Monster of the Day #204

*This* is how you make a new cult classic. That Dickies theme song is like the best thing ever, too.

  • TongoRad

    This is definitely the best thing that I ever stumbled upon completely by accident. God bless the Chiodo brothers for pulling out all of the stops on it. Everything in there is pretty much what you’d expect if you made up a laundry list of clown related gags, but done in such a way as to confound expectations. Great casting coup with John Vernon, too, and they just let him chew the scenery as only he could.

  • Gamera

    Almost as good as ‘Buckaroo Banzai’! God I love this movie. In the commentary for my DVD (the special edition with the holograpic clowns on the cover!) the Chiodo brothers talked about a sequel. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing though.

  • The Rev.

    I probably like Night of the Creeps a bit more, but this is still one of the better horror-comedies of the ’80s, or any time, really. The clowns are wonderful.

    The scene with the “ventriloquist dummy” still makes my spine crawl, and “suffocating in a cotton candy cocoon” still seems like a terrible way to die. However, you also get good gags like the little clown taking on the gang that wrecks his bike and the lady clowns. Just great stuff.

  • BeckoningChasm

    A terrific time at the movies. The clowns are awesome in every regard. It seems almost churlish to complain about how stiff the three leads are. But then, as noted, they are more than compensated with John Vernon and Royal Dano (“Well I’ll be greased and fried!”).

  • David Fullam

    Love this movie. The shadow puppet and boxing scenes are definite favorites.

  • Rock Baker

    Ah, this is why I love 80s genre pictures. It seems the 80s were the last decade you could take an outlandish, downright goofball idea and build a genuine, straight-laced horror film around it. I really, really miss that.

  • GalaxyJane

    You know, odd as it sounds. this movie just always creeped me out, and I mean literally made me nauseated creeped me out, that I’ve never been able to properly enjoy it in the spirit it was offered.

  • roger h

    This one was made locally in fact where I worked at the time (The Boardwalk) but, I can’t recall why I did not work on it. I did other film support at the time. My wife might have done some of it.