That's not what I was thinking. I was thinking, they could have come up with new artwork or done the classic movie-Tshirt thing and replicated the poster. That image isn't bad. But, it's just the DVD cover. I'm sure that ain't hard to do. I mean, they could have put any clown on that thing but someone didn't want to do new drawing / painting / pressing, whatever. It feels kinda cheap - to me, a huge fan of the movie.
Perhaps it's supposed to be irony in a way but I really don't see the point of endorsing a crappy movie like that with a t-shirt.
Well, being such a huge horror fan and with your website (?), something of a scholar... you should know as well as anyone the point of this practice is: cult horror films do well on T-shirts. If the huge proliferation of dorks with
The Evil Dead and
Cannibal Holocaust shirts are any indication. Not that I don't love
The Evil Dead, but it's the T-shirt you see nearly every single low budget horror filmmaker from the late 90's 'til whenever the last American low budget horror film was made wearing it in pictures on the set, at conventions, etc.
And obviously, you'll excuse me if I don't agree with your "well researched opinion" on the film being crappy.
"Killer Klowns" was one of the worst movies I watched in the 80s and I was silly enough to buy it again recently for $3 just because I like to have all the movies I've ever watched whether they are good, bad or, in this case, absolutely pointless.
It's not a scary movie, it's not even a real horror movie, so it's a bit redundant discussing it at all on this thread.
I'm guessing my respect doesn't mean very much to you. Does it? Because either you know it's my favorite movie and are just doing this to irritate me. Or you didn't bother to read the oh... 5 or 6 topics on this board in which I've raved on for paragraphs about how good the movie is. Either way, this is not the best move you could've made. And I hope you can understand this reaction, but: if you can't even be bothered to be the slightest bit considerate - what the hell are you doing on this board in the first place?
If you really want scary movies then you need something like Arachnophobia (if you are afraid of spiders)
That's viscerally scary, yes. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of people are pissing on this movie now because, like Chucky, they claim small things aren't scary. As though the element of surprise never popped into their minds. If the movie didn't exist - people would not were they confronted by a walking, talking, fully moving living doll with the capacity to murder someone be expecting it, nor would they have a contingency plan ready to kill or stop said murdering doll. Or spider, in this case. So the "Macho Defense" (what I call it), "eh, just step on 'im!" is useless and stupid to believe.
The Haunting (if you are afraid of ghosts - though Lost Hearts is more visually scary still)
I'm due for a rewatch of that film (the 1963 original, of course), but... when I first saw it, I was bored, nearly to TEARS!! I admit this is a personal peeve - but I can't get into a movie where a main character, who is so meak and meager or sensitive, is trying to make others believe in spirits and the like. Because I've never believed in ghosts and I knew people who used to do that whole thing with the Ouija board (I'm not moving it! It's moving! It's really moving!), for which I berrated them with sarcastic comments. How can atheism be possible if your siblings and best friends are pretending - even for the novelty of it - that ghosts are real... ? It's like misplaced Christianty. These people won't go to church but they'll play whiny, lame "the spirit told me his name was Charlie" (or whatever) bullshit. I have a hard cynicism toward both.
So anyway, back to the movies... there are 2 things about this kind of movie (including the remake and 1972's
The Legend of Hell House) that get under my skin. One is the fact that they just spend way too much time trying to make you believe the ghosts will come and do something scary and the fact that they never do. Either show up at all or do anything scary. To reference perhaps the best ghost film ever made (comedy or horror),
Beetlejuice, these movies delight in nothing but parlor tricks. And don't even have the look of a magic show or carnival attraction, to remind us of the fun we had believing in ridiculous things when we were children. In the meantime, the characters aren't interesting (I see you bring up Empathy below, well I don't care about that so much- I have to be interested in the movie and the characters can't become too overbearing unless their struggle is really worth getting involved in - ala,
Rosemary's Baby or
Carrie, or... perhaps... the first hour or so of
Frailty) and the dialogue is so damn whiny. "Believe me!" "They're restless in this house! They're tormented! Let them go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o! Help me save them!"
Ghost films are generally nothing but pure schlock.
