BLAST FROM BARGAIN BINS PAST – Shakes the Clown (1991)

Director: Bobcat Goldtwaith

Recovering alcoholics with coulrophobia, brew yourself some chamomile tea and go rewatch Steel Magnolias. For the rest of us normal folks, Bobcat Goldthwait’s 1991 Shakes the Clown will entice you to down an entire bottle of Wild Turkey in one go and then sucker punch a mime in the head. If you grew up in the 1980’s, your exposure to clowns was based entirely on rather depraved cultural icons: John Wayne Gacy, Stephen King’s original Pennywise, and the menacing satin-clad freak doll that burst forth from under the whiny kid’s bed to strangle him in Poltergeist. Goldthwait’s raucously decrepit underbelly of children’s entertainment is a world where being caught wearing the wrong grease paint on the wrong side of clown town may find one’s garish, synthetic-haired head stomped in by a pair of squeaky-toed size 20 shoes.

Shakes the Clown (Bobcat Goldthwait) is a notoriously temperamental boozehound whose juggling and balloon-animal making skills are on par with his crass verbal jabs and pugnacious physicality. Ever the acrobatic antihero – cue Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” – Shakes nonetheless strives for upward professional mobility. His ultimate dream is to garner the coveted hosting gig of prime time children’s television show, Circus Train. The only thing standing in Shakes’s way – apart from an aversion to sobriety – is fellow “U-Rent-A-Clown” colleague and narcissistic, scrotum-punching, cokehead nemesis, Binky (Tom Kenny).

Much to the chagrin of his love interest, Judy (Julie Brown), a lisping airhead waitress-come-wannabe professional bowler, Shakes fritters away his evenings drowning his sorrows at Palukaville, NY den of harlequin iniquity, “The Twisted Balloon”. Fellow dipsomaniac jesters Dinky (Adam Sandler), Stenchy (Blake Clark) et al guzzle away and lament the “should’ve, would’ve, could’ves” of their sad, unfulfilling careers. Other more effusive compatriots like Female Clown (LaWanda Page – “Aunt Esther” from Sanford and Son) spout forth drunkenly irreverent pronouncements regarding their genitalia. In case you were wondering, hers is “Peanut butter pussy: Brown, smooth, and easy to spread”. Who says magniloquence in art is dead?

Rollin’ through the mean streets of Palukaville in Stenchy’s convertible, banging Carol Brady’s whored-up alter ego side chick (Florence Henderson), and engaging in clown-on-mime gangland fisticuffs just don’t honk Shakes’s horn any longer. He begrudgingly endeavors to board the proverbial wagon, but his attempts at abstinence are thwarted during his next birthday party engagement when he succumbs to his basest desire. Everything spirals out of control. Judy dumps Shakes; his boss, Owen Cheese (Paul Dooley of Sixteen Candles fame, seemingly typecast once again as “father figure to angst-ridden redhead”) fires him; he’s framed for a murder he didn’t commit by redneck, drug dealing Rodeo Clowns (the pantomimist pariah of the Clown Caste System); and, he’s on the run from a couple of inept 1950s-style quasi-noir gumshoes.

Lovelorn, lisping Judy reconciles with Shakes and assists him in finding the perfect temporary hideout within which he may regroup and take cover: A mime instruction school run by flamboyant pedagogue Mime Jerry (Robin Williams) who takes no shit and gets into Shakes’s alabaster-daubed face like a wildly gesticulating R. Lee Ermey portraying Marcel Marceau sans weaponry. Regrettably, Shakes’s imperceptible box-and-wall climbing exercises crash and burn faster than the Hindenburg. Forced back to “The Twisted Balloon”, he is rejoined by besties Dinky and Stenchy who inform Shakes that Judy’s been kidnapped. The motley trio set out in Stenchy’s polka dotted convertible on a mission to rescue Judy, identify and bring to justice the homicidal reprobates, and restore Shakes’s “good” name.

What follows is a prodigious cinematic denouement, punctuated by violent hijinks and pandemonium. A Road House-esque throw-down at the “Broken Saddle” rodeo clown bar; a slow-speed 35mph car chase incorporating shotguns, cream pies, and Porto Pottys; and, a climactic final clown-on-clown confrontation replete with guns, knives, and fists-a-flyin’ on the set of Circus Train before a live studio audience of wide-eyed awestruck 8-year-olds. Suck on that oversized photoplay lolly, Tarantino.

Long after the credits roll, you’ll find yourselves spirited away on a furiously impaired current of Shakespearean depravity. You may even find yourselves contemplating that you possess the capacity to polish off several bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 then deftly execute backflips off a garage roof while simultaneously juggling four bowling pins, and still remain coherent enough to perform an extended bifrontal craniotomy in the midst of a magnitude 7.9 earthquake. Don’t fool yourselves, delusional prestidigitators. You never could juggle four pins – three, max – but definitely not four. Don your Snuggie, crack open a 40-ounce, nuke some nachos; and, “hop on board the fun-a-delic cartoon circus train” that is Shakes the Clown.

by Jacqui O.