There’s an old saying that goes, “all the world loves a clown,” but writer/director Jaysen Buterin has decided to add his own little caveat to it: “no one ever said it had to be alive.” From the award-winning Mad Ones Films comes Kill Giggles, a Hitchcockian horror/thriller inspired by Buterin’s own coulrophobia (extreme fear and/or hatred of clowns) and for a special Halloween treat they’ve teamed up with iHorror.com for an exclusive online world premiere of the official theatrical trailer on October 31st!
“iHorror.com has always been an amazing resource, not only for keep up on the latest news and events in indie and mainstream horror, but to also get a glimpse of what’s coming next,” says Buterin. “We knew we wanted to do something special with Kill Giggles for the Halloween holiday, and the film fanatics over at iHorror were just crazy and awesome enough to let us!”
Kill Giggles stars talented North Carolina local actor of stage and screen Michael Ray Williams (Knob Goblins, Echoes, Between Hell and a Hard Place) as unhinged clown killer Tommy dos Santos, alongside indie scream queen Ellie Church (High on the Hog, Harvest Lake, The Bad Man) as Eden di Prima, someone with her own clown skeletons in the closet. The pair were supported by genre legends Vernon Wells (Commando, Mad Max, Weird Science), Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) and Judith O’Dea (Night of the Living Dead) as well as Patrick G. Keenan and Nereida Velazquez.
Buterin wanted to turn the tables on a timeless terror trope by telling a story of a serial killer of clowns, as opposed to a mass-murdering maniac who just dresses up like one, so that the clowns were finally the victims instead. This allowed him to make a movie where he could face up to his own fears and explore the way his mind twists normal, kind, human clowns into terrifying man-shaped monsters. “It’s ill-advised, self-administered psychotherapy at its best, or worst… depending on how you look at. It’s kind of like a dream come true and my worst nightmare all at the same time,” he says.
Supported by stars and creative talent from all over the world, the cast and crew came together over a three-week period to shoot the film. “What we’ve done here is truly make movie magic, shooting 148 scenes over a period of 20 days in 36 different locations with a 20-25-person crew,” says Buterin. “From a ghost mall to a haunted hospital to beautiful theatres and downtown settings, there are some absolutely amazing sequences and death scenes coming up we hope people will be talking about for some time!”
SYNOPSIS:Tommy dos Santos wasn’t born a psychopath, nor was he made into a sociopath. He’s something entirely new, and he’s walking his own path – a path that will run red with the blood of the foulest most fiendishly frightening creatures ever conceived by man… CLOWNS! No longer the madmen and monsters that nightmares are made of, now it’s the clowns who are the victims, running for their lives from a killer who won’t stop until every single one of them is dead.
