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My younger son wrote a screenplay and entered it in a local contest last year and won. Here is what he posted about the casting call for the zombie horde. "I have written a short film, a satire of 1950s
educational movies and zombie films called "How To
Survive A Zombie Attack". It is being produced by the
Andy Miller and the Short Ends project and it is being
directed by Joey Carrillo of Lone Banana Productions." .
Most of the extras were his family(myself included) and friends.

Lon Chaney, Sr.: "There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight."

An extreme fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia.

It has been said that the character of a clown depends upon where it is seen. A clown at a circus could be funny in this context, but that same clown lurking in an alley way or outside your window late at night is decidedly less funny.

The image of the evil clown appears to have gained notoriety to the extent of becoming a cliché.

Some major examples of "evil clown" imagery are to be found in movies and television:

In the Beatles' animated film Yellow Submarine, large clowns serve as artillery for the Blue Meanies.
Pennywise in Stephen King's 1986 novel It, and the made-for-TV movie based on the book.
The Clowns are a sadistic rival motorcycle gang in Katsuhiro Ôtomo's 1988 anime Akira, and Ôtomo's original manga that he based it on.
The sci fi movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988).
The Joker who is the greatest enemy of Batman, is a murderously insane supervillain with a disturbing clown-like appearance. Appeared in Batman #1 (1940).
The clown doll in the first of the Poltergeist movies, which becomes possessed by a ghost and attempts to strangle a young boy.
In "Treehouse of Horror", a parody of Trilogy of Terror, Homer Simpson purchased a talking Krusty the Klown doll which attempted to kill him because a switch in the toy's back was set to "evil."
Zombie clowns who drowned in a circus train accident return to eat the living in Dead Clowns, a low-budget horror movie made in the US and released in the UK in 2003.
The Chief Clown in the 1988 Doctor Who serial The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is a high-voiced maniac assassin with an army of robot clowns. He drove a hearse. Sinister clown imagery had previously appeared in the programme in The Celestial Toymaker and The Deadly Assassin.
The Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Thaw" features a mocking clown (Michael McKean) who presides over a Poe-influenced virtual reality kingdom. He feeds on the fear of those wired into the VR, and is determined to keep them under his power.
Coco Demento, one of the students in ¡Mucha Lucha!, has the appearance of an evil clown, and was even shown as a bad guy in his first appearance. Afterwards, though, he is not considered a villain by the rest of the cast, in spite of his practical jokes. It was later revealed that he once hung out with some really evil clowns whom he is now afraid of.
Mr. Giggles, Mischief and Stumpy were evil Clowns in the TimeSplitters series.
In Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, the residents of Halloween Town include the so-called "clown with the tear-away face," a hideous, seemingly undead clown.
In the movie Scary Movie 2, an evil clown attacked Ray, the gay black man. This is another parody of both the evil toy clown scene in Poltergeist and Pennywise from It.
A clown doll in the first Ghoulies movie is possessed by Ghoulie in the end.
In the movie Saw and its sequels, the antagonist sends a clown-like doll on a bicycle to deliver macabre messages to his victims.
The character of Captain Spaulding in the Rob Zombie directed films House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects.
In the Victor Salva film Clownhouse, lunatics murder three circus clowns: Cheezo, Bippo, and Dippo, and assume their identities while terrorizing children.
The movies Xtro, Killjoy, S.I.C.K. Serial Insane Clown Killer, Fear of Clowns and Mr. Jingles all feature evil clowns.
In the movie Batman Returns, the Penguin's henchmen are a street gang known as the Red Triangle, formerly a traveling circus act. The gang has a circus theme, most members being clowns.
In the Simpson's episode, Lisa's First Word, Homer makes Bart a clown-themed bed, but due to the shoddy work, looks evil. In Bart's nightmare, it says "If you should die before you wake..." and chuckles insanely. The next day, baby Bart is curled up on the couch, chanting "Can't sleep. Clown will eat me."
On an episode of Family Guy (Petergeist), Chris Griffin is cowering in his bed and says "I wish that scary clown at the end of my bed would go away!" The scene cuts to the end of his bed where Ronald McDonald is casually sitting in a chair and draws a pair of golden arches in mid-air. Chris screams.
In Doctor Who, the Doctor's companion Ace is established as having a fear of clowns.
In Life on Mars, Sam Tyler is haunted by the Test Pattern Girl and her clown.

and finally,

Canio, main character in Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci, a Commedia Dell'Arte performer who, after discovering his wife Nedda's infidelity, murders both her and her lover Silvio while on stage as Pagliaccio (clown.)

