From Art To Pennywise, Ranking The 11 Scariest Clowns In Horror

Why are we so afraid of clowns? If you ask my sister, it's because a clown once popped a balloon in her face. His name was Macaroni, and he used to entertain families at a diner near where we grew up, and she was so afraid of him that if we were eating there, and she realized it was a Tuesday night (aka Family Night), she would burst into tears. And she's not alone. During the craziness of the 2016 election, the country was gripped by creepy-clown fever, with sightings of sinister roadside clowns reported all across America.

Professor Andrew McConnell Stott credits the scary clown to Charles Dickens, who edited the memoirs of a real-life British jester named Grimaldi. Dickens explicitly tied the many tragedies of Grimaldi's life — alcoholism, poverty, chronic pain — to his willingness to debase himself for an audience. Ever since, Stott told Smithsonian Magazine, we've understood the clown as someone whose ability to make others laugh is tied to their own pain. "It becomes impossible to disassociate the character from the actor," Stott said.

When clowns show up in horror, then, we find ourselves caught between their silly appearance and the darkness we imagine coursing underneath the costume. Clowns feel familiar, yet unknowable, capable of doing absolutely anything for a laugh ... evil things, even.

Warning: This article contains many references to clowns. Clowns that stalk, clowns that kill, clowns that decapitate. Clowns that do a whole lot worse. Readers with coulrophobia, proceed at your own risk.

In 2014, a video went viral online that showed a clown emerging from under a child's bed. It was titled "Wrinkles The Clown Caught on CCTV," and the description suggested that the family involved had no idea what the clown was doing in their home. Soon stickers began popping up around Florida, inviting parents to give Wrinkles a call if their children misbehaved. That's right: unlike the other clowns on this list, Wrinkles is real.

Well, he's "real" in the sense that there's a real person who goes around in that mask, maintaining a voicemail box of requests. The mask looks like a hollow-eyed clown has begun to melt, and it's an unsettling visage, to be sure. In the 2019 film "Wrinkles the Clown," however, the whole thing is revealed as performance art. 

The documentary itself isn't too scary, strictly speaking, which is why Wrinkles lands so far down this list. Still, it's a performance-art project that became online folklore, terrifying countless kids who believed that an evil clown was really going to come whip them into shape. "There were thousands and thousands of calls and texts, and I just couldn't miss the chance to dive into this Internet myth and see how people were building up this clown in their heads based on just the tiniest bits of information," director Michael Beach Nichols told /Film. Perhaps seeing the man behind the mask could work as a coulrophobia cure!

Well, I'll be greased and fried! "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" from 1988 remains one of the most purely-fun evil-clown movies. It's about a small town that's visited by a circus-tent-shaped flying saucer, spilling aliens who look like killer clowns onto the streets. They capture people in cotton candy pods, shoot evil popcorn from their guns — "because they're clowns, that's why!" — and make a mean balloon animal ... literally.

For the most part, "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" isn't actually trying to be scary. You're mostly meant to laugh at the bumbling alien weirdos and their zany town-destroying antics. As the film goes on, however, and the killer klowns keep koming like ... well, like clowns piling out of a clown car ... the tone shifts subtly. Sometimes, as when the local police chief gets turned into a living ventriloquist dummy, the movie manages to wring some actual unsettling tension from its concept. It all climaxes inside the circus-like spaceship, featuring some excellent, practical set design and deliciously-grotesque clown puppet effects.

It's all reminiscent of the 1958 version of "The Blob," and like that film, this one's got a killer, catchy theme song to match. You may not be scared by this movie, exactly, but you won't be able to stop singing, "Everybody's running when the circus comes into their towns!"

In the 1924 silent film "He Who Gets Slapped," Lon Chaney plays a clown by the same name. He starts the film as a scientist who uncovers something important about the origins of humanity, but after his work and his beloved are stolen by a rich baron, he falls on hard times and joins a Parisian circus. He Who Gets Slapped steps into the ring every night and endures hundreds of slaps from other clowns, receiving uproarious laughter from the crowd. It's about the fine line between pain and mirth, questioning the very nature of clowns: why, exactly, do we like seeing them get hurt?

Chaney, best known for other silent horror roles like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Phantom of the Opera," was also a makeup artist. The look of He Who Gets Slapped inspired countless other creepy-clown designs in the ensuing century of horror, including several you'll find on this very list, but the original design is still quite effective. It's believable as the face of an actual clown you'd see at the circus, which many horror clowns aren't. but the slashes through his eyes resemble wounds, and the exaggerated lips aren't that far off from The Joker's scars. As the film goes on, and He Who Gets Slapped is driven to madness, Chaney uses the look to excellent, eerie effect.

