IS IT JUST ME OR SHOULD CLOWNS NOT BE ALLOWED IN HORROR MOVIES?

Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in 2017’s It, but is the horror clown now merely ‘a lazy scare tactic’?

‘What’s the matter, kid, don’t you like clowns?’ snarls Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding as he terrorises a child in Rob Zombie’s grindhouse sequel The Devil’s Rejects. ‘Ain’t we fuckin’ funny?’ It’s this aggressive try-hard energy that characterises the modern horror clown, and a well that Zombie would return to in his 31, in which a crew of carnival workers is kidnapped and brutalised by homicidal clowns, led by the sadistic Doom-Head (Richard Brake). But there’s nothing funny about any of these greasepaint ghouls.

Ditto Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise, and Terrifier’s Art the Clown. The horror clown’s appeal traditionally lay in the distance between its friendly countenance and the brutalities that generally followed. But lately, there is no contrast. Once a chilling subversion of a colourful sideshow personality, the horror clown has become a lazy scare tactic. Need to amp up the horror? Bring on the clowns: Art leering at his kebab-shop victims; Pennywise grinning from the sewer; and recently Twisted Metal’s Sweet Tooth. There’s no subversion, just an already creepy guy in overtly horrifying make-up.

This is all a far cry from the goofballs of Killer Klowns from Outer Space, or Cesar Romero’s surfboarding Joker. Ross Noble did the killer clown well in Stitches – as did Reece Shearsmith in Psychoville. But in both those cases, their explicit grotesqueness was a commentary on how far the movie clown has fallen, more associated these days with monstrous lawbreaking than the tragicomic circus attraction upon which the trope is based.

Following the release of 2017’s It, Clowns International representatives took to the airwaves to protest the bad rap the film gave the community. It is ‘a cheap Hollywood movie’ that has ‘nothing to do with clowning’, spokesclown Rob Bowker told ITV’s This Morning. Diluted through overexposure and about as edgelord as an Insane Clown Posse record (talking of bad raps…), the horror clown is now so commonplace that it’s lost all meaning.

Send in the clowns? It’s time for a moratorium instead. Or is it just me? Share your reaction at gamesradar.com/totalfilm or on Facebook and Twitter.

LAST TIME IS THIS THE GREATEST ERA FOR ANIMATION?

KIEREN McSWEENEY

The recent Spider-Verse and Turtles movies look sloppy. It’s good to see today’s generation has found a style, but it doesn’t measure up to the classics (Disney or not).

JUSSI KANGA

Modern animation offers much more personality and diversity than what was available when I was a kid. I’m kinda jealous of my children.

THOMAS J. PARSONS

If it ain’t done by Don Bluth [The Secret of NIMH] or Ralph Bakshi [1978’s The Lord of the Rings], I don’t give a shit. A lot of today’s animated films look and feel the same.