Laugh or die trying: “It” opens in theaters Friday. Meantime, we list seven killer clown films.
Coulrophobia is no laughing matter. Fear of clowns has driven more than a few impressionable children to run screaming from their friends’ birthday parties and transformed innocent balloon animals into torture devices.
And now we have a remake of Stephen King’s “It” coming to theaters on Friday, Sept. 8.
You can keep running from birthday parties, circuses and singing telegrams, or you can try a little exposure therapy to get you over your fear of face paint and bulbous red noses. These seven killer clown movies will either cure your fears or plunge you deeper into psychosis. Just don’t send us your therapy bills.
7. ‘Clown’ (2014)
We can all agree that putting on a creepy vintage clown costume you find locked in a chest in an abandoned house is a bad idea. But blinded by love for his kid, that’s just what realtor Kent (Andy Powers) does, when the clown booked for his boy’s birthday party bails. Except when the party’s over, the fun has just begun — and Kent finds himself trapped in an increasingly hostile, possibly possessed costume. It’s formulaic and low rent, but nevertheless a skin-crawlingly effective work of body horror.
It’s only natural that a man who goes by the name Rob Zombie would turn his creative talents toward directing horror movies. His debut film wears its influences on its bloodied sleeve, namely “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” While not exactly subtle, it’s an awful lot of fun for horror fiends as an unsuspecting group of passersby find themselves at the mercy of a demented family. Your
ringleader through this sleazy carnival haunted house is Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), a charismatic clown with a skull bowtie and quite the potty mouth.
5. ‘Zombieland’ (2009)
When your greatest fear is clowns, it’s almost a stroke of luck to find yourself in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. What room is there for clowns among the brain-hungry hordes of the undead? In this riotous comedy-horror starring Jesse Eisenberg as the coulrophobic Columbus, the odds of meeting your worst fear remain high.The climax takes Columbus and his scrappy band of survivors to an amusement park, where they’re besieged by the undead – and where Columbus comes face to face with a zombie clown. The gore spilling out of its mouth is the same as every other zombie’s but is ten times scarier dripping down an oversize bowtie and rainbow suspenders.
Director John Carpenter essentially gave birth to the slasher genre, and one of Halloween’s best-selling monster masks, with hardly a budget to speak of. And that inimitable, simple piano score that still haunts? Carpenter came up with that, too. The plot is as simple as its soundtrack: Escaped mental patient Michael Myers terrorizes teenager Laurie
This TV miniseries adaptation doesn’t get a lot of love from Stephen King fans, a hazard when adapting a 1000-plus-page novel on a dime. While it may not be faithful, thorough or cutting edge, it is nevertheless intermittently terrifying