Editorials
‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game’ Preview: A Fresh Twist on the Multiplayer Horror Formula
“Everyone knows who Jason is. Everyone can point out The Predator. And, of course, everyone’s familiar with the Ghostbusters!”
So says Jared Gerritzen, Chief Creative Officer at IllFonic, as we sit down for a quick interview with him on Discord. He’s certainly an authoritative voice on this matter too, given that he’s worked on adaptations for each of those cherished properties over the years (in the form of Friday the 13th: The Game, Predator: Hunting Grounds and Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed), giving them all the asymmetrical multiplayer treatment that his development studio has got down to a fine art by now.
He continues: “And that means that people have pre-conceived notions of what those franchises should be. I guess what I’m saying is that they come with the burden of expectation, as you’ve got to [appease] fans of every individual movie or comic-book, regardless of their varying degrees of quality.”
Yet Gerritzen seems less wary of any such purism when it comes to IllFonic’s latest release. Probably because it’s based on an IP that’s nowhere near as venerated in the pop-culture zeitgeist.
From Enduring Blockbusters to a Cult Movie
There’s no two ways about it; Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a textbook example of a cult classic. While it might be yet another hallmark of the 1980s, it’s one that’s far less recognizable to your Average Joe cinemagoer than Ghostbusters and it’s effectively been left untouched by the Hollywood system for almost four decades.
If you’ve not seen it, the film is a B-movie pastiche about a group of ancient astronauts, who inadvertently inspired our planet’s tradition of jesters and fools, running amok in a Gremlins-style rampage. Their goal being to encase hapless earthlings in cotton candy cocoons, so that they can later drink their gelatinized fluids as a means of sustenance. It’s every bit as daft as it sounds.
With that said, apart from the fact that its titular ETs have glowing red weak spots for noses, there’s nothing about Killer Klowns that makes it feel like a particularly obvious candidate for a video game revival in the year 2024. The demented brainchild of the Chiodo Brothers — a trio of special effects renaissance men with shared expertise in claymation, animatronics, creature design, stop motion and more — it’s a modestly budgeted affair that hardly set the box office ablaze, didn’t really penetrate the mainstream consciousness, and never got a sequel (in an era when that was practically an industry mandate). And yet here we are.
For his part, Gerritzen is cognizant of the brand’s relatively niche appeal, conceding: “It’s one of those things where some goofy kids had this absurd idea almost 40 years ago, turned it into a movie and then it just kind of [disappeared] into the ether. But over the decades people keep on rediscovering it and there is a real passionate fanbase out there! You’d be surprised by the number of people who have approached us at expos like PAX, proudly displaying their tattoos of Jumbo or getting starstruck [when they] meet the Chiodos over at our booth.
“And for those who don’t know Killer Klowns, we hope that our game will serve as a gateway into that wonderfully weird world. That they’ll play it and seek out this completely insane film that they’ll fall in love with too.”
On that note, even if it’s not as legendary as Predator or Ghostbusters, IllFonic is still adapting Killer Klowns from Outer Space with the same reverence they held for those other, arguably more prestigious, licenses. Regarding that original film as a kind of holy text, they have been careful to honor its spirit, its tone, its mythos and its iconography in every single aspect of their new title.
So if you are a card-carrying Klownhead, there will be ample opportunity here for you to do the Rick Dalton fingerpoint. Indeed, over the course of just a 30-minute preview session, we struggled to count how many Crescent Cove landmarks we encountered (Hello Big Top Burger!), how many cute Easter Eggs we managed to spot, and how many of our favourite moments we got to experience first-hand. Whether we were avoiding detection from a balloon-animal tracker as a human, or performing a gravity-defying vertical jump as one of the aliens in order to zip around the map; it all felt so authentic.
Rebalancing the Asymmetrical Multiplayer Genre
Speaking of which, this is an IllFonic production (co-developed with Teravision Games) and so it’s naturally an online asymmetrical take on the material. Borrowing quite a bit from Friday the 13th, it’s got the usual match structure that you’ve come to expect from this sort of thing.
Those in the role of would-be victims must scavenge the environment for various items that will unlock escape routes — such as gasoline to fuel a boat, spark plugs to power various electronics, or keycards to enter shelters — while their opponents have the considerably more straightforward task of just murdering everyone in sight.
To be fair, Klown gameplay is a little bit more nuanced than the mindless slaughter F13 veterans might be accustomed to, as you’ll also need to keep your eyes peeled for valuable cotton candy cocoons. These resources can be hooked up to generators — scattered all over the environment — in order to accelerate the apocalyptic countdown that triggers the ends of the match, as well as to spawn in lackeys that will alert you to your quarry’s location. Think of it a bit like how feeding Grandpa works in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Not to mention, you’ll also have a suite of fun gadgets and abilities at your disposal too, like the aforementioned super jump, popcorn bazookas and oversized mallets for caving in skulls.
