Weirdhouse Cinema: Killer Klowns From Outer Space

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1988 horror comedy creature feature Killer Klowns From Outer Space, produced by the Chiodo brothers and starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson and John Vernon.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. On today's episode of
Weird House Cinema, We're going to discuss what's kind of
a Rare Beast? A goofy horror comedy that manages to
avoid being too self aware and takes itself its genre
and the films it inspired it seriously enough to maintain

(00:33):
a certain air of creepiness, seriousness, and indeed horror, while
still being ridiculous and hilarious and fun. It is nineteen
eighty eight's Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I think I'd agree with all of that, except I
don't know if a film can be more self aware
than Killer Clowns. This seems like the ultimate kind of
meta exercise.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, I guess it depends how you exactly consider too
self aware in a film. For me, when a film
becomes too self aware, it's like things begin to fall apart,
you know, like.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
Not taking the plot seriously.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
I mean right where it becomes too much of a joke,
to where you can see the joke and the performances
you can feel the joke and the writing in the
way that just again makes things fall apart. And sometimes
I've you know, there's some obvious examples of that in
more recent films you could point to, but I mean
there are also some older films that have a cult
following that I've tried to get into, and I just

(01:31):
find that, like, oh, this was just one big joke
for everybody, Like if the villain can't be taken seriously,
if if everybody's if it's just too much of a party.
I mean, I guess that can be fun, but it
can it can make the narrative itself fall apart.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Oh no, well, I agree with exactly what you're talking
about there. Yeah, an effective parody does still have to
function as a story, and some parodies are, you know,
so self conscious that they just they stop even trying
to be a function story. They're just doing the jokes,
and that becomes less engaging.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Yeah, So this is one that this is one of
those films that I don't think I'd ever actually sat
down and watched it all the way through start to finish.
I recall it airing on cable back in the nineties
and early two thousands and watching you know, parts of
it on late and probably something like USA Up All Night,
but I'm not sure where exactly it was airing. Maybe
it aired on Sci Fi Channel as well. You know,

(02:26):
it fits a number of those molds. It was also
originally released theatrically, apparently didn't do that well, but has
enjoyed a long life via home media, apparently more than
making back. It's I think one point eight million dollar
budget over the course of time. But as the filmmakers
have said in interviews, it's one of those things where
they've they've wanted to do a follow up, but studios

(02:49):
aren't really interested in a movie that's going to make
you know, millions and millions of dollars over the course
of like three decades. They want something that's going to
make that much money in one weekend. And so, for
various reas, we have yet to fully cinematically return to
the universe of the Killer Clown.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I don't. I mean, on one hand, I would like
to trust them, but on the other hand, I'm like,
I don't know if I would like what this movie
would look like if it was made today.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, yeah, there. The closest thing that we have is
there was a recent video game that came out, Killer
Clowns from Outer Space. The game came out in twenty
twenty four. It's one of those asymmetrical survival horror games,
you know, kind of like the Friday the Thirteenth game.
In fact, I think some of the same people worked
on it.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
That makes sense. They also made a Texas Chainsaw Mamasacre game,
which I've played one time.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, I have not played this one. It's one of
those my machine can't handle it. But I looked at
the stills and it looks pretty cool. It looks like
a lot of work went into maintaining the vibe of
the original picture. But I also agree with you on
the idea of like a modern clown remake or even
a sequel, Like even if the Kyoto brothers were just

(04:04):
all the way involved, it seems like there would be
a tendency to like lean into like nastier territory or
just I don't know, like, how would you maintain the
perfection that you have in this film right? At any rate,
there remains talk of a sequel, and I've recently read
that Ryan Gosling has been attached as a producer for
a potential remake so we'll see. We'll see. So what

(04:28):
we have here is pretty singular in many respects. It's
essentially a kind of Invaders from Mars the Blob plot,
but with clowns from outer space, and they are killer
clowns of course, and it is presented in PG thirteen forms.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
So you know it's not hard PG thirteen.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
It's a hard PG thirteen Like the clowns are frightening.
There's certainly some adult humor sprinkled throughout that doesn't go
too hard, but also some of it hasn't aged all
that well, was maybe a little tasteless back in the
day as well. But yeah, for my money, this film
stands out for a number of reasons. So it's a

(05:09):
goofy horror comedy that balances like the late eighties goofiness
and the monster horror quite well. So, like I say,
it doesn't become a complete farce, and the creatures are
all really convincing, look amazing. It really has the I
don't know how many I don't know if you can
relate to this or listeners can, but it reminds me
a lot of Mad Magazine movie parodies from back of

(05:32):
the day.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yes, in multiple ways, with the slight ugliness of the caricature,
in the way the clowns are realized visually, the comedic
sensibility of the gags is very Mad Magazine And what
is that I'm recognizing there is On one hand, it's
not a dry humor. It's like a it's a very juicy,

(05:56):
wet humor. But also it goes a little bit hard.
As we were saying, it's a little bit more adult
than you might expect in some areas.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah. Yeah, Like I'm reminded specifically when when RoboCop two
came out. I don't think I was able to watch
RoboCop two yet, but I had a Mad Magazine that
had the parody of RoboCop two in it, and of
course it was loaded with gags. It's very much, you know,
comedy and satire. But at the same time, like RoboCop
looked pretty cool in some of the in many of

(06:26):
the drawings, so did the nemesis of RoboCop two, and
so that comic I just have a strong memory of it,
you know, impressing me in a couple of ways, Like
it was funny, it was goofy, but also I was like, wow,
you know, there's still robots battling each other. I'll take it.
Let's see what else. We'll get into a lot of
this when we get into the plot more. But we've

(06:48):
already talked about it. It's PG thirteen, so it's kind
of a hard PG thirteen. But in terms of like
a late eighties, like nearly nineties monster movie that features
like college student characters, this film's not nearly as tasteless
as it could have been, and it's not really gory.
Has no nudity, despite the inclusion of the genre standard

(07:10):
shower scene.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Which is notable in several respects, not just for having
no nudity.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Right, but overall. I think it's just the big thing
about killer clowns from outer space is just the absolute
commitment to the bit. You know, this was clearly their
vision for this picture. Earth has been invaded by clowns
from outer space, aliens that are clowns, clowns that are aliens,
as this film actually explores humanity's knowledge of clowns and

(07:38):
clowning traditions. We're talking from ancient Egypt, through gesture traditions
around the world through twentieth century Circus times. All of
this was inspired, perhaps by Earth's ancient alien first contact
with clowns from outer space.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
They do, in fact mention this in dialogue. Yeah, at
least as a suggestion by a character who is not
an expert.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
So, but we don't know what his major speculating, We
don't know what his major is. Yeah, but but yeah,
these these aliens are not disguised as clowns. They are clowns.
Clowns are a species. Human clowns are unknowingly disguised as
clowns from outer space.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
That theory is a wonderful little garnish on the feast
that is this film.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah. Yeah, It's an idea that, to a certain extent,
is later explored in a different way, into a different
degree in horror writer Thomas Leggatti's nineteen ninety story The
Last Feast of Harlequin.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Oh, I haven't read that one.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Oh it's creepy and it has clowns. So if you
want a creepy clown read I recommend that one. All right,
elevator pitch for this one. I mean, this is one
of those films where the title alone tells you everything
you need to know. It's killer clowns from outer space.
What else do you need to say.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Do you know why they chose to spell clowns with
a K in the title?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
I don't know offhand. I guess it just it looks funny. Uh,
it really clown is funny because the word found clown
is funny because it has that hardca kind of sound, right,
and so just go ahead and give it a K.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Fair enough?

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and listen to just
a little bit of trailer audio here.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
It was a night like any other night. Then something happened,
you see that, something different. It's still shooting star. Why here?

Speaker 5 (09:43):
Why now? Why clowns? Killer clowns, Killer Clowns from outer Space?

Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's crazy, all right. As of this recording, Killer Clowns
from Outer Space is streamable on to the and Amazon
Prime here in the States, but is generally just widely
available in all formats. Shout Factory put out a really

(10:35):
nice looking steel book edition and it's i think still
available loaded with extras. Again, this one has enjoyed a
very long life as home media, and so different editions
I think have come out over the years, and I
mean it's really at home where people have grown to
love it. I'm honestly not sure about other media that

(10:56):
has explored the Killer clown universe beyond the recent video game.
It seems like you could have a lot of like
comic book crossovers here. It seems like Killer Clowns Aliens
versus Predator, like the crossover absolutely should happen there because
you can get the you know, you have ancient alien visitors,
you have you could have a hybrid where you have
like a xenomorph clown hybrid. Like what does that look like?

