The Creepiest Clowns In Movies And On TV

Clowns are supposed to be funny, but somehow along the way, we learnt to be scared of them.

There’s a dozen theories why (because while they seem happy, the mask can hide how they really feel, because they’re so manic, because stranger danger), but horror films and TV shows certainly don’t help.

They frequently use psychopathic, murderous clowns to terrify us, and it’s definitely effective.

Check out some of the creepiest here:

It

Starting with the most obvious, Pennywise from Stephen King’s It is about as scary as scary clowns get. He murders children, for one, and he lurks in the sewer, which gives rise to images like this:

Warner Bros.

Try not having nightmares about that…

Played by Tim Curry (and due to be played by Bill Skarsgard in the upcoming remake), Pennywise isn’t actually a clown - he’s an “inter-dimensional predatory life-form” that takes the shape of whatever its victim fears the most, so it can feed on their terror.

Apparently ‘It’ finds a scary clown particularly effective when it comes to petrifying people, so he most commonly appears as Pennywise:

Credit

ClownTown

A low budget horror released earlier this year, ClownTown saw a group of friends get themselves stranded (phoneless) in a small, sleepy town. No problem, right? Find a bar, ask to borrow the phone, call the AA and then sit for a few hours and wait for assistance to arrive. Yes, it’s an inconvenience, but it’s not the end of the world…

Apart from, for these friends, it is. The sleepy town turns out to be filled with psychopaths dressed as clowns that, for whatever reason, want to violently murder them all.

Millman Productions

Check out the trailer here:

Amusement

Amusement was a film made of three separate stories - each detailing the macabre and gruesome ways a psychopath got revenge on three different women who had wronged him in the past - but we’re going to focus on just one.

Tabitha, while babysitting her cousins, notices that her Aunt has a room filled with clown dolls. Now, that’s creepy enough already, but given that one of the clowns is life sized, we’d probably have been running for the door…

Picturehouse Entertainment

Tabitha probably wishes she had run. Later on, while on the phone to her Aunt, she mentions said scary life-sized clown. Her Aunt inevitably replies that she has no idea what Tabitha is talking about, and as it turns out, it’s actually the psychopath - hiding in plain sight.

Tabitha turns around to discover that he’s gone, and pretty much the rest of the segment is a clown-slasher nightmare.

Picturehouse Entertainment

Poltergeist

While it might not be the crux of the film, the clown attack in Poltergeist is pretty much one of its scariest scenes, so we’re including it on the list. Basically, young Robbie’s clown doll comes to life and attacks him. It’s a simple premise, but my god is it effective.

Check it out here:

American Horror Story

There’s a strong argument that Twisty the Clown was misunderstood, but he went around kidnapping kids and murdering people, so we’re still going to consider him as creepy. A former circus clown, Twisty was forced to leave his beloved profession after a group of carnival freaks spread the rumour that he was a paedophile.

He tried to kill himself, but failed, succeeding only in blowing off part of his jaw (hence the terrifying mask).

FX

Once Elsa’s carnival rolled into town with her freaks, Twisty, still cut up about the whole paedophile rumour, decided to “save” the town’s children from them. Unfortunately, his methods were questionable: he murdered kids’ parents and pretty much anyone else who got in his way.

All Hallows’ Eve

Back from trick or treating, a babysitter discovers that one of the kids has got a mysterious VHS tape in his bag. She does pretty much what every single horror film tells you not to do, and watches it. On the tape? Three short films, each showing a horrible clown murdering people in horrific ways.

Ruthless Pictures

Honestly, you’d think she’d just stop watching, but she soldiers until the end of the tape. And that’s when things get really scary…

Have you seen any of these films? Let us know in the comments!