like the clowns can't kill this guy fast enough. But
Speaker 2: I don't think I liked him as much as I
Speaker 2: was supposed to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly how we're supposed to receive him was a
Speaker 3: little difficult for me to read. I found myself thinking
Speaker 3: that that, essentially Debbie's other boyfriend, Dave, was the more
Speaker 3: likable of the two characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, It's like, come on, Debbie, you can do
Speaker 2: better than this guy, and he's right here. Why aren't
Speaker 2: you with Officer Dave? But anyway, none of this is
Speaker 2: Grant Kramer's fault. I'm perfectly fine here he was. His
Speaker 2: first film credit was nineteen eighties New Year's Evil, followed
Speaker 2: by the nineteen eighty four sex comedy Hard Bodies, and
Speaker 2: his subsequent credits are a bit scattered, and he produced
Speaker 2: a number of projects as well. He reprised his role
Speaker 2: as a vocal talent in that recent Killer Clowns video.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, I probably dare not go watch the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four sex comedy Hard Bodies, but I'm curious about
Speaker 3: it because it shares a name with the gym in
Speaker 3: burn After reading oh yeah, I remember that Richard Jenkins
Speaker 3: repeatedly just talking about their workplace by name, saying like,
Speaker 3: we can't have this material here at Hard Bodies.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we mentioned Debbie already. Debbie Stone is
Speaker 2: played by Suzanne Snyder born nineteen sixty two American actress
Speaker 2: with some great genre film credentials. She has an uncredited
Speaker 2: cheerleader role in nineteen eighty four as the Last Starfighter,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show. She's in eighty
Speaker 2: five's Weird Science, eighty six's Night of the Creeps, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and also nineteen eighty eight Return of the Living Dead
Speaker 2: two and then this Glorious Picture.
Speaker 3: You know, I love the original Return of the Living Dead,
Speaker 3: but I've never watched the sequel. I've heard it's kind
Speaker 3: of looney tunes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're on. They're definitely the sequels that I'm familiar with,
Speaker 2: mostly by box art. I know, the Return of the
Speaker 2: Living Dead two has you know, kind of cool box art,
Speaker 2: and then Living Dead Three's big selling point, I think
Speaker 2: is Sexy Zombie. That's the one that I like. Sexy
Speaker 2: Zombie is in the forefront, but I never actually watched
Speaker 2: it anyway, Snyder. She had a number of subsequent TV
Speaker 2: roles that included appearances on In the Heat of the Night,
Speaker 2: Jake and the Fat Man, Seinfeld, and Homicide Life on
Speaker 2: the Street, and she also reprised her role as a
Speaker 2: vocal talent in The Killer Clams from Outer Space.
Speaker 3: Okay, she's great in this. She brings a very good,
Speaker 3: straight delivery of dialogue that is funny. Yeah, like not,
Speaker 3: she's not hamming it up in a way that is good.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, as we'll discuss, she spends a lot of
Speaker 2: screen time taking a shower. But you know, we'll break
Speaker 2: that down when we get into the plug. All right,
Speaker 2: let's talk about Officer Dave Hanson, then played by John
Speaker 2: Allen Nelson born nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, this character is
Speaker 2: Debbie's ex boyfriend and current local cop. Nelson's TV credits
Speaker 2: go back to nineteen eighty three, but I believe nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine he starred in Death Stalker and the Warriors
Speaker 2: from Hell. This is a barbarian movie. He is the
Speaker 2: lead in it. This one I think has been riffed before.
Speaker 2: A lot of regular mainstream, mainstream TV work from this
Speaker 2: guy followed. But he also pops up in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine's Feast three.
Speaker 3: I might have seen that Death Stalker movie or maybe not,
Speaker 3: don't recall, but he I don't know. This guy doesn't
Speaker 3: read barbarian to me.
Speaker 2: Well, no, you have two different basic types of barbarian.
Speaker 2: You have the muscle bound Barbarian, and then you have
Speaker 2: your leaner Barbarian Oka, and I think death Stalker tends
Speaker 2: to be your leaner of Barbarian in different installments. More
Speaker 2: of the rogue than the fighter, yeah, or is more finesse,
Speaker 2: you know, he's putting more into decks than strength.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay. I would say the same thing about a
Speaker 3: Nelson here that I would say about Snyder in the
Speaker 3: role of Debbie. Both of them do a great job
Speaker 3: of straight delivery of funny dialogue that if they'd been
Speaker 3: winking a little bit more wouldn't have been as good.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay. Now let's get to the main human antagonist
Speaker 2: of the picture, and that is Officer Curtis Mooney, played
Speaker 2: by the great John Vernon who lived nineteen thirty two
Speaker 2: through two thousand and five. Yes, it is the Dean
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy eight's Animal House.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, the guy who puts them on double secret probation.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's playing a sin actually the same character here,
Speaker 3: but as a cop like with a gun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean Vernon really found a later career niche
Speaker 2: for himself as you know, no nonsense, hard ass like.
Speaker 2: More than that, I would say that's being too generous,
Speaker 2: like a lot of the characters he played are just
Speaker 2: outright malicious.
Speaker 3: A guy who hates the youth.
Speaker 2: He hates the youth, and he's going to do everything
Speaker 2: within his powers given to him by his position or
Speaker 2: his job to go after them and also maybe go
Speaker 2: a little more as well, a little harder.
Speaker 3: This is the character archetype that is I think hilariously
Speaker 3: parodied in the Simpsons episode where Homer goes back to
Speaker 3: college because the dean is super cool.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, there's also a Futurama episode that parodies
Speaker 2: this where Bender it goes to college and yeah, it's
Speaker 2: become such a staple, but it, you know, it all
Speaker 2: really begins with John Vernon's performance in that film, and
Speaker 2: again he plays a similar sort of character here, just
Speaker 2: you know, a hard ass that hates everybody. The talented actor.
Speaker 2: The Canadian actor with filming TV credits going back to
Speaker 2: the fifties, and his pre Animal House credits include some
Speaker 2: voice work for Marvel animated series in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: He voiced iron Man and would later do some Marvel
Speaker 2: voices on much later animated series. He debuted on Broadway
Speaker 2: in sixty four. He starred in the Canadian crime series
Speaker 2: Wojiic from sixty six to sixty eight, which I've never
Speaker 2: seen but I'm to understand was like, you know, highly
Speaker 2: thought of at the time. It was like a new
Speaker 2: sensation on Canadian television. He soon crossed over into American
Speaker 2: film with roles in Hitchcock's Topaz in sixty nine, Dirty
Speaker 2: Harry in seventy one, he plays the mayor he pops
Speaker 2: up in seventy six is the outlaw Josie Wales. He
Speaker 2: followed up on Animal House with its thirteen episode TV spinoff,
Speaker 2: Delta House. Oh.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it, but I don't have high hopes.
Speaker 2: Other credits include nineteen eighties Herbie Goes Bananas, eighty two's
Speaker 2: Airplane two, the eighty three horror movie Curtains. Oh, and
Speaker 2: he's also in an Earnest movie nineteen eighty seven's Earnest
Speaker 2: Goes to Camp. I think that might have been the
Speaker 2: first full fledged Earnest movie. That's one I definitely saw.
Speaker 3: I don't think I saw that one.
Speaker 2: He's also in eighty seven's Blue Monkey. Let's See. There's
Speaker 2: a nineteen seventy seven killer cat movie called The Uncanny,
Speaker 2: and he's also in the nineteen seventy four provocative surrealist
Speaker 2: comedy sweet movie.
Speaker 3: I just had to look up The Uncanny to see Wait,
Speaker 3: have I seen this? I honestly don't recall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not one that I think I'm familiar with.
Speaker 3: I think it's like a it's an anthology film, right
Speaker 3: that has a cat as the villain.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, seems to be the case. Yeah, we have
Speaker 2: different times, you know this might did I maybe maybe
Speaker 2: I did watch part of this. Yeah. Yeah, it's because
Speaker 2: very familiar because we do. We have Peter Cushing and
Speaker 2: in at least one segment.
Speaker 3: Maybe Donald Pleasance and Raymonland.
Speaker 2: You know, I think maybe I did watch one of
Speaker 2: We did watch one segment from this for one of
Speaker 2: our horror episodes in the past. I think we are
Speaker 2: horror anthology series. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's got Samantha Eggar too. Yeah, I think we've seen this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The segment that Vernon is in is Hollywood
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six. This is the segment that has Samantha Eggar,
Speaker 2: Donald Pleasance and John Vernon.
