Killer Klowns from Outer Space, released in 1988, is the satirical culmination of the fixation that 1980s horror filmmakers had on the B-movie cinema of the 1950s. The film relentlessly and lovingly parodies the alien invasion movies that were popular in both decades, with the more contemporary addition of elements taken from zombie movies. The end result is a delightfully wacky and darkly hilarious horror-comedy that utilizes monster and zombie tropes to their fullest and absurdest extent.
The 1980s saw a revival of the type of Cold War-era monster movies that were popular thirty years before in the 1950s, usually involving some type of extraterrestrial or lab-created threat that invades and disrupts the life of the homey confines within small-town America. These stories were not-so-subtle attacks on the growing foreign Soviet presence, and the dangers of nuclear technology. However, the 1980s brought a new layer of commentary as counter-culture filmmakers sought to parody the patriotic undertones of the 1950s monster invasion films while retaining the fun and horror of their antagonistic creatures.
Not all of these films were immediately successful, but a significant number of them attained a respectable cult status over the years. Night of the Creeps, released in 1986, which centered on alien slugs that zombify the inhabitants of a small town, is a prime example of the type of alien invasion movie that Killer Klowns sought to emulate. The small, but mischievously deadly creatures from Critters, which was also released in 1986 and contains special effects by Killer Klowns directors, the Chiodo brothers, is another sure influence.
The Killer Klowns Resemble Alien Monsters and Zombies
Killer Klowns from Outer Space occupies its own unique spot in the echelons of B-movie cult classics by retrofitting sci-fi horror movie tropes to goofy clown-themed jokes. Immediately at the start of the movie, two teenagers at a cliffside makeout spot discover that the shooting star they saw is a circus tent spacecraft. The event marks the beginning of the relentless spoofing of alien invasions with the same opening events as The Blob from 1958. The ominously lit circus is reminiscent of the sort of glowing meteorite commonly seen at the beginning of alien monster films, as well.
The “klowns” use a ray gun that wraps their victims in cotton candy cocoons, an image not dissimilar to the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The effect also imitates spider webs, as if people were being encased by the type of mutated spiders that were the stars of such Cold War killer insect movies like Earth vs. the Spider (1959) and Tarantula! (1955). There’s a part when a bloody arm hangs out of one the cotton candy pods like the horrifically digested victims in the remake of The Blob that coincidentally released the same year as Killer Klowns, further bridging the gap between the horror filmmaking of the two decades.
Acid pies, popcorn creatures, and a giant boss klown named Jojo further the monster movie mayhem, but the horror movies of the 1980s also took cues from zombie films to help update their 1950s influences. Killer Klowns is no exception, as the only way to stop the seemingly invincible makeup-covered fiends is to shoot them their red noses the same way zombie-killers aim for the head. When the klowns gather in a group to surround the protagonists at the end of the movie, it’s hard not to think of the hordes of undead or the alien automatons of other sci-fi movies. In this way, Killer Klowns from Outer Space demonstrates that alien monsters and zombies traveled full circle within three decades.
