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It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie

Reader Review


Killer Klowns From Outer Space

Posted by: Adam
Date Submitted: Friday, July 23, 1999 at 05:53:29
Date Posted: Saturday, July 31, 1999 at 16:39:24

I borrowed this movie from a friend and thought it was so funny that I bought it (cheaply, mind you -- I wasn't going to pay much for this).

Basically, it is about a comet that turns out to be an alien spaceship -- the aliens just happen to look like clowns (albeit crusty, flaky, snarly, evil clowns who would fool no one...yet do), that lands and becomes a glowing big top. Clowns attack the town, cocooning them in candy floss and drinking their blood through curly straws. Finally, heroes find out that the clowns can be killed by popping their noses and kill them all.

What this boils down to is a series of set pieces showing the clowns killing off civilians, but it is the dialogue that really makes this stand out. When the makers wanted to lead up to an obvious visual joke they have the actor lean forward and deliver their lines slowly: "Come on then, KNOCK MY BLOCK OFF!" -- just before a tiny clown uppercuts a biker's head off. Another example: the police sergeant to the officer: "You won't make a DUMMY out of me...." Next time you see him he is hollowed out by a clown, being used as a ventriliquist's dummy. Ho Ho. This is still not as good as when the heroes are trying to escape from the clowns' "Fun House," by opening a little door only to find another one behind it, and another behind that, and another. Using the same whine, the hero exclaims, "Another door? ... Another door? ... Another door? ..."

One of the most mysterious things is how the civies assume that the evil clowns are normal people: one turns up at a woman's door with a box of chocolates and a gun, and she thinks it's a birthday surprise from her husband. And why is the heroine is captured alive, not cocooned? And why does the spaceship explodes in a burst of fireworks? And why...(snip)

Rating: 3.5 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: Shadow puppet T-Rex eating people.

Best line: "Another door!?!" (ad infinitum)

Things that make you go "Huh?": (1) Why the clowns are accepted when they look so bad. (2) Why the heroine is put alive in a bubble and not cocooned. (3) How the comedy heroes can survive falling to Earth from an exploding spaceship simply by hiding in an ice cream truck!


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