The Haunting wants to be deeply heartfelt and emotional. I recognize I'm turned off from being able to always read that. But it feels like people are just too easy to manipulate. In these films, you know as a general rule nobody is going to be in that much danger. And at best (
Hell House), you see a semi-gruesome aftermath for a second. I don't need to see graphic violence, but I need to believe it's possible and that it can happen. With the exception of a little foggy atmosphere and some tilted or interesting camera angles -
Hell House is the only one of these whiny-medium ghost movies that comes close to being scary. And it's tedium watching the movie, waiting for the moment something legitimately terrifying will happen. And in the meantime, the perverted relevations and/or "shock" gross-out shots in something like
Ghost Story (1981) or
The Changeling don't do the trick either.
Being that they are schlock, I give the following films their due credit for being entertaining:
Poltergeist - where you have no choice but to feel the characters' sadness and fear (a very rare exception to the rule, but still the movie caved in to big FX sequences, gore, and schlock on a number of occasions, which at least is an attempt to make seen what's only hinted at in most of the ghost movies to come before it), the
Ghostbusters films (which are more fantasy-adventure rides with spectacular special effects and FUN characters),
Beetlejuice (with its' flamboyantly dark, nasty, and cynical parade of death images and stereotype satirizing), John Carpenter's deeply spooky
The Fog, and William Castle's old-fashioned
13 Ghosts and
The House on Haunted Hill, which like his monster movies aren't afraid to say that these concepts aren't that scary.
All that having been said - no, I haven't seen
The Innocents yet and I'm actually a little excited to see it. Just hearing Joe Dante (the master of the scary/exhilirating horror-comedy, sorry Larry Cohen, Peter Jackson, and John Landis) rave about it means I gotta see it!
or anything else which really puts the main characters in situations where you empathise with them so much that it scares you. Somehow guys dressed up in rubber clown heads don't do it for me though the look of Sid Haig as a clown does.
Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding was intense in a few very short bursts in
House of 1,000 Corpses. I'm assuming those moments are what you're referring to. But he spent most of that thing making stupid cracks about fried chicken and retards, and cursing up a blue streak. That's dumb. Not scary. Which is pretty much why Rob Zombie hired him. Because he was equally not-scary in
Spider Baby. And because Rob Zombie wouldn't know how make a scary movie if he had a How-To book! He'd find some way to screw it up. Every time.
And those heads were DAMN convincing, by the way. If you think the movie isn't scary, you can't also claim the Chiodo bros. weren't masters of technical and visual special effects! The work they did on that film was fucking genius, nothing less. Especially for the budget they had to work with.
And very little impresses me.
Among the scores of people who go wild for Lucio Fulci's gore films, I think his gore scenes look like shit. I've never been wowed or impressed by any
Star Wars movie. I yawned at Spielberg's
Jaws- many times. I never thought Captain Kirk was cool. I think Chuck Norris is a dumbass. As a huge Disney fan, I think
The Lion King is irritating and juvenile. The only dinosaur in
Jurassic Park to scare me was the one hunting that Newman from
Seinfeld (I always get his name wrong), and I never went (even as an 12 year old, which is what I was when I saw the film) - "
ooooh" or "
awwww." The
Back to the Future films (though now I find them entertaining enough) disturbed me, but not because of the special effects or loud music.
Forrest Gump pisses me off. I found most of
American Beauty to be flat-out pretentious. I still think
Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie is better than the TV show!
24,
Rescue Me,
The Shield,
House, and
The Sopranos can blow it out their asses!! Roger Moore was the best James Bond in my opinion.
Batman's boy wonder Robin is clearly gay. Cops and detectives in flicks and shows with expensive cars and a tendancy for badge-flashing are overcompensating! I think every war movie is the same (and if you've seen the
Tales from the Crypt episode, "Yellow," you've seen the only one that matters anyway). Will Ferrell is a douchebag. Michael Bay jerks off while looking at himself in a mirror. Hitchcock's
Vertigo was an unintentional laugh-riot, when it wasn't boring and James/Jimmy Stewart is overrated.
Saw is probably the single worst movie ever made. I would have been more amused to see Tori Spelling as the Joker than Heath Ledger.
Stand by Me blows! Alexandre Aja is nothing but a pervert and a hack. John Carpenter's
The Thing is probably the most overrated film in history. The "Smurfs" scene in
Donnie Darko was idiotic.
