Terrifying Clown Movies You Never Knew Existed

Kent's just a regular guy, but when his son's birthday party is almost ruined after the clown cancels, Kent puts on an old suit and plays the role himself. Unfortunately, the suit is cursed; not only can he not take it off, but he starts transforming into a demonic clown with an insatiable need to eat the flesh of children. As the clown takes over, all traces of Kent disappear and he becomes a truly terrifying creature, complete with white skin, red nose, and multi-colored hair.

Brought to you by future Spider-Man: Homecoming director Jon Watts, Clown was shot in 2012, but it took until 2016 to find distribution in the U.S. It's a genuinely disturbing film, featuring one of the most terrifyingly inhuman clowns ever to appear onscreen.

Art the Clown is a force for chaos and evil, his human origin (if he has one) unknown. In one segment of the anthology All Hallows' Eve, he's a literal agent of Satan. In another, he's just an image that looms over an assault by aliens. And in the third, he's a mysterious killer obsessed with dismembering his victims. He also appears in the framing sequence of the movie, in which a babysitter working on Halloween finds a videotape of Art's ghoulish deeds in a kid's Trick or Treat bag.

All Hallows' Eve director Damien Leone created Art years before the movie's 2013 release; the monstrous clown, as played by Mike Gianelli, appeared in Leone's short films Terrifier and The 9th Circle, both of which he then incorporated into All Hallow's Eve, with the addition of a third short segment and a framing sequence. Art the Clown is set to return in Leone's next film, a feature-length version of Terrifier.

Prank, an indie film from 2013, comes at the murderous clown idea from a very different direction. In this one, it's the protagonists who dress up like clowns to take revenge on their bullies from high school. As the title implies, it was only ever supposed to be a prank, but when a bully dies, things rapidly spiral out of control. Facing a killer clown is one thing, but how would it feel to have to face the fact that you've inadvertently become one yourself? Director Yiuwing Lam forces the viewer to put themselves in the blood-soaked clown shoes.

Mervo the Marvelous is unique among the clowns on this list—he's not necessarily the killer in Blood Harvest, he's just hanging around, being incredibly creepy, in the town where the killings are happening. (He's also played by Tiny Tim, the falsetto-singing ukulele player best known for performing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips.") Mervo is the older brother of the ex-boyfriend of Jill, the film's protagonist. When everyone she cares about starts dying, Mervo is only one of the possible suspects, although when people are mysteriously dropping dead, being the town eccentric who always wears clown facepaint is not a great look.

Director Bill Rebane approached Tiny Tim about appearing in a horror film after seeing him perform live. Blood Harvest turned out to be more of a footnote than a bright spot in the strange performer's unusual career, but it's certainly weird enough to be worth a look for enthusiasts of the clown horror subgenre.

Pagliacci is an opera about a clown, and the lead in that opera supposedly murdered opera singer Lorraine Sedgewick years ago, which is still giving her now-teenage daughter Kate nightmares about killer clowns. Kate's friend Monica convinces her to help restore the opera house where her mother was killed, but of course they and they're friends are stalked by a murderous figure in the Pagliacci costume, because the basic premise of a slasher movie is that the killer will always come back.

The Clown at Midnight was directed by Jean Pellerin, a filmmaker best known for heavy metal videos, and features Tatyana Ali, better known as Ashley Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

John Wayne Gacy is perhaps the scariest killer clown of all, for the simple reason that he actually existed. A family man and respected community member, Gacy turned out to have the bodies of more than 30 men and boys buried underneath his house, having murdered them usually after first sexually assaulting and sometimes torturing them. He owned a construction company, but also performed as a clown on a volunteer basis. It's the images of Gacy as a clown that have become ubiquitous in discussions of the murders, for the simple fact that clowns are so unnerving.

The biopic Gacy came out in 2003, directed by Clive Saunders and starring Mark Holton. It's not a widely remembered or popular film, but if you're interested in true crime or killer clowns, it's a must-see.

Rob Zombie initially promoted his survival horror feature "31" back in 2014 with an image of a blood-streaked clown face, which prompted some fans to surmise that it was a stand-alone adventure for Sid Haig's Captain Spaulding, the deranged clown from "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects," among other Zombie films. The Captain was absent when "31" made it to theaters in 2016 (via crowdfunding efforts), but a new crop of killer clowns was on hand to bedevil his heroes, a quintet of carnival workers kidnapped by psychopaths in aristocratic drag to fight for their lives in an elaborate funhouse maze called Murder World.

