Insane Clown Posse: has hor­ror impact­ed the once noble art of clowning?

A big red nose, a wild wig, and a gap­ing grin stretch­ing from ear to ear. A clown’s unique appear­ance is designed to spread joy and warm the hearts of many, but it isn’t balm to the soul for all of us. Research by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Wales of near­ly 1,000 adult par­tic­i­pants from 64 coun­tries found that more than half were scared of clowns. Los Ange­les-based drag clown, screen­writer, and author Jester Le Roux notes the appear­ance of clowns as a part of their scare fac­tor: ​“While I know some of the sweet­est clowns in the world, the arche­typ­al clown is extreme­ly creepy. I’ve had peo­ple run from me on the street because the pale, exag­ger­at­ed fea­tures of a clown scratch that part of our brain that freaks out at the uncan­ny val­ley.” Sim­i­lar­ly, the clown’s errat­ic nature and abil­i­ty to trans­form from vic­tim to agi­ta­tor in a scene so flu­id­ly makes us feel uneasy in their pres­ence. Hal­lie Gar­cia, who has worked as a par­ty clown and ther­a­peu­tic hos­pi­tal clown, stat­ed: ​“Clowns can be unpre­dictable. Even in a fun set­ting, where every­one is enjoy­ing enter­tain­ment from a clown, you might not know what will hap­pen next – that unpre­dictabil­i­ty can be fright­en­ing and cause fear or anxiety.”

Some of the ear­li­est doc­u­ment­ed jesters were record­ed in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, with the first depic­tion of the evil clown in film trac­ing back to 1924’s He Who Gets Slapped, in which sci­en­tist Paul Beau­mont becomes a clown after patron Baron Reg­nard steals his job and wife. In the 1940s, the image of the evil clown with a white face, gap­ing grin, and mani­a­cal ten­den­cies was pop­u­larised in the DC Comics Bat­man series with The Jok­er, who first hit the big screen in the 1966 ver­sion of The Bat­man played by Cesar Romero before going on to be played by the likes of Jack Nichol­son, Mark Hamill, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix. The 1976 Cana­di­an hor­ror movie The Clown Mur­ders is arguably the first tra­di­tion­al clown hor­ror movie, with four friends dress­ing up like clowns on Hal­loween to kid­nap a businessman’s wife.

The crimes of noto­ri­ous ser­i­al killer John Wayne Gacy have been cit­ed as a cat­a­lyst for the boom of evil clown films that fol­lowed in the 1980s, fol­low­ing his arrest in 1978 for the rape and mur­der of at least 33 young men and boys. He became known as The Killer Clown due to his pre­vi­ous pub­lic per­for­mances as a clown, though he is not thought to have com­mit­ted any offences while in cos­tume. Four years after Gacy’s cap­ture, Pol­ter­geist was released, fea­tur­ing the icon­ic moment young­ster Rob­bie (Oliv­er Rob­bins) is attacked by his pos­sessed clown doll while the remain­ing spir­its kid­nap his sis­ter Car­ol Anne (Heather O’Rourke). In 1988, Killer Klowns from Out­er Space was released, fea­tur­ing aliens dis­guised as clowns who embark on a bloody ram­page in a small Amer­i­can Town – less than a year passed before Clown­house was released, fea­tur­ing escaped men­tal patients pos­ing as cir­cus clowns to wreak hav­oc on a small com­mu­ni­ty. In the wake of Gacy’s hor­ri­fy­ing crimes, the evil clown sub­genre took a more bru­tal, vio­lent turn in which the antag­o­nists kill for pleasure.

The 1990s began with the most icon­ic depic­tion of an evil clown: It, an adap­ta­tion of Stephen King’s 1986 nov­el fea­tur­ing Pen­ny­wise the Danc­ing Clown. Pen­ny­wise – an alien who takes on the form of a clown – tor­ments the town of Der­ry, Maine every 27 years, prey­ing on the town’s chil­dren. King him­self chose a clown as the alien’s pre­ferred iden­ti­ty as he found clowns to be some­thing many were scared of. A 2022 research paper from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds pro­posed there was an increase in cas­es of coul­ro­pho­bia fol­low­ing It’s release, while the World Clown Asso­ci­a­tion (WCA) blamed the orig­i­nal film for ruin­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of clowns ahead of Andrés Muschietti’s 2017 remake. The ​’90s also saw the release of Spawn, Shakes the Clown, and The Clown At Mid­night all fea­tur­ing sadis­tic clown antag­o­nists, while Charles Band’s Killjoy and Cap­tain Spauld­ing in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and its sequel The Devil’s Rejects quick­ly fol­lowed in the noughties.