Speaker 3: It's maddening when I get into the state where I
Speaker 3: can't remember if I've seen a film, but I really
Speaker 3: think I have. And now I've got to go back
Speaker 3: and watch it to figure out if I've already watched it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't remember for sure, but there's no
Speaker 2: way that John Vernon gets out of this movie without
Speaker 2: being eaten by a cat. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh he's got yeah, yeah, chump chump fancy feast.
Speaker 2: So anyway, yeah, terrific character actor, great at this sort
Speaker 2: of role and is tremendous sin killer clowns from outer space.
Speaker 2: All right. We have the Trensey brothers as characters in
Speaker 2: this There are comic relief characters. I would say they
Speaker 2: only hold up as limitedly funny. I had to chuckle
Speaker 2: at maybe one or two things that they do. And
Speaker 2: they are played by the comedy team Siegel and Lakassi.
Speaker 2: This was an actual comedy duo of the time. That's
Speaker 2: Peter Lcassi, who lived nineteen fifty nine through twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and then Michael S. Siegel. Michael S. Siegel I think
Speaker 2: ultimately went on to do more things. He got involved
Speaker 2: in the UK film and Theater project when he moved
Speaker 2: in projects when he moved over there, and he's done
Speaker 2: some video game voice acting, including the recent RoboCop Rogue
Speaker 2: City Game.
Speaker 3: These guys occupy a strange niche in that they are
Speaker 3: the character archetypes who would normally be the comic relief
Speaker 3: in an otherwise not funny film. But this is a
Speaker 3: funny film, and I found their comedy bits some of
Speaker 3: the most failed attempts to be funny in this otherwise
Speaker 3: funny film.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, the trends, Yeah, the times they succeed
Speaker 2: in being humorous, for my money anyway, are just smaller
Speaker 2: moments and not like the hard gag moments they're going
Speaker 2: for with these two.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, one more actor we're gonna mention here, and
Speaker 2: that is Royal Dano, who lived nineteen twenty two through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four playing the character farmer Jane Green Curricie
Speaker 2: American character actor with credits going back to nineteen forty three.
Speaker 2: His credits include nineteen fifty six Is Moby Dick, in
Speaker 2: which he plays the prophetic Elijah. This is the character
Speaker 2: that like warns our central characters that they are doomed
Speaker 2: if they go on the.
Speaker 3: Ship oh before they get on the pequad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, let's see. He's in a seventy two TV
Speaker 2: movie titled Moon of the Wolf. He's in seventy fours,
Speaker 2: Messiah of Evil, seventy six is the outlaw Josie Wales,
Speaker 2: eighty three's Something Wicked, This Way Comes eighty three is
Speaker 2: the Right Stuff to eighty seven's Goolies two, nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: Spaced Invaders, and nineteen ninety three's.
Speaker 3: The Dark Half.
Speaker 2: He also has a slew of TV credits, including one
Speaker 2: episode of Night Gallery. You know, clearly a talented actor
Speaker 2: with a great folksy vibe, and he just goes ahead
Speaker 2: and just hams it up all the way here, just
Speaker 2: absolutely amped up to eleven. This is a fun little role.
Speaker 3: Spaced Invaders is a film that I loved when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. I think I rented it from the
Speaker 3: video store and I ended up watching it many times.
Speaker 3: Also a comedy science fiction film with some you know,
Speaker 3: zany Martians who come to Earth by accident and they
Speaker 3: end up running around on Halloween night. Everybody thinks that
Speaker 3: their kids in costumes while they're trying to take over
Speaker 3: the world. Haven't seen it many years. Probably doesn't hold
Speaker 3: up very well, but I loved it when I was
Speaker 3: a kid. And this guy plays the exact same character
Speaker 3: in that movie that he does in this one.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: And they're so close together too, it's like it's almost
Speaker 2: too close together for it to have for that to
Speaker 2: have been influenced by this. I don't know. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: the character that he plays is kind of like it's
Speaker 2: basically the trope that you see in the Blob. He's
Speaker 2: like the good natured, folksy guy who just happens to
Speaker 2: run a foul of the alien menace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tar Nation. He's a farmer who's you know, a
Speaker 3: meteor has landed on his property and now he's going
Speaker 3: to be rich.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right. And then finally the music. The music's
Speaker 2: really fun here. The composer is John Massari born nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven. He worked a lot in TV and film
Speaker 2: over the years. Also scored the Lorenzo Lama Snake Eater movies.
Speaker 2: And I would say the general vibe for Killer Clowns
Speaker 2: from Outer Space is John Carpenter esque synth that is
Speaker 2: occasionally like quite suspenseful and very John Carpentry. But then
Speaker 2: you also have plenty of circus music whimsy sprinkled in
Speaker 2: there as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's all right. But then also, of course a
Speaker 3: major musical texture here is the rock music from the
Speaker 3: from the Dickies, because right at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: movie we get that opening theme song, which, if you
Speaker 3: did not already know, this is one of those movies
Speaker 3: like the Flash Gordon film that is not a musical
Speaker 3: but does have an original rock theme song that says
Speaker 3: the title of the movie in the lyrics and describes
Speaker 3: the plot in the lyrics.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, Killer Clowns from Outer Space performed by
Speaker 2: the Dickies. Not a band I was super familiar with,
Speaker 2: but they've they've been around for a long time and
Speaker 2: they seem to have a strong following American pop punk
Speaker 2: band or I guess you'd just call him a punk band,
Speaker 2: but I've also seen pomp pop punk or humor punk
Speaker 2: thrown in there. Active still today, based out of la
Speaker 2: headed up by vocalist Leonard Graves Phillips, who also has
Speaker 2: writing production credit on this song. And it's also worth
Speaker 2: pointing out that noted film composer and frequent Steven Soderberg
Speaker 2: and Nicholas wending Refin collaborator Cliff Martinez was their drummer
Speaker 2: at the time, and and so presumably listening to the
Speaker 2: coiler Clowns from out of Space, we're hearing Cliff Martinez
Speaker 2: on drums.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The same year he would have composed the score
Speaker 2: for Soderberg's Sex Lives and Videotapes, So an interesting little
Speaker 2: bit of film score trivia there. But the song the
Speaker 2: color Clowns from Out of Space was released the same
Speaker 2: year on an EP from The Dickies with the same title.
Speaker 3: That EP also includes a pretty amazing cover. It's a
Speaker 3: cover of a song originally from The Jetsons The Hannah
Speaker 3: barbera cartoon that's played on the show The Jetsons by
Speaker 3: an in show like teen Idol named I think Screaming
Speaker 3: Jet or Jet Screamer or something like that, and the
Speaker 3: song is called eepop orc u Ah, it's eepop orc
Speaker 3: I Love you, and the Dickies cover is excellent.
Speaker 2: I think yeah, this song is really fun. I mean
Speaker 2: it should be noted, as with the score, there's enough
Speaker 2: circus music in there that it is going to maybe
Speaker 2: annoy you a bit. I mean, that's the thing about
Speaker 2: circus music. But it's a really fun track. Some of
Speaker 2: the lyrics include the likes of everybody's running when the
Speaker 2: circus comes into their towns. Everybody's gunning for the likes
Speaker 2: of the Killer Clowns or this one's really this one
Speaker 2: gets a bit hard here see a rubber nose on
Speaker 2: a painted face bringing genocide to the human race. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's almost getting into almost like Misfits territory with the
Speaker 2: lyrics on that one.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, Oh it reminds me of the lyrics of
Speaker 3: Astro Zombies.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So the main Killer Clowns song plays while we get
Speaker 3: a montage of nightlife in the movies setting, which is
Speaker 3: this California town called Crescent Cove. So we see teenagers
Speaker 3: hanging out a circus themed restaurant called Big Top Burger.
Speaker 3: The youth are surveyed with evident disgust here by a
Speaker 3: cop named Officer Mooney. This is again the character played
Speaker 3: by John Vernon. Mooney's just looking around at these kids,
Speaker 3: and he would clearly love to arrest all of these
Speaker 3: long hairs, but he is outnumbered, so he gets his
Speaker 3: coffee and he drives off in his squad car, looking
Speaker 3: frustrated and fuming. Next thing we see is a young
Speaker 3: guy with blonde hair and glasses carrying some groceries on
Speaker 3: the sidewalk. He's drinking a beer in a can. That's
Speaker 3: just labeled beer in all caps with nothing else, and
Speaker 3: he sort of hides his open container as he goes
Speaker 3: through a crosswalk in front of Mooney's car, and Mooney grumbles,
Speaker 3: it's just like looking at this kid makes him furious,
Speaker 3: but then he moves on. This guy, by the way,
Speaker 3: is a minor character named Bob, played by Christopher Titus,
Speaker 3: and after they go their separate ways, Bob says, cops,
Speaker 3: but next we're going to check in at the local lane.
