n a typical Friday night, obstinate Officer Curt Mooney (John Vernon) patrols the usual hotspots for underage drinking and making out. He’s perpetually displeased with youthfulness in general, even though their activities are nothing new for the college town of Crescent Cove. Two such young adults, Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer) and Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder), are kissing in the back of their SUV when what appears to be Halley’s Comet comes crashing down not too far away. With a sense of adventure intact, they drive into the woods to investigate.

Farmer Green (Royal Dano) beats them too it, however, when he strolls out to take a look. What he finds is inexplicable: an enormous circus tent, lit up with lights and surrounded by electrified rigging, firmly planted in the middle of nowhere. When one of the big top’s inhabitants – a chubby, grinning clown – saunters out, it aims a gun at the farmer and fires. Mike and Debbie show up shortly afterward, poking around in the funhouse, which seems to be an enormous spaceship. And its contents include pink sacs hung up in one of the cavernous chambers, containing the bodies of abducted victims from Crescent Cove.

This bizarre, comical horror picture begins with mediocre acting, eye-rolling histrionics, goofy sound effects, and a cheesy rock tune for its theme music (performed by The Dickies). As silly as the setup is, a popcorn cannon and a balloon animal tracking dog are rather amusing, while the set designs look like a cotton candy factory or something from Willy Wonka’s domain. The special effects that follow aren’t as convincing, but enough effort is put into the environments that the sci-fi mischief grows steadily more interesting. A love triangle with Officer Dave Hansen (John Allen Nelson) doesn’t add anything to the originality, but evil clown aliens are certainly a fresh twist on extraterrestrial invaders. “Don’t worry about Dave; it’s those clowns you gotta worry about.”

The film’s greatest assets are the clown costumes, which are as funny as they are grotesque. Featuring corpulent, misshapen torsos and morbidly disproportionate body parts, the monsters are a mix of puppet-like appendages and animatronic facial components, additionally boasting moist lips, twitchy eyes, neon hair, patchy skin, brightly colored makeup (and red noses, of course), oversized shoes, and rotted teeth. And they’re not afraid to joke around just before a bloody decapitation, or when turning a corpse into a human marionette, or when hurling acidic desserts. “What’re you gonna do with those pies, boys?”

The film works best when the seriousness or bloodshed alternates with the slapstick, but there are too many comedy relief sidekicks (such as ice cream truck drivers Paul [Peter Licassi] and Rich Terenzi [Michael Siegel], who largely ruin the mood) and insincere spurts of dialogue for the horror aspects to remain truly effective. A few more eerie moments could have offset the hokiness; the body count is high, but the gore is too limited. Since the antagonists are already difficult to buy into (except for audiences suffering from coulrophobia), “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” definitely would have benefitted from an R-rating. Still, the creativity is admirable, even if the end result is more of a joke than it should have been.

– Mike Massie