Seriously deranged stuff with a ridiculous premise of alien clowns setting up camp near a small town, abducting the local inhabitants and turning them into cotton candy and snacks. Any film with a title like this deserves this amount of attention and it's still a stellar cult favorite in the Midnight- and Bad Movie circuits. Most of the films intentionally made as bad movies or camp usually blow it (like most of Troma's disasters), but this is a surprisingly fun and good-natured homage to some silly sci-fi and horror classics of the fifties like FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956), INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) and THE BLOB (1958).
Our heroes are Debbie and Dave, two of your typical annoying eighties' youngsters with bad hairdos and less than impressive acting skills, trying to persuade the locals something's seriously wrong here. "Nobody stores Cotton Candy like this", observes Debbie when they enter the alien Klowns' circus tent. Smart girl, but how to get rid of these cosmic bozos. Now, clowns are plain creepy and evil. We all know that. Although the tone is generally tongue-in-cheek, the film does manage to throw in some genuine scares. The make-up fx are very impressive and when these Klowns are on the rampage, they are a seriously scary bunch. Undeniably a campy affair, with its truly off-the-wall premise, cheezy acting and predictable storyline, the whole film is laden with an irresistible charm, nicely complemented with a catchy theme song by cult punk band The Dickies, so eighties and so dated, it was already seriously out of fashion by the time the film was released. Cheezy fun all the way.
Camera Obscura --- 7/10
Our heroes are Debbie and Dave, two of your typical annoying eighties' youngsters with bad hairdos and less than impressive acting skills, trying to persuade the locals something's seriously wrong here. "Nobody stores Cotton Candy like this", observes Debbie when they enter the alien Klowns' circus tent. Smart girl, but how to get rid of these cosmic bozos. Now, clowns are plain creepy and evil. We all know that. Although the tone is generally tongue-in-cheek, the film does manage to throw in some genuine scares. The make-up fx are very impressive and when these Klowns are on the rampage, they are a seriously scary bunch. Undeniably a campy affair, with its truly off-the-wall premise, cheezy acting and predictable storyline, the whole film is laden with an irresistible charm, nicely complemented with a catchy theme song by cult punk band The Dickies, so eighties and so dated, it was already seriously out of fashion by the time the film was released. Cheezy fun all the way.
Camera Obscura --- 7/10