By the third act of "Krampus," Michael Dougherty's 2015 film, a dysfunctional family has found themselves under assault from the film's titular demon. Santa's satanic rival has unleashed a number of Christmas-themed villains in the house, terrorizing actors like Toni Collette, Adam Scott, and David Koechner with festive fury. Evil gingerbread men attack the kitchen, devilish elves break down the front door, and up in the attic, a jack-in-the-box becomes a grotesque monster called Der Klown, Eater of Children. Yep, that's right: this hideous clown unhinges his jaw and straight-up eats a kid, wiping his mouth daintily with a handkerchief. "Oh, come on!" Adam Scott's character groans in dismay.

Der Klown walks that fine line between scary and funny, an eldritch creature that's nevertheless sorta silly, as all the best clowns are. That's basically Michael Dougherty's approach to horror; he's also the filmmaker behind "Trick 'r Treat," and just like when the character of Sam gets unmasked in that movie, the primary emotion isn't so much fear as it is appreciation for the big swing the director was willing to take. By the time Der Klown crawls through the HVAC vents while the house devolves into Christmassy chaos, all you can do is hold on and enjoy the ride.

"The House on Sorority Row," a low-budget slasher from 1983, is about seven sorority girls who accidentally kill their house mother in a prank gone horribly wrong. As they throw their graduation party anyway, the girls begin to be picked off one by one, and those left alive fear that their house mother wasn't actually dead, and now she's out for revenge. (Spoilers follow for this 40+ year old film.)

In the last few moments of the movie, final girl Katey (Kathryn McNeil) heads to the attic for one last showdown with the killer. Instead of finding her house mother, however, Katey is confronted by a creepy jack-in-the-box that features a green-hatted clown. She places it at the edge of the attic door as bait, hoping to lure the killer up the ladder ... until the matching clown costume hanging on the wall raises its head. The killer isn't their dead house mother after all. Instead, the sorority girls have had a disturbed man named Eric living in their attic, and he saw what they did.

Eric has, by far, the least amount of screen time of any clown on this list. Many of his kills happen off-screen or in shadow, and his costume is relatively tame compared to some of horror's more monstrous clowns. Still, that shot where he finally emerges from the shadows is downright chilling, more than earning him a place in horror-clown history. 

In 1986, Stephen King terrified readers everywhere with "It," a decades-spanning story of an evil clown in Derry, Maine. Pennywise returns to haunt the children of Derry every 27 years, luring them down into the sewers and feeding on their fear. In 2017 and 2019, "It" was adapted into two films, both starring Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. He's excellent, though not quite as good as Tim Curry's portrayal from the early 90s (more on that later).

As any Constant Reader knows, King loves to make wild left turns into cosmic horror, and "It" is no different. Pennywise isn't just a demonic clown; he's an alien, a being from a different dimension, a shapeshifting creature of sorts who's powered by The Deadlights (don't ask). Skarsgård's version of the character leans into this, and it's an impressively physical performance as he contorts his body in ways no one should be able to. Still, while interdimensional, shapeshifting, fearsucking, demon aliens are certainly scary, they feel like more of an abstract horror than certain other clowns on this list.

That makeup, though, is already iconic. Red lines from his lips extend upward through his eyes, almost reminiscent of satanic horns, and his massive forehead seems like an overinflated balloon. This is a creepy clown that people will be mimicking on Halloween for the rest of time, cementing Skarsgård's legacy.

I'll confess up front that the "Terrifier" movies don't really work for me as a whole. They feel a bit too try-hard, mostly an excuse for director and practical effects wizard Damien Leone to show off the most twisted things he can think of making. I'm not one to complain about gratuitous violence in horror (bring it on!), but even I can barely stomach the bit in the first "Terrifier" where Art the Clown saws an upside-down woman in half, crotch-first. It's just mean in a way I don't often enjoy.

Still, the gore effects are undeniably impressive, even if they mean Art is "gross" rather than "scary," exactly. In these movies, you'll find some of the most inventively squelchy, disgustingly rendered kills in all of horror, from the aforementioned saw kill to the setpiece in "Terrifier 2" where Art scalps and skins a woman in bed.

Even I can't deny that Art himself has quickly become a horror icon, and there's no getting around how instantly-iconic that creepy-clown design is. From his tiny sideways tophat, to those perfectly-arched eyebrows, to that hooked nose, Art made a big splash when he debuted in the anthology film "All Hallow's Eve," and his presence in culture is only growing. After the box office success of "Terrifier 2," Leone told /Film that "Terrifier 3" will be bigger and scarier, so here's hoping Art can win me over. 