Speaker 3: It's makeout point. So all the youths here are parking,
Speaker 3: listening to the radio, drinking beer, stargazing and smoochin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's one of those movies where I think
Speaker 2: they're all clearly well into their late twenties. Yes.
Speaker 3: And in the scene we meet a lot of the
Speaker 3: young characters who at first I was assuming we would
Speaker 3: follow many of these characters for the rest of the film,
Speaker 3: but no, mainly just our primary two characters here, Mike
Speaker 3: Tobacco and Debbie Stone. They're going steady. They're hanging out
Speaker 3: in their car. They are drinking, but while everybody else
Speaker 3: here is drinking beer, for some reason, they're having champagne.
Speaker 3: I don't know if here's a question did you read
Speaker 3: Mike as like a rich or preppy guy. He's sort
Speaker 3: of dressed in a preppy way. He's got this sweater
Speaker 3: on with a collared shirt underneath, and he's they're drinking
Speaker 3: champagne while everybody else is not. Is that what we're
Speaker 3: supposed to take from this? Oh?
Speaker 2: I had not put that together till just now. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's what they were going for, But yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know his character. Yeah, about the only thing I really
Speaker 2: get out of it is that, yeah, he is a
Speaker 2: cut up, and he also is kind of he's a
Speaker 2: cool kid, but he's also still friends with the weird kids. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's a transitional character in that recard.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah. And then of course Debbie we meet
Speaker 3: in the scene, is depicted as very earnest and good hearted.
Speaker 3: She's got that final girl energy. We also in the
Speaker 3: scene meet the Trensey brothers, Paul and Rich, who are
Speaker 3: friends of Mike's from school. These are zany low level
Speaker 3: hustlers who make money running an ice cream truck, and
Speaker 3: their truck has a giant clown head on top called
Speaker 3: Jojo the ice Cream Clown. So when these brothers show up,
Speaker 3: they cause a major ruckus at the lover's lane by
Speaker 3: pulling up in their truck and yelling at everybody through
Speaker 3: their loud speaker. Their ice cream slogans have a lot
Speaker 3: of vulgar double on tundra based around the concept licking,
Speaker 3: and they also try to upsell the frozen treats by
Speaker 3: There's one who's doing his routine in the microphone and
Speaker 3: he keeps humping the air while he's listing the ice creams.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Their entire business model seems to revolve around selling
Speaker 2: ice cream at night and put and setting their sights
Speaker 2: on the local makeout places like where the prime business
Speaker 2: is going to be for buying a bunch of fudge,
Speaker 2: sickles and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Tranzi brothers are After this, they are driven
Speaker 3: away from the car park area after being brutally heckled
Speaker 3: and pelted with beer cans and other trash. They're not popular, no,
Speaker 3: But then after watching all this happen, Mike tells Debbie,
Speaker 3: whenever I want to have a good time, I call
Speaker 3: Rich and Paul. A night out with those guys is
Speaker 3: a total adventure.
Speaker 2: What I mean, he just knows them. That's I guess
Speaker 2: all we really need to take away from this.
Speaker 3: But if we don't get the sense that there's that
Speaker 3: much adventurous about them, I don't know. Maybe it depends
Speaker 3: on what you call an adventure. They just seem like
Speaker 3: guys who were always trying to work some sort of scam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're making poor choices. Yeah, like did they did
Speaker 2: they run the ice cream truck truck during the day?
Speaker 2: Like or are they? Is it maybe some sort of
Speaker 2: weird scam where they're like, we know a guy who
Speaker 2: runs an ice cream truck, but he doesn't run it
Speaker 2: at night. We could rent it from him and sell
Speaker 2: ice cream to teenagers and college students at night, and yeah,
Speaker 2: thinking that's a great idea, that would make sense.
Speaker 3: Wait, I think later that they do say the ice
Speaker 3: cream truck is rented, right, Oh.
Speaker 2: Well they do, that's right, that's right. So maybe that's
Speaker 2: what's going on. They can only use it at night.
Speaker 3: Because they say, you know, like use the ice cream
Speaker 3: truck to ram the killer cloud and they're like, you,
Speaker 3: I can't. It's a rental anyway. So Mike and Debbie
Speaker 3: lie out in the back of their car looking at
Speaker 3: the stars when suddenly a huge bright object streaks across
Speaker 3: the night sky. What was that? Was it a comet?
Speaker 3: Debbie wants to go see where it landed, and Mike
Speaker 3: takes some convincing but she talks him into it. We
Speaker 3: also cut to somewhere else nearby, on a farm where
Speaker 3: an old codure this is Jean Green played by Royal Dano,
Speaker 3: is sitting out on his porch with his bloodhound Pooh,
Speaker 3: and he watches the light pass right overhead. And this
Speaker 3: guy is full of oddball rural colloquialism. See He's like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll be hornswoggle. Do you see that there? Sky Guppy
Speaker 3: is up one by sky Guppy? Is that a saying?
Speaker 2: I don't know? I mean I trust him?
Speaker 3: So Green determines the object was Haley's comet, and he
Speaker 3: also decides to go find the crash site, reasoning that
Speaker 3: somehow this will make him filthy rich. So he grabs
Speaker 3: his lantern and shovel and he heads out into the woods. However,
Speaker 3: when he comes upon the landing site, it is not
Speaker 3: an impact crater but a circus tint, and he's talking
Speaker 3: to his dog. He says, well, I'll be greased and fried.
Speaker 3: What's the circus doing out here? I love the circus?
Speaker 3: Come on maybe we can get us some free passes.
Speaker 2: Oh man, it's all it's really it's adorable. This guy
Speaker 2: loves circuses so much, but of course he's so dimmed.
Speaker 2: This is this guy's clearly going to get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But the scene takes a turn, so the farmer
Speaker 3: goes to investigate the tint and he determines that there
Speaker 3: is something peculiar about the circus. Where's the ticket booth?
Speaker 3: Here we also get our first clown stalking scene, first
Speaker 3: in silhouette through the side of the tent, so the
Speaker 3: guy's creeping along and then there's a there's a clown
Speaker 3: shaped shadow following him, which for a second you could
Speaker 3: mistake as being his shadow, and then he realized like,
Speaker 3: oh no, wait, that's a clown. There's something in here,
Speaker 3: kind of like the Charlie Chaplin mirror gag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I love the colors here, and
Speaker 2: I think the film's already doing a great job invoking
Speaker 2: a surrealistic comedic menace in the clowns, and as a
Speaker 2: sidebark here, I think this is one of the things
Speaker 2: the film does just so well. So scary clowns are
Speaker 2: obviously a dime a dozen nowadays, and even at point
Speaker 2: when Killer Consorm outter Space came out, we'd already had
Speaker 2: multiple movies with sinister clowns in them, and Stephen King's
Speaker 2: hit the novel was a fairly recent best seller, and
Speaker 2: you know there would be many more scary clowns to come.
Speaker 2: But the thing about scary clowns in horror is that
Speaker 2: their clownness is very often only skin deep or grease
Speaker 2: paint deep, and underneath we usually get either human cruelty
Speaker 2: or supernatural menace. And I don't wanted to dismiss all
Speaker 2: of that out of hand. You know that can be
Speaker 2: a lot of fun still and be very terrifying. Pennywise,
Speaker 2: the dancing clown is one of the best, and he
Speaker 2: totally fits this mold clown on the outside. But it's
Speaker 2: just an illusion, just a face that's worn by an
Speaker 2: extra dimensional menace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, Pennywise. Obviously, it is a It's a
Speaker 3: way of salting the meat for the creature, right, because
Speaker 3: it is a creature that thrives on fear. He savors
Speaker 3: the fear of his victims, and the clown the guise
Speaker 3: kind of heightens the ambiguity and the tension increases. The
Speaker 3: tension because you don't know what to make of it.
Speaker 3: A clown is supposed to be a funny and non
Speaker 3: threatening thing, but obviously this is one that is causing
Speaker 3: you fear, and that mismatch actually makes him more frightening.