Because of the popularity of the "Horror Hosts" thread, I thought I'd link you
to a couple of the free horror films available that are introduced (and in some
cases interrupted) by ONLINE horror hosts.

Here's the perennial "Godzilla, King Of The Monsters," presented as part of Google Video's
BOO! series of horror films, hosted by Dr. Head:

view link

And here's Mario Bava's classic "Black Sunday," hosted by Count Gore DeVol on his show "Creature Feature":

view link

...Mystery Science Theater Style!

Here is the 1957 fright flick that first made Michael Landon a heartthrob. Landon plays a troubled teen being "treated" by a psychiatrist whose idea of helping is to regress him to a savage pre-human stage of evolution (acne was nothing compared to the sudden outbursts of unsightly excess facial hair!) Hosted, hilariously, by the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3,000.

1 hr., 32 minutes
view link

A good follow up to Nosferatu is Shadow of a Vampire with Malkovitch and Dafoe as Murneau and the Monster, respectively.

Growing up in Philly in the 60s I watched Wee Willie Weber, an ex-deejay (I think) who hosted late afternoon cartoons and scifi shows, mostly of Japanese origin, like Ultra Man, Marine Boy, Eighth Man, Astro Boy, etc. Most of them were animated -- except for Ultra Man, a half-hour live action show about a human member of the Space Patrol who could transform himself into a giant alien named Ultra Man to defend the earth from very Godzilla-like monsters. Basically the action sequences were guys wrestling in rubber suits. For suspense the series relied on the fact that Ultra Man could only survive in the earth's atmosphere for a few minutes, so he had to win the fight in one round. A light bulb on his chest would start to blink as he began to weaken. Once in a while Wee Willie would also show an old movie serial, one twenty minute installment at a time for however many days -- including the old Flash Gordon with Buster Crabbe, which I recall as a special treat.

Later, in the early 70s, the local host was Dr. Shock, who showed horror movies and basically had himself made up to look like The Phantom Of The Opera. Like most horror hosts, he played it for laughs and did schticks with rubber chickens and such.

At some point in the 80s Philly had a buxom host like Elvira whose name was Stella. Her real name was Karen Scioli, and I had met her before her reign as Stella began; we had mutual acqauintances. At the time I met her she was in a cabaret musical comedy act with another girl called Processed American Cheese, which was way funnier than her work as Stella. I didn't watch her show much because I was too busy at the time editing a weekly newspaper -- but I remember being present at a particularly embarrassing personal appearance she did at a local restaurant to promote their new chicken special, "Stella's Breasts." I think it horrified her more than the movies she hosted!

Who was your local horror host?

Peter Graves plays a scientist, killed in a plane crash, who's resurrected by pop-eyed aliens from the planet Astron Delta who want him to act as a spy, paving the way for their planned invasion of Earth. It's every bit as silly as it sounds. Features a little-known cameo by J. Edgar Hoover in drag as an airline stewardess (OK, that last part was a lie to make it sound more interesting!) First released in 1954 -- the year before yours truly was born.

71 minutes

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This is the classic 1932 cult film by Todd Browning, director of the Bela Lugosi "Dracula."
Banned for many years, the movie depicts the mistreatment of circus freaks -- and their eventual harrowing revenge. The film was controversial for, among other things, its use of actual "extraordinary people," but it portrayed them with great empathy. It's been described -- accurately -- as "one of the most nightmarish and COMPASSIONATE films ever made."

view link

Complete film

1 hr., 4 mins

Here it is. The first movie version of the Dracula story, made by director F.W. Murnau in Germany in 1922. Bram Stoker's widow wouldn't let Murnau use the name "Dracula," so the vampire here is named "Count Orlock" -- but the story will be familiar to anyone who's read the novel, though it ends differently. Max Shreck's makeup remains the creepiest and most often imitated visual representation of a master vampire, and has influenced "Salem's Lot" and many other modern vampire films.

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Full length silent film with musical score

1 hr., 24 mins

Full Length Movie


1958-1959
Plot Summary for
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)
"Can your heart stand the shocking facts about Graverobbers from Outer Space?" That's the question on the lips of the narrator of this tale about flying saucers, zombies and cardboard tombstones. A pair of aliens, angered by the "stupid minds" of planet Earth, set up shop in a California cemetery. Their plan: to animate an army of the dead to march on the capitals of the world. (The fact that they have only managed to resurrect three zombies to date has not discouraged them.) An intrepid airline pilot living near the cemetery must rescue his wife from this low-budget terror. "Can you prove it *didn't* happen?"