Clownhouse ** (1989, Nathan Forrest Winters, Brian McHugh, Sam Rockwell) – Classic Movie Review 6954

Writer-director Victor Salva’s first feature Clownhouse is a creepy 1989 American slasher horror film with a fairly high body count.

Nathan Forrest Winters, Brian McHugh and Sam Rockwell (in his film debut) play Casey and his older brothers Geoffrey and Randy, left alone in a big house when their mother visits relatives, so they decide to visit a local circus.

Unfortunately for them, the local state insane asylum has sent the inmates to the carnival for therapy, but three psychotic mental patients escape and kill three clowns, taking their makeup and costumes. The brothers are then menaced by the three escaped mental patients in clown suits. And Casey has an intense fear of clowns.

Also in the cast are Tree [Michael Jerome West] as Lunatic Cheezo, Bryan Weible as Lunatic Bippo, David C Reinecker as Lunatic Dippo, Timothy Enos as Real Cheezo, Frank Diamanti as Real Bippo, Karl-Heinz Teuber as Real Dippo, Viletta Skillman as Mother, Gloria Belsky as Fortune teller, Erika Young as Storekeeper, Jasper Watts as Storekeeper’s Assistant, Bobby Salem as Booth Barker and Tom Mottram as Ringmaster.

Francis Ford Coppola admired by Salva’s 1986 short film Something in the Basement and gave him $250,000 and George Lucas’s cameras for American Graffiti (1973) to make Clownhouse, partly made at Coppola’s home in Napa Valley. All of the dialogue had to be added in post-production because the very loud noise of the old cameras.

Salva was convicted in 1988 of the sexual abuse of Winters during production and served 15 months of a three-year prison term.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6954

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