(11:19):
I mean, there's there's so many places you could go
with it.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Can I suggest something that is more I would say
tonally and thematically already aligned with Killer Clowns. You can
have RoboCop versus Terminator, you can have Alien versus Predator,
and you can have Killer Clowns versus Critters.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
There you go, right, crites, it seems like a perfect fit, yes,
for a number of reasons. So, and that really leads
us into into our discussion of the people behind this picture,
because the main like driving creative force here is of
course the Kyoto brothers. This is Stephen Kyoto, Charles Kyoto,
and Edward Kyoto. I'm gonna basically talk about them as

(12:00):
a trio. But if you get into the credits, Steven
born nineteen fifty four is credited as director, one of
the writers, and the producer or one of the producers.
Charles born fifty two is credited as writer, producer, production designer,
clown designs and also plays the role of clown Zilla.
You'll find out what that is later if you haven't

(12:21):
seen it. And then Edward has a writer producer credit,
and he was born in nineteen sixty.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
So these guys, before they were filmmakers in their own right,
they had worked on special effects for a number of things, right.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, absolutely, they were already an established effects team. And
they're still around as an established effects team. They can
continue to work even though they haven't really come back
and done any kind of like a full feature film
in the same way as Killer It Clowns from Outer Space.
But yeah, an American trio special effects siblings who specialize

(12:54):
in clay modeling, creature creation, stop motion animatronics, you know,
so many of those nice, you know, rub the fur
practical effects that we love in films like.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
This totally And do I understand correctly that they originally
intended to include some stop motion effects in Killer Clowns,
but they weren't able to, and that's why the clown
Zilla effect. Yeah, I think it's like was originally going
to be a stop motion creature but ended up being
a man in a suit.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, that's my understanding. Yeah, that was gonna so we
were going to get some stop motion, and they've done
a lot of stop motion over the years, including him
to understand some bits for the Simpsons here and there.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
But to be clear, I'm not trying to diminish the
clown effects by referring to them as a guy in
a suit, because they are more than just a person
in a suit with like makeup.

Speaker 5 (13:44):
There.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
There is some puppetry involved in the clowns, right, Yes, Yeah,
the clowns that we get in the film.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
As we'll be talking about time and time again here,
they just look amazing, just wonderful practical effects. I mean
the way that the heads have been sculpted and fabricaded,
painted and then manipulated in a way that they just
completely come to life, Like the movements of the mouth,
the eyes, oh my goodness, the eyes of these things.
I guess it's you know, it's it's you don't have

(14:13):
to worry about Uncanny Valley with a creature like this
that is already supposed to be uncanny, but man, pretty
much in every shot, these clowns absolutely feel like living creatures. Yeah,
so the Kyoto Brothers. Other credits include, of course, nineteen
eighty six's Critters, which we've covered on the show before,
and that's why a Critter's killer Clown's crossover would be wonderful,

(14:35):
even though that would be a lot of k sounds
in the title. Yeah. They apparently also did the six
thousand sucks commercial for nineteen eighty seven's RoboCop.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, that's right, the car that is constantly being advertised
in the RoboCop universe and gets six miles to the gallon.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, let's see. Of course they did eighty eight Critters too,
as well as UHF the same year. They did some
effects in that. They did effects work in ninety one's three.
They did nineteen ninety one's Earnest Scared Stupid. This is
a film that I think a lot of us remember
from our childhoods, in part because the monster effects. The

(15:12):
trolls in that movie are extremely creepy and convincing and
share a certain resemblance to the creatures in this film.
Though despite rumors that they're the same sculpts like repainted.
That appears to not be the case, just I think
a similar design aesthetic.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
I can't remember if we've talked about this on the
show before, but that is a film I remember very
vividly for being one of those things that was just
supposed to be funny and the kid's movie, but actually
scared me when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember how scary I found it,
but I remember liking it a lot more like I
was still at the point where I was obviously down
for earnest movies. Yeah, Like I wasn't. No one dragged
me into an earnest movie kicking and screaming. But then
I was like, oh man, I could tell, like this
is hitting harder than I had. I think these things
were like taking kids, turning them into wood. I recall

(16:02):
is that. I think that's right. That's one we may
come back to in the future. Let's see. They also
worked on ninety two's Critters, four ninety seven's Turbo, a
Power Rangers movie. They did some work in two thousand
and three's Elf Team America World Police in two thousand
and four, and they even had their hands in twenty
twenty one's Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which is

(16:25):
a very delightful film. I saw that one in the
theater with my kid. They also did makeup on the
Monsters Horror anthology series from eighty eight through ninety, which
did indeed have some tremendous monster makeup effects. And like
I said earlier, they've done stop motion segments on The
Simpsons as well. They've remained very active in film and TV,

(16:45):
but again have yet to truly follow up on the
Killer Clowns from Outer Space with a sequel or spiritual successor.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Okay, wait a minute, I'm going to revise my earlier
recommendation of Killer Clowns versus critters. What about Killer Clowns
versus the Power Rangers. That's already there a skill set.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
I could see that matchup maybe working.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, you know magic wand to make my clown grow.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we do get a giant clown.
That's the kind of thing that could battle a giant
robot for sure. We could do get into to Kaiju territory.
So Stephen Kyoto has claimed that the initial inspiration for
the series occurred when he was driving on a mountain
road and looked over and saw a clown driving next
to him. A clown where there shouldn't be a clown

(17:31):
sounds horrifying to me. It sounds like it, and I
think we get a sense of that in the film.
There's actually a scene in the movie that seems to
allude to this encounter, perhaps an encounter from another world.
They also cite strong influences from fifties and sixties sci
fi horror monster movies, which totally makes sense Mad Magazine,
which lines up with what I already said, as well
as Looney Tunes, which is perfectly believable, and they've stressed

(17:56):
in interviews that it was also an essential ingredient, ingredient
that the actors treat the threat itself, the threat of
the killer clowns, as absolutely serious and threatening, despite the
heavy comic veneer to everything. So again, I think that's
what the sense I get is that that's absolutely key
to this movie working, is that the clowns are legitimately

(18:18):
funny but also grotesque, and also there's a strong sense
of life and death here, like they are frightening.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, that's right, especially I think in the scenes where
they're like menacing children, and stuff that's like, those are
the least funny and the most actually threatening. I think,
fortunately though, the movie is kind of gentle in that regard,
and that we never actually see a child harmed, you know,
that always gets averted somehow. But the threat is kind

(18:47):
of looming, and that emphasizes the less funny aspects.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Let's get into the cast here a bit, all right.
Starting at the top, we have the character Mike Tobacco,
presumably a realistic name, played by Grant Kramer born in
nineteen sixty one.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
This is one of our main two guys in the film.
Mike and Dave are the main two guys, and the
main lady in the film is Debbie. But Mike here
is a He's a real cut up.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, and it's a mixed bag. It's the character is
full of terrible dated jokes. For the most part. I
think we're supposed to like him more than I found
myself liking him. I never hated him. I was never
like the clowns can't kill this guy fast enough. But
I don't think I liked him as much as I
was supposed to.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yeah, exactly how we're supposed to receive him was a
little difficult for me to read. I found myself thinking
that that, essentially Debbie's other boyfriend, Dave, was the more
likable of the two characters.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah. Absolutely, It's like, come on, Debbie, you can do
better than this guy, and he's right here. Why aren't
you with Officer Dave? But anyway, none of this is
Grant Kramer's fault. I'm perfectly fine here he was. His
first film credit was nineteen eighties New Year's Evil, followed
by the nineteen eighty four sex comedy Hard Bodies, and
his subsequent credits are a bit scattered, and he produced

(20:18):
a number of projects as well. He reprised his role
as a vocal talent in that recent Killer Clowns video.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Okay, okay, I probably dare not go watch the nineteen
eighty four sex comedy Hard Bodies, but I'm curious about
it because it shares a name with the gym in
burn After reading oh yeah, I remember that Richard Jenkins
repeatedly just talking about their workplace by name, saying like,
we can't have this material here at Hard Bodies.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
All right, Well, we mentioned Debbie already. Debbie Stone is
played by Suzanne Snyder born nineteen sixty two American actress
with some great genre film credentials. She has an uncredited
cheerleader role in nineteen eighty four as the Last Starfighter,
which we've talked about on the show. She's in eighty
five's Weird Science, eighty six's Night of the Creeps, Oh yeah, yeah,

(21:10):
and also nineteen eighty eight Return of the Living Dead
two and then this Glorious Picture.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
You know, I love the original Return of the Living Dead,
but I've never watched the sequel. I've heard it's kind
of looney tunes.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, they're on. They're definitely the sequels that I'm familiar with,
mostly by box art. I know, the Return of the
Living Dead two has you know, kind of cool box art,
and then Living Dead Three's big selling point, I think
is Sexy Zombie. That's the one that I like. Sexy
Zombie is in the forefront, but I never actually watched