Speaker 2: Right, But there will come a point where it's like
Speaker 2: the mask is drawn away, yeah, and the monsters revealed
Speaker 2: and the cloudness is gone. But I think there's something
Speaker 2: admirable where in a case like this movie where the
Speaker 2: clownness goes absolutely all the way to the bone. I'd
Speaker 2: venture to guess that maybe some incarnations of the Joker
Speaker 2: in comic books land in this area, but Killer Clowns
Speaker 2: from Outer Space definitely does. At no point is the
Speaker 2: mask of the clown removed to reveal some horror beneath. Again,
Speaker 2: they do not become clowns. They are clowns. Clowns are
Speaker 2: a species in this movie. They don't paint themselves to
Speaker 2: become what they're presented as. Like everything that they do
Speaker 2: on a biological or civilizational level is clowning.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, So in this scene,
Speaker 3: you know, you're right, we do get our first tastes
Speaker 3: of that. So the farmer's dog disappears. I think a
Speaker 3: hole appears in the side of the circus tent and
Speaker 3: a big net comes out. And then the farmer turns
Speaker 3: around and his dog's gone, And this part's actually kind
Speaker 3: of sad, you know, But anyway, he gets enraged and
Speaker 3: he starts shouting at the tent that he will tear
Speaker 3: it apart with his bare hands. But then when he
Speaker 3: grabs one of the ropes surrounding the tent, it sends
Speaker 3: a huge jolt of electricity through him, and he says, like,
Speaker 3: holy smokes, this thing is wired. And then uh oh,
Speaker 3: here comes our first full view of one of the
Speaker 3: movie's clowns. How can we describe the look? Generally, the
Speaker 3: different clowns have somewhat different features, but they are basically
Speaker 3: humanoid in shape, but with distorted features and proportions, generally
Speaker 3: somewhat larger than a human but not much larger, or
Speaker 3: have some parts of their body with larger than normal
Speaker 3: proportions to the others, like a big head, big face,
Speaker 3: big hands, and feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like kind of like like a grotesque version of
Speaker 2: like an old man's features underneath, but also like a
Speaker 2: troll or an ogre's features. Yeah, you know, everything very exaggerated.
Speaker 3: Of course, clown clothes and makeup with pale white skin,
Speaker 3: generally candy colored hair, and big red noses. And then yeah,
Speaker 3: like you're saying, there are these hints of monstrousness. The skin,
Speaker 3: while made to look like a clown, it's got that
Speaker 3: makeup look. The grease paint look is also texturally craggy.
Speaker 3: It looks kind of rough and suggests a reptilian nature underneath,
Speaker 3: or maybe like ancient skin. Also, the mouth on the
Speaker 3: first guy we see is huge, with lots of glistening
Speaker 3: teeth inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like it's sort of a cannibal more for something,
Speaker 2: you know, like extra large mouth for consuming things.
Speaker 3: So the clown approaches and the farmer is confused, and
Speaker 3: then the clown says something in his alien clown language
Speaker 3: which we hear many times in the film, then pulls
Speaker 3: out a ray gun and appears to cook the farmer
Speaker 3: alive with it.
Speaker 2: That went about as well as we knew it would
Speaker 2: for this poor farmer.
Speaker 3: So next thing, we go to the police station, where
Speaker 3: we get some drama between the two main cop characters
Speaker 3: in the film. There is Mooney, the seething law and
Speaker 3: order maniac we met earlier and a younger, more even
Speaker 3: tempered cop named Dave Hanson played by John Allen Nelson.
Speaker 3: The basic conflict in the scene is that Mooney has
Speaker 3: arrested two college guys dressed like they're headed to a
Speaker 3: Bauhause concert. He detained them I think for the crime
Speaker 3: of walking through the park in goth makeup, or maybe
Speaker 3: it was another open container issue I don't recall. But
Speaker 3: Dave Hanson is trying to calm the situation and get
Speaker 3: Mooney to take it easy, but Mooney won't be stopped.
Speaker 3: He's freaking out and screaming like it's come like you
Speaker 3: that are killing this town. And he hauls the guys
Speaker 3: away for booking. But apparently these two cops have some
Speaker 3: bad blood between them. Dave doesn't like Mooney beating people
Speaker 3: up and raging around like a psycho, and Mooney doesn't
Speaker 3: like Dave I think for being young, yeah, or maybe
Speaker 3: for being weak. Maybe he's like, you know, you're not
Speaker 3: tough enough on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It quickly becomes clear that Mooney is a terrible cop.
Speaker 2: He's a would be local tyrant who thinks the job
Speaker 2: is all about cracking heads. And again, Vernon is the
Speaker 2: perfect guy to play this hard ass.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So our farmer guy already got microwaved by the clowns,
Speaker 3: but now we gotta have another visit to the Circus Tints.
Speaker 3: So Debbie and Mike are they were also going to
Speaker 3: go look for where the shooting star landed, and they
Speaker 3: end up tromping through the woods, with Mike doing a
Speaker 3: lot of kind of cringey comedy routines as they go
Speaker 3: until they finally come across the circus Tint Debbie. Once
Speaker 3: they get there, Debbie is hesitant, but Mike is full
Speaker 3: steam ahead and he leads them inside where wouldn't you
Speaker 3: know it, This is not a circus tint but an
Speaker 3: interstellar starship with pervasive decorative circus themes. And again, all
Speaker 3: through this, mic is just doing this running comedy act
Speaker 3: to impress Debbie, most of which is super cringe worthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this spaceship man looks amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So inside the spaceship they find a bunch of
Speaker 3: fun house style corridors with wacky color schemes and angles.
Speaker 3: There is a portal that leads to a giant reactor
Speaker 3: room that really looks like it belongs on the Death Star.
Speaker 3: I think because of just the vertical depth of it.
Speaker 3: It's this giant chasm or shaft, but it is bathed
Speaker 3: in pink and purple light. And then at the core
Speaker 3: of this chamber is a giant crystal ball that is
Speaker 3: arcing like a Tesla coil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this scene. Like the painting special effects
Speaker 2: combo here looks really good, Like, well, it really didn't
Speaker 2: even need to look this cool and clowney at the
Speaker 2: same time, but it does. And I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: also drives home that we're dealing with an advanced civilization here,
Speaker 2: Like they're somewhere on the Kardashchev scale, the Kardashev clown scale.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how that differs from your standard Kardaschev scale,
Speaker 2: but they're on there. They have advanced technology, but they're
Speaker 2: clowning to the max.
Speaker 3: They don't have dice in spheres. They have dice in balloons.
Speaker 2: Yes, there you go.
Speaker 3: So anyway, they you know, they're starting to get the
Speaker 3: idea that something's a little weird here. I think Debbie says,
Speaker 3: this is no fun house, no circus either. So Mike
Speaker 3: and Debbie realized that the shooting star they saw was
Speaker 3: actually an alien ship and they are now inside it,
Speaker 3: so they hear some approaching footsteps and they duck into
Speaker 3: a different room to hide. This room is the cotton
Speaker 3: Candy Room, which we will visit again a couple times
Speaker 3: in the film. This is a giant room filled with
Speaker 3: fog swirling around the floor and large pink, almost testicular
Speaker 3: kind of bowllesses hanging off of hooks on metal racks
Speaker 3: with rows and rows of rack space going up to
Speaker 3: the ceiling. And these pink bulbs, these dangling bulbs are
Speaker 3: supposed to be cotton candy.
Speaker 2: Yes, which you know, we did some episodes of stuff
Speaker 2: to blow your mind on cotton candy a while back,
Speaker 2: and you know, as we discussed there, like cotton candy
Speaker 2: is just intrinsically bound the idea of circus and fair
Speaker 2: and outdoor spectacle, so it makes sense that it would
Speaker 2: be associated with clowns. But as we'll discuss, the cotton
Speaker 2: candy here that the clowns are using must not be
Speaker 2: true cotton candy because they can do things that cotton
Speaker 2: candy is completely incapable of doing. It really seems to
Speaker 2: be more like a spider's silk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right. But Mike does not catch on
Speaker 3: too to the spider silk elements here. He first says,
Speaker 3: look at this place smells like candy. I don't know
Speaker 3: where we were before, but this looks like a cotton
Speaker 3: candy factory to me. This must be where they hang
Speaker 3: it up to dry before they ship it out. What
Speaker 3: And Debbie says, I don't believe in UFOs, but if
Speaker 3: they do exist, then we're trapped in one right now.