Somewhat unusually for this genre though, humans can give just as good as they get. From firearms to melee weapons and throwables, they have the capacity for self-defense and can take the fight directly to their interstellar tormentors, provided that they coordinate as team of course.
In fact, some well-placed buckshot or a powerful axe-swing might be enough to take one of the Klowns out of commission, meaning that you can actually rack up some kills as a survivor for once. As someone who has been hoisted upon one-too-many hooks in Dead by Daylight, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s pretty damn cathartic.
Recalling how this refreshing twist came about, Gerritzen told us: “It’s a delicate balance. We’ve made four of these asymmetrical horror games now and think we have a pretty strong understanding of what does and doesn’t work.
“The key thing is that humans have to feel vulnerable, otherwise playing as a Klown isn’t satisfying whatsoever. But we also know, from experience, that you can go too far in the other direction. If you make the killers overpowered in these games, then you leave room for annoying scenarios [wherein] somebody spawns, turns the wrong corner and is immediately killed through no fault of their own. That really sucks! It’s one of the reasons we decided to let the humans have a real fighting chance here.”
Evening the playing field further, Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game boldly eschews tradition by allowing its survivors to respawn mere moments after death (provided that a resurrection machine has been activated) and they even have a chance of coming back with the gear intact, so long as they manage to ace a quick minigame. As a result, the main concern for human players is not that they could kick the bucket too early, but rather that they might not be able to escape before the timer hits zero. That’s ultimately how you fail here, and it creates an entirely different dynamic. One that encourages you to take more risks, instead of simply cowering in hiding places while your partners do all the heavy lifting.
Should you get away, then you are also incentivized to stick around as a spectator by participating in a short arcadey minigame, through which you can gift your leftover items to any teammates who are still in jeopardy, helping them out in their hour of need. Again, it’s a neat, innovative way of balancing the scales.
Trading Blood & Guts for Confetti & Glitter
Because of that (much-appreciated) second wind mechanic, we actually managed to emerge victorious on our very first round as a survivor. And this was despite the fact that we fell victim to a “Klownality” at the 10-minute mark.
Which brings us to those wacky finisher animations.
Named in a way that blatantly nods towards their Mortal Kombat counterparts, these are uninterruptable kills that Klowns can perform should they manage to down their prey. Unlike fatalities, though, they’re not excessive displays of bloodshed and viscera, so much as they are silly little visual gags that befit the source material. Rather than ripping out spinal columns or bisecting people with saw blades then, you’re far likelier to be pelting them with an entire patisserie’s worth of custard pies.
Describing the rationale behind this, Gerritzen explained: “When we’ve been adapting movies in the past, we’ve often had the privilege of getting to work with the original creators. We were lucky enough to meet Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd when doing Ghostbusters, for instance. Yet that was very much on an ad-hoc basis. They weren’t deeply involved with the project.
“Whereas I now text the Chiodos almost weekly to ask them questions and [solicit] their opinion on what we’re doing. It’s been really, really cool becoming friends with them. They came out to Boston for PAX and they hung out for the entire weekend in the booth, doing lots of interviews. They’re just super cool dudes. They even started gaming now because of their involvement with this!
“They’re also really different from people like Tom Savini [who collaborated with IllFonic on Friday the 13th: The Game]. You know, Savini always tries to figure out how to make the most brutal kills imaginable and he tries to make the audience members look away from the screen if he can.
“The Chiodos have a very different [ethos]. They’re masters of their own, far more tongue-in-cheek, style of practical effects. If you look at their work with Critters, Team America or Marcel the Shell, they’re absolutely not going for hardcore ultraviolence. They’re just not gore guys.”
Which is a characterization of the brothers that definitely chimes with their onscreen output. After all, anyone who has seen the PG-13 rated Killer Klowns will attest that it’s pretty tame viewing (even for the most coulrophobic of individuals), sharing more in common with something like Mars Attacks! than it does intense horrors like Stephen King’s It or the Terrifier films. Indeed, it never gets much worse than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it decapitation and its most gruesome moments are generally softened with a tinge of black comedy too (like when the aliens drink blood through an extravagant silly straw!) So, it makes sense that the Chiodos would want the game adaptation to strike a similarly playful tone.
“That was actually the subject of one of my first calls with them,” Gerritzen adds. “We presented them with the original Klownalities and their response was: ‘This is very cool, but it’s all blood.’ They wanted us to rein that in and injected this idea of replacing most of the gory [giblets] with confetti, glitter and bubbles. Because that’s what’s Killer Klowns is! It really changed our way of thinking.