(21:43):
it anyway, Snyder. She had a number of subsequent TV
roles that included appearances on In the Heat of the Night,
Jake and the Fat Man, Seinfeld, and Homicide Life on
the Street, and she also reprised her role as a
vocal talent in The Killer Clams from Outer Space.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Okay, she's great in this. She brings a very good,
straight delivery of dialogue that is funny. Yeah, like not,
she's not hamming it up in a way that is good.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Absolutely. Yeah, as we'll discuss, she spends a lot of
screen time taking a shower. But you know, we'll break
that down when we get into the plug. All right,
let's talk about Officer Dave Hanson, then played by John
Allen Nelson born nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, this character is
Debbie's ex boyfriend and current local cop. Nelson's TV credits

(22:35):
go back to nineteen eighty three, but I believe nineteen
eighty nine he starred in Death Stalker and the Warriors
from Hell. This is a barbarian movie. He is the
lead in it. This one I think has been riffed before.
A lot of regular mainstream, mainstream TV work from this
guy followed. But he also pops up in two thousand
and nine's Feast three.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
I might have seen that Death Stalker movie or maybe not,
don't recall, but he I don't know. This guy doesn't
read barbarian to me.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Well, no, you have two different basic types of barbarian.
You have the muscle bound Barbarian, and then you have
your leaner Barbarian Oka, and I think death Stalker tends
to be your leaner of Barbarian in different installments. More
of the rogue than the fighter, yeah, or is more finesse,
you know, he's putting more into decks than strength.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Right, Okay. I would say the same thing about a
Nelson here that I would say about Snyder in the
role of Debbie. Both of them do a great job
of straight delivery of funny dialogue that if they'd been
winking a little bit more wouldn't have been as good.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Right, Okay. Now let's get to the main human antagonist
of the picture, and that is Officer Curtis Mooney, played
by the great John Vernon who lived nineteen thirty two
through two thousand and five. Yes, it is the Dean
from nineteen seventy eight's Animal House.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Oh boy, the guy who puts them on double secret probation.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yeah, and he's playing a sin actually the same character here,
but as a cop like with a gun.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah. I mean Vernon really found a later career niche
for himself as you know, no nonsense, hard ass like.
More than that, I would say that's being too generous,
like a lot of the characters he played are just
outright malicious.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
A guy who hates the youth.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
He hates the youth, and he's going to do everything
within his powers given to him by his position or
his job to go after them and also maybe go
a little more as well, a little harder.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
This is the character archetype that is I think hilariously
parodied in the Simpsons episode where Homer goes back to
college because the dean is super cool.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yes, yeah, yeah, there's also a Futurama episode that parodies
this where Bender it goes to college and yeah, it's
become such a staple, but it, you know, it all
really begins with John Vernon's performance in that film, and
again he plays a similar sort of character here, just
you know, a hard ass that hates everybody. The talented actor.

(25:03):
The Canadian actor with filming TV credits going back to
the fifties, and his pre Animal House credits include some
voice work for Marvel animated series in the nineteen sixties.
He voiced iron Man and would later do some Marvel
voices on much later animated series. He debuted on Broadway

(25:23):
in sixty four. He starred in the Canadian crime series
Wojiic from sixty six to sixty eight, which I've never
seen but I'm to understand was like, you know, highly
thought of at the time. It was like a new
sensation on Canadian television. He soon crossed over into American
film with roles in Hitchcock's Topaz in sixty nine, Dirty

(25:45):
Harry in seventy one, he plays the mayor he pops
up in seventy six is the outlaw Josie Wales. He
followed up on Animal House with its thirteen episode TV spinoff,
Delta House. Oh.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
I haven't seen it, but I don't have high hopes.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Other credits include nineteen eighties Herbie Goes Bananas, eighty two's
Airplane two, the eighty three horror movie Curtains. Oh, and
he's also in an Earnest movie nineteen eighty seven's Earnest
Goes to Camp. I think that might have been the
first full fledged Earnest movie. That's one I definitely saw.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
I don't think I saw that one.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
He's also in eighty seven's Blue Monkey. Let's See. There's
a nineteen seventy seven killer cat movie called The Uncanny,
and he's also in the nineteen seventy four provocative surrealist
comedy sweet movie.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
I just had to look up The Uncanny to see Wait,
have I seen this? I honestly don't recall.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, it's not one that I think I'm familiar with.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
I think it's like a it's an anthology film, right
that has a cat as the villain.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yep, yep, seems to be the case. Yeah, we have
different times, you know this might did I maybe maybe
I did watch part of this. Yeah. Yeah, it's because
very familiar because we do. We have Peter Cushing and
in at least one segment.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Maybe Donald Pleasance and Raymonland.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
You know, I think maybe I did watch one of
We did watch one segment from this for one of
our horror episodes in the past. I think we are
horror anthology series. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
It's got Samantha Eggar too. Yeah, I think we've seen this.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah. Yeah. The segment that Vernon is in is Hollywood
nineteen thirty six. This is the segment that has Samantha Eggar,
Donald Pleasance and John Vernon.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
It's maddening when I get into the state where I
can't remember if I've seen a film, but I really
think I have. And now I've got to go back
and watch it to figure out if I've already watched it.

Speaker 2 (27:41):
I mean, I don't remember for sure, but there's no
way that John Vernon gets out of this movie without
being eaten by a cat. Right.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Oh he's got yeah, yeah, chump chump fancy feast.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
So anyway, yeah, terrific character actor, great at this sort
of role and is tremendous sin killer clowns from outer space.
All right. We have the Trensey brothers as characters in
this There are comic relief characters. I would say they
only hold up as limitedly funny. I had to chuckle
at maybe one or two things that they do. And

(28:14):
they are played by the comedy team Siegel and Lakassi.
This was an actual comedy duo of the time. That's
Peter Lcassi, who lived nineteen fifty nine through twenty twenty,
and then Michael S. Siegel. Michael S. Siegel I think
ultimately went on to do more things. He got involved
in the UK film and Theater project when he moved

(28:35):
in projects when he moved over there, and he's done
some video game voice acting, including the recent RoboCop Rogue
City Game.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
These guys occupy a strange niche in that they are
the character archetypes who would normally be the comic relief
in an otherwise not funny film. But this is a
funny film, and I found their comedy bits some of
the most failed attempts to be funny in this otherwise
funny film.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, the trends, Yeah, the times they succeed
in being humorous, for my money anyway, are just smaller
moments and not like the hard gag moments they're going
for with these two.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
All right, one more actor we're gonna mention here, and
that is Royal Dano, who lived nineteen twenty two through
nineteen ninety four playing the character farmer Jane Green Curricie
American character actor with credits going back to nineteen forty three.
His credits include nineteen fifty six Is Moby Dick, in
which he plays the prophetic Elijah. This is the character

(29:36):
that like warns our central characters that they are doomed
if they go on the.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Ship oh before they get on the pequad.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Yeah. Yeah, let's see. He's in a seventy two TV
movie titled Moon of the Wolf. He's in seventy fours,
Messiah of Evil, seventy six is the outlaw Josie Wales,
eighty three's Something Wicked, This Way Comes eighty three is
the Right Stuff to eighty seven's Goolies two, nineteen ninety
Spaced Invaders, and nineteen ninety three's.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
The Dark Half.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
He also has a slew of TV credits, including one
episode of Night Gallery. You know, clearly a talented actor
with a great folksy vibe, and he just goes ahead
and just hams it up all the way here, just
absolutely amped up to eleven. This is a fun little role.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Spaced Invaders is a film that I loved when I
was a kid. I think I rented it from the
video store and I ended up watching it many times.
Also a comedy science fiction film with some you know,
zany Martians who come to Earth by accident and they
end up running around on Halloween night. Everybody thinks that

(30:46):
their kids in costumes while they're trying to take over
the world. Haven't seen it many years. Probably doesn't hold
up very well, but I loved it when I was
a kid. And this guy plays the exact same character
in that movie that he does in this one.

