Evil Clowns and Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

When I was a child, I used to be taken to parades all the time. Okay, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. It’s not like there were parades every weekend or something. But there was at least one in each season of the year. I would get taken to each of them to see the floats roll on by. There would be candy tossed to children. Back in the day (maybe twenty or twenty-five years ago), there would be peanuts tossed around, too. That probably couldn’t happen now because of allergies.

Every parade has its bunch of characters that stroll down the street. The Christmas parade has Santa in a sleigh to finish it off. There’s always a high school marching band and an old fire truck. Around here, there are a bunch of old guys called the Shriners that ride around in little cars while a bigger boat on wheels rolls on, shooting bubbles out into the air. And, of course, there are the clowns.

The frequency of clowns at parades and public outings has slowed down quite a bit in recent years. People have begun to fear clowns in a way that wasn’t as apparent when the boomers of today were growing up. Even when I was a child twenty years ago, there wasn’t the same apprehension about clowns as there is now. A clown fear culture has recently sprung up that made clowns more a poster child for horror than for wholesome, family fun.

A large part of this fear in western culture has to do with John Wayne Gacy. He was a serial killer who murdered at least 33 young men in the 1970s. Nobody knew he was doing this while he was doing it. They thought he was an upstanding citizen of their community. He led clubs and dressed like a clown for the kids. When he was caught and imprisoned, he began painting pictures of his clown character. Since he became known for his serial killing, he has been associated with killer clowns. There is no way that’s not a major factor contributing to the collective fear of clowns.

Then there was the scare a few years ago where clowns were popping up in forests and on the side of roads. They weren’t doing too much. Just standing there and staring at people. It was enough to create a cultural spook. People were fearing for their lives that a clown was going to walk out of the woods and stare at them. They though the clowns were murderers, working together to kill a mass population. It doesn’t seem like that was the case and the whole situation is behind us now.

However, the fear of clowns is ever present. It permeated through the culture thanks to those two real world situations. The fear was so apparent that it has been used in different stories, both in written form and visual form, to scare new generations of people. If something is scary, horror will pick up on that and run with it. People who watch and read horror want to be scared. Utilizing themes and imagery that naturally scares them will help elevate the fear in the work.

The generation before me got Stephen King’s novel It and the movie Poltergeist. It was about a group of children who fought off a demonic clown that wasn’t really a clown. They had to reband together twenty something years later to fight the clown again. It became one of Stephen King’s classics and would go on to be made into a television mini-series in 1990 and a two movie franchise in the past few years. Poltergeist wasn’t about clowns, but it did use a clown toy in one scene to scare the bajeebers out of one of the children in the family, as well as the audience watching it.

Those two works brought the fear of clowns to the children growing up in the 1980s. They weren’t the only clown projects to come out during that decade, though. There were a few others, including Killer Klowns from Outer Space. The 1988 film was a schlocky B-movie featuring alien clowns coming to a town and entrapping people in a cotton candy type of substance. A couple who had wandered into the spaceship tried to warn the town, but nobody believed them. They teamed up with a police officer and attempted to fight back against the extra-terrestrial clowns.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space brought some frightening clown imagery to audiences. It wasn’t through what the clowns were doing. That was a basic B-movie story of the monsters trying to harvest humans for sustenance of some sort. What was frightening was the look of the clowns, themselves. Clearly, they weren’t people with painted faces. They were exaggerated rubber masks that looked like they had been painted a year ago and then half melted. To see one of them laugh is to see all of the nightmares in the world right before your eyes. That was where Killer Klowns from Outer Space excelled at the scares.

Moving forward, the people who grew up in the 1990s got the mini-series of It to put the fear of clowns into them. Tim Curry played Pennywise the clown and spent the nearly four hour total runtime tormenting the kids and their grown up, adult counterparts. It was the one 1990s scary clown story to really stick with people. Audiences were so affected by it that even when the new movies came out, they would revisit the miniseries and discuss what was scary in it. I know that as a kid, it affected me. I wasn’t super scared of clowns, but there were still some things in the movie that frightened me.

