How genre cin­e­ma fuelled our col­lec­tive fear of killer clowns

This year Hal­loween has come ear­ly, and scary clowns are in the news. It start­ed in August, when unsub­stan­ti­at­ed reports cir­cu­lat­ed in Greenville, South Car­oli­na of two clowns try­ing to lure chil­dren into an aban­doned house. Then some­one going by the name ​‘Flo­mo Klown’ dec­o­rat­ed their Face­book page with grotesque pic­tures of blood-soaked clowns and began post­ing ​‘ter­ror­is­tic’ (albeit vague) threats against Flo­ma­ton, Alaba­ma. Sev­er­al local schools were locked down, the FBI became involved, and a 22-year-old local woman was arrested.

In oth­er states, peo­ple have been arrest­ed for wear­ing clown suits, or con­verse­ly for mak­ing up sto­ries about oth­ers wear­ing clown suits. One well-known burg­er chain has decid­ed to reduce the pub­lic appear­ances of its icon­ic clown mas­cot out of sen­si­tiv­i­ty to people’s creep­ing anx­i­eties. Bear in mind that the US has a long tra­di­tion of well-armed indi­vid­u­als and poss­es fill­ing the air with men­ace and mad­ness – but the moment a clown is added to the mix, ​“well then,” to quote the jester-like Jok­er from The Dark Knight, ​“every­one los­es their minds.”

Now the phe­nom­e­non has crossed the Atlantic. Pho­tos and videos of sin­is­ter cos­tumed malin­ger­ers in var­i­ous loca­tions up and down the UK are appear­ing online. The tabloid press is full of what they have swift­ly dubbed the ​‘killer clown’ craze (even though no one has actu­al­ly been killed). And ear­li­er this week, I received a for­mal let­ter from my children’s head­mistress declar­ing that, ​“the school, amongst oth­er sec­ondary schools, has been tar­get­ed by the ​‘Scary Clown Craze’ that seems to be sweep­ing the coun­try,” and promis­ing ​“emer­gency pro­ce­dures in place,” in response to some posts on Insta­gram appar­ent­ly mod­elled on Flo­mo Klown.

All this is part copy­cat prank­ing, part mass hys­te­ria, but then, clowns have always inspired a spe­cial blend of amuse­ment and unease. It is to do with their thick make­up, their out­landish cloth­ing, their lurid wigs, masks and fixed smiles (or frowns) – all designed for enter­tain­ment and per­for­mance, but also patent­ly a grotesque dis­guise, con­ceal­ing from view any real emo­tion or intent, and mark­ing clowns as inhab­it­ing their own uncan­ny val­ley. It is also con­nect­ed to the fact that clowns are adult strangers with spe­cial access – and attrac­tion – to children.

There is, how­ev­er, some­thing new to this lat­est out­break of coul­ro­pho­bia. It is not just that many of the clown sight­ings have been filmed and uploaded online as audio­vi­su­al clips, but also that their iconog­ra­phy (the blood­ied cos­tumes, the blad­ed weapons) is direct­ly inspired by genre cin­e­ma. ​‘Killer clown’ was a phrase first used by the media in the 1970s to describe John Wayne Gacy, who made reg­u­lar pub­lic appear­ances in full out­fit and make­up as ​‘Pogo’ while in pri­vate rap­ing and mur­der­ing over 30 young males. But it was also pop­u­larised in Stephen Chiodo’s 1988 film Killer Klowns from Out­er Space, which offered a pre­scient view of today’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious: for right now we too are imag­in­ing our­selves as a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from big-nosed invaders in fright wigs.

The cur­rent focus on schools in lock­down and chil­dren at risk from preda­to­ry Pier­rots feeds into a par­tic­u­lar­ly cin­e­mat­ic image of the clown as kid­dy both­er­er. There is Cap­tain Spauld­ing (Sid Haig) in Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects ter­ror­is­ing a young boy with a threat to ​“come back here and check on you and your mom­ma and if you ain’t got a rea­son why you hate clowns, I’m gonna kill your whole fuck­ing fam­i­ly!” (Zombie’s new film, 31, also fea­tured a pair of rape-hap­py chain­saw-wield­ing clowns.) Then there’s Kent (Andy Pow­ers) in Jon Watts’ Clown, a lov­ing father whose emerg­ing pae­dophilic urges are fig­ured as his trans­for­ma­tion into a mon­strous cos­tumed other.

Of course, the grand­dad­dy of all these is Tim Curry’s Pen­ny­wise from the TV adap­ta­tion of Stephen King’s 1986 nov­el ​‘It’. Pen­ny­wise is a demon­ic enti­ty that preys upon chil­dren in the small US com­mu­ni­ty of Der­ry. While capa­ble of shapeshift­ing, Pen­ny­wise set­tles on the form of a clown – and its face fea­tured promi­nent­ly on the orig­i­nal cov­er pho­to of Flo­mo Klown’s Face­book page. King him­self, recog­nis­ing the link between his own imag­i­na­tive works and the present-day creepy clown phe­nom­e­non, has weighed in on Twit­ter with an explic­it call for calm and per­spec­tive.

Mean­while, the deci­sion to reimag­ine It for the big screen (with Andrés Mama Muschi­et­ti at the helm and Bill Skars­gård play­ing Pen­ny­wise) – a deci­sion ini­tial­ly met with the usu­al skep­ti­cism that sur­rounds announce­ments of remakes – has now nev­er seemed so time­ly. By 2017, how­ev­er, when the film is sched­uled for release, the cur­rent clown craze will prob­a­bly be only the dimmest of trau­mat­ic child­hood memories.