The evil clown became less humanoid and more mon­strous with super­nat­ur­al and demon­ic ori­gins in the 2010s, with Conor McMahon’s 2012 com­e­dy hor­ror Stitch­es fol­low­ing a clown who comes back from the dead to take revenge on the kids who caused his death. Yet it was Damien Leone’s All Hal­lows’ Eve, released in 2013, that intro­duced the world to a brand new hor­ror leg­end: Art the Clown. The sub­se­quent Ter­ri­fi­er fran­chise – con­tain­ing Ter­ri­fi­er, Ter­ri­fi­er 2, and the upcom­ing Ter­ri­fi­er 3 – expand­ed on Art’s mythol­o­gy and con­tin­ued to devel­op his exag­ger­at­ed per­son­al­i­ty, in which he switch­es from a camp, comedic enti­ty to a hack­ing, slash­ing, gore-cov­ered mon­ster who loves noth­ing more than to muti­late the res­i­dents of Miles County.

But does all this neg­a­tive press come at a cost to real-life clowns? Steven Spielberg’s block­buster Jaws is said to have spawned the tragedy known as ​‘The Jaws effect’, in which pop­u­la­tions of sharks declined by 70% and one in three species are at threat of extinc­tion fol­low­ing the release of the film and the fear it sparked. Stephen Fol­lows found that 20% of clown movies released in the 2000s were hor­ror movies, ris­ing to 45% in the 2010s. At the same time, the BBC report­ed in 2016 that World Clown Asso­ci­a­tion mem­ber­ship num­bers had fall­en by almost a third over the past 10 years, from about 3,500 to 2,500. In the same year, report­ed inci­dents of peo­ple dressed as evil clowns appear­ing in ran­dom pub­lic loca­tions in the Unit­ed States, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, and the Unit­ed King­dom saw more bad press levied toward clowns.

How­ev­er, Bob Bowk­er, aka Bib­bledy Bob, of Clowns Inter­na­tion­al says the exis­tence of hor­ror films has not neg­a­tive­ly affect­ed clowns. ​“The tar­get audi­ence for an aver­age clown doing kids’ par­ties is under 10 years old, and the audi­ence who go to see films such as It are clear­ly over 18,” he said. Sim­i­lar­ly, Le Roux added: ​“Clowns have adapt­ed, incor­po­rat­ing the tools learned in oth­er areas of their lives. The fear of clowns has been a nec­es­sary cat­a­lyst for many clowns, push­ing the art form into new realms as we all apply prin­ci­ples of clown to our own art and objectives.”

Rather than destroy­ing the art of clown­ing, their depic­tion in hor­ror has expand­ed the art form as scare attrac­tions bring in thou­sands of patrons look­ing for a thrill. Pon­go Joe, a sea­soned haunt actor, tells us: ​“Clown hor­ror films have had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on our cul­ture, espe­cial­ly in how a haunt­ed attrac­tion is shaped. Clowns have become so pop­u­lar at haunt­ed hous­es because they res­onate with peo­ple in dif­fer­ent ways. Clowns def­i­nite­ly scare peo­ple, but they also make you laugh. A clown is a catch-all bit of enter­tain­ment and fits right in with the live atmos­phere of a haunt­ed attrac­tion. Clowns con­jure feel­ings of being ter­ri­fied, amused and mystified.”

So even with the rise of killer clowns on the big screen, clown­ing has remained a val­ued and revered form of artistry, with both its tra­di­tion­al form and hor­ror stylings able to coex­ist and thrive. And pop­u­lar­i­ty is at an all-time high with the hype sur­round­ing Ter­ri­fi­er 3’s release and thou­sands of scare attrac­tions record­ed world­wide, while cur­rent pro­fes­sion­al clown num­bers report­ed­ly stand at an esti­mat­ed 50,000 to 100,000 (per Vault​.com). As Le Roux sum­maris­es: ​“Even if peo­ple fear clowns, they can’t help but be fas­ci­nat­ed with the way we defy human con­ven­tion and decorum.”