When did clowns become creepy? For centuries, they were beloved bringers of laughter and prickers of pomposity. Now the word is synonymous with grinning butchers like John Wayne Gacy, Pennywise, and Art. However, horror-comedy Clown in a Cornfield remembers when the most dangerous weapon they wielded was a seltzer bottle. Writer/director Eli Craig explained, “We definitely play with that dichotomy between the cute clown and the horrible, terrifying clown.”
The giddily gruesome bloodfest, which makes its world premiere at South by Southwest 2025, adapts Adam Cesare’s award-winning smash hit young adult horror novel about teens in the dying town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, under attack by a slasher. However, this isn’t any random masked killer, but instead looks a lot like Frendo, beloved mascot of the now-shuttered Baypen Brand Corn Syrup factory.
Craig is no stranger to bloody comedy in rural communities, as he is probably best known as the twisted mind behind an all-time great horror comedy, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. Yet it didn’t obtain that status overnight. After debuting at SXSW 2010, it took a year and a half for it to get distribution and a theatrical release. “The studio system itself was like, ‘This is not a good film, we will not release it,’” Craig said. While he admits he may have had an easier career if he’d gone “fully dark” with his movies, “I don’t want to. I have a sense of humor, and I can’t avoid it.” He even dubs his particular brand “hopeful horror. [It] has heart and humor, and hopefully some depth and character.”
So who cries for the clown? Craig does, a bit. After all, Frendo’s fall from friend to fiend is an American tragedy, and he sees a similar metaphor in how corn syrup, once the lifeblood of small towns like Kettle Springs, is now a toxic ingredient. Back in the 1930s, he said, “It was a salve for all these illnesses, it was a medicine, it was a sweetener, and it wasn’t seen as bad in any way.”
Clowns have suffered a similar fate. “They were once a part of American culture in a way that was so joyful.” In Clown in a Cornfield, Frendo isn’t just some random carny under greasepaint, but an icon of success. “They celebrate Frendo because it was a one-industry town that ran on corn syrup.”
So, Craig’s biggest task wasn’t making Frendo scary, but reminding modern audiences that people used to genuinely love clowns. That love remains in Kettle Springs because Frendo represents better times to “a place that’s lost its flame a little bit but is hanging on to it, because that’s all it had.” That’s why the town is filled with vintage ads and even a jack-in-the-box decorated with a kinder, gentler clown – “this cute little Frendo that would have been the Frendo from the Thirties.”
In bringing Frendo to the screen, he was particularly inspired by advertising icons like Krinkles the Clown, the Post Sugar Rice Krinkles mascot who transitioned from promoting breakfast treats to postwar children into raw nightmare fuel. For Craig, it’s that very commercialization that made audiences increasingly uneasy. “If you look at the Forties commercials, you can’t believe they were marketing this stuff for kids. There’s clowns tearing their way out of paper and going, ‘Kids, enjoy your own little cereal today!’ and it’s terrifying precisely because it’s meant to be joyful, and it’s meant to make kids wanna buy something.”
Clown in a Cornfield
Narrative Spotlight, World Premiere
Monday 10, 6:15pm, Paramount Theatre
Wednesday 12, 2:30pm, Hyatt Regency
This article appears in March 7 • 2025.
