Harefooted Halloween: Killer Klowns from Outer Space

What I Liked: The commitment to theme is very nice to see.  These really are clowns, oh excuse me, klowns from somewhere in space that come to Earth and kill people.  The Chiodo brothers took clown and circus elements and figured out clever ways to turn them into something evil for their klowns to use in the invasion.  The most famous example is wrapping the victims inside huge pink cotton candy cocoons.  I also like when the security guard gets pelted with cream pies and he melts.

For a low budget movie the effects look pretty good.  The klown faces are somewhat expressive, the matte paintings of the inside of the circus tent spaceship make the place look massive and cavernous, the gargantuan klown boss fight at the end is handled well with getting the scale of everything right, there’s a shadow hand puppet monster that eats a group of folks up and lots of other stuff.

That main theme song by The Dickies is awesome.  It’s catchy and has a great feel.

What I Didn’t Like: It’s hard to rag on a movie like this that’s just meant to be good fun.  I mean sure the acting isn’t the best, the klowns are obviously guys in circus outfits with foam rubber head pieces as opposed to something more elaborate like full blown animatronics and there isn’t really a story.  The klowns land on our planet, they murder people, the protagonists try to stop them.  That’s all.  It’s more of a series of gags the filmmakers came up with and strung together.  But in this case it’s barely a negative.

Overall Impressions: What’s smart about this movie is the approach to the material.  The filmmakers came up with an incredibly silly concept and shot it as seriously as if they were making any regular horror movie.  They didn’t go gory or for gross out stuff or anything too heavy though.  And by keeping things a bit more on the lighter side the film becomes a good time and not an awkward clash of styles.  This could’ve easily been a disaster with a lot of terrible contrived humor but I’m so glad the filmmakers played it straight and let the material be funny on its own.

I don’t love this picture like a lot of others do but it’s definitely a cool one.  I don’t know how you can get too upset over something that only wants to hang out and harmlessly goof around for a while.  You can tell a lot of thought and work went into it which gives the whole thing a small town let’s put on a show kinda vibe.  I dig it.