Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a 1988 science fiction horror movie directed by the Chiodo Brothers. The film has since been a cult classic among horror fans.
Plot[]
Young couple Mike and Debbie are on the top of the world looking at the stars. Debbie notices a shooting star and wants to follow it. Meanwhile, an old man see's the shooting star, believing it to be Haley's comet, so he and his dog go look for it. In the middle of the forest, the old man sees a circus tent and looks for a ticket booth, only for his dog to be captured. He then runs into a big clown named Jumbo and uses his ray gun to trap the old man in a cotton candy cocoon.
Mike and Debbie find the circus tent and discover that the cotton candy has dead bodies in them, Debbie suggests that the circus tent is a UFO, making the clowns aliens. They are then chased out of the tent by the clowns Rudy, Spikey, and Bibbo who shoot popcorn at them, and make living balloon dogs to track their sent. Luckily, Mike and Debbie manage to escape.
Mike and Debbie go to the police station to tell officer Dave (who is Debbie's ex-boyfriend) about the clowns, but his superior officer Mooney doesn't believe them about the clowns. Mike goes with Dave to investigate, while Debbie goes home to take a shower.
Meanwhile, the clowns begin terrorizing the town. Rudy invades a local convenient store, a clown named Shorty punches a biker's head off, Spikey fools a man with his puppets and traps him in a cotton candy cocoon, a clown named Slim rams a man off a highway with his invisible car, Bibbo tricks a woman by delivering pizza to her, only for Shorty to be in the pizza box and traps the woman in a cotton candy cocoon, and a clown named Fatso gives a woman a box of chocolates, only to trap her in a cotton candy cocoon as well.
Dave finally believes Mike about the clowns after he witnesses Slim make a shadow puppet dinosaur to trap a group of people in his bag of popcorn. After Debbie's shower, the popcorn on her clothes hatches into little clown snake-like creatures, and she is trapped in a balloon by Slim, Rudy, and Bibbo.
Mike gets help by his friends Rich and Paul and chase down a mini clown car with their ice cream truck. Meanwhile, Dave finds officer Mooney dead, with Jumbo using his corpse as a ventriloquist dummy. Dave shoots Jumbo's nose, and that manages to kill the big clown. Dave later catches up with Mike, Rich, and Paul, and they find the circus tent at a local carnival, where the clowns threw pies made out of acid at a security guard.
Inside the circus tent, they see hundreds of cotton candy cocoons, and a clown named Chubby drinks the blood out of one. They find Debbie in a balloon and pop it to free her. Mike, Dave, and Debbie are then chased by the clowns, and are unfortunately surrounded by them. However, the clowns begin to leave, as their leader, Jojo the Klownzilla, a 15-foot-tall clown arrives. Mike and Debbie leave the tent while Dave tries to fight Jojo off. Jojo grabs Dave with the intent to eat him, however, Dave uses his badge to pop his nose, killing Jojo, and causing the circus tent to explode.
Dave survives by hiding in a clown car, and Mike and Debbie are revealed that he survived. In the final shot, pies fall on the three of them. It's unknown if those were the same acid pies the clowns used to melt the security guard.
Trivia[]
- The tagline of the film, In Space, No one can eat ice cream! is a reference to the tagline of the film, Alien.
- The movies opening theme song was performed by the Dickies.
- The Chiodo brothers came up with this movie by a childhood memory where they asked what the scariest thing, they could think of was. Which one of them thought a clown driving an invisible car, which happens in the movie.
- The fan favorite clowns in the movie are Shorty, Jumbo, Rudy, Slim, and Spikey.
- The movie spawned a video game called Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game. Announced in 2022, the video game was released on June 4, 2024, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC.