When I was about ten, I stayed a friend's house and watched a film called Clownhouse. We got it from the local video shop, Take One Video it was called. It closed down probably about ten years ago and has since been replaced by the One Stop Party Shop. Considering the shop no longer exists, it really is of no benefit to me to be able to remember that our membership number was 9133. Take One Video had a wonderful system where they would let young children rent 15 or 18 certificate films if they could provide a note from their parents saying it was OK. I say "from their parents", although obviously the kids just wrote the notes themselves.
So, we were ten years old. We had a fake note allowing us to watch ANY film in the whole of Take One Video. We chose Clownhouse.
It's about three psychopaths who escape from the local mental institution and disguise themselves as clowns and stalk three teenage brothers who have been left alone for the weekend by their parents. Every slasher movie box is ticked there, well done. One possible improvement would have been to have teenage girls rather than young boys, although I now understand why director Victor Salva chose young male protagonists.
We stayed up very late and turned off all the lights and put the film on. At one particularly scary moment, I I carefully slid off my chair and crawled over behind where my friend was sitting and jumped out just when the spooky music told me too. It was very funny.
The point of all this is to address the myth that clowns are scary. Clowns aren't scary. It's just escaped psychopaths disguised as clowns that are scary. They weren't really clowns, they were just disguised as clowns. Just like Pennywise isn't really a clown, he's just a demonic being in the form of a clown. And John Wayne Gacy wasn't really a clown. He just used to dress up like a clown to befriend young boys he would later sexually abuse, brutally murder and bury under his house.
I quite like the idea of hiring a clown. I'm not sure what I'd do with a clown, but maybe it would be good to have one for a few hours and then just go around doing normal stuff like going to the supermarket or whatever, but with a clown. I don't think I'd want the clown to do much, I find clown acts a bit annoying, but I like the idea of hanging around with a clown. Maybe just sitting in a pub for a couple of hours on a Sunday, reading the paper. Me and my clown.
I like that the Clowns International website tells you who else is online:
The Clowns International magazine is called The Joey.
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