Speaker 5 (31:00):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
And they're so close together too, it's like it's almost
too close together for it to have for that to
have been influenced by this. I don't know. Yeah, but
the character that he plays is kind of like it's
basically the trope that you see in the Blob. He's
like the good natured, folksy guy who just happens to
run a foul of the alien menace.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah, tar Nation. He's a farmer who's you know, a
meteor has landed on his property and now he's going
to be rich.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah all right. And then finally the music. The music's
really fun here. The composer is John Massari born nineteen
fifty seven. He worked a lot in TV and film
over the years. Also scored the Lorenzo Lama Snake Eater movies.
And I would say the general vibe for Killer Clowns
from Outer Space is John Carpenter esque synth that is

(31:47):
occasionally like quite suspenseful and very John Carpentry. But then
you also have plenty of circus music whimsy sprinkled in
there as well.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Yeah that's all right. But then also, of course a
major musical texture here is the rock music from the
from the Dickies, because right at the beginning of the
movie we get that opening theme song, which, if you
did not already know, this is one of those movies
like the Flash Gordon film that is not a musical
but does have an original rock theme song that says

(32:18):
the title of the movie in the lyrics and describes
the plot in the lyrics.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
That's right, Yeah, Killer Clowns from Outer Space performed by
the Dickies. Not a band I was super familiar with,
but they've they've been around for a long time and
they seem to have a strong following American pop punk
band or I guess you'd just call him a punk band,
but I've also seen pomp pop punk or humor punk
thrown in there. Active still today, based out of la

(32:45):
headed up by vocalist Leonard Graves Phillips, who also has
writing production credit on this song. And it's also worth
pointing out that noted film composer and frequent Steven Soderberg
and Nicholas wending Refin collaborator Cliff Martinez was their drummer
at the time, and and so presumably listening to the

(33:05):
coiler Clowns from out of Space, we're hearing Cliff Martinez
on drums.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Yeah. The same year he would have composed the score
for Soderberg's Sex Lives and Videotapes, So an interesting little
bit of film score trivia there. But the song the
color Clowns from Out of Space was released the same
year on an EP from The Dickies with the same title.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
That EP also includes a pretty amazing cover. It's a
cover of a song originally from The Jetsons The Hannah
barbera cartoon that's played on the show The Jetsons by
an in show like teen Idol named I think Screaming
Jet or Jet Screamer or something like that, and the

(33:50):
song is called eepop orc u Ah, it's eepop orc
I Love you, and the Dickies cover is excellent.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
I think yeah, this song is really fun. I mean
it should be noted, as with the score, there's enough
circus music in there that it is going to maybe
annoy you a bit. I mean, that's the thing about
circus music. But it's a really fun track. Some of
the lyrics include the likes of everybody's running when the
circus comes into their towns. Everybody's gunning for the likes

(34:19):
of the Killer Clowns or this one's really this one
gets a bit hard here see a rubber nose on
a painted face bringing genocide to the human race. Yeah,
it's almost getting into almost like Misfits territory with the
lyrics on that one.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Yeah yeah, Oh it reminds me of the lyrics of
Astro Zombies.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
So the main Killer Clowns song plays while we get
a montage of nightlife in the movies setting, which is
this California town called Crescent Cove. So we see teenagers
hanging out a circus themed restaurant called Big Top Burger.
The youth are surveyed with evident disgust here by a
cop named Officer Mooney. This is again the character played

(35:09):
by John Vernon. Mooney's just looking around at these kids,
and he would clearly love to arrest all of these
long hairs, but he is outnumbered, so he gets his
coffee and he drives off in his squad car, looking
frustrated and fuming. Next thing we see is a young
guy with blonde hair and glasses carrying some groceries on

(35:29):
the sidewalk. He's drinking a beer in a can. That's
just labeled beer in all caps with nothing else, and
he sort of hides his open container as he goes
through a crosswalk in front of Mooney's car, and Mooney grumbles,
it's just like looking at this kid makes him furious,
but then he moves on. This guy, by the way,
is a minor character named Bob, played by Christopher Titus,

(35:52):
and after they go their separate ways, Bob says, cops,
but next we're going to check in at the local lane.
It's makeout point. So all the youths here are parking,
listening to the radio, drinking beer, stargazing and smoochin.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah. And it's one of those movies where I think
they're all clearly well into their late twenties. Yes.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
And in the scene we meet a lot of the
young characters who at first I was assuming we would
follow many of these characters for the rest of the film,
but no, mainly just our primary two characters here, Mike
Tobacco and Debbie Stone. They're going steady. They're hanging out
in their car. They are drinking, but while everybody else

(36:34):
here is drinking beer, for some reason, they're having champagne.
I don't know if here's a question did you read
Mike as like a rich or preppy guy. He's sort
of dressed in a preppy way. He's got this sweater
on with a collared shirt underneath, and he's they're drinking
champagne while everybody else is not. Is that what we're

(36:56):
supposed to take from this? Oh?

Speaker 2 (36:57):
I had not put that together till just now. Maybe
that's what they were going for, But yeah, I don't
know his character. Yeah, about the only thing I really
get out of it is that, yeah, he is a
cut up, and he also is kind of he's a
cool kid, but he's also still friends with the weird kids. Yeah,
so he's a transitional character in that recard.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
That's right. Yeah. And then of course Debbie we meet
in the scene, is depicted as very earnest and good hearted.
She's got that final girl energy. We also in the
scene meet the Trensey brothers, Paul and Rich, who are
friends of Mike's from school. These are zany low level
hustlers who make money running an ice cream truck, and

(37:40):
their truck has a giant clown head on top called
Jojo the ice Cream Clown. So when these brothers show up,
they cause a major ruckus at the lover's lane by
pulling up in their truck and yelling at everybody through
their loud speaker. Their ice cream slogans have a lot
of vulgar double on tundra based around the concept licking,

(38:01):
and they also try to upsell the frozen treats by
There's one who's doing his routine in the microphone and
he keeps humping the air while he's listing the ice creams.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah. Their entire business model seems to revolve around selling
ice cream at night and put and setting their sights
on the local makeout places like where the prime business
is going to be for buying a bunch of fudge,
sickles and stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Yeah, the Tranzi brothers are After this, they are driven
away from the car park area after being brutally heckled
and pelted with beer cans and other trash. They're not popular, no,
But then after watching all this happen, Mike tells Debbie,
whenever I want to have a good time, I call
Rich and Paul. A night out with those guys is

(38:45):
a total adventure.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
What I mean, he just knows them. That's I guess
all we really need to take away from this.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
But if we don't get the sense that there's that
much adventurous about them, I don't know. Maybe it depends
on what you call an adventure. They just seem like
guys who were always trying to work some sort of scam.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Yeah, they're making poor choices. Yeah, like did they did
they run the ice cream truck truck during the day?
Like or are they? Is it maybe some sort of
weird scam where they're like, we know a guy who
runs an ice cream truck, but he doesn't run it
at night. We could rent it from him and sell
ice cream to teenagers and college students at night, and yeah,
thinking that's a great idea, that would make sense.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Wait, I think later that they do say the ice
cream truck is rented, right, Oh.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Well they do, that's right, that's right. So maybe that's
what's going on. They can only use it at night.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Because they say, you know, like use the ice cream
truck to ram the killer cloud and they're like, you,
I can't. It's a rental anyway. So Mike and Debbie
lie out in the back of their car looking at
the stars when suddenly a huge bright object streaks across
the night sky. What was that? Was it a comet?
Debbie wants to go see where it landed, and Mike

(39:55):
takes some convincing but she talks him into it. We
also cut to somewhere else nearby, on a farm where
an old codure this is Jean Green played by Royal Dano,
is sitting out on his porch with his bloodhound Pooh,
and he watches the light pass right overhead. And this
guy is full of oddball rural colloquialism. See He's like, well,

(40:16):
I'll be hornswoggle. Do you see that there? Sky Guppy
is up one by sky Guppy? Is that a saying?

Speaker 2 (40:24):
I don't know? I mean I trust him?

Speaker 3 (40:27):
So Green determines the object was Haley's comet, and he
also decides to go find the crash site, reasoning that
somehow this will make him filthy rich. So he grabs
his lantern and shovel and he heads out into the woods. However,
when he comes upon the landing site, it is not
an impact crater but a circus tint, and he's talking

(40:49):
to his dog. He says, well, I'll be greased and fried.
What's the circus doing out here? I love the circus?
Come on maybe we can get us some free passes.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Oh man, it's all it's really it's adorable. This guy
loves circuses so much, but of course he's so dimmed.
This is this guy's clearly going to get it.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
Yeah, But the scene takes a turn, so the farmer
goes to investigate the tint and he determines that there
is something peculiar about the circus. Where's the ticket booth?
Here we also get our first clown stalking scene, first
in silhouette through the side of the tent, so the
guy's creeping along and then there's a there's a clown
shaped shadow following him, which for a second you could

(41:30):
mistake as being his shadow, and then he realized like,
oh no, wait, that's a clown. There's something in here,
kind of like the Charlie Chaplin mirror gag.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I love the colors here, and
I think the film's already doing a great job invoking
a surrealistic comedic menace in the clowns, and as a
sidebark here, I think this is one of the things
the film does just so well. So scary clowns are
obviously a dime a dozen nowadays, and even at point

(42:00):
when Killer Consorm outter Space came out, we'd already had
multiple movies with sinister clowns in them, and Stephen King's
hit the novel was a fairly recent best seller, and
you know there would be many more scary clowns to come.
But the thing about scary clowns in horror is that
their clownness is very often only skin deep or grease
paint deep, and underneath we usually get either human cruelty