“We realized that we were still in that Friday the 13th and Predator mindset — where gore is a big deal — and that had to shake out of it. I’m so happy that we did that because what we ended up with is far truer to [the spirit of that] original film.”
Based on the short snippet of Killer Klowns from Outer Space that we’ve played thus far, that’s very much our impression too. It’s a game that absolutely understands its heritage, captures its creator’s unique sense of humour, and seems to be quite well-polished to boot. Whether or not it will be the Greatest Show on Earth, it’s still a circus that we can’t wait to experience in full.
Co-developed by Teravision Games and IllFonic, Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The Game will be released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on Thursday the 6th June.
When the news of Roger Corman’s passing was announced, the online film community immediately responded with a flood of tributes to a legend. Many began with the multitude of careers he helped launch, the profound influence he had on independent cinema, and even the cameos he made in the films of Corman school “graduates.”
Tending to land further down his list of achievements and influences a bit is his work as a director, which is admittedly a more complicated legacy. Yes, Corman made some bad movies, no one is disputing that, but he also made some great ones. If he was only responsible for making the Poe films from 1960’s The Fall of the House of Usher to 1964’s The Tomb of Ligeia, he would be worthy of praise as a terrific filmmaker. But several more should be added to the list including A Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which despite very limited resources redefined the horror comedy for a generation. The Intruder (1962) is one of the earliest and most daring films about race relations in America and a legitimate masterwork. The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967) combine experimental and narrative filmmaking in innovative and highly influential ways and also led directly to the making of Easy Rider (1969).
Finally, X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) is one of the most intelligent, well crafted, and entertaining science fiction films of its own or any era.
Officially titled X, with “The Man with the X-Ray Eyes” only appearing in the promotional materials, the film arose from a need for variety while making the now-iconic Poe Cyle. Corman put it this way in his indispensable autobiography How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime:
“If I had spent the entire first half of the 1960s doing nothing but those Poe films on dimly let gothic interior sets, I might well have ended up as nutty as Roderick Usher. Whether it was a conscious motive or not, I avoided any such possibilities by varying the look and themes of the other films I made during the Poe cycle—The Intruder, for example—and traveling to some out-of-the-way places to shoot them.”
Some of these films, in addition to Corman’s masterpiece The Intruder (1962), included Atlas and Creature from the Haunted Sea in 1961, The Young Racers (1963), The Secret Invasion (1964), and of course X, which was originally brought to him (as was often the case) only as a title from one of his bosses, James H. Nicholson. Corman and writer Ray Russell batted the idea presented in the title around for a couple days before coming to this idea also described in Corman’s book:
“He’s a scientist deliberately trying to develop X-Ray or expanded vision. The X-Ray vision should progress deeper and deeper until at the end there is a mystical, religious experience of seeing to the center of the universe, or the equivalent of God.”
While Corman worked on other projects, Russell and Robert Dillon wrote the script, which has a surprising profundity rarely found in low-budget science fiction films of the era. Like The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) before it and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) after, X grapples with nothing less than humanity’s miniscule place in an endless cosmos. These films also posit that, despite our infinitesimal nature, we still matter.
In some senses, X plays out like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. Considering Corman’s work with regular contributors to that show Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont during this era, this makes a lot of sense. It begins with establishing the conceit of the film—X-ray vision discovered by a well-meaning research scientist Dr. James Xavier, played by Academy Award Winner Ray Milland. The concept is then developed in ways that are innocuous, fun, or helpful to humanity or himself. As the effect of the eyedrops that expand his vision cumulate, Xavier is able to see into his patients’ bodies and see where surgeries should be performed, for example. He is also able to see through people’s clothes at a late-evening party and eventually cheat at blackjack in Las Vegas. Finally, the film takes its conceit to its extreme, but logical, conclusion—he keeps seeing further and further until he sees an ever-watching eye at the center of the universe—and builds to a shock ending. And like many of the best episodes of The Twilight Zone, X is spiritual, existential, and expansive while remaining grounded in way that speaks to our humanity.
Two sections of the film in particular underscore these qualities. The first begins after Xavier escapes from his medical research facility after being threatened with a malpractice suit. He hides out as a carnival sideshow attraction under the eye of a huckster named Crane, brilliantly played by classic insult comedian Don Rickles in one of his earliest dramatic roles. At first, a blindfolded Xavier reads audience comments off cards, which he can see because of his enhanced vision. Corman regulars Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze appear as hecklers in this scene. He soon leaves the carnival and places himself into further exile, but Crane brings people to him who are infirmed or in pain and seeking diagnosis. Crane then collects their two bucks after Xavier shares his insights. This all acts as a kind of comment on the tent revivalists who hustled the desperate out of their meager earnings with the promise of healing. Now in the modern era, it is still effective as these kinds of charlatans have only changed venues from canvas tents to megachurches and nationwide television.