The clowns in "31" are a motley crew of killing machines known as the Heads, and identified largely by words on their bondage and metal-inspired outfits: Death-Head (Torsten Voges), Sex-Head (E.G. Daily), and so on. The Big Bad among the bunch is Richard Brake's gaunt Doom-Head, who issues doom-laded monologues before slaughtering his victims. Brake is a mesmerizing presence in and out of Zombie's features (he was the Night King on "Game of Thrones" and appeared in films like "Barbarian" and "Mandy") and he and his fellow Heads elevate "31" with their wholly committed lunacy whenever Zombie's penchant for '70s horror tropes and pulp dialogue feel stale.

The 2019 documentary "Wrinkles the Clown" opens with grainy video footage that appears to show every child's nightmare: a sleeping girl is visited by a disheveled, black-eyed clown that emerges from under her bed. The intruder is Wrinkles the Clown, a strange figure that surfaced in Florida in 2014, promising to honor parents' requests to frighten misbehaving children for a fee. Stickers advertising Wrinkles' services papered the Sunshine State, and additional videos showed Wrinkles lurking outside homes and scaring kids silly.

Wrinkles briefly became a pop culture sensation, inspiring news coverage, talk show gags, and even serious discussion about the stigma attached to clowns (and parents who would hire one to scare their kids). The truth about Wrinkles, however, proved even weirder. In the film, director Michael Beach Nichols reveals what he believes to be the real Wrinkles: a retiree who donned the grease paint for the money.

But the retiree was revealed to be an actor hired by the "real" Wrinkles, who reportedly created the character and videos as part of a performance art project. A feature in the Naples Daily News opined that the "real" Wrinkles was former clown Cary Longchamps, who had attempted to raise funds for his own Wrinkles documentary – allegations that Longchamps denied. Though Wrinkles sightings have dropped off since 2019, those videos retain the power to creep out viewers of all ages.

You know that you're in for a singular and strange movie experience within the first few minutes of the 1976 supernatural thriller "The Premonition." No sooner have the opening credits unfurled than we are treated with the sight of '70s go-to bad guy Richard Lynch who, as a carnival clown and recent mental hospital patient, performing a stylized dance number to no audible music. To the credit of Lynch, co-writer-director Robert Allen Schnitzer, and co-writer Anthony Mahon, the scene is more haunting and touching than weird, which also sums up "The Premonition."

Lynch's clown, Jude, has teamed with fellow ex-patient Andrea (stage actress Ellen Barber) to kidnap her daughter, who is being raised by the middle-class Bennetts (Sharon Farrell and Edward Bell). Their plan works but the effort leaves Andrea unhinged, prompting the equally troubled Jude to murder her. Meanwhile, Farrell's Sheri experiences disturbing visions that draw her closer to Jude, her daughter, and the location of Andrea's body.

Terrifying is maybe too strong a term for "The Premonition," but it has an undeniably eerie vibe and several setpieces that will raise shivers, especially when Sheri is drawn by her premonitions to a lake, unaware that Andrea's body is there. Lynch's unstable Jude echoes the film's mournful vibe: as historian Stephen Thrower notes in his book "Nightmare USA" Lynch emits an unearthly moan when he loses control, but the sound is more heartbreaking than horrific.

Say what you will about 1980's "Terror on Tour" — that it's cheaply produced, atrociously acted, and in its final moments, flails wildly to make sense from the revelation of the killer's identity — but the film, directed by Grindhouse legend Don Edmonds ("Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS") and written by Alex Rebar (star of "The Incredible Melting Man") attempts to deliver something different within the slasher template. And yes, what it comes up with is a KISS-style rock band in clown makeup that is accused of killing their fans. But you can't say it's a premise that's been done to death.

The band itself — dubbed the Clowns and played by the members of a real Illinois power-pop act called the Names – are both creepy and ridiculous in their frizzy fright wigs and leotards, but their stage act, which features simulated killings a la Alice Cooper's stage act, is startling upon first glimpses. The killer is revealed to be the band's manager (Larry Thomas, "Seinfeld's" Soup Nazi), who delivers an unhinged rant con gusto that reveals his homicidal motivations (mother issues are again the culprit). Thomas later apologized for his performance on the film's IMDB page, but he shouldn't have made the effort: he manages to inject a real, live-wire dose of insanity into the proceedings.

