Katterfelto

"Killer Klowns from Outer Space" is one of the few 80s horror comedies that actually seems to have gotten better with age. When I first saw it on late-night cable about ten years ago, I thought it was a fun little throwaway movie, but having recently seen it again on DVD, I was surprised to find that it was better than I had remembered.

Before the Wayans brothers ran the genre into the ground with their ham-fisted (and increasingly boneheaded) "Scary Movie" franchise, horror comedies were usually odd little, low-budget movies that often didn't do well, either because audiences didn't know what to make of them or the producers didn't know how to handle the material. The best horror comedies are those that work on both levels. They're funny, but they also maintain a sense of unease. In this respect, movies like "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," "Young Frankenstein," and even the "Scary Movies" aren't true horror comedies because the rampaging tomatoes, Peter Boyle's monster, and the Wayans' pot-smoking slasher are objects of derision, not fear. Those movies were broad slapstick comedies, the point of which was not to create a sense of menace, but to say "look how ridiculous this is."

"Killer Klowns" is one of those rare horror comedies that actually gets it right. Unlike other films, in which the jokes are often at the expense of the horror elements, the creepiness is never short-changed for the sake of a cheap laugh, though there are plenty of those. One of my favorite scenes occurs when the evil clown-things arrive at a closed amusement park and are confronted by a security guard. The guard—a deadpan Broderick Crawford type—takes one look at the cream pies they're holding, and says sternly, "What're you gonna do with those pies, boys?" Yep, it's a shameless setup, and you can see the payoff coming a mile away, but it's still laugh-out-loud funny.

One of the reasons the movie works is that director Stephen Chiodo has shot it like a straightforward horror film, in which the monsters just happen to be extraterrestrial clowns. The actors are on the same page. In a film like this, it would be easy for the actors to over-arch into high camp or self-parody, but the acting is convincing and surprisingly restrained, especially the two leads, Grant Cramer and John Allen Nelson, both of whom play it completely straight in that 1960s, Steve McQueen sort of way. The only actor who does any scenery-chewing at all is the great John Vernon as a snarky, bombastic cop who is convinced the entire town has gone mad, and who has some of the movie's best lines. (On the phone with an alarmed citizen: "They took your wife away in a balloon! You don't need the police, you need a psychiatrist!") Other reviewers have compared the movie to 'The Blob," which it does resemble in some respects. The movie takes place in a small town with a small police department (only a couple of cops on duty), and the events all unfold over the course of a single evening, which lends an almost real-time immediacy to the action.

I've read that the movie was made on a modest budget, but the production value is high, the clowns are creepy and funny, and the monster effects are quite good. This is a great, fun little movie, that delivers more sheer entertainment value than a lot of the bigger, slicker movies that have been produced in the last couple of decades. If you're ever bored of an evening but don't feel like going out, you could do far worse than to put a bag of Jolly Time in the microwave and spend a guiltless hour-and-a-half chuckling at the sinister intergalactic buffoonery of Chiodo's "Killer Klowns." It's killer. Really.

Just remember: "In space, no one can eat ice cream!"

If there were an Oscar category for most sincere performance in a ridiculous movie (and there should be!), Lester Brown and William Mayer would surely have been nominated for their work in Doris Wishman's "Nude on the Moon," a jaw-dropping sci-fi "nudie cutie" in which Brown and Mayer play a pair of intrepid astronauts who discover the first interplanetary nudist colony.

Brown, a handsome Wishman veteran who also appeared in Doris's "Blaze Starr Goes Wild" (1960), "Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls" (1962), and "Behind the Nudist Curtain" (1964), plays dedicated young scientist Jeff Huntley, who decides to use his $3 million inheritance to finance a trip to the Moon along with mentor and colleague William Mayer (i.e., the "Professor.")

One of the amazing things about the film is the amount of time and care devoted to its exposition and set-up. The extended opening sequence is surprisingly well written, and is easily on par with any sci-fi "B" movie from the early sixties. Brown and Mayer are credible and convincing throughout, which only makes the lunacy (no pun intended) all the more surreal. Their straight-faced, deadpan performances help make the film the giddily preposterous gem that it is.

Top billing is afforded nudie model "Marietta," who appears in the double roles of Brown's secretary, Cathy, and the Moon Queen. She was obviously cast on account of her physical attributes, yet she's actually a decent actress, and her brief scenes as Brown's lovestruck secretary are sincere and believable.

The film opens with a cheesy and inexplicably lengthy shot of the twinkling heavens as might be viewed from the moon, accompanied by Judith J. Kushner's catchy title song, "Moon Dolls," sung by Ralph Young, who would later partner with Belgian singer Tony Sandler to form the famous recording duo of Sandler and Young. (Another interesting footnote: Doc Severinsen of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" not only contributed to the musical score but also appears in the cast list, though I challenge anybody to recognize him as one of the half-naked "moon men.")

One of the great things about this movie is the sunny, Florida-travelogue photography. And there are one or two beautiful and almost breathtakingly unconventional shots of our heroes driving along rain-slicked Miami blacktop under a menacing canopy of thunderheads.

There's also a clever in-joke that occurs whilst our intrepid astronauts drive through Miami Beach on their way to the launch pad. Just as Clint Eastwood walked past a movie marquee advertising the Eastwood-directed "Play Misty for Me" in Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry," Brown and Mayer drive past Miami Beach's Variety Theater, the marquee of which is emblazoned with the title of another Doris Wishman film, "Hideout in the Sun" (in "Nuderama!")

The great drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs listed "Nude on the Moon" as one of his "Sleaziest Movies in the History of the World," however I would respectfully disagree. For sheer sleaze, the film hardly measures up to Wishman's "Bad Girls go to Hell" (1965), "The Amazing Transplant" (1970), or her latest offering, "Satan was a Lady" (2001). In spite of the liberal above-the-waist nudity, "Nude on the Moon" is one of the least sleazy movies I've ever seen. I've seen many films with far fewer bared breasts that were a thousand times sleazier. If anything, this most famous of Wishman's films strikes the viewer not with its venality but its astounding innocence.

One of the most interesting things about the film was that it was shot at the oddball south Florida tourist attraction, Coral Castle, the bizarre history of which is detailed in Florida journalist Eliot Kleinberg's entertaining book "Weird Florida." Coral Castle was also used as a location in James L. Wolcott's "Wild Women of Wonga" (1958) and Herschell Gordon Lewis's obscure fantasy opus, "Jimmy, the Boy Wonder" (1966).

Cult fans will immediately recognize blonde cutie Shelby Livingston in a non-speaking part as one of the fetching "Moon Dolls." Shelby is best remembered for her role as disaffected housewife Bea Miller, who gets her arm hacked off in H.G. Lewis's southern-fried gorefest, "Two Thousand Maniacs."

A delirious mixture of campy humor, harmless nudity and Florida kitsch, "Nude on the Moon" is a priceless cinematic gem from a more innocent time. A silly, wonderful, charming little film.