The only other memorable clown in a movie from the 1990s was the villain of Air Bud. He was a failed clown who only cared about money. He abused his dog to try and get the dog to do tricks. When the dog ran away, he didn’t care. Until the dog started becoming famous. Then he decided to take the dog back, even though the dog now had a family. He was the bad guy because he was going to steal the dog away from the main kid and probably abuse it some more. That sticks with kids who watch Air Bud when they’re young.

The 2000s really saw a resurgence of the scary clown motif. Insane Clown Posse had become a thing. They wrestled. They made music. They were in movies. Slipknot became more popular and slightly more mainstream. One of their members dressed as a creepy clown. Low budget clown movies were making a comeback. There was a movie made about John Wayne Gacy. Clowns were becoming as much of a horror staple as vampires, werewolves, mummies, and all those other monsters.

Then we slipped into the current decade and the clown stuff exploded. The low budget movies were still out there. But the evil clowns in movies thing came to a peak when the whole clowns being everywhere scare happened. Rob Zombie released a film called 31, which involved clowns kidnapping people. That was around the same time that the first new It film was released, which once again pitted kids against an evil demonic creature of sorts that posed as a clown. A couple years before that, there was an American Horror Story season set at a freak show, which featured a creepy looking clown. Scary clowns were back in a big way.

This year saw the sequel to It come out, in which the children were now adults and had to return to fight off Pennywise one last time. Then came Joker. It was a movie showing a man’s descent into madness. He was a clown by profession and wanted to be a comedian. As he spiraled downward, his violent tendencies, his personality, and his clown alter ego all began to merge into one chaotic beast. Evil clown season was here again.

Clowns have been a frightening part of cinema and storytelling in general for decades. Every generation has seemed to have their own version of a spooky clown to haunt their nightmares. Whether they were real life clowns like John Wayne Gacy, novel clowns like Pennywise, or film clowns like the Killer Klowns from Outer Space, they’ve permeated culture with their scary aspects. Clowns are no longer the friendly figures they once were. They’re now a dark presence that strikes fear into the hearts of anyone who sees them.

Parades are a thing of my past. I don’t go to see them anymore. I don’t know if they still have clowns goofing off during the parades that roll through the city. There could be a few clowns. But I’m sure they’re looked at differently now than they were when I was a child. The fear that people have makes me think they aren’t as popular at parades. That could be why I remember the old guys in the cars more than any clowns. That’s just they way culture is. People are weird. They’ll turn out to be afraid of anything.

Now let’s get some notes in here:

• John Vernon was in Killer Klowns from Outer Space. His voice was featured in Delgo (week 148).
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space featured Charles Chiodo, who would go on to appear in Theodore Rex (week 223).
• Finally, Grant Cramer popped up in Killer Klowns from Outer Space. You might remember him from New Year’s Evil (week 318).
• Have you seen Killer Klowns from Outer Space? Did you enjoy it? How do you feel about clowns and clown movies? Let me know on Twitter, or you can drop a comment in the comment section.
• The comments and Twitter are also places where you can find me to tell me about movies I might not know of. That way, I’ll be able to schedule them into the Sunday “Bad” Movies and check them out. Keep me informed.
• There’s an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies where you can see some stuff about the movies I’ve watched for the blog. Check it out.
• October is coming to a close, and as such, the horror marathon is ending. That doesn’t mean there won’t be horror any other time of the year. It just means that it’s not all in a row anymore. Next week is something different. It’s a movie called The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, and I hope you’ll join me for another post when I release it. See you then.

Tremors (1990), Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996), Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001), and Franchises that Stick with People

There has never been a time in film history where franchises weren’t a thing. Okay, maybe the first few years when things were getting started. People needed to figure out how to do the film thing and have audiences appreciate it. But by the 1920s, serials and sequels and franchises and series were something that had flourished throughout the film industry. Everyone has grown up with franchises that they love. Unless they weren’t into movies, but what kind of heathens are those?

Franchise filmmaking became more apparent during the blockbuster era that was kicked off by Jaws and Star Wars. Each of those franchises grew into something bigger than the first hit movie. And there were new franchises starting or continuing all the time. That age is ongoing with the reboots, remakes, television adaptations of movies, and film adaptations of television shows. Everyone who loves movies has a special relationship with one, two, or however many franchises. Those people will always go back for a new installment. If they don’t, they’re at least interested that a new installment comes out. The reason for those connections might vary, but they all come down to one thing. The audience has a love for whatever that franchise is about and the people involved.