Speaker 3: But Mike doesn't seem to agree. He gives her the
Speaker 3: old you come on, there's got to be a logical
Speaker 3: explanation for this, and to which Debbie replies, I don't
Speaker 3: remember exactly how she gets here, but she says, nobody
Speaker 3: stores cotton candy like this, and she's right, Yeah again,
Speaker 3: we did core episodes on cotton candy. Cotton candy is hygroscopic,
Speaker 3: meaning it absorbs moisture from the air and it will
Speaker 3: lose its fluffiness and turn into sticky goop. Look at
Speaker 3: all the fog in that room. That is a high
Speaker 3: humidity room. You cannot hang cotton candy like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: However, Mike decides he's got to prove that Debbie is
Speaker 3: being silly and demonstrate that this is definitely normal cotton
Speaker 3: candy and not sinister outer space cotton candy. So he
Speaker 3: rips out a chunk of the nearest bulb, revealing underneath
Speaker 3: the wet, bloody, skinless face of a man. So it
Speaker 3: in fact is not just cotton candy. These are cocoons
Speaker 3: made out of a cotton candy like substance, which again
Speaker 3: is a terrible idea, by the way, and they appear
Speaker 3: to dissolve your flesh.
Speaker 2: Looks pretty grim. Looks pretty grim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Mike and Debbie are interrupted when a clown
Speaker 3: comes in to hang up a new bulb. And by
Speaker 3: the way, just side note, in the middle of the
Speaker 3: room there is a giant popcorn machine. He just pops
Speaker 3: swirling popcorn.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We'll learn more about that popcorn later.
Speaker 3: But Mike and Debbie are discovered and they bolt for
Speaker 3: the exit, and the clown gives chase, bringing along a
Speaker 3: popcorn gun. This is a big gun that shoots popcorn
Speaker 3: that kind of flies through the air after them as
Speaker 3: they run. The popcorn does hit Debbie and Mike just
Speaker 3: as they escape the tent, but it doesn't kill them.
Speaker 3: And I really wasn't sure what the popcorn was supposed
Speaker 3: to do at this point, but they do come back
Speaker 3: to that. Yeah, so Debbie's like popcorn? Why popcorn? And
Speaker 3: then Mike says, because of their clowns, that's why. Also
Speaker 3: after this, Mike and Debbie like they run away, and
Speaker 3: when the clowns follow them outside the tent, they make
Speaker 3: a balloon animal dog that helps them track the humans. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's barking and roughing, you.
Speaker 2: Know, total Looney Tunes moment.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's a chase through the woods, but Debbie
Speaker 3: and Mike get away in their car and also they
Speaker 3: you know, there's some fighting in the car, like you know,
Speaker 3: you end up with a clown on the hood of
Speaker 3: the car, of course, trying to reach through the windshield.
Speaker 3: But they get away and then while escaping the scene,
Speaker 3: they talk about what to do next to Mike thinks
Speaker 3: they can't tell anyone because of how crazy the story sounds,
Speaker 3: but Debbie says she has a friend who works for
Speaker 3: the police and he will believe them. She knows it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we watch the clowns slowly waddling toward the city limits.
Speaker 3: Oh no, and this will be the beginning of a
Speaker 3: lot of the movie is just going to be little
Speaker 3: scenes of the clowns doing various clowning, clowning activities and
Speaker 3: circus related activities within the city against the citizens, all
Speaker 3: of which end in people being caught and cocooned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all acts that are at once malicious and pure clowning.
Speaker 2: And at times it's hard, it's hard to figure out
Speaker 2: exactly like what the mo is like. Are they entertaining
Speaker 2: to put their victims at ease before they get them
Speaker 2: and you know, cocon them for later, or is there
Speaker 2: something else like is there's just something about them where
Speaker 2: they must entertain people as well? I don't know they
Speaker 2: are after all.
Speaker 3: I really like the moment where the clown tries to
Speaker 3: blend in by pretending to be a motorized Halloween decoration
Speaker 3: outside the drug store.
Speaker 2: That's smart, that's stealthy.
Speaker 3: So the friend that Debbie was talking about is Dave Hansen,
Speaker 3: the nicer cop from earlier. So Debbie and Mike try
Speaker 3: They get to the police station and they try to
Speaker 3: explain to him what they saw. But in the middle
Speaker 3: of explaining the killer clown popcorn conspiracy, Mooney wanders in
Speaker 3: and he's like, ah, this is a load of hogwash.
Speaker 3: And Mooney says to Mike he says, I know you,
Speaker 3: you little fart. You hang out with the Tarnzi brothers,
Speaker 3: and Mooney concludes that these clowns they're talking about are
Speaker 3: a Tarnsi Brothers stunt to sell ice cream. Makes sense
Speaker 3: so much to Mooney's derision, Dave agrees to go with
Speaker 3: Mike and Debbie to check out the circus tent and
Speaker 3: see for himself. Now we eventually learn here that Dave
Speaker 3: is Debbie's ex boyfriend and he is still in love
Speaker 3: with her, still carrying a torch for her, and because
Speaker 3: he still cares about her, he takes this kind of
Speaker 3: paternalistic tone and tells her that she can't come back
Speaker 3: to the ship. He's dropping her off at home, and
Speaker 3: Mike and Debbie have a little moment talking to each
Speaker 3: other before Mike is going to get back in the
Speaker 3: car and go with Dave up to the tent, and
Speaker 3: he's worried. He's like, yeah, I didn't know he was
Speaker 3: your ex boyfriend. He's gonna shoot me when we get
Speaker 3: up there, and Debbie tells Mike, don't worry about Dave.
Speaker 3: It's those clowns you got to worry about. So let's
Speaker 3: talk about some of the general clown antics in town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it basically becomes that for a while, just
Speaker 2: one clown antic can kill after another.
Speaker 3: One I liked is the puppet show in the gazebo
Speaker 3: with a single audience member, And I was genuinely laughing
Speaker 3: out loud about how this guy is just at first,
Speaker 3: he's scoffing and rolling his eyes at a puppet show
Speaker 3: that he is choosing to watch alone.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, Wow, what is this crap? But then
Speaker 2: he's drawn in by the you know, the raw honesty
Speaker 2: of this two puppet performance. And one of the puppets
Speaker 2: draws a lake are gun of some sort ray gun
Speaker 2: and zaps the other puppet, making that puppet completely evaporate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the guy's like what And then of
Speaker 3: course the gun gets turned on him but zaps him
Speaker 3: into a cotton candy cocoon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is where we learned. This is what
Speaker 2: they're doing. They zap people this the ray gun like
Speaker 2: spins them around, and then they're in this candy cotton
Speaker 2: candy cocoon that can then be collected later harvested.
Speaker 3: We also get a lot of drug store antics. We
Speaker 3: saw the clown going to the drug store earlier. So
Speaker 3: once inside, the clown wanders around clumsily knocking things over.
Speaker 3: The drug store clerk is extremely nervous and bothered by this. Uh,
Speaker 3: and eventually the clown starts cotton can, defying everybody in
Speaker 3: the store. But they're also like playing with the products,
Speaker 3: spraying themselves with shaving cream and sneezing in the baby powder.
Speaker 2: They can't resist a good site guy like that. They
Speaker 2: got to go for it.
Speaker 3: We also get a pizza delivery clown gag. I think
Speaker 3: that this is supposed to be a Carl Hungus style
Speaker 3: like pornographic movie set up, or like, oh, here's the
Speaker 3: pizza delivery guy here and the lady's answering the door
Speaker 3: in her nightgown but instead wine, yeah, with a glass
Speaker 3: of wine. But instead it's a clown delivering the pizza.
Speaker 3: And then the pizza box opens and inside there are
Speaker 3: more clowns.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This actress, by the way, is Carla Sue Krawl.
Speaker 2: This is only credit though, but this gag, this was hilarious,
Speaker 2: So clearly we clearly we need to do another similar
Speaker 2: bit with another clown delivery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically the same setup, but instead now it's an
Speaker 3: older lady who opens the door and the clown at
Speaker 3: the door has a box of Valentine cotton candy or
Speaker 3: not cotton candy, sorry, Valentine like chocolates box, you know,
Speaker 3: in a heart shape. And she turns and I guess
Speaker 3: is talking to her husband and she's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: oh Phil, you got this for me, And of course
Speaker 3: the clown there is ready to cotton candify them once again.
Speaker 2: They have a great deal of cultural knowledge of our planet.
Speaker 2: Maybe did a lot of research. Maybe we're you know,
Speaker 2: they're on the dark side of the moon for a
Speaker 2: while before they they made their trip, they've.
Speaker 3: Been studying us, watching our TV. So after dropping Debbie off,
Speaker 3: Dave and Mike head up to check out the spaceship tent.