The other sequence comes right at the end. After speeding his way out of Las Vegas under suspicion of cheating at cards, Xavier gets in a car accident and wanders out into the Nevada desert. He finds his way to a tent revival and is asked by the preacher, “do you wish to be saved?” He responds, “No, I’ve come to tell you what I see.” He speaks of seeing great darknesses and lights and an eye at the center of the universe that sees us all. The preacher tells him that he sees “sin and the devil,” and calls for him to literally follow the scripture that says, “if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.” Xavier’s hands fly to his face, and the last moment of the film is a freeze frame of his empty, bloody eye sockets.
At this point, Xavier is seeing the unfathomable secrets of the universe. Taken in a spiritual sense, he is the first living human to see the face of God since Adam before being exiled from the Garden of Eden. But neither the scientific community nor the spiritual one can accept him. The scientific community sees him as a pariah, one who has meddled in a kind of witchcraft because he has advanced further and faster than they have been able to. The spiritual leader believes he has seen evil because he cannot fathom a person seeing God when he, a man of God, is unable to do so himself. The one man who can supply answers to the eternal questions about humanity’s place in the universe, questions asked by science and religion alike, is rendered impotent by both simply because they are unable to see. The myopia of both camps is the greater tragedy of X. Xavier himself perhaps finally has relief, but the rest of humanity will continue to live in darkness, a blindness that is not physical but the result of a lack of knowledge that Xavier alone could provide. In other words, he could help them see, or to use religious terminology, give sight to the blind. Rumor has it that a line was cut from the final film in which Xavier, after plucking out his eyes, cries out “I can still see!” A horrifying line to be sure, but it also would have kept the tragedy personal. In the final version, the tragedy is cosmic.
I usually try to keep myself out of the articles in this column, but allow me to break convention if I may. Roger Corman’s death affected me in ways that I did not expect. With his advanced age I knew the news would come down sooner rather than later, but maybe a part of me expected him to outlive us all. Corman’s legacy loomed large, but he never seemed to believe too much of his own press. I’ve heard many stories over the years of his gentle, even retiring demeanor, his ability to have tea and conversation with volunteers at conventions, his reaching out to people he liked and respected when they felt alone in the world. I never had the pleasure of meeting or speaking with him myself, but I did get to speak with his daughter Catherine and sneak in a few questions about her father. It was fascinating to hear about the kind of man he was, the things that interested him, and the community he created in his home and studio.
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes was the first Corman movie I ever heard of, though I saw it for the first time many years later. When my family first got a VCR back in the mid-80s, my parents quickly learned about my obsession with horror movies, though at the time I was too afraid to actually see most of them. One day while browsing the horror section at the gigantic, pre-Blockbuster video store we had a membership with, my dad said, “Oo! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes! That’s a great one.” For whatever reason, we didn’t pick the video up that day, but I never forgot that title. Then I read about it in Stephen King’s Danse Macabre and, though he spoils the entire movie in that book (which is fine, it’s not really that kind of movie) I was enthralled and became a bit obsessed with seeing it. Of course, by then it was a lot harder to track down the film, so I only had King’s plot description, a few scattered details from my dad’s memory, and my imagination to go by. When I finally did see it, the film did not disappoint. Sure, the special effects, clothes, music, and styles are pretty dated, but the themes and messages of the film are endlessly fascinating and relevant.
It may seem obvious, but X is a film about seeing and all the different meanings of that word. There are those things seen by the physical eye but there is so much more to it than that limited meaning. It asks questions of what we see with imagination, the spiritual, and intellectual eye. It explores what society does to people who can truly see. Some are deified while others are condemned and ostracized. And then there are those questions of if there is something out there that sees us. Is it a force of good or evil or indifference? Is there anything at all out there that looks for us as much as we look for it? It may just be a silly little low-budget science fiction film, but somehow X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes has the power to provoke thought and imagination in a way few films can. It may even have the power to help us see in ways we could only imagine.
In Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Pretorius, played by the inimitable Ernest Thesiger, raises his glass and proposes a toast to Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein—“to a new world of Gods and Monsters.” I invite you to join me in exploring this world, focusing on horror films from the dawn of the Universal Monster movies in 1931 to the collapse of the studio system and the rise of the new Hollywood rebels in the late 1960’s. With this period as our focus, and occasional ventures beyond, we will explore this magnificent world of classic horror. So, I raise my glass to you and invite you to join me in the toast.
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