20 best horror films and franchises featuring scary clowns

After a sorority prank results in the shooting death of a house mother, the sisters attempt to cover up their crime, only to be picked off one by one. We won’t give away the identity of the assailant, who wears a red and green clown costume, even though The House on Sorority Row came out in 1982, and that spoiler is now more than 40 years old!

There are a lot of memorable scary scenes in the classic 1982 horror film Poltergeist —not surprising, considering it was conceived of and co-written by Steven Spielberg and helmed by Tobe Hooper, the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke) talking to a staticky television set disturbed many viewers (“They’re heeeere!”), as did a tree attacking Robbie (Oliver Robins) and Dr. Marty Casey (Martin Casella) tearing his face apart, but the scene that repeatedly gets voted as one of the scariest in horror history is when the creepy clown doll comes to life and begins choking Robbie, dragging him under the bed.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space features a whole fleet of freaky-looking clowns, but the movie is much more lighthearted than most of the other entries in this list. Yes, Slim, Shorty, Spike, and the other clowns kill plenty of people — true to the film’s title — but they do it in a comical way by shooting their victims with a cotton candy gun, among other wacky weapons. The film didn’t find a lot of fans among critics upon its initial release, but the B-movie has since become a certified cult classic for its extravagant visuals and loads of ‘80s cheese. 

It is the gold standard of scary clown movies. The 1986 Stephen King novel of the same name was first adapted in 1990 as part of a television miniseries starring Tim Curry as the sinister Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise terrorized the youngsters of the fictional Derry, Maine, in the first part of the miniseries and returned in the second part, when the kids grew into adults played by Harry Anderson and John Ritter, among others. Although it initially aired as a miniseries, it is now generally viewed as a single 187-minute movie.

Are the Killjoy movies (six and counting) good? Not in terms of quality. They’re filled with bad acting that does nothing to improve the lame writing, cheap special effects, and overdependence on sex and stereotypical characters. But similar to a Troma movie, the cheesiness and borderline offensiveness are actually amusing, and — shockingly — the franchise seems to get slightly better with every new film. And although Killjoy will produce more eye rolling than eye covering, the eponymous clown is still quite freaky-looking.

Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses focused on a group of friends who were kidnapped and tortured by a sadistic family during a cross-country road trip in the ‘70s, similar to classic horror films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The patriarch of the Firefly family is Captain Spaulding, a cursing clown who runs a roadside gas station/haunted house/chicken joint that helps lure unsuspecting victims to their deaths. Veteran actor Sid Haig played Captain Spaulding in the original film of the Firefly trilogy, as well as the 2005 sequel The Devil’s Rejects and the 2019 finale 3 from Hell, which was the final film of Haig’s career.

100 Tears is an extremely low-budget horror film, but it still manages to be an absolute splatterfest from start to finish...and a surprisingly delightful one. The budget was only $75,000, and from the looks of it, the filmmakers spent it all on the extremely gory practical special effects that center on an evil clown who lops off heads, crushes skulls, and stabs, slices, and dismembers his lengthy list of victims. The plot is simplistic, and the acting is amateurish — although Joe Davison’s script delivers some hearty laughs — but that’s just fine, as the primary point of this 2007 slasher was clearly to employ as much blood as the limited budget would allow.

James Wan’s critically panned but darkly amusing 2007 horror film Dead Silence is full of ventriloquist dummies, but one of the most memorable (aside from the guy on the cover) is a creepy clown doll. In a particularly off-putting scene, the clown whispers a secret to Jamie (Ryan Kwanten), and while he leans in to hear, an enormous slimy tongue emerges from the clown’s mouth and licks Jamie’s face.

As we’ve stated several times, we’re big on brainless B-movie slashers from the 1980s. But we’re also fans of more modern films created in the same vein, like 2007’s Drive-Thru , which is about a group of teens who are stalked by a fast food mascot named Horny the Clown. Sound terrible? It is, but it’s also quite enjoyable, with a surprising number of laughs in the script, solid plot pacing, plenty of graphic gore, and a cast consisting of Leighton Meester ( Gossip Girl), Nicholas D’Agosto (Heroes), and Melora Hardin (The Office).

The Cabin in the Woods isn’t a clown-centric film, but “clowns” are listed among the monsters, maniacs, and other murderous beings on a giant whiteboard of possible foes to terrorize our unsuspecting teenagers. And when all hell breaks loose during the purge sequence, we see a clown with a large curved knife attacking some of the facility employees.