Speaker 3: But when they arrived, there's nothing there, just a big
Speaker 3: hole in the ground. Huh. Well here, Dave gets mad
Speaker 3: and he places Mike under arrest. Another antic of that
Speaker 3: is going on in town is the whole biker versus
Speaker 3: clown scene, which is very inspired. There are a there's
Speaker 3: like a massive congregation of bikers hanging out in an
Speaker 3: alley outside a building that is covered in graffiti. By
Speaker 3: the way, I paused it to just read what some
Speaker 3: of the graffiti is some of it's biker slogans, but
Speaker 3: other stuff is like one graffito just says Jimmy Hendrix,
Speaker 3: another one says beer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or one says no button, no put. What does
Speaker 2: that even mean? I don't know. Maybe that's someone.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a biker thing. I actually looked that up.
Speaker 3: I think it means basically like, I will not give
Speaker 3: you a ride on my bike unless I find you
Speaker 3: sexually attractive.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, but.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so, yeah, all the bikers are hanging out being rowdy,
Speaker 3: and then a single clown rides up to them on
Speaker 3: a bicycle with training wheels. I think this is the
Speaker 3: sort of it's implied the childlike clown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the little guy of the group that
Speaker 2: may be a young clown.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he rides up on his little bicycle with
Speaker 3: training wheels. And then there's one big, gross, drooling, mean biker,
Speaker 3: the biker bully, who approaches this little clown and starts
Speaker 3: bullying him. He asks if he can ride his bicycle,
Speaker 3: and the little clown shakes his head, and then the
Speaker 3: bully smashes the clown's bicycle while all his friends cheer,
Speaker 3: and then you really feel sad for the clown here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he cries a little bit. It's so sad. He's just
Speaker 3: a little guy. And then one of the other bikers
Speaker 3: watching this is like, yeah, he should have let the
Speaker 3: man ride his bike. But then the clown manifests boxing
Speaker 3: gloves and puts his hands up and he starts dancing
Speaker 3: around and cutely saying something in the alien clown language.
Speaker 3: It sounds a bit like Scooby Doo saying, put up
Speaker 3: your dukes, and then he punches the biker's head off
Speaker 3: into a trash can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fatality.
Speaker 3: Back at the Big Top Burger, we get one of
Speaker 3: the actually creepier scenes in the movie, where there is
Speaker 3: a clown outside the restaurant playing peekaboo with a child
Speaker 3: through the window and trying to lure her outside while
Speaker 3: holding a giant cartoon mallet behind his back. But fortunately
Speaker 3: before the girl can make it outside to her clown doom,
Speaker 3: her scolding mother yanks her back to the table to
Speaker 3: finish her hamburger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely very creepy sequence. Clown looked amazing. The music
Speaker 2: was very evocative here. Yeah, in that mallet, you know,
Speaker 2: obviously a comedic mallet but what's he going to do? Like,
Speaker 2: what kind of awful clown technology does it have? So
Speaker 2: really twin this did not come to fruition.
Speaker 3: I think we never see the mallet used in the film,
Speaker 3: so we don't know about that one.
Speaker 2: We're just left to imagine.
Speaker 3: Also, somewhere in here there is the thing that we
Speaker 3: really had a question about. There's a scene where there
Speaker 3: is a dude driving along a dark highway and he
Speaker 3: gets run off the road over the edge of a
Speaker 3: bridge by a clown driving what I took to be
Speaker 3: an invisible car. So I was trying it first to think, like,
Speaker 3: this doesn't seem clown related, like so many of the
Speaker 3: other attacks and gags are, what's the deal here? But
Speaker 3: then I was thinking, maybe it's supposed to be miming,
Speaker 3: because you know, clowns and mimes have some overlap, and
Speaker 3: mimes interact with invisible objects. That's part of clowning. I've
Speaker 3: never really seen an invisible car gag from a mime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this one. This segment made a lot more
Speaker 2: sense when I read that bit about one of the
Speaker 2: Kyoto brothers being inspired by a supposed encounter with a
Speaker 2: clown driving on a mountain road, write what you know
Speaker 2: right exactly.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Officer Dave, with Mike handcuffed in the back of
Speaker 3: his squad car, comes across the Lover's lane from earlier
Speaker 3: and all the cars that now appear to be abandoned.
Speaker 3: It's dark and quiet here, and he investigates further and
Speaker 3: finds nobody around. All the cars are just filled with
Speaker 3: cobwebs of cotton candy, and so I think that's all
Speaker 3: the convincing Dave needs. He goes back in the uncuffs Mike.
Speaker 3: He's like, Okay, I believe you clowns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the cotton candy cobwebs are just really convincing
Speaker 2: here too, Like it's everything's just bright, pink and colorful.
Speaker 2: But he's also legitimately unganny and creepy.
Speaker 3: Now there's some more police business. There's a scene where
Speaker 3: we're at the police station and Mooney is reading a
Speaker 3: magazine laughing to himself, laughing like it's a humor magazine
Speaker 3: or something, maybe he's reading copy of Mad. But then
Speaker 3: we see him turn a page and it's a gun catalog.
Speaker 3: What's he laughing at?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, But then the clown calls start coming in on
Speaker 3: the phone. The phones are ringing off the hooks with
Speaker 3: clown related complaints. You know, He's like, oh really, the
Speaker 3: clowns took your wife away in a balloon, And Mooney
Speaker 3: is angry. He does not like this nonsense, and he says,
Speaker 3: if they want to play games, they're missing with the
Speaker 3: wrong guy. So he resolves to ignore all of the
Speaker 3: phones that are ringing in the police station.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the perfection of his terrible job as a cop,
Speaker 2: actively ignoring dangerous situations going on while also just being
Speaker 2: a tyrannical bully.
Speaker 3: Now, meanwhile, we got the beginning of you alluded to
Speaker 3: this earlier rob the famous shower scene, not famous for
Speaker 3: the reasons many shower scenes are famous.
Speaker 2: That's right. It is a shower scene that does seem
Speaker 2: to go on forever. I got a sense of this one.
Speaker 2: I watched it through the first time in its entirety.
Speaker 2: But then I saw some folks referencing this online saying
Speaker 2: it's the longest cinematic shower of all time. I don't
Speaker 2: know about that. I couldn't find some stats on that.
Speaker 2: But again, it is remark first of all, and then
Speaker 2: it is a very PG thirteen shower scene. We get
Speaker 2: full arm nudity. We almost see an armpit. That's about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like it's it's even tamer than the full bikini shower
Speaker 2: scene from Piranha Mandir. We watched a while back, and
Speaker 2: it indeed goes on a while, so I had to
Speaker 2: clock it. I got out my stopwatch. Multiple scenes and
Speaker 2: nearly twelve minutes of screen time take place between the
Speaker 2: beginning and the end of Debbie's actual shower, and that's
Speaker 2: just when the water turns off. It is a full
Speaker 2: eighteen plus minutes of screen time before we see her
Speaker 2: fully out of the shower and dressed, but still in
Speaker 2: the bathroom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, So it's not all that much screen time,
Speaker 3: but it just spans a lot of the film. You
Speaker 3: get this feel like it starts in the middle of
Speaker 3: the movie and then you're like into the third act
Speaker 3: by the time it's over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess screen time is maybe not the right
Speaker 2: discrete because it's yeah, we're not actually walked the full thing,
Speaker 2: but we keep coming back to it. That's the duration
Speaker 2: of this shower within the pacing of this movie. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, in reality, a twelve minute or even an
Speaker 2: eighteen minute shower not unreasonable, but within the context of
Speaker 2: a film's pacing, that's one long shower. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think the shower scene in Psycho, the most famous shower
Speaker 2: scene of all, is something like a minute long, less
Speaker 2: than a minute even. Yeah, and that one's pivotal to
Speaker 2: the plot.
Speaker 3: But in that one, at least, you're not like cutting
Speaker 3: away to multiple other subplots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. We cut away to, just multiple subplots.
Speaker 3: So first of all, what's happening here, let's talk about
Speaker 3: so further developments during the span of the shower within
Speaker 3: Debbie's house, there are developments on the popcorn subplot. So
Speaker 3: we eventually find out that the popcorn does do something.
Speaker 3: I think it's understood to be the lauval form of
Speaker 3: the clown beings. Is that how you understood it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the popcorn we see is crawling around on
Speaker 2: the tiles of the bathroom floor like little larval creatures.
Speaker 2: So I think this is the larval form of the
Speaker 2: clown life form. What's the next phase in their development?
Speaker 2: I think we're about to find out.
Speaker 3: That's right. So, yeah, and we see this, by the way,
Speaker 3: because Debbie still has the popcorn stuck to her clothes,
Speaker 3: which are on the bathroom floor, so we see the
Speaker 3: popcorn kernels kind of squirming around.