The Spy Who Shagged Me is an inferior sequel and the Fat Bastard character is not funny. David Fincher's movies aren't nearly as interesting as his fans claim. David Lynch's movies blow. And
Crash only won the Oscar because of America's minority double-standard, where white-guilt is more powerful than straight-guilt!
I hope by now you're seeing a pattern. I don't think with the same head as the masses. Most other people do. I wasn't born yesterday, I know people can't get beyond the low budget of this movie. But that's why there's still wrong in the world. Because people can't look beyond the surface for 2 seconds - not even for entertainment or film / music / art appreciation. That's why there's such things as majorities and masses. And of course, there's the tired standard of people needing to "feel for the characters." Sometimes, "Dr.," a movie is spoofing a type of character from a previous movie or genre. That's what
Killer Klowns was doing. The characters are types. What the hell did you expect? That the movie was meant to be taken seriously?? Look at the title again. I know you're smarter than this but you're not showing it. Are you under the impression that you need to be able to put yourself in the characters' shoes? And why do you insist every horror movie needs to be done the same way to be scary?
As pointed out in previous posts, there's a big difference between something being scary or being shocking. "Shock films" aren't really scary unless the atmosphere that goes with the shock scenes gives you that rollercoaster thrill ride that makes you scared through all the tension.
was intended to be a schlock film, just a fun spoof with a lot of special effects and costume / makeup work. However, many films become something else when they're filmed. Take on a whole new power. The "don't worry, Dave..." scene single-handedly proves that. And Leonard Maltin's original review of the film. In 1988, he gave it a BOMB rating and said the reason why was because the film was sadistic. And you know what... it kind of is, isn't it?
If you empathise enough with the lead character in "Martyrs", for instance, it would probably be the scariest movie of all time just because of what she goes through. Apart from "Mum & Dad" recently which really made the adrenalin flow for me, the scares in all the torture porn movies are all over too quickly to make the movies scary overall. Even "Judgment Night" with Emilio Estevez from years ago (or the one with John Boy Walton trapped on the streets of some really scary neighborhood after his car gets locked away for the night ) makes for much scarier viewing because of the realism of the situation.
The bottom line though is that scares are subjective. Some movies such as "Suspiria" just aren't scary in any way for anyone while others such as "The Hills Have Eyes" cater for a much wider demographic.
Well - what I'm hearing from you is that you agree that scary isn't scary unless it's made with the wider demographic in mind. Although I should admire you for having the balls to say that, it's still a dumbass thing to say. You can't count on majority opinion or demographics to predict or guess our reactions to movies or define what's (anything, fill in the blank - scary, funny, pure, good). In movies or real life.
"Hellraiser" (to get back to the discussion again) is a much scarier movie than "Killer Klowns" mainly because it's a serious horror movie with a really nasty supernatural and murderous atmosphere to it.
Is that what you think? Well, then, tell me exactly what you think in response to my first post on Hellraiser being scary:
It's too selective about its' victims. Like the Lottery, only if you picked a ticket. And- who on Earth would pick a ticket to be captured by demons and taken to a pain-pleasure purgatory-hell from wence there is almost no escape? As for the men the evil wife murdered, well, this isn't the first movie about bad things happening to folks who get picked up in bars.
-
Serious? Are you kidding me?!?! Serious is in the eye of the beholder! The least you could do to flesh out that argument would be to actually address some of the issues behind what you insist makes that movie so serious. How the hell is it really that serious? Because the music score is more typical to non-horror films? Because the style of the movie is more gritty?
Let me tell you what my eye be-held: The movie takes place in an absurd nether-realm somewhere where some people are American, some are British, half are dubbed over with American accents. Which I don't mind, but that's anything
but serious. Kirsty is chased all over the place by S&M, bondage-clad demons who never really hurt her. Barker's first-time-director status screams all throughout the movie. Most of the special effects look like crap. The ending breaks down completely, after the "we have such sights to show you!" line. Kirsty has a sports-like brawl over HOLDING the puzzle box in her hand. During that scene where she fumbles to work it while the orange worm stands there and looks menacing, you could easily put in that whistle & marching band football cheer theme you hear in any high school sports movie into the background because of how stupid the sequence is. Ashley Laurence's performance is wooden. Barker admits to wanting to stick in several Argento film references (which, the fact that so many horror directors cite him as an influence, proves you're not giving Argento the horror cred he deserves!) and the best he can do is a baby crying, feathers, and a corpse that doesn't look anything like Kirsty's father. 9 out of every 10 images in this movie don't hold up over time.