Stitches (Ross Noble) didn’t want to be a scary clown. He also didn’t want to fall face-first on a kitchen knife after some rambunctious kids tied his shoelaces together at a birthday party. But after this deadly prank, the ghost of Stitches returns for revenge on all the pint-sized party attendees, who are now teenagers. Stitches can be truly scary to those with coulrophobia, but most people — especially those with dark senses of humor — will find the film more funny than frightening.

Technically, the graphic, gore-filled Terrifier franchise consists of just two feature-length films: 2016’s Terrifier and 2022’s Terrifier 2 (the latter of which was shown in theaters that offered vomit bags). However, the insanely sadistic character of Art the Clown — who brutally and mercilessly slashes, stabs, and dismembers his victims — also appears in the 2013 horror anthology film All Hallow’s Eve. Damien Leone directed all three movies, but the actor who played Art changed from Mike Giannelli in the first film to David Howard Thornton in the next two. 

A well-meaning father (Andy Powers) dons a clown suit after his son’s birthday party entertainer cancels but soon discovers he can’t remove the clown’s costume or makeup as they begin fusing with his body and urging him to kill and devour children. This twisted plot combines buckets of blood and gore in the disturbing but amusing horror thriller Clown from director Jon Watts, screenwriter Christopher Ford, and producer Eli Roth.

In the favorably reviewed 2014 horror film The Houses October Built, a group of friends travel across the U.S. visiting various extreme haunted houses. But things get uncomfortable when they are followed from one attraction to another by a pair of actors, including a scary-looking clown. When the friends are eventually abducted, they struggle to determine what’s real and what’s part of the haunted house experience. A 2017 sequel, The Houses October Built 2, picks up where the last film left off.

We love it when a horror-comedy delivers on both of those promises. The Funhouse Massacre certainly does double duty. Speaking of double duty, there are actually two clowns among the half-dozen serial killers that take over a haunted maze attraction after escaping from an asylum: “Rocco the Clown,” who is a former wrestler, and “Dollface,” a.k.a “The Stitch Face Killer,” who got her name because she sews her victims’ faces shut. The iconic Robert Englund also has a role in this 2015 film from Ben Begley and director Andy Palmer.

Hell House LLC is a real documentary about a mysterious accident at an Upstate New York haunted house attraction that claimed the lives of more than a dozen people, according to a title slide, at least. It’s actually a fictional found-footage horror film written and directed by Stephen Cognetti and widely praised for its unique premise, quality acting, and subtle but substantial scares. One of the freakiest running bits involves a trio of clowns, supposedly harmless mannequins, that are seen lurking in the background and inexplicably appearing in various places throughout the house…including when the most menacing clown is suddenly seen at the bottom of a staircase while the protagonists are sleeping. The franchise released two sequels, including clowns, in 2018 and 2019.

Quality Christmas horror movies are hard to come by, so we were delighted to add 2015’s Krampus to our list after the very first watch. Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, and Allison Tolman headline the cast of this comedic film that centers on a young boy (Emjay Anthony) whose attempts to maintain his family’s holiday traditions are complicated by the arrival of the titular horned beast from European folklore. Although Krampus gets top billing, a secondary antagonist is a demonic jack-in-the-box called Der Klown, who can consume children. Ho ho ho.

There’s nothing particularly original about Rob Zombie’s 2016 horror film 31, which places some cross-country travelers in a series of mazes packed with murderers while rich people place wagers on their fates. However, fans of creepy clowns will love that the killers are a costumed cadre consisting of psychotic clowns with names like “Schizo-Head,” “Psycho-Head,” “Death-Head,” and “Doom-Head.”

It was adapted again as a two-movie franchise remake in 2017 and 2019, this time with Bill Skarsgård playing Pennywise. Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, and Sophia Lillis were among the actors who played the members of Losers Club as kids in It , with James McAvoy, Bill Hader, and Jessica Chastain playing them as adults in  It Chapter Two. The big-budget productions cost a combined $120 million to make but were well received and brought in nearly $1.2 billion at the box office.

At first, the clown in Haunt is just the creepy, silent figure in a mask who makes a group of teenage friends sign a waiver before entering a notoriously intense haunted house. But as the darkly suspenseful 2019 film (which was written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods) continues to make the audience guess which aspects of the extreme haunt are part of the experience and which are all too real, the clown emerges as a major player — right up until the brutal film’s satisfying final scene.