It should go without saying that a horror movie about a murderous, psychopathic clown is going to have scenes of violence in it. That certainly applies to all of the films in this list, but few aside from the "Terrifier" series approach the degree of carnage seen in 2014's "Circus of the Dead." Co-writer, producer, and director Billy "Bloody Bill" Pon — who also tackled vicious killer clowns in his 2010 short "Doll Boy" — spares no quarter in depicting extreme savagery carried out by a group of deranged circus clowns who force a troubled father (Parrish Randall) to play sadistic games in order to save his daughters. The violence here is bloody (courtesy of Marcus Koch's special effects) and brutal — the kill sprees in "The Devil's Rejects" pale in comparison — and dismisses any sense of dark humor associated with clowns carrying out the acts.

The violence is grounded somewhat in the story, which suggests that the cruel actions of clown leader Papa Corn (Bill Oberst Jr., who's also in "Scary or Die") and his minions are some kind of rough justice handed down to unpunished sinners. That idea waxes and wanes throughout the film, though the body count continues to mount; it's also worth noting that some of the violence is sexual in nature, which may make "Circus of the Dead" palatable to only hardcore horror fans.

The killer clown subgenre doesn't allow for a lot of creative freedom – filmmakers are essentially required to feature a clown delivering some variation on slasher film tropes – but the 1989 thriller "Out of the Dark" displays impressive genre cross-pollination within its very weird framing device. At first blush, it plays like sleazy exploitation, focusing on a clown-masked killer named Bobo who's preying on the extreme types that orbit a phone sex service. But the script by J. Greg De Felice and Zane W. Levitt (a prolific indie producer) quickly turns into a funhouse mirror reflection of cheapjack horror, adding layers of dark and weird humor, and even a few legitimately tense moments. The end result may not satisfy those looking for a straight-ahead stalk-and-slash fare, but genre fans that appreciate some quirks will find "Out of the Dark" refreshingly offbeat.

The cast adds immeasurably to the off-kilter aesthetic: Director Michael Schroeder seems to share John Waters' affection for actors with eccentric or larger-than-life personas on and off-screen. The presence of Waters' late muse, Divine, who plays a man in his last film appearance, and her "Polyester" co-star, Tab Hunter, seem to confirm the connection, as do oddball specialists Tracey Walter ("Repo Man") and Bud Cort ("Harold and Maude"), "Eating Raoul" director Paul Bartel, "Valley Girl" co-star Cameron Dye, and Oscar nominee turned cult favorite Karen Black.

Marcus Koch, who handled the grisly special effects for "Circus of the Dead" (among many other indie horror titles), also directed his own clown horror title, "100 Tears," which somehow manages to outdo even the catalog of cruelties he oversaw for Bloody Bill Pon's feature. "100 Tears" has a bare-bones plot: a pair of tabloid reporters (Georgia Chris and Joe Davison, who also wrote the film) pursue the Teardrop Killer (Jack Amos), a former circus clown turned psychopathic killer – that provides just enough framework for Koch to craft wall-to-wall, NC-17 rated splatter sequences.

The swath of carnage cut through the supporting cast by Amos' Grundy the Clown is at times breathtaking in its hideousness: characters are disemboweled, carved into sections, whacked by Grundy's comically huge cleaver in very personal places, and in one scene, a wheelchair-bound girl is decapitated and then pushed down a flight of stairs. The platonic banter between Chris and Davison has some comic bite, and there's a late-inning appearance by Raine Brown as Grundy's daughter that kicks the film into an even crazier territory, but "100 Tears" is focused squarely on the gore, the whole gore, and nothing but the gore. Art the Clown would surely approve.

Extreme haunted house attractions — the ones that seek to terrify or disgust, not entertain — have been the subject of several films, most notably the two "Houses October Built" films and indie titles like "Hell Fest." Most have been forgettable efforts sunk by low budgets and lack of imagination, but 2019's "Haunt" is a satisfying shocker that delivers a wealth of chills as well as an accurate approximation of the extreme haunt experience. It also features a killer clown (Justin Marxen) who leads a handful of similarly masked assailants that turn the haunt's torture chamber and surgical theater sets into real slaughterhouses.

Haunted house films need a central location with plenty of spookshow style, and slasher pics work best when the killers in question are more than just hulking ciphers with power tools. "Haunt" boasts both: the deliberately disorienting production design for the extreme haunt is a haunted house fan's dream (or nightmare), and the clown and his minions have a disturbing origin story that surpasses the usual how-to-make-a-slasher tropes. Written and directed by "Quiet Place" scribes Scott Beck and Bryan Woods and co-produced by Eli Roth, "Haunt" is a creep show that deserves a wider audience.