Killer Klowns From Outer Space: Reliving An Old Favourite

I first watched this film when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My dad had a video section to his newsagents shop, and I remember looking at the bright and colourful box, and thinking this was the scariest thing in the world. The film was classified as a 15, but I watched it anyway… and I laughed all the way through. I would watch this film time and time again, would it hold its value to me over time though?
Despite the fact that no-one in the office had even heard of it when it turned up from Play.com, and that they all said it looked rubbish, I could not wait to watch this again. After all it had been nearly 20 years since it last polluted my young fragile mind! My girlfriend Jasmin wasn’t too happy that I had bought yet another ’shit film’, but somehow I managed to persuade her to watch it.
Killer Klowns is now rated as a 12, which is pretty much par for the course these days with older films being downgraded (The Terminator is now a 15), but I reckon it could even get away with a PG certificate. I cannot remember even a drop of blood being spilt in this film, and the violence is cartoony at best. The clowns don’t talk they just make these weird squeeking noises, and the closest you get to nudity is a close up of a girls ankle (surely would be banned in the middle east!). One thing that I never picked up on when I was younger, is that it stars John Vernon, who has been in loads of films and TV programs, and is one of those people who you would say ‘Who is that guy, I know his face’. He is probably best known for his role in Animal House as the hapless college Dean. Anyway, Vernon plays the typical police sherriff of a small town who thinks the local kids are playing tricks on him when they tell him that the town is being over run by Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Seriously you just don’t get comic genius like that anymore!
Yes the acting is shocking, the Klowns themselves are about as scary as Sooty and Sweep, and the special effects are… well… special in the kind of way that they might have to get a different kind of bus to other special effects.
Time may have diminished it to new viewers (my girlfriend thought it was terrible), but to those of us who watched it in 1988 (damn I was 7!) put your feet up and enjoy the classic theme tune, terrible acting and piss poor effects and remember the things you forgot (totally forgot about the killer shadown puppet T-Rex!)

Fantastic for what it (a B-Movie Horror/Comedy… well comedy more than horror… actually no horror at all… unless you hate clowns)

7/10