Clownado (2019)

Out of all the movies to spark followers and inspire other movies, I would never have expected Sharknado to be a modern example. Yet, here we are. The 2013 SyFy team-up with The Asylum was an event movie, if you could call an ironic television movie watch an event. There ended up being five sequels, a documentary, a mockumentary, a television documentary special, a video game, a book, and even an Archie comic. All were direct Sharknado properties because of the success of that one movie in 2013.

Lavalantula came soon after. It was a series of two films that weren’t produced by The Asylum but were still considered spin-offs of the Sharknado movies. Instead of sharks in a tornado, there were tarantulas that had to do with lava. Different faded stars headlining, but the idea was the same. Someone or a group of someones banded together to stop an animal natural disaster. I should note that I had a joke around that time where I told my university friends that I was going to make a movie called Bearcano with a volcano that erupted bears. I would put that into this category as well.

That might not seem like much. There were a couple of SyFy franchises and my one unrealized joke idea. Sharknado hasn’t hit Jaws or Die Hard levels for movies they inspired. It didn’t need to, though. All it needed to do was inspire enough that I could eventually write this post, about another of those inspired movies. This one wasn’t about animals in a natural disaster. It was about another sort of monstrous natural disaster.

Clownado came from the mind of Todd Sheets. It was set in a world where there was a clown mafia. Savanna Dane (Rachel Lagen) tried to run away from her abusive boyfriend, Big Ronnie (John O’Hara), the leader of the clown mafia. He found out, killed Savanna’s lover, and tortured her in front of a circus audience. Savanna put a curse on the clowns. It turned the clowns into a supernatural tornado force. Meanwhile, unsuspecting truck driver, Hunter Fidelis (Bobby Westrick), and his new Elvis-impersonating wingman, Dion (Antwoine Steele), ended up in the path of the clown tornado. Or clownado, if you’d prefer to call it that.

I’ve only seen two other Todd Sheets movies before Clownado, and I’d say this was easily the best of the three. It felt more polished. The cinematography, the effects, and I’d say the acting were all an improvement from what I’d previously seen. That’s not saying much. The other two movies were made on almost no budget, nearly three decades ago. Nightmare Asylum was 1992 and Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City was a year before that. There have been major technological advancements since then, as well as experience on Todd Sheets’s part that would facilitate that improvement. It’s not like it came out of nowhere.

The main crux of Clownado was the revenge story of Savanna Dane. It was the driving force behind everything. She tried to escape the life she dreaded. Her abusive boyfriend killed her lover. She cursed the boyfriend as revenge, and that spawned the whole tornado thing. This was a solid enough story to drive one side of the movie, while the other side was the standard (as far as I know) Todd Sheets story of people running around and being involved in “wacky” hijinks while doing almost nothing else. Hunter Fidelis and his group of survivors didn’t have anything to do with Savanna’s story. They just so happened to get in the way of the tornado and become victims of the clowns’ harassment. There wasn’t much of a story to their side, except survival. And one character being found by her estranged birth father.

There was an interesting twist on the Savanna part of Clownado. It wasn’t a story twist. There weren’t very many surprise twists throughout the movie. It was simply an added layer that I wouldn’t have expected in a movie set in the modern day. Savanna, her lover, the clowns, and, I guess, anyone involved in the clown mafia stuff had those gangster accents of the 30s through the 50s. You know, that stereotypical “say, what is a dame like you…” sort of accent you hear in your head when thinking about that era of gangster movie. I don’t know why they were using that accent. I don’t care. It was an entertaining little detail that added to my enjoyment of Clownado.

That wasn’t the only inspired character work. The main group in Clownado had some interesting character attributes, too. Hunter Fidelis, the leader of the pack, was a trucker who basically had the personality of an alcoholic cowboy, except without drinking all the time. He was the gung-ho leader of the group, with a sort of sarcastic undertone to a lot of what he said. Bobby Westrick was clearly having a blast as the character. Dion, meanwhile, was a Black man who spent his entire screentime dressed as Elvis, and he had a punch that could go right through a body. Why was this character there? In the great words of the classic film, Rubber, “No reason.” There was the recently fired stripper with a heart of gold, the teenage girl who recently met her birth father before watching him die, and two storm chasers who were up against much more than they bargained with the tornado. It felt like a random collection of characters, but kind of worked to make things that much more fun.

Fun would be the key word for Clownado. It wasn’t a good movie. There wasn’t much to the story beyond Savanna’s search for revenge. The focus wasn’t on that revenge. It was on the other characters running from the tornado, and that was a fairly simple story. But it was fun. The actors were enjoying themselves as they fought off the clowns. The crew was having fun with the gore that gushed out of people as they were hacked, slashes, eaten, and killed. That fun was infectious enough that it made Clownado enjoyable, albeit not substantial in any way. I can’t say that for the other Todd Sheets movies I’ve seen, which felt much more like chores to get through. This one was easier to digest.

Clownado was clearly an idea spawned by the success of Sharknado and its sequels. It came a little late to fully capitalize on that success, dropping a year after the final Sharknado movie, but sometimes that’s how things go. It was a crowdfunded movie, which sometimes takes a little longer to produce because of the way the funding and incentives go. The Sharknado inspiration was there, though. People were fleeing from a tornado filled with some sort of monster or creature. Instead of sharks, it was clowns. Then they smacked the monster or creature with nado and got Sharknado or Clownado. It’s pretty simple detective work that anyone could do.

In the pantheon of movies that inspired other movies, Sharknado might not be near the top. It didn’t inspire nearly as many knock-offs, parodies, and things as the MCU, Scream, Jaws, or Die Hard managed to. It wasn’t one of those generationally-defining movies that shifted the entire business into a certain direction. It was just a goofy television movie that people decided to watch ironically, and were entertained by. It led to a franchise, a spin-off, and some work in other media. It led to a couple movies that came out later, which latched onto the idea that something could be merged with a natural disaster to create something worse. But it didn’t move the needle much.

Clownado came out of that Sharknado popularity and found a place for itself. That place might be in the dark corner of a streaming service where most of the movies are of equal quality and recognizability. It might get lost in the shuffle with people not knowing it even exists. But it does exist. Thanks to Sharknado, it exists. Todd Sheets saw the popularity of those movies and thought to make his own version of that kind of thing. He upped the gore and violence. He switched the sharks for clowns. He tossed in some weird gangster accents and an Elvis impersonator. And it kind of worked. I enjoyed it.

Maybe you’ll enjoy these notes:

• Clownado was suggested by @LastFilmSeen, who previously suggested Santa, Jr. (week 107), Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (week 159), Santa with Muscles (week 211), and Fred Claus (week 265). This is their first non-Christmas movie, it seems.
• I covered Sharknado (week 190), Sharknado 2: The Second One (week 190), and Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190).
• Todd Sheets directed Nightmare Asylum (week 134) and Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City (week 464).
• Clownado featured Linnea Quigley, who was in Graduation Day (week 462) and Jack-O (week 466).
• Have you seen Clownado? What did you think? How do you feel about Todd Sheets? What other seemingly Sharknado-inspired movies are out there? Share your thoughts in the comments or find me on Twitter.
• If there’s a movie you think would make a good fit for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know. Hit me up on Twitter or drop the suggestion in the comments.
• Check out Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
• We’re getting closer to week 500. There are only a few more weeks. Next week isn’t it, though, so I’ll be watching another solo movie. This should be an interesting one. I’ve had it on Blu-ray for a while, and I’ve been meaning to check it out. I’ll be seeing The Guardians, that Russian movie with the bear man. Maybe you’ll come back and see what I have to say about it? See you next week.