Please Enjoy the Shamelessly Awful Trailer for Horror Film Clownado

We’re never going to pretend to be surprised when a film like Clownado is revealed to exist. Shameless hacks will always exist on the B-movie periphery of the legitimate filmmaking space. And as we’ve covered in great depth, SyFy’s Sharknado series has finally come and gone. It only makes sense that some enterprising filmmaker would come along and attempt to weld a different pop culture villain—in this case, “evil clowns”—onto the framework of a dead horse like Sharknado and try to make a few bucks off it. Not everyone can be Andy Muschietti, putting the finishing touches on It: Chapter Two.

But with that said, goddamn is Clownado an abysmal thing to see in action, even within the confines of a trailer. Even more concerning: The fact that 202 human beings apparently came to the collective agreement that they would hand over $18,005 in crowdfunding dollars to make Clownado happen. Is it safe to assume that these are 202 misanthropes who wish ill upon any audience that will have to sit through Clownado?

According to the film’s press materials, Clownado will be out this summer, surely in VOD format. Written and directed by prolific, zero-budget horror director Todd Sheets, it apparently stars beloved 1980s scream queen Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Demons), but good luck spotting her for more than a second in the first trailer embedded below. Or seeing anything else for that matter, given that every scene looks like it was lit by a reading lamp.

“The goal with Clownado was to make a damned good, scary and splatter-filled, nonstop roller coaster ride,” says Sheets in a quote at Bloody Disgusting. “It’s something new, fresh, original and unique but also familiar. Using only practical special makeup effects and old school-styled visual effects, Clownado has the vibe of classic horror movies we love. Think Evil Dead, Dead Alive, Bad Taste and Texas Chainsaw Massacre if Lucio Fulci was directing, all mixed in a swirling storm of insanity.”

Somehow, we suspect that Peter Jackson wouldn’t exactly appreciate all these comparisons … nor would Lucio Fulci enjoy the implication that his work looks like it was shot in a warehouse on cheap video.

Here’s the premise of Clownado, such as it is:

Cursed demonic circus clowns set out on a vengeful massacre using tornadoes. A stripper, Elvis impersonator, truck driver, teen runaway, and a dude get caught in the supernatural battle between femme fatale and the boss clown from hell.

A “dude”? Someone apparently ran out of archetypes halfway into the second sentence of that premise. Check out the full trailer for Clownado below.