Tremors was released in 1990. It starred Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward as Valentine McKee and Earl Bassett, two day laborers working in the desert community of Perfection. They wanted nothing more than to leave the almost nothing town for greener pastures. On their way out of town, the pair stumbled upon some horrific scenes where townspeople died. They informed everyone, then encountered the monsters that had caused the deaths. It was up to them to lead the town to safety, as much as they wanted to leave and never look back.

Since the release of the first Tremors film, the franchise has blossomed into something much bigger. There have been four direct-to-video sequels, a direct-to-video prequel, a one season television show, and two cancelled television pilots. The cast went through many changes with familiar faces popping up now and then. Kevin Bacon was in the first film and one of the aborted pilots. Fred Ward was in the first two films. Ariana Richards and Tony Genaro were in the first and third. Reba McEntire and Victor Wong were in the first film. Jamie Kennedy joined the franchise for the fifth and sixth film entries, while Dean Norris, Nicholas Turturro, and Christopher Lloyd showed up in the one season television show. The constant through all the movies and the television show is Michael Gross.

With the evolution of the franchise from theatrical to direct-to-video to television and back to direct-to-video, there was also an evolution in the monsters that were wreaking havoc throughout Perfection and, in the case of the second movie, Mexico. They started off as giant worm-like creatures called graboids that dug through the ground and burst out to eat people. Their primary sense was though vibrations. If they could feel a vibration, they went after it. If they heard anything, they attacked. In Tremors 2: Aftershocks, the creatures evolved into two-legged giant head things that could sense heat. They couldn’t hear anymore, but they could track people by their body heat. They could also reproduce asexually by eating. Tremors 3: Back to Perfection evolved them once again into winged heat-seeking two-legged creatures that could fly by shooting fire out their butts.

Following the third film, a television series picked up the story for a single season. Many of the characters who survived the third film returned for the series, though some of them had new actors in the roles. Then came a prequel the year after the series. The prequel showed that graboids had been in Perfection for much longer than people thought. The fifth and sixth films in the franchise came out in 2015 and 2018. They had Burt, the only character to be in all of the films and the television show (minus the prequel, which featured the ancestor of Burt instead of Burt), teaming up with his long lost son.

The Tremors franchise has a special place in my heart because I grew up on the first three films. The first film came out the year I was born. The second film, which evolved the graboids into shriekers, came out when I was five. I had evolved from a baby into a school-going child. The third one came out when I was eleven. The shriekers had now turned into ass blasters, and I was about to hit puberty, if I hadn’t already. Then the series came out and the prequel was released when I was fourteen, and I fell off the franchise. I can’t remember if I ever actually watched the prequel. Either way, I was now in my teen years. It was a transitional part of my life, just like it became a transitional part of the franchise’s life. It had no direction for eleven years. I had barely any direction through high school, three years of university before dropping out, and the few years I worked a full-time minimum wage job. Then the franchise came back when I was 25 and had decided to go back to school and put my life on track. I was soft rebooting my future, while Universal was soft rebooting Tremors.

That connection might seem forced. I just tied the entire franchise into my life through checkpoints. In reality, I grew up on the first three films and watched them countless times. Of course, I saw the first more than the second or third. It was released eleven years before the third and was much more popular because it was theatrically released. The direct-to-video market was not respected at all back in the day. Anything that wasn’t released in theaters was seen as subpar. It usually was. The standard of quality on direct-to-video releases wasn’t a high bar until more recent years. The change in potential film outlets might be the cause of that. Netflix, Redbox, Hulu, Amazon, and all the other new ways to access movies has vastly changed the landscape and forced people to try and bring a higher quality.