John Carroll Lynch's character Twisty the Clown, who is one of the best "American Horror Story" villains, is introduced early in the "Freak Show" season. It's a scene reminiscent of something from "Zodiac," which Carroll Lynch also starred in, as Twisty approaches a couple having a picnic. It doesn't go well for them. He's a dirty sort of clown, kind of sweaty, and he seems to be wearing someone else's scalp. He's got slashes through his eyes, as many post-"He Who Gets Slapped" clowns on this list do, and his defining feature is his too-wide, too-toothy grin. Despite the gigantic smile, he seems completely dead behind the eyes. It's horrifying.

As the season progresses, we learn that Twisty loves little kids. He insists that he's keeping them safe, that he's merely protecting them from their parents, but you can imagine how well that goes over with the local townsfolk. He's a man on the edge, and when his prosthetic smile turns out to be concealing a missing jaw, it feels correct.

The character was such a hit that he was brought back for "American Horror Story: Hotel," this time as a version of real-life killer clown John Wayne Gacy. "Hotel" was good — there's no denying Gaga — but it's still his terrifying "Freak Show" appearance that makes Twisty deserving of a place in the cultural memory.

Art is known for his gory kills, but really, we should be celebrating (and fearing) Dummo, from the 2014 film "Clown." Whereas the "Terrifier" movies struggle to balance character and clownery, "Clown" makes sure to map all of the bloody mayhem onto recognizable human beings, and it's all the better for it. 

"Clown" is about a man named Kent (Andy Powers). He's a real estate agent who discovers a clown costume in a trunk at an in-progress home renovation, just as the clown cancels on his son's birthday party. Kent dresses up as Dummo and entertains his kid — but then he realizes he can't take the costume off. It's not a costume at all, but the skin of a creature called The Clöyne, an ancient demon that lived in the mountains of Europe and lured kids to their doom. Over the course of the film, The Clöyne consumes Kent, and each time we see him, he's more bedraggled, his face scabby, his eyes all bloodshot. And he's so, so hungry.

The film was produced by Eli Roth, and as a result, there's an incredible amount of vicious, viscous clown gore, as well as some really inventive kills. It's the human side of Dummo that makes this such a disturbing film, however, almost working as a metaphor for addiction; he's a dad who just wants to do right by his kid, but he can't control himself. All he can do is eat.

When Bill Skarsgård's version of Pennywise transforms from a clown into something more eldritch and sinister, he doesn't necessarily have far to go; that version always seems otherworldly. In the "It" miniseries from 1990, on the other hand, Tim Curry's Pennywise looks more like an actual clown and is therefore scarier. After all, it's Tim Curry! "Clue" and "Rocky Horror Picture Show" star Tim Curry! There's a whimsy here that's missing in the more straightforward adaptations from the 2010s, and the casting of Curry (who had a very specific vision for Pennywise) perfectly rides the line between funny and frightening, both sides of that coin only heightening the other.

Who can forget Curry's Pennywise between the fluttering sheets, his smile turning sour, kicking off the miniseries? Who can forget the way he peers out at Georgie from the sewer drain, eyes watery, giving that feeling of something that's just wrong. Who can forget that image of Curry in the school showers, emerging from the drain? Because he looks so aggressively normal for much of the film, it's all the more disturbing when the mask does slip and he's revealed to be a creature.

"We had a much more prosthetic version of this makeup, which was very scary looking, and beautifully executed, but did too much work by itself," Curry told Fangoria. "And I personally think that what is the most horrifying is the moment of decision behind somebody's eyes when they decide to kill somebody." He's exactly right, and that's why his version is the superior Pennywise.

Sometimes, the things that scare us the most are the simplest. A TV set, glowing with static in an empty room. A tree branch, scratch-scratch-scratching at the window in the wind. A clown doll sitting in a chair at the edge of the bed, watching you sleep. An empty chair where you could've sworn there was just a clown doll. A rustling sound, under your bed ...

As the various versions of "It" understand, fear of clowns is a little childish (no disrespect to coulrophobia-sufferers intended). Lots of scary clowns work overtime to make sure that adults are scared, too, either dialing up the gore or making the makeup design extra-demented. In the case of the clown doll from "Poltergeist," however, all that's required is tapping into a childhood fear of the dark and those long nights where shapes in your bedroom seemed like they might be anything — and they might be something out to get you.

Little Robbie Freeling (Oliver Robins) goes through a lot in "Poltergeist," witnessing the horror that befalls his family when his little sister gets sucked into an alternate, ghostly dimension. At the end of the film, he nestles in his bed, certain the worst is over ... until his clown doll comes to life, wraps its too-long arms around his neck, and drags him under the bed. It's every kid's worst nightmare, and for that reason it's the scariest clown moment in horror history.