Speaker 2: Which got blasted onto her by the clown guns.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right. Yeah, so they're like little caterpillars. And
Speaker 3: then much later, once she's out of the shower, the
Speaker 3: popcorn appears to have metamorphosed into baby monster clowns, which
Speaker 3: are each like a little demon clown head with a
Speaker 3: mohawk on top of a snakelike spine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so I think it goes basically free moving
Speaker 2: popcorn larvae to juvenile clown snake, and then to adult
Speaker 2: clown form. And then I think we might assume that
Speaker 2: the killer clown from outer space is kind of like
Speaker 2: certain reptiles that keep growing throughout their entire life, because
Speaker 2: they seem to just get taller and taller.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right. Now, these creatures, the snakelike creatures, attack
Speaker 3: Debbie in the bathroom, but she escapes, though she is
Speaker 3: later she escapes only to be menaced by fully grown
Speaker 3: adult clowns all around her, which ambush her and then
Speaker 3: prevent her escape from her apartment. There's one part where
Speaker 3: she's trying to get out and she runs to the
Speaker 3: window and looks down and there are a bunch of
Speaker 3: clowns holding a trampoline firemen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also worth noting that those snake clowns, they're also
Speaker 2: like Jack in the boxes, because again there's nothing about
Speaker 2: the clowns, their biology, or their life cycle, or their
Speaker 2: culture and civilization that is not clowning to its heart.
Speaker 3: Yes, so she's eventually captured and put inside a balloon,
Speaker 3: like we heard about on the phone. Before that, we
Speaker 3: get we cut away to different kinds of clown horror
Speaker 3: and subplots going on. We get a bit more with
Speaker 3: Mike and Dave in the car. Dave is kind of
Speaker 3: rambling about I think. Mike tries to apologize. He's like, look, man,
Speaker 3: I didn't want to, you know, cause any weirdness with
Speaker 3: you and Debbie.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And Dave is like, the problem is me, obviously. She
Speaker 3: goes for laughs, not stability.
Speaker 2: Burn Yeah, but Mike's like, yeah, you got me.
Speaker 3: He gues and contest this, And there's more clown horror.
Speaker 3: There is the clown puppet show, where a clown shows
Speaker 3: up on a sidewalk and starts doing a oh not
Speaker 3: just a puppet show, a shadow puppet show. He's doing
Speaker 3: shadow puppetry for a group of elderly people at a
Speaker 3: bus stop. It begins cute and then gets increasingly absurd.
Speaker 3: One of the hand shadows he does is a detailed
Speaker 3: outline of Washington crossing the.
Speaker 2: Delaware yeap legitimately hilarious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the shadow puppet turn into a big
Speaker 3: Tyrannosaurus rex head with glowing eyes, and it eats all
Speaker 3: the old people and that somehow shrinks them, which allows
Speaker 3: the clown to put them in a suitcase full of popcorn.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: So Mike and Dave witness part of this bus stop
Speaker 3: attack from Dave's squad car, and after this they split up.
Speaker 3: Dave heads to the police station and Mike goes to
Speaker 3: recruit his friends, the Tarnzi Brothers, the guys with the
Speaker 3: ice cream truck. I think the idea is they're going
Speaker 3: to drive around, maybe warning people to stay away from
Speaker 3: clowns on the megaphone, but first they've got to go
Speaker 3: rescue Debbie. Also back at the police station, which is
Speaker 3: only manned by Mooney. At this point, a clown appears
Speaker 3: at the station. While Mooney is sitting at his desk
Speaker 3: smoking a cigar and ignoring all of the ringing telephones.
Speaker 3: The clown offers him a bouquet, but it's a trick
Speaker 3: bouquet that squirts his face with water, and uh oh,
Speaker 3: that makes Mooney very mad. He attempts to arrest the clown,
Speaker 3: but encounters difficulties, including detachable clown hands that come off
Speaker 3: with the handcuff uffs, and so he tries to He
Speaker 3: does end up jailing the clown in the cell next
Speaker 3: to the two goth guys from earlier. When Dave later
Speaker 3: arrives at the police station, he finds that the clown
Speaker 3: has cocooned the unfortunate prisoners and has turned Mooney into
Speaker 3: a ventriloquist dummy. So he's got the little red cherry
Speaker 3: cheeks and the some blood running from the corners of
Speaker 3: his mouth that make it resemble the little like block
Speaker 3: mouth that operates on a on a ventriloquist puppet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god, this this scene is his is terrifying.
Speaker 3: The clown makes John Vernon talk and he says, don't worry, Dave,
Speaker 3: all we want to do is kill you.
Speaker 2: And then he he let that the clown lets this
Speaker 2: grotesque ventriloquis dummy like collapse onto the table and as
Speaker 2: he does so, like withdraws his now blood slit clown
Speaker 2: hand from the back of of of of the of
Speaker 2: mooney and then just kind of like flicks the blood
Speaker 2: off just to just a really centient here. Yeah, terrifying.
Speaker 3: So it's a showdown between Dave and the clown, and
Speaker 3: so the clown is approaching. Dave starts firing his service
Speaker 3: revolver at the clown, but the clown appears invulnerable until
Speaker 3: Dave discovers the clown's only weakness, the nose. Shooting them
Speaker 3: in the red, bulbous nose causes the nose to explode
Speaker 3: in a burst of confetti, and then the clown turns
Speaker 3: into a spinning, sequined Christmas ornament and then that explodes
Speaker 3: with pink fireworks. Is that about right?
Speaker 2: I think? So? Yeah, I mean you could. You could
Speaker 2: basically say the trick is you shoot him in the face,
Speaker 2: which works with a lot of things, but in this
Speaker 2: case it is the nose. The nose hold their.
Speaker 3: Power, that's right, it's their Achilles nose. Yeah. Also, Dave
Speaker 3: manages to get a call in to the state police
Speaker 3: to request help with their their killer clown issue, and
Speaker 3: the state police are like, Okay, we're on the way
Speaker 3: what's the police code for killer clowns?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. You gotta have a new one
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 3: So while Mike and the Trendsy Brothers are on the
Speaker 3: way to pick up Debbie, they encounter a giant mechanized
Speaker 3: human harvesting operation where the clowns are parading through the
Speaker 3: streets of the city, surrounded by confetti and streamers with
Speaker 3: a giant vacuum cleaner machine that sucks up all of
Speaker 3: the people who have been pre wrapped in cotton candy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a full blown parade here. Reminds me a
Speaker 2: lot of a very similar scene that we get in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven's Masters of the Universe when Skeletor rolls
Speaker 2: into town.
Speaker 3: Somewhat recalls also the harvesting imagery and War of the Worlds,
Speaker 3: but obviously here it is clown themed. Yes, yes, Anyway,
Speaker 3: by the time Mike and the brothers arrive at Debbie's apartment,
Speaker 3: she's already been placed inside the balloon and attached to
Speaker 3: a clown car which drives away. So Mike and the
Speaker 3: brothers and then also Dave arrives in his squad car
Speaker 3: and they all give chase, but they lose track of
Speaker 3: the car. Some Oh, I think the Trenzi brothers like
Speaker 3: they pull over because there's a police car behind them.
Speaker 3: Maybe is that what happens? And so they end up
Speaker 3: losing the clown car, but they figure out where it's
Speaker 3: where it's going. Where are these clowns headed with Debbie? Well,
Speaker 3: if you were a clown, where would you go? The
Speaker 3: amusement park? Obviously, that's right. That's where they fill at home,
Speaker 3: that's where they can blend in. So when we see
Speaker 3: the clowns arrive, we pack multiple gags into the same scene.
Speaker 3: Where the clowns show up at the amusement park and
Speaker 3: there's a security guard there. We first of all get
Speaker 3: many clowns climbing out of a single tiny clown car
Speaker 3: while the guard watches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 3: And then they also produce like banana cream pies and
Speaker 3: the guards like, what are you going to do with
Speaker 3: those pies? And of course they give him pies to
Speaker 3: the face, but uh oh, the pies are some kind
Speaker 3: of corrosive material, you know, their their lye pies or something,
Speaker 3: and they melt the guard into this pile of whipped
Speaker 3: cream basically, and then as the clowns walk past his
Speaker 3: melted form. Uh, the little clown puts a cherry on top.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's the dedication to the art form.
Speaker 3: So our heroes arrive on scene to the rescue, and
Speaker 3: they head into the funhouse for the final showdown. And
Speaker 3: while they're exploring the clown's layer, here's where we get
Speaker 3: to the curious exchange we talked about earlier. Dave is saying,
Speaker 3: where do the clowns come from? Why are they here?
