What scares
Andrew Goodridge?
He’s giving us a month to find out.
Follow along with Andrew as he plans to get into the spirit of his favorite holiday by watching a different horror movie every day in the month of October.
October 3
Klowns make me happy
I’m too happy to enjoy being unhappy.
Too many contemporary horror films (“Saw,” “Hostel,” Rob Zombie’s “Halloween”) revel in nastiness and gore and sadistic torture. Where’s the entertainment in that? When did we forget that movies — even horror movies — can be fun?
The horror genre has gone through more change than any other, and filmmakers never had so much fun as they did in the 80s. “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” (1988) is one of the goofiest and most bizarre entries in an era that began to reject the somber and the macabre in favor of the darkly and morbidly funny. “Killer Klowns” is silly and self-aware like the later installments in the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13th” series, but it spares the audience the blood and guts and gore that can turn a fun time into a disturbing one. Watching Freddy Krueger turn someone into a roach and then squish them to death borders on repulsive. But watching an evil alien Klown use a death ray to spin someone into a giant cotton candy cocoon is nothing short of awesome.
If I had to choose between watching Jigsaw slowly torture people to death and a movie that treats the audience to an alien clown killing a group of bystanders with a shadow puppet, well, I’m fine with the choice I’ve made.
“Klowns” gives a perverse twist to all circus imagery imaginable, from guns loaded with popcorn to balloon-animal search dogs to circus-tent spaceships. And it’s all just fun. The Klowns are creepy, but equal parts hilarious.
Toward the end, the characters have an obviously self-referrential conversation about the Klowns’ motives. Where are they from? Why are they here? What do they want from us? These questions may be logical in any other movie, but the audience understands immediately that these questions won’t be answered. We don’t want them to be answered. We just want more Klowns.
And we get plenty of them. As was the trend in 80s horror, “Klowns” favors repetition over twists and turns, and the movie feels less like an expertly structured story and more like an amalgam of clever clown-related mayhem. None of this advances the plot, but there’s a time and place for plot and a time and place for fun. “Killer Klowns” knows which side of the fence it’s on, and it marks its territory with a wink and a nudge.
Andrew Goodridge likes movies so much that he married one. He teaches Audio/Video production, Filmmaking, and Film & Television History in Fort Worth, Texas. He would one day like to have a Pug, or maybe a Bulldog.
Andrew Goodridge can be reached at goodridge@everythingnac.com
And yet this particular movie scarred my childhood like no other did! :P