Post by Lazario on Jul 5, 2006 9:08:21 GMT -5
I know I just made 2 of these sort of posts in a very short time. But I don't plan on doing it many more times in the future.
But I love this film beyond words, so I think the words I choose to try to explain my love of it should really do this misunderstood film some good.
It would be really cliched and expect for me to just go on about how or how much I disagree with this - so I'll just get right to explaining why I love it:
I was a kid when I saw it. And I have friends that I've hooked onto this film. In fact, my entire next door neighbor's (my best friend for a very long time) household became hooked on this movie, and subsequently, everyone they knew who saw it. Because it's a film that appeals to the kid in all of us.
A kid who could be bored by a film that tries to go deep into the science fiction angle of a film's plot, makes up a bunch of phony terminology and explainations for what the alternate lifeforms are. Thankfully, this film doesn't do that. Instead, it gives us the alien lifeforms in really scary costumes and make-up (I'm not kidding - this movie gave me nightmares for many years, but in the end, I'm delighted by that), and puts them right in our small towns (with the one town they invaded). Giving us something very strange to fear - these clowns of course being cannibalistic, evil, malicious aliens in the form of clowns (which still terrify many small children), and puts the human population of this town in a new food chain-mode that they are not prepared for.
I think the greatest terror is one related to the time it takes you to understand - these clowns aren't just scary, they're killers and they want to eat / suck the person's blood. But as the filmmakers themselves have said (and I've suspected all along), the characters don't know these clowns are more dangerous than normal clowns until it's too late to do anything about it - until the girl's house is already surrounded by them, or the townspeople could warn others, or get away from the one they're looking at holding the cotton-candy gun. So suffice it to say, one of the things that I and the people I've seen this with have responded to, was the fear of the unknown and distortions of what we've been told are actually safe and harmless things.
And, entertaining? I happen to think this film is very entertaining - whether or not you've ever been to a circus or carnival in your life. First of all - the colors. This film really goes out of it's way to candy-coat everything associated with these clowns. Then, the actual craft that went into making these sets rises it above what people think would have been scarier or more impressive. This film is low budget, but watching it - I couldn't (and still can't) tell that for a minute. This film has such attention to detail, visually, that I think even Tim Burton would be proud. For instance, the hall of Door Frames (not the "Another door?" tunnel, the one after the poll into the black room) is very reminiscent of some of Burton's production design in Beetlejuice. And is there a single soul here that didn't think Beetlejuice was genius, visually?
The props and sets in this film are so visually appealing, it's almost like a playground. Like Toys R Us, if the actual building was made out of the brightly-colored and lavishly decorated boxes their inventory of toys came in. I don't understand for 1 second how Justin could call this boring. I mean, doesn't anyone remember what it was like to be a kid? In addition to still liking shiny things, we're still allowed to like colors, aren't we? Again, on the visual front of this movie - this movie was made by the Chiodo brothers, who were some of the most popular claymation / animation effects-artists in the business in the '80s and also created the famous "Large Marge" creature for Pee Wee's Big Adventure. And they also worked on Weird Al's UHF.
Then, the music and sound design for the film is also just as ambitious as the film's look. The clowns don't have a complete language of their own (again, I appreciate that greatly), but they do have their own words and the sound of their voices are very cool. Sort of a distortion on little animals on children's cartoons, things not meant to talk to the characters onscreen. Which does make them sound like a cross between 80's aliens (Weird Al has a song, "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" that have some alien voices that these clowns sound a lot like) and little monsters from the Critters / Gremlins subgenre of horror, sci-fi comedy, horror-comedy.
As for the acting - as I've said before, this film was meant to evoke the feel of 1950's sci-fi movies. And this is one of the staples of those movies. You find this same brand of overacting in films as beloved as The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It didn't hurt those films and it doesn't hurt this one. It's meant to be a part of it. Almost a single necessary comment on the fact that this subject matter is complete fiction. It doesn't take itself seriously, like other more self-important sci-fi films. And that's one of the things that makes this film so endearing. It exists and thrives on it's own merits of production. Almost every frame of this movie is cinematic joy.
Yet, it also has a great sense of doom and darkness. The scene with Dave, the clown, and Puppet-Moony sends a chill up my spine every single time I see this movie. The movie knows to stage a lot of their colorful murderous exploits in darkness, with shadows and fog stretching themselves onto the clowns and giving them an almost mythic sense of dread and making their existence almost dreamlike. Certainly, this is a perfect nightmare-type movie. It really goes after things people remember from their childhood and uses them to creep us out. Making them malevolent and disturbing and creepy. And creating an entire atmosphere of things representing danger that once represented childhood and safety, and playfulness.
Maybe you have to have a bit of kid in you to understand these things.
