"What’s the matter, kid, don’t you like clowns?" snarls Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding as he terrorizes a child in Rob Zombie’s grindhouse sequel The Devil’s Rejects. "Ain’t we fuckin’ funny?" It’s this aggressive try-hard energy that characterizes the modern horror clown, and a well that Zombie would return to in his 31, in which a crew of carnival workers is kidnapped and brutalized by homicidal clowns, led by the sadistic Doom-Head (Richard Brake). But there’s nothing funny about any of these greasepaint ghouls.
Ditto Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise in IT, and Terrifier’s Art the Clown. The horror clown’s appeal traditionally lay in the distance between its friendly countenance and the brutalities that generally followed. But lately, there is no contrast.