(42:24):
or supernatural menace. And I don't wanted to dismiss all
of that out of hand. You know that can be
a lot of fun still and be very terrifying. Pennywise,
the dancing clown is one of the best, and he
totally fits this mold clown on the outside. But it's
just an illusion, just a face that's worn by an
extra dimensional menace.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, it was, Pennywise. Obviously, it is a It's a
way of salting the meat for the creature, right, because
it is a creature that thrives on fear. He savors
the fear of his victims, and the clown the guise
kind of heightens the ambiguity and the tension increases. The
tension because you don't know what to make of it.
A clown is supposed to be a funny and non

(43:04):
threatening thing, but obviously this is one that is causing
you fear, and that mismatch actually makes him more frightening.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Right, But there will come a point where it's like
the mask is drawn away, yeah, and the monsters revealed
and the cloudness is gone. But I think there's something
admirable where in a case like this movie where the
clownness goes absolutely all the way to the bone. I'd
venture to guess that maybe some incarnations of the Joker
in comic books land in this area, but Killer Clowns

(43:34):
from Outer Space definitely does. At no point is the
mask of the clown removed to reveal some horror beneath. Again,
they do not become clowns. They are clowns. Clowns are
a species in this movie. They don't paint themselves to
become what they're presented as. Like everything that they do
on a biological or civilizational level is clowning.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, So in this scene,
you know, you're right, we do get our first tastes
of that. So the farmer's dog disappears. I think a
hole appears in the side of the circus tent and
a big net comes out. And then the farmer turns
around and his dog's gone, And this part's actually kind
of sad, you know, But anyway, he gets enraged and

(44:21):
he starts shouting at the tent that he will tear
it apart with his bare hands. But then when he
grabs one of the ropes surrounding the tent, it sends
a huge jolt of electricity through him, and he says, like,
holy smokes, this thing is wired. And then uh oh,
here comes our first full view of one of the
movie's clowns. How can we describe the look? Generally, the

(44:46):
different clowns have somewhat different features, but they are basically
humanoid in shape, but with distorted features and proportions, generally
somewhat larger than a human but not much larger, or
have some parts of their body with larger than normal
proportions to the others, like a big head, big face,
big hands, and feet.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Yeah, like kind of like like a grotesque version of
like an old man's features underneath, but also like a
troll or an ogre's features. Yeah, you know, everything very exaggerated.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Of course, clown clothes and makeup with pale white skin,
generally candy colored hair, and big red noses. And then yeah,
like you're saying, there are these hints of monstrousness. The skin,
while made to look like a clown, it's got that
makeup look. The grease paint look is also texturally craggy.

(45:43):
It looks kind of rough and suggests a reptilian nature underneath,
or maybe like ancient skin. Also, the mouth on the
first guy we see is huge, with lots of glistening
teeth inside.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah. Yeah, like it's sort of a cannibal more for something,
you know, like extra large mouth for consuming things.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
So the clown approaches and the farmer is confused, and
then the clown says something in his alien clown language
which we hear many times in the film, then pulls
out a ray gun and appears to cook the farmer
alive with it.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
That went about as well as we knew it would
for this poor farmer.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
So next thing, we go to the police station, where
we get some drama between the two main cop characters
in the film. There is Mooney, the seething law and
order maniac we met earlier and a younger, more even
tempered cop named Dave Hanson played by John Allen Nelson.
The basic conflict in the scene is that Mooney has
arrested two college guys dressed like they're headed to a

(46:44):
Bauhause concert. He detained them I think for the crime
of walking through the park in goth makeup, or maybe
it was another open container issue I don't recall. But
Dave Hanson is trying to calm the situation and get
Mooney to take it easy, but Mooney won't be stopped.
He's freaking out and screaming like it's come like you
that are killing this town. And he hauls the guys

(47:07):
away for booking. But apparently these two cops have some
bad blood between them. Dave doesn't like Mooney beating people
up and raging around like a psycho, and Mooney doesn't
like Dave I think for being young, yeah, or maybe
for being weak. Maybe he's like, you know, you're not
tough enough on them.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah. It quickly becomes clear that Mooney is a terrible cop.
He's a would be local tyrant who thinks the job
is all about cracking heads. And again, Vernon is the
perfect guy to play this hard ass.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yeah. So our farmer guy already got microwaved by the clowns,
but now we gotta have another visit to the Circus Tints.
So Debbie and Mike are they were also going to
go look for where the shooting star landed, and they
end up tromping through the woods, with Mike doing a
lot of kind of cringey comedy routines as they go
until they finally come across the circus Tint Debbie. Once

(48:02):
they get there, Debbie is hesitant, but Mike is full
steam ahead and he leads them inside where wouldn't you
know it, This is not a circus tint but an
interstellar starship with pervasive decorative circus themes. And again, all
through this, mic is just doing this running comedy act
to impress Debbie, most of which is super cringe worthy.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Yeah, but this spaceship man looks amazing.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
Yeah. So inside the spaceship they find a bunch of
fun house style corridors with wacky color schemes and angles.
There is a portal that leads to a giant reactor
room that really looks like it belongs on the Death Star.
I think because of just the vertical depth of it.
It's this giant chasm or shaft, but it is bathed

(48:50):
in pink and purple light. And then at the core
of this chamber is a giant crystal ball that is
arcing like a Tesla coil.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, I love this scene. Like the painting special effects
combo here looks really good, Like, well, it really didn't
even need to look this cool and clowney at the
same time, but it does. And I guess, you know,
also drives home that we're dealing with an advanced civilization here,
Like they're somewhere on the Kardashchev scale, the Kardashev clown scale.

(49:19):
I'm not sure how that differs from your standard Kardaschev scale,
but they're on there. They have advanced technology, but they're
clowning to the max.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
They don't have dice in spheres. They have dice in balloons.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yes, there you go.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
So anyway, they you know, they're starting to get the
idea that something's a little weird here. I think Debbie says,
this is no fun house, no circus either. So Mike
and Debbie realized that the shooting star they saw was
actually an alien ship and they are now inside it,
so they hear some approaching footsteps and they duck into
a different room to hide. This room is the cotton

(50:03):
Candy Room, which we will visit again a couple times
in the film. This is a giant room filled with
fog swirling around the floor and large pink, almost testicular
kind of bowllesses hanging off of hooks on metal racks
with rows and rows of rack space going up to

(50:23):
the ceiling. And these pink bulbs, these dangling bulbs are
supposed to be cotton candy.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yes, which you know, we did some episodes of stuff
to blow your mind on cotton candy a while back,
and you know, as we discussed there, like cotton candy
is just intrinsically bound the idea of circus and fair
and outdoor spectacle, so it makes sense that it would
be associated with clowns. But as we'll discuss, the cotton
candy here that the clowns are using must not be

(50:52):
true cotton candy because they can do things that cotton
candy is completely incapable of doing. It really seems to
be more like a spider's silk.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
Yeah, yeah, that's right. But Mike does not catch on
too to the spider silk elements here. He first says,
look at this place smells like candy. I don't know
where we were before, but this looks like a cotton
candy factory to me. This must be where they hang
it up to dry before they ship it out. What

(51:21):
And Debbie says, I don't believe in UFOs, but if
they do exist, then we're trapped in one right now.
But Mike doesn't seem to agree. He gives her the
old you come on, there's got to be a logical
explanation for this, and to which Debbie replies, I don't
remember exactly how she gets here, but she says, nobody
stores cotton candy like this, and she's right, Yeah again,

(51:45):
we did core episodes on cotton candy. Cotton candy is hygroscopic,
meaning it absorbs moisture from the air and it will
lose its fluffiness and turn into sticky goop. Look at
all the fog in that room. That is a high
humidity room. You cannot hang cotton candy like that.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
However, Mike decides he's got to prove that Debbie is
being silly and demonstrate that this is definitely normal cotton
candy and not sinister outer space cotton candy. So he
rips out a chunk of the nearest bulb, revealing underneath
the wet, bloody, skinless face of a man. So it
in fact is not just cotton candy. These are cocoons

(52:25):
made out of a cotton candy like substance, which again
is a terrible idea, by the way, and they appear
to dissolve your flesh.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Looks pretty grim. Looks pretty grim.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Yeah, So Mike and Debbie are interrupted when a clown
comes in to hang up a new bulb. And by
the way, just side note, in the middle of the
room there is a giant popcorn machine. He just pops
swirling popcorn.