Over the eleven years between the prequel and the fifth film, the landscape for direct-to-video product had changed. People have started to come around on movies being put directly into the video market. Trick ‘R Treat earned a huge fanbase when it was released on DVD. WWE Studios has been putting out sequels to The Marine that have gotten some mild acclaim. The Scooby-Doo animated films are as strong as ever and they’re each premiering on home video. There’s a whole world of Marvel and DC animated films retelling many stories from the comics. Plus, there are plenty of low budget action flicks starring the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin, Scott Adkins, and Steven Seagal out there for people to eat up. The direct-to-video market was seen as a wasteland, but now it’s an outlet for the lower budget work that doesn’t tend to make it to the big screen.

And that’s probably part of the reason that Universal wanted to bring the franchise back with the fifth and sixth installments. I haven’t seen those, so I can’t say too much about them. What I can say, however, is that people have been revisiting the second and third Tremors films and finding fun in them. Now that the direct-to-video market has grown into a semi-respected branch of film release, people are reassessing some of what came out before, I’d say, around 2007 when more effort started being put into the movies. That and the rise of streaming services from each studio. Universal needs to bulk up on their catalogue to compete. Reviving the Tremors franchise brings in a built-in audience.

Those first three films are something special to me, though. The first one was one of those horror movies that my parents would let me watch because it wasn’t particularly scary. It had people being eaten by graboids and it had some bad language, but in the end, it was on the lighter side of horror movies. It helped usher me into the horror world alongside kids shows like Freaky Stories, Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Tales from the Cryptkeeper. Tremors 2: Aftershocks was one of those movies that I remember watching on TBS back when it was called TBS Superstation. I’m not sure if it actually played on that channel or if I’m just placing TBS over another channel in my memories. The third one was a movie I watched repeatedly when we had (illegally free) pay per view channels. They were all a part of my childhood for good chunks of time.

Everyone has a franchise or two or three that they’re attached to. Sometimes they have even more. Tremors is one of many for me, and one that likely wouldn’t be the first one that anyone would think to mention. It’s still a franchise, though, and it’s been around for twenty-nine years. It doesn’t look like it’ll be stopping anytime soon, either. There’s another sequel on the horizon. The only question is when it will come out.

Studios will keep making franchises knowing that they connect with people. There’s something about familiarity that people enjoy. They want comfort food and going back to a franchise that they know gives them that comfort. That’s why reboots, remakes, and sequels are all over the place. There’s a built in fanbase. That fanbase is attached to the franchise. They’ll stick with the franchise through thick and thin. That’s the magic of franchise filmmaking and the magic of film in general.

Now let’s take a look at the magic of these notes:

• Michael Gross has become the face of the Tremors franchise. He appeared in all of the films. But the first three Tremors movies aren’t the only Sunday “Bad” Movies to feature him. He was in Cool as Ice (week 348) as well.
• Robert Jayne was in Tremors and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection. He had previously made an appearance in Iron Eagle (week 90).
• Ariana Richards was also in Tremors and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection. A few months back, she made an appearance in Battledogs (week 346).
• Tremors II: Aftershocks was the third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Marcelo Tubert. His other two appearances were Alex Cross (week 12) and The Marine 3: Homefront (week 30).
• Tom Woodruff Jr. returned from Mortal Kombat (week 140) to show up in Tremors.
• Sunshine Parker made his second appearance in Tremors after having a role in Road House (week 200).
• Fred Ward was the only actor to appear in Tremors and Tremors II: Aftershocks before bowing out of the franchise.
• A few people were in Tremors and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection. They were Tony Genaro, John Pappas, and Charlotte Stewart.
• Have you seen any of the Tremors movies? What do you think of them? Were the first two direct-to-video sequels kind of fun? Are there other franchises you have an attachment to? Let me know about this stuff in the comments or on Twitter.
• The comments and Twitter are also a good place to tell me about the movies I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments. I’m open to suggestions. They help with the variety in the blog.
• There’s a Sunday “Bad” Movies account on Instagram. There hasn’t been too much in the past week on that account, only because I’ve been busy with a film festival. It’ll pick up again soon.
• Now onto the next post. To finish of the Halloween season, I decided to go back to one of those classic cult movies from the 1980s. I tend to do that a lot. Last year, I went with Chopping Mall, a movie that I love, but is completely a B-Movie. This year, I’m going that route again. The next post will be about something related to Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Come on back soon to find out what I wrote.