He didnt frolic or make balloon animals.
He didnt have a seltzer bottle or do pie gags.
All he did during his sporadic and unexpected appearances was stand on street corners and glower at passersbys.
If you ask me, thats a hell of a lot scarier than if he had a chainsaw.
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And believe you me: this recent rash of sightings is nothing new.
Theres hieroglyphic evidence that a form of clown existed in ancient Egypt.
We know that the Greeks and Romans both had their clowns.
Clowns worked the courts of the Middle Ages.
And that, Im guessing, is where the trouble really began.
There was always something insidious about clowns, and kids far more than adults seemed to recognize this instinctively.
Pagliacci (1892)
So you think murderous clowns with butcher knives are something new?
Some recent invention of a cold and cynical postmodern world?
As Spike Jones pointed out in his adaptation, Taint very sanitary.
Two years later it became the very first film shot at the newly-formed MGM Studios.
Which in itself is a little weird and creepy, when you think about it.
We wrote Who Gets Slappedright here.
Long after Steeplechase was gone, Funny Face as hes sometimes known remains Coneys unofficial mascot.
Only problem with the latter theory was that the leering Steeplechase logo premiered in 1897.
Read more about our thoughts and study ofThe Man Who Laughsright here.
But then they both fall for the same girl and, well, things dont end well.
Some say it was never completed and only exists as scraps.
Among the films countless and still timely sketches, few are more notorious thanThe Koko Show.
Yes, well, lets just say a few of us simply saw it as a given.
Christ, even his makeup design was a giveaway.
Carny (1980)
Carnywasnt by any stretch a horror film.
It was an honest and insightful peek into life in a contemporary traveling carnival.
Hell, just the thought of Gary Busey in clown makeup creeps the hell out of me.
No, they may not draw blood, but the damage they do can linger for a long time.
Just how widespread the fear was proven to me the first time I saw this in 82.
And isnt that what lay at the heart of it all?
A clowns face-paint is merely a highly stylized and colorful death mask.
After punk alien conspiracy movies, zombie movies, and Spaghetti Westerns, this one almost seemed inevitable.
They even wield clownish but deadly alien weapons, that smother people with cotton candy and the like.
far outshine the finished film, but so what?
Given our present predicament, it remains the most timely film of the lot.
So it only makes sense one of them would let his bitterness get the better of him.
Here is a clown who would not take it anymore!
In that, the film also exists as yet another rare cinematic example of clown-on-clown violence.
Puddles Pity Party
Forget Insane Clown Posse.
The more I saw him.
Only difference is Puddles has yet to pick up the knife.
Puddles does not frolic or caper or take pratfalls.
He stands in existential isolation onstage and sings heartbreaking songs in a soaring baritone reminiscent of Scott Walker.
I mean, I still get a big hoot out of the climax.
And you ask me, for that reason alone theyre getting what they deserve.