Speaker 4 (52:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
We'll learn more about that popcorn later.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
But Mike and Debbie are discovered and they bolt for
the exit, and the clown gives chase, bringing along a
popcorn gun. This is a big gun that shoots popcorn
that kind of flies through the air after them as
they run. The popcorn does hit Debbie and Mike just
as they escape the tent, but it doesn't kill them.
And I really wasn't sure what the popcorn was supposed

(53:11):
to do at this point, but they do come back
to that. Yeah, so Debbie's like popcorn? Why popcorn? And
then Mike says, because of their clowns, that's why. Also
after this, Mike and Debbie like they run away, and
when the clowns follow them outside the tent, they make
a balloon animal dog that helps them track the humans. Yes,

(53:33):
it's barking and roughing, you.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Know, total Looney Tunes moment.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Right, So there's a chase through the woods, but Debbie
and Mike get away in their car and also they
you know, there's some fighting in the car, like you know,
you end up with a clown on the hood of
the car, of course, trying to reach through the windshield.
But they get away and then while escaping the scene,
they talk about what to do next to Mike thinks
they can't tell anyone because of how crazy the story sounds,

(53:58):
but Debbie says she has a friend who works for
the police and he will believe them. She knows it. Meanwhile,
we watch the clowns slowly waddling toward the city limits.
Oh no, and this will be the beginning of a
lot of the movie is just going to be little
scenes of the clowns doing various clowning, clowning activities and

(54:18):
circus related activities within the city against the citizens, all
of which end in people being caught and cocooned.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, all acts that are at once malicious and pure clowning.
And at times it's hard, it's hard to figure out
exactly like what the mo is like. Are they entertaining
to put their victims at ease before they get them
and you know, cocon them for later, or is there
something else like is there's just something about them where
they must entertain people as well? I don't know they

(54:49):
are after all.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
I really like the moment where the clown tries to
blend in by pretending to be a motorized Halloween decoration
outside the drug store.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
That's smart, that's stealthy.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
So the friend that Debbie was talking about is Dave Hansen,
the nicer cop from earlier. So Debbie and Mike try
They get to the police station and they try to
explain to him what they saw. But in the middle
of explaining the killer clown popcorn conspiracy, Mooney wanders in
and he's like, ah, this is a load of hogwash.
And Mooney says to Mike he says, I know you,

(55:22):
you little fart. You hang out with the Tarnzi brothers,
and Mooney concludes that these clowns they're talking about are
a Tarnsi Brothers stunt to sell ice cream. Makes sense
so much to Mooney's derision, Dave agrees to go with
Mike and Debbie to check out the circus tent and
see for himself. Now we eventually learn here that Dave

(55:46):
is Debbie's ex boyfriend and he is still in love
with her, still carrying a torch for her, and because
he still cares about her, he takes this kind of
paternalistic tone and tells her that she can't come back
to the ship. He's dropping her off at home, and
Mike and Debbie have a little moment talking to each
other before Mike is going to get back in the
car and go with Dave up to the tent, and

(56:09):
he's worried. He's like, yeah, I didn't know he was
your ex boyfriend. He's gonna shoot me when we get
up there, and Debbie tells Mike, don't worry about Dave.
It's those clowns you got to worry about. So let's
talk about some of the general clown antics in town.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Yeah, because it basically becomes that for a while, just
one clown antic can kill after another.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
One I liked is the puppet show in the gazebo
with a single audience member, And I was genuinely laughing
out loud about how this guy is just at first,
he's scoffing and rolling his eyes at a puppet show
that he is choosing to watch alone.

Speaker 5 (56:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Yeah, he's like, Wow, what is this crap? But then
he's drawn in by the you know, the raw honesty
of this two puppet performance. And one of the puppets
draws a lake are gun of some sort ray gun
and zaps the other puppet, making that puppet completely evaporate.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
Yeah, and then the guy's like what And then of
course the gun gets turned on him but zaps him
into a cotton candy cocoon.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Yeah, so this is where we learned. This is what
they're doing. They zap people this the ray gun like
spins them around, and then they're in this candy cotton
candy cocoon that can then be collected later harvested.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
We also get a lot of drug store antics. We
saw the clown going to the drug store earlier. So
once inside, the clown wanders around clumsily knocking things over.
The drug store clerk is extremely nervous and bothered by this. Uh,
and eventually the clown starts cotton can, defying everybody in
the store. But they're also like playing with the products,

(57:46):
spraying themselves with shaving cream and sneezing in the baby powder.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
They can't resist a good site guy like that. They
got to go for it.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
We also get a pizza delivery clown gag. I think
that this is supposed to be a Carl Hungus style
like pornographic movie set up, or like, oh, here's the
pizza delivery guy here and the lady's answering the door
in her nightgown but instead wine, yeah, with a glass
of wine. But instead it's a clown delivering the pizza.

(58:15):
And then the pizza box opens and inside there are
more clowns.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
Yeah. This actress, by the way, is Carla Sue Krawl.
This is only credit though, but this gag, this was hilarious,
So clearly we clearly we need to do another similar
bit with another clown delivery.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yeah, basically the same setup, but instead now it's an
older lady who opens the door and the clown at
the door has a box of Valentine cotton candy or
not cotton candy, sorry, Valentine like chocolates box, you know,
in a heart shape. And she turns and I guess
is talking to her husband and she's like, oh, you know,

(58:50):
oh Phil, you got this for me, And of course
the clown there is ready to cotton candify them once again.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
They have a great deal of cultural knowledge of our planet.
Maybe did a lot of research. Maybe we're you know,
they're on the dark side of the moon for a
while before they they made their trip, they've.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
Been studying us, watching our TV. So after dropping Debbie off,
Dave and Mike head up to check out the spaceship tent.
But when they arrived, there's nothing there, just a big
hole in the ground. Huh. Well here, Dave gets mad
and he places Mike under arrest. Another antic of that
is going on in town is the whole biker versus

(59:28):
clown scene, which is very inspired. There are a there's
like a massive congregation of bikers hanging out in an
alley outside a building that is covered in graffiti. By
the way, I paused it to just read what some
of the graffiti is some of it's biker slogans, but
other stuff is like one graffito just says Jimmy Hendrix,

(59:51):
another one says beer.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
Yeah, or one says no button, no put. What does
that even mean? I don't know. Maybe that's someone.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
That's a that's a biker thing. I actually looked that up.
I think it means basically like, I will not give
you a ride on my bike unless I find you
sexually attractive.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Oh okay, but.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Anyway, so, yeah, all the bikers are hanging out being rowdy,
and then a single clown rides up to them on
a bicycle with training wheels. I think this is the
sort of it's implied the childlike clown.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Yeah, this is the little guy of the group that
may be a young clown.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Yeah. So he rides up on his little bicycle with
training wheels. And then there's one big, gross, drooling, mean biker,
the biker bully, who approaches this little clown and starts
bullying him. He asks if he can ride his bicycle,
and the little clown shakes his head, and then the
bully smashes the clown's bicycle while all his friends cheer,

(01:00:48):
and then you really feel sad for the clown here. Yeah,
he cries a little bit. It's so sad. He's just
a little guy. And then one of the other bikers
watching this is like, yeah, he should have let the
man ride his bike. But then the clown manifests boxing
gloves and puts his hands up and he starts dancing
around and cutely saying something in the alien clown language.

(01:01:12):
It sounds a bit like Scooby Doo saying, put up
your dukes, and then he punches the biker's head off
into a trash can.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Yeah, fatality.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Back at the Big Top Burger, we get one of
the actually creepier scenes in the movie, where there is
a clown outside the restaurant playing peekaboo with a child
through the window and trying to lure her outside while
holding a giant cartoon mallet behind his back. But fortunately
before the girl can make it outside to her clown doom,
her scolding mother yanks her back to the table to

(01:01:44):
finish her hamburger.

Speaker 2 (01:01:45):
Yeah, definitely very creepy sequence. Clown looked amazing. The music
was very evocative here. Yeah, in that mallet, you know,
obviously a comedic mallet but what's he going to do? Like,
what kind of awful clown technology does it have? So
really twin this did not come to fruition.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
I think we never see the mallet used in the film,
so we don't know about that one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
We're just left to imagine.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Also, somewhere in here there is the thing that we
really had a question about. There's a scene where there
is a dude driving along a dark highway and he
gets run off the road over the edge of a
bridge by a clown driving what I took to be
an invisible car. So I was trying it first to think, like,
this doesn't seem clown related, like so many of the

(01:02:29):
other attacks and gags are, what's the deal here? But
then I was thinking, maybe it's supposed to be miming,
because you know, clowns and mimes have some overlap, and
mimes interact with invisible objects. That's part of clowning. I've
never really seen an invisible car gag from a mime.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Yeah, yeah, this one. This segment made a lot more
sense when I read that bit about one of the
Kyoto brothers being inspired by a supposed encounter with a
clown driving on a mountain road, write what you know
right exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Meanwhile, Officer Dave, with Mike handcuffed in the back of
his squad car, comes across the Lover's lane from earlier
and all the cars that now appear to be abandoned.
It's dark and quiet here, and he investigates further and
finds nobody around. All the cars are just filled with
cobwebs of cotton candy, and so I think that's all
the convincing Dave needs. He goes back in the uncuffs Mike.