Speaker 3: Why are they clowns? And Mike says, they're not clowns,
Speaker 3: some kind of animal from another world that just look
Speaker 3: like clowns. And then this is suddenly dawning on him.
Speaker 3: He says, Dave, maybe they're the ancient astronauts, you know
Speaker 3: that came to our planet centuries ago, and our idea
Speaker 3: of clowns comes from them.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, that's that's one I love it.
Speaker 3: They built the pyramids, had to be no other explanation.
Speaker 2: Everything in our clowning cultures, which again, you know, not
Speaker 2: to get too deep here. You know they're they're clowning
Speaker 2: cultures around the world, and they go back a very
Speaker 2: long way. What if they're all based on something we
Speaker 2: observed when these ancient alien creatures came to our world
Speaker 2: and did clowning.
Speaker 3: One of the Tornsi brothers says, how come they're not funny,
Speaker 3: that they are funny.
Speaker 2: But Therenzi brothers they are funny. You might not know funny,
Speaker 2: see it they.
Speaker 3: Are, And then the other one says, how come they're
Speaker 3: not funny. The other one says, maybe they're from a
Speaker 3: dying planet.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 3: At some point, our heroes become separated, and the Tornsi
Speaker 3: brothers fall into a ball pit, where they are later
Speaker 3: seduced by clowns in wigs that have made themselves appear
Speaker 3: buxom with the aid of balloons.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm just gonna put a pin in this one
Speaker 2: and trying to figure out how this factors into the
Speaker 2: clown life cycle.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, Mike and Dave they find the cotton candy
Speaker 3: storage room, and then while hiding, they watch a clown
Speaker 3: drink blood from one of their cocooned victims through a
Speaker 3: silly straw. Yes, this makes me wonder what is the
Speaker 3: origin of silly straws? When do we get the first
Speaker 3: silly straws?
Speaker 2: Hmmm, well, there's definitely I think material requirements for that,
Speaker 2: but of course this would have been something we observed
Speaker 2: long ago when the Killer Clowns visited our world in
Speaker 2: ancient times.
Speaker 3: So we got the idea for silly straws from their
Speaker 3: visits to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would just be a long time. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you could have made a glass silly straw
Speaker 2: at some point before you could make a plastic one. Well,
Speaker 2: we'll have to roll out an invention episode on the
Speaker 2: straw and figure that out.
Speaker 3: That would act.
Speaker 2: That would be fun. I'm actually down for that anyway.
Speaker 3: So they eventually find Debbie inside the balloon and Dave
Speaker 3: shoots the balloon to release her, but the sound draws
Speaker 3: the attention of the clowns and this leads into a
Speaker 3: big chase scene where they're running around the spaceship the
Speaker 3: funhouse corridors. There's a good silly firehouse pole gag where
Speaker 3: they like slide down a pole and then they hop
Speaker 3: off at one leg before going down all the way,
Speaker 3: and Dave comes down after them and he's like, why
Speaker 3: didn't you go any lower? And then we just see
Speaker 3: a giant sarlac mouth at the bottom of the pole
Speaker 3: and he says, oh, good reason. But eventually they get
Speaker 3: cornered by clowns in a big funhouse room full of
Speaker 3: wacky painted blocks and furniture, and how are they going
Speaker 3: to escape? The clowns are crowding in, menacing them, and
Speaker 3: then it's the Trenzi brothers to the rescue. I don't
Speaker 3: recall how they got out of the clown seduction situation.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's never revealed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like they were done for, but they
Speaker 2: I don't know, they love their way out of it,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they crashed through the wall in their ice
Speaker 3: cream truck. Now, remember the ice cream truck had a
Speaker 3: giant clown on top, and so they get on the
Speaker 3: loud speaker and they say, I am the Great and
Speaker 3: powerful Jojo that you will obey my command. And this
Speaker 3: does seem to work. It temporarily hypnotizes the clowns and
Speaker 3: they stand frozen in awe their their giant clown god.
Speaker 3: So this buys some time for our other heroes to run,
Speaker 3: you know, run out of the middle of the room
Speaker 3: to safety. But this leads into the final final showdown,
Speaker 3: which is the lowering from the ceiling of a gigantic
Speaker 3: clown on marionette strings. And what do we call this.
Speaker 3: Is this the King Clown or clown Zilla?
Speaker 2: I think in the credits it's referred to as clown Zilla,
Speaker 2: but yeah, we might think of it as as kind
Speaker 2: of a ruler of the bunch, or just maybe the
Speaker 2: largest I don't know, Like I have this theory that
Speaker 2: these clowns grow throughout their life, and so some of
Speaker 2: them are just extra huge.
Speaker 3: I would say it is a cross between a clown
Speaker 3: of monstrous size and Bowser from Mario. Do you know
Speaker 3: it's the Bowser like shape and movements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like if you were if you could remove the
Speaker 2: grease paint from this face, which you can't because it's
Speaker 2: the clown space, Yeah, you would have had you have
Speaker 2: a very and even more monstrous inhuman skull for this creature.
Speaker 3: So the giant clown attacks it, grabs and hurls the
Speaker 3: ice cream truck across the room, seemingly with the trendsy
Speaker 3: rows inside. So I was like, well, they're dead now,
Speaker 3: and then Dave distracts clown Zilla while Mike and Debbie
Speaker 3: run outside through a hole in the wall. Outside, the
Speaker 3: state police are arriving and Dave is cornered, so it
Speaker 3: seems like he's done for because clown Zilla picks him
Speaker 3: up in his giant hand as if to bite his
Speaker 3: head off. And meanwhile, the big top clown spaceship is
Speaker 3: taking off into the sky and Dave is there in
Speaker 3: the monster clown's hand. How is he going to survive this?
Speaker 3: What's going to happen? The solution is pretty ingenious. He
Speaker 3: takes the police badge off of his shirt, which I
Speaker 3: guess is held in place by a safety pin, and
Speaker 3: uses the pin to pop the nose. Pop the nose
Speaker 3: on the big which this super clown is actually quite fragile.
Speaker 3: I mean, if just a pin prick on the nose
Speaker 3: completely destroys it, and not only the clown Zilla but
Speaker 3: also destroys the entire ship, maybe is like only powered
Speaker 3: by the magic of the clown Zilla. I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's a weakness in the design, I would say.
Speaker 2: I would say so as well. It seems like even
Speaker 2: a very primitive prey culture would be able to overcome you.
Speaker 2: Potentially that's just one well placed arrow. They're victorious.
Speaker 3: So the entire spaceship explodes in fireworks. It seems like
Speaker 3: Dave's got to be dead, right, But somehow no. A
Speaker 3: clown car falls out of the sky and Dave emerges
Speaker 3: from it unhurt. Also, somehow the Trenzi brothers are fine.
Speaker 3: They emerge from the same car eating popsicles. So basically
Speaker 3: all the main characters are okay, and we get our
Speaker 3: final stinger of the heroes looking up into the sky
Speaker 3: and Debbie says, do you think it's over? And then
Speaker 3: pies fall in their faces.
Speaker 2: Presumably these are not acid clown pies like we saw earlier.
Speaker 2: This is just supposed to be a goofy send up
Speaker 2: of that sort of keep watching the skies ending that
Speaker 2: we get in a lot of those old fifties and
Speaker 2: six these movies, whereas like, is is there something else
Speaker 2: out there? Is the end, and you know, we get
Speaker 2: a little philosophic in our victory at the end, and here,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just one more reason for a nice
Speaker 2: clown gag to close it all out. Bravo, All right,
Speaker 2: Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Like I say, commendable. There
Speaker 2: are some other films in the horror comedy genre from
Speaker 2: this time period that I also really love, Terror Vision
Speaker 2: being one of them, But it's really hard to think
Speaker 2: of anything quite like Killer Clowns from Outer Space. It
Speaker 2: does stand alone absolutely, and hey, everybody loves a clown,
Speaker 2: keep up orc uh uh. All right, well, we're going
Speaker 2: to go ahead and close out this our first full
Speaker 2: fledged October episode of Weird House Cinema for this October season,
Speaker 2: but we have more October selections to come, so stay tuned.
Speaker 2: We will have a Weird House Cinema every Friday in
Speaker 2: the Stuff to blow your podcast feed. We're primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but Friday is our time to set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns and just talk about a weird film. If you
Speaker 2: want to keep up with all the films that we've
Speaker 2: covered over the years and sometimes get a peek ahead
Speaker 2: at what comes up next, go to letterbox dot com
Speaker 2: our account. There is Weird House search us find us,
Speaker 2: look at that list, and yeah, wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 2: just make sure that you rate, review and subscribe to
Speaker 2: get more episodes.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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