(I hope this wasn't too long to be considered a Discussion post)
But I love this film beyond words, so I think the words I choose to try to explain my love of it should really do this misunderstood film some good.
However, the key weakness, the exhaust port to its Death Star, if you will, is that the film isn't actually that entertaining.
It would be really cliched and expect for me to just go on about how or how much I disagree with this - so I'll just get right to explaining why I love it:
I was a kid when I saw it. And I have friends that I've hooked onto this film. In fact, my entire next door neighbor's (my best friend for a very long time) household became hooked on this movie, and subsequently, everyone they knew who saw it. Because it's a film that appeals to the kid in all of us.
A kid who could be bored by a film that tries to go deep into the science fiction angle of a film's plot, makes up a bunch of phony terminology and explainations for what the alternate lifeforms are. Thankfully, this film doesn't do that. Instead, it gives us the alien lifeforms in really scary costumes and make-up (I'm not kidding - this movie gave me nightmares for many years, but in the end, I'm delighted by that), and puts them right in our small towns (with the one town they invaded). Giving us something very strange to fear - these clowns of course being cannibalistic, evil, malicious aliens in the form of clowns (which still terrify many small children), and puts the human population of this town in a new food chain-mode that they are not prepared for.
I think the greatest terror is one related to the time it takes you to understand - these clowns aren't just scary, they're killers and they want to eat / suck the person's blood. But as the filmmakers themselves have said (and I've suspected all along), the characters don't know these clowns are more dangerous than normal clowns until it's too late to do anything about it - until the girl's house is already surrounded by them, or the townspeople could warn others, or get away from the one they're looking at holding the cotton-candy gun. So suffice it to say, one of the things that I and the people I've seen this with have responded to, was the fear of the unknown and distortions of what we've been told are actually safe and harmless things.
And, entertaining? I happen to think this film is very entertaining - whether or not you've ever been to a circus or carnival in your life. First of all - the colors. This film really goes out of it's way to candy-coat everything associated with these clowns. Then, the actual craft that went into making these sets rises it above what people think would have been scarier or more impressive. This film is low budget, but watching it - I couldn't (and still can't) tell that for a minute. This film has such attention to detail, visually, that I think even Tim Burton would be proud. For instance, the hall of Door Frames (not the "Another door?" tunnel, the one after the poll into the black room) is very reminiscent of some of Burton's production design in Beetlejuice. And is there a single soul here that didn't think Beetlejuice was genius, visually?
The props and sets in this film are so visually appealing, it's almost like a playground. Like Toys R Us, if the actual building was made out of the brightly-colored and lavishly decorated boxes their inventory of toys came in. I don't understand for 1 second how Justin could call this boring. I mean, doesn't anyone remember what it was like to be a kid? In addition to still liking shiny things, we're still allowed to like colors, aren't we? Again, on the visual front of this movie - this movie was made by the Chiodo brothers, who were some of the most popular claymation / animation effects-artists in the business in the '80s and also created the famous "Large Marge" creature for Pee Wee's Big Adventure. And they also worked on Weird Al's UHF.
Then, the music and sound design for the film is also just as ambitious as the film's look. The clowns don't have a complete language of their own (again, I appreciate that greatly), but they do have their own words and the sound of their voices are very cool. Sort of a distortion on little animals on children's cartoons, things not meant to talk to the characters onscreen. Which does make them sound like a cross between 80's aliens (Weird Al has a song, "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" that have some alien voices that these clowns sound a lot like) and little monsters from the Critters / Gremlins subgenre of horror, sci-fi comedy, horror-comedy.
As for the acting - as I've said before, this film was meant to evoke the feel of 1950's sci-fi movies. And this is one of the staples of those movies. You find this same brand of overacting in films as beloved as The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It didn't hurt those films and it doesn't hurt this one. It's meant to be a part of it. Almost a single necessary comment on the fact that this subject matter is complete fiction. It doesn't take itself seriously, like other more self-important sci-fi films. And that's one of the things that makes this film so endearing. It exists and thrives on it's own merits of production. Almost every frame of this movie is cinematic joy.
Yet, it also has a great sense of doom and darkness. The scene with Dave, the clown, and Puppet-Moony sends a chill up my spine every single time I see this movie. The movie knows to stage a lot of their colorful murderous exploits in darkness, with shadows and fog stretching themselves onto the clowns and giving them an almost mythic sense of dread and making their existence almost dreamlike. Certainly, this is a perfect nightmare-type movie. It really goes after things people remember from their childhood and uses them to creep us out. Making them malevolent and disturbing and creepy. And creating an entire atmosphere of things representing danger that once represented childhood and safety, and playfulness.
Maybe you have to have a bit of kid in you to understand these things.
(I hope this wasn't too long to be considered a Discussion post)