(01:03:22):
He's like, Okay, I believe you clowns.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Yeah, yeah, the cotton candy cobwebs are just really convincing
here too, Like it's everything's just bright, pink and colorful.
But he's also legitimately unganny and creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Now there's some more police business. There's a scene where
we're at the police station and Mooney is reading a
magazine laughing to himself, laughing like it's a humor magazine
or something, maybe he's reading copy of Mad. But then
we see him turn a page and it's a gun catalog.
What's he laughing at?

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Yeah, But then the clown calls start coming in on
the phone. The phones are ringing off the hooks with
clown related complaints. You know, He's like, oh really, the
clowns took your wife away in a balloon, And Mooney
is angry. He does not like this nonsense, and he says,
if they want to play games, they're missing with the
wrong guy. So he resolves to ignore all of the

(01:04:17):
phones that are ringing in the police station.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Yeah, the perfection of his terrible job as a cop,
actively ignoring dangerous situations going on while also just being
a tyrannical bully.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
Now, meanwhile, we got the beginning of you alluded to
this earlier rob the famous shower scene, not famous for
the reasons many shower scenes are famous.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
That's right. It is a shower scene that does seem
to go on forever. I got a sense of this one.
I watched it through the first time in its entirety.
But then I saw some folks referencing this online saying
it's the longest cinematic shower of all time. I don't
know about that. I couldn't find some stats on that.
But again, it is remark first of all, and then

(01:05:01):
it is a very PG thirteen shower scene. We get
full arm nudity. We almost see an armpit. That's about it. Yeah,
like it's it's even tamer than the full bikini shower
scene from Piranha Mandir. We watched a while back, and
it indeed goes on a while, so I had to
clock it. I got out my stopwatch. Multiple scenes and

(01:05:24):
nearly twelve minutes of screen time take place between the
beginning and the end of Debbie's actual shower, and that's
just when the water turns off. It is a full
eighteen plus minutes of screen time before we see her
fully out of the shower and dressed, but still in
the bathroom.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Yeah, that's right, So it's not all that much screen time,
but it just spans a lot of the film. You
get this feel like it starts in the middle of
the movie and then you're like into the third act
by the time it's over.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Yeah, I guess screen time is maybe not the right
discrete because it's yeah, we're not actually walked the full thing,
but we keep coming back to it. That's the duration
of this shower within the pacing of this movie. And yeah,
I mean, in reality, a twelve minute or even an
eighteen minute shower not unreasonable, but within the context of

(01:06:16):
a film's pacing, that's one long shower. I mean, I
think the shower scene in Psycho, the most famous shower
scene of all, is something like a minute long, less
than a minute even. Yeah, and that one's pivotal to
the plot.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
But in that one, at least, you're not like cutting
away to multiple other subplots.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
Yeah, that's the thing. We cut away to, just multiple subplots.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
So first of all, what's happening here, let's talk about
so further developments during the span of the shower within
Debbie's house, there are developments on the popcorn subplot. So
we eventually find out that the popcorn does do something.
I think it's understood to be the lauval form of

(01:06:56):
the clown beings. Is that how you understood it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
Yeah, because the popcorn we see is crawling around on
the tiles of the bathroom floor like little larval creatures.
So I think this is the larval form of the
clown life form. What's the next phase in their development?
I think we're about to find out.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
That's right. So, yeah, and we see this, by the way,
because Debbie still has the popcorn stuck to her clothes,
which are on the bathroom floor, so we see the
popcorn kernels kind of squirming around.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Which got blasted onto her by the clown guns.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Yeah that's right. Yeah, so they're like little caterpillars. And
then much later, once she's out of the shower, the
popcorn appears to have metamorphosed into baby monster clowns, which
are each like a little demon clown head with a
mohawk on top of a snakelike spine.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
Yeah. Yeah, so I think it goes basically free moving
popcorn larvae to juvenile clown snake, and then to adult
clown form. And then I think we might assume that
the killer clown from outer space is kind of like
certain reptiles that keep growing throughout their entire life, because
they seem to just get taller and taller.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Yeah that's right. Now, these creatures, the snakelike creatures, attack
Debbie in the bathroom, but she escapes, though she is
later she escapes only to be menaced by fully grown
adult clowns all around her, which ambush her and then
prevent her escape from her apartment. There's one part where
she's trying to get out and she runs to the
window and looks down and there are a bunch of

(01:08:30):
clowns holding a trampoline firemen.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Yeah. Also worth noting that those snake clowns, they're also
like Jack in the boxes, because again there's nothing about
the clowns, their biology, or their life cycle, or their
culture and civilization that is not clowning to its heart.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Yes, so she's eventually captured and put inside a balloon,
like we heard about on the phone. Before that, we
get we cut away to different kinds of clown horror
and subplots going on. We get a bit more with

(01:09:09):
Mike and Dave in the car. Dave is kind of
rambling about I think. Mike tries to apologize. He's like, look, man,
I didn't want to, you know, cause any weirdness with
you and Debbie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
And Dave is like, the problem is me, obviously. She
goes for laughs, not stability.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Burn Yeah, but Mike's like, yeah, you got me.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
He gues and contest this, And there's more clown horror.
There is the clown puppet show, where a clown shows
up on a sidewalk and starts doing a oh not
just a puppet show, a shadow puppet show. He's doing
shadow puppetry for a group of elderly people at a
bus stop. It begins cute and then gets increasingly absurd.

(01:09:50):
One of the hand shadows he does is a detailed
outline of Washington crossing the.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Delaware yeap legitimately hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Yeah, and then the shadow puppet turn into a big
Tyrannosaurus rex head with glowing eyes, and it eats all
the old people and that somehow shrinks them, which allows
the clown to put them in a suitcase full of popcorn.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
So Mike and Dave witness part of this bus stop
attack from Dave's squad car, and after this they split up.
Dave heads to the police station and Mike goes to
recruit his friends, the Tarnzi Brothers, the guys with the
ice cream truck. I think the idea is they're going
to drive around, maybe warning people to stay away from
clowns on the megaphone, but first they've got to go

(01:10:32):
rescue Debbie. Also back at the police station, which is
only manned by Mooney. At this point, a clown appears
at the station. While Mooney is sitting at his desk
smoking a cigar and ignoring all of the ringing telephones.
The clown offers him a bouquet, but it's a trick
bouquet that squirts his face with water, and uh oh,
that makes Mooney very mad. He attempts to arrest the clown,

(01:10:55):
but encounters difficulties, including detachable clown hands that come off
with the handcuff uffs, and so he tries to He
does end up jailing the clown in the cell next
to the two goth guys from earlier. When Dave later
arrives at the police station, he finds that the clown
has cocooned the unfortunate prisoners and has turned Mooney into

(01:11:18):
a ventriloquist dummy. So he's got the little red cherry
cheeks and the some blood running from the corners of
his mouth that make it resemble the little like block
mouth that operates on a on a ventriloquist puppet.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
Yeah, oh my god, this this scene is his is terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
The clown makes John Vernon talk and he says, don't worry, Dave,
all we want to do is kill you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
And then he he let that the clown lets this
grotesque ventriloquis dummy like collapse onto the table and as
he does so, like withdraws his now blood slit clown
hand from the back of of of of the of
mooney and then just kind of like flicks the blood
off just to just a really centient here. Yeah, terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
So it's a showdown between Dave and the clown, and
so the clown is approaching. Dave starts firing his service
revolver at the clown, but the clown appears invulnerable until
Dave discovers the clown's only weakness, the nose. Shooting them
in the red, bulbous nose causes the nose to explode

(01:12:23):
in a burst of confetti, and then the clown turns
into a spinning, sequined Christmas ornament and then that explodes
with pink fireworks. Is that about right?

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
I think? So? Yeah, I mean you could. You could
basically say the trick is you shoot him in the face,
which works with a lot of things, but in this
case it is the nose. The nose hold their.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
Power, that's right, it's their Achilles nose. Yeah. Also, Dave
manages to get a call in to the state police
to request help with their their killer clown issue, and
the state police are like, Okay, we're on the way
what's the police code for killer clowns?