"Killer Klowns" is just a really bad sci-fi inspired comedy with a few horror set pieces which could have come out of any B movie whether sci-fi, horror, or wartime invasion.
I'm afraid you're thinking
Night of the Creeps. Try again.
Pinhead and all the Cenobites are also much scarier looking characters than the Klowns. I suppose we could list about a dozen more reasons but really is it worth it?
And I suppose you're going to deny the obvious gay implications about Clive Barker dressing the Cenobites in leather strap outfits with various S&M tweaks to them. You would, straight people are usually completely oblivious to this. Barker, as you may know, is one of my kind. And Pinhead looks cool and all that. But scary he is not, apart from whatever ties people might insist his aristocratic behavior would have to dictators, etc. And you shouldn't be throwing stones if your house is made out of glass. The Cenobites don't do anything more than Klowns do. They just look menacing. And have the psychic ability to attack people with chains that fall from the ceiling, floors, or are projected from the puzzle box. The Klowns had a lot more going for them. They're an eternal symbol of something that many have deep-seeded fear for. Clowns traumatize some people. And the fact that I have nothing against clowns but that these ones scared me is enough to prove this movie works both ways. Because I know if this were real life, it would be terrifying. There are so many things in that movie going absolutely wild, the fact you didn't pick up on them almost feels like you have a deficiency of imagination.
First - look at what the clowns are and do. They only come out at night. Their purpose seems dictated by a need to fill up their spaceship with food. And people are their food. Yet, they don't eat or drink or take the bodies of all their victims. They terrorize people! They kill for fun sometimes. They stalk. They lie and pretend their harmless. They have many different ways of disposing of people, lots of different weapons. And we aren't bashed over the head being shown what all the weapons do. But we know they're a kind of vampire that kills us for blood. Taking that into account- why don't they just drain the blood and keep it in viles. That would save them room in their storage facility. They do more than what they're shown to do with the bodies they hang up, which also ties their killing us to the very disturbing act of us being kept like animals, in a meat locker of sorts! You can't reason with them. They're inhuman. Cold blooded. They don't talk. And when you do hear their words, they're again terrorizing.
Their costumes are brightly colored. And that image walking down dark streets and coming out of dark alleys is SCARY! You don't see this usually in the dark. Children's / family entertainments usually take place during the day. We're taught to believe the night isn't safe and there are people wanting to hurt us in the dark. Which sets up us expecting something more human. At least in the 1980's. Most sci-fi / horror hybrids were like
The Blob remake or
Strange Invaders, dealing with backstory or the government or the military. Etc. It was obvious when the almost token scary scene would come up.
Killer Klowns is the one token scary scene stretched to feature length. The movie is endlessly, relentless creative and inventive. And has a great scary idea. In close-up, these clowns look like real creatures. And yet, what makes them scary is that in wide shots, they're meant to be mistaken for people in costumes. And when they mass together, they feel like a real race. Like they could really take over.
Hellraiser is meant to be more poetic. But it has more than its' share of unintentionally goofy moments. When you look at what it's really about, it loses all scariness altogether. You'd have to find the sexual subtext scary. I like the odd muscled bear (though the fact that I like my bears less hairy might seem defeating the purpose) in a tight leather squarecut, but kinky sex isn't scary - man! The Klowns are about a lot more. The trust we place in commercialized images and institutions meant to be harmless, is a perfect front for an underlying threat. Sure it stands in for fear of invasion - which you know those torture films are also taking inspiration from. The fear of terrorism. Violation - invasion. In fact, look at 1982-1990. And how many movies clowns appeared in and had a huge effect on viewers.
Poltergeist, the
IT miniseries, and
Clownhouse. All of these films are still talked about in cult circles. The clowns and what they represented scared the shit out of people. Then,
Killer Klowns takes that and makes a race out of these guys.
To say the least, you may be a bad product of the inability to suspend disbelief. Unless of course, you think other people will buy your excuses. And since people still don't widely recognize
Hellraiser is about S&M - whether it be gay or straight, internal or external - you may get away with them. But I'm not buying it.
.