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Oh, I don't know. You gotta have a new one
for that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
So while Mike and the Trendsy Brothers are on the
way to pick up Debbie, they encounter a giant mechanized
human harvesting operation where the clowns are parading through the
streets of the city, surrounded by confetti and streamers with
a giant vacuum cleaner machine that sucks up all of
the people who have been pre wrapped in cotton candy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Yeah, it's a full blown parade here. Reminds me a
lot of a very similar scene that we get in
nineteen eighty seven's Masters of the Universe when Skeletor rolls
into town.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Somewhat recalls also the harvesting imagery and War of the Worlds,
but obviously here it is clown themed. Yes, yes, Anyway,
by the time Mike and the brothers arrive at Debbie's apartment,
she's already been placed inside the balloon and attached to
a clown car which drives away. So Mike and the
brothers and then also Dave arrives in his squad car

(01:13:56):
and they all give chase, but they lose track of
the car. Some Oh, I think the Trenzi brothers like
they pull over because there's a police car behind them.
Maybe is that what happens? And so they end up
losing the clown car, but they figure out where it's
where it's going. Where are these clowns headed with Debbie? Well,

(01:14:16):
if you were a clown, where would you go? The
amusement park? Obviously, that's right. That's where they fill at home,
that's where they can blend in. So when we see
the clowns arrive, we pack multiple gags into the same scene.
Where the clowns show up at the amusement park and
there's a security guard there. We first of all get
many clowns climbing out of a single tiny clown car

(01:14:37):
while the guard watches.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
And then they also produce like banana cream pies and
the guards like, what are you going to do with
those pies? And of course they give him pies to
the face, but uh oh, the pies are some kind
of corrosive material, you know, their their lye pies or something,
and they melt the guard into this pile of whipped
cream basically, and then as the clowns walk past his

(01:15:02):
melted form. Uh, the little clown puts a cherry on top.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Oh, it's the dedication to the art form.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
So our heroes arrive on scene to the rescue, and
they head into the funhouse for the final showdown. And
while they're exploring the clown's layer, here's where we get
to the curious exchange we talked about earlier. Dave is saying,
where do the clowns come from? Why are they here?
Why are they clowns? And Mike says, they're not clowns,
some kind of animal from another world that just look

(01:15:32):
like clowns. And then this is suddenly dawning on him.
He says, Dave, maybe they're the ancient astronauts, you know
that came to our planet centuries ago, and our idea
of clowns comes from them.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Yes, absolutely, that's that's one I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
They built the pyramids, had to be no other explanation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Everything in our clowning cultures, which again, you know, not
to get too deep here. You know they're they're clowning
cultures around the world, and they go back a very
long way. What if they're all based on something we
observed when these ancient alien creatures came to our world
and did clowning.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
One of the Tornsi brothers says, how come they're not funny,
that they are funny.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
But Therenzi brothers they are funny. You might not know funny,
see it they.

Speaker 3 (01:16:19):
Are, And then the other one says, how come they're
not funny. The other one says, maybe they're from a
dying planet.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
At some point, our heroes become separated, and the Tornsi
brothers fall into a ball pit, where they are later
seduced by clowns in wigs that have made themselves appear
buxom with the aid of balloons.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Okay, I'm just gonna put a pin in this one
and trying to figure out how this factors into the
clown life cycle.

Speaker 3 (01:16:49):
Yeah. Meanwhile, Mike and Dave they find the cotton candy
storage room, and then while hiding, they watch a clown
drink blood from one of their cocooned victims through a
silly straw. Yes, this makes me wonder what is the
origin of silly straws? When do we get the first
silly straws?

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Hmmm, well, there's definitely I think material requirements for that,
but of course this would have been something we observed
long ago when the Killer Clowns visited our world in
ancient times.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
So we got the idea for silly straws from their
visits to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
Yeah, it would just be a long time. I mean,
I guess you could have made a glass silly straw
at some point before you could make a plastic one. Well,
we'll have to roll out an invention episode on the
straw and figure that out.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
That would act.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
That would be fun. I'm actually down for that anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
So they eventually find Debbie inside the balloon and Dave
shoots the balloon to release her, but the sound draws
the attention of the clowns and this leads into a
big chase scene where they're running around the spaceship the
funhouse corridors. There's a good silly firehouse pole gag where
they like slide down a pole and then they hop
off at one leg before going down all the way,

(01:18:02):
and Dave comes down after them and he's like, why
didn't you go any lower? And then we just see
a giant sarlac mouth at the bottom of the pole
and he says, oh, good reason. But eventually they get
cornered by clowns in a big funhouse room full of
wacky painted blocks and furniture, and how are they going
to escape? The clowns are crowding in, menacing them, and

(01:18:24):
then it's the Trenzi brothers to the rescue. I don't
recall how they got out of the clown seduction situation.
Maybe that's never revealed.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Yeah, it seems like they were done for, but they
I don't know, they love their way out of it,
I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Yeah, So they crashed through the wall in their ice
cream truck. Now, remember the ice cream truck had a
giant clown on top, and so they get on the
loud speaker and they say, I am the Great and
powerful Jojo that you will obey my command. And this
does seem to work. It temporarily hypnotizes the clowns and

(01:18:57):
they stand frozen in awe their their giant clown god.
So this buys some time for our other heroes to run,
you know, run out of the middle of the room
to safety. But this leads into the final final showdown,
which is the lowering from the ceiling of a gigantic
clown on marionette strings. And what do we call this.

(01:19:20):
Is this the King Clown or clown Zilla?

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
I think in the credits it's referred to as clown Zilla,
but yeah, we might think of it as as kind
of a ruler of the bunch, or just maybe the
largest I don't know, Like I have this theory that
these clowns grow throughout their life, and so some of
them are just extra huge.

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
I would say it is a cross between a clown
of monstrous size and Bowser from Mario. Do you know
it's the Bowser like shape and movements.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
Yeah, Like if you were if you could remove the
grease paint from this face, which you can't because it's
the clown space, Yeah, you would have had you have
a very and even more monstrous inhuman skull for this creature.

Speaker 3 (01:19:59):
So the giant clown attacks it, grabs and hurls the
ice cream truck across the room, seemingly with the trendsy
rows inside. So I was like, well, they're dead now,
and then Dave distracts clown Zilla while Mike and Debbie
run outside through a hole in the wall. Outside, the
state police are arriving and Dave is cornered, so it
seems like he's done for because clown Zilla picks him

(01:20:21):
up in his giant hand as if to bite his
head off. And meanwhile, the big top clown spaceship is
taking off into the sky and Dave is there in
the monster clown's hand. How is he going to survive this?
What's going to happen? The solution is pretty ingenious. He
takes the police badge off of his shirt, which I
guess is held in place by a safety pin, and

(01:20:43):
uses the pin to pop the nose. Pop the nose
on the big which this super clown is actually quite fragile.
I mean, if just a pin prick on the nose
completely destroys it, and not only the clown Zilla but
also destroys the entire ship, maybe is like only powered
by the magic of the clown Zilla. I don't know.

(01:21:06):
That's a weakness in the design, I would say.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
I would say so as well. It seems like even
a very primitive prey culture would be able to overcome you.
Potentially that's just one well placed arrow. They're victorious.

Speaker 3 (01:21:20):
So the entire spaceship explodes in fireworks. It seems like
Dave's got to be dead, right, But somehow no. A
clown car falls out of the sky and Dave emerges
from it unhurt. Also, somehow the Trenzi brothers are fine.
They emerge from the same car eating popsicles. So basically
all the main characters are okay, and we get our

(01:21:41):
final stinger of the heroes looking up into the sky
and Debbie says, do you think it's over? And then
pies fall in their faces.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Presumably these are not acid clown pies like we saw earlier.
This is just supposed to be a goofy send up
of that sort of keep watching the skies ending that
we get in a lot of those old fifties and
six these movies, whereas like, is is there something else
out there? Is the end, and you know, we get
a little philosophic in our victory at the end, and here,
you know, it's just one more reason for a nice

(01:22:09):
clown gag to close it all out. Bravo, All right,
Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Like I say, commendable. There
are some other films in the horror comedy genre from
this time period that I also really love, Terror Vision
being one of them, But it's really hard to think

(01:22:30):
of anything quite like Killer Clowns from Outer Space. It
does stand alone absolutely, and hey, everybody loves a clown,
keep up orc uh uh. All right, well, we're going
to go ahead and close out this our first full
fledged October episode of Weird House Cinema for this October season,

(01:22:52):
but we have more October selections to come, so stay tuned.
We will have a Weird House Cinema every Friday in
the Stuff to blow your podcast feed. We're primarily a
science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
but Friday is our time to set aside most serious
concerns and just talk about a weird film. If you
want to keep up with all the films that we've
covered over the years and sometimes get a peek ahead

(01:23:13):
at what comes up next, go to letterbox dot com
our account. There is Weird House search us find us,
look at that list, and yeah, wherever you get your podcasts,
just make sure that you rate, review and subscribe to
get more episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:23:25):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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