At this stage in the game, a clown is more likely to elicit terror than laughter. Entities like Stephen King's Pennywise, Rob Zombie's Captain Spaulding, and the real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy have seen to that. Yet there is one clown who continues to fly under the radar. A cult classic clown, if you will. And to think, with the exception of Gacy, he may be the most terrifying one of all. His name is Wrinkles The Clown, and he's set to be the center of an upcoming documentary from Magnolia Pictures.
The story goes as follows. In 2014, video footage of Wrinkles enacting pure nightmare fuel hit the internet, prompting speculation about the nature of his very existence. It was eventually learned that the visually disturbing Wrinkles was the imagining of a Florida Man(!), who found himself becoming the world's first Clown Mercenary. The premise was simple: for a modest fee, Wrinkles would down his garb and scare the shit out of your chosen target. Naturally, it didn't take long for Wrinkles to explode on social media, equal-parts creepypasta and genuine service-for-hire.
Now, filmmaker Michael Beach Nichols has been granted access to the man behind the mask, and come October 4th, the mystery will open up to sate our morbid curiosity. "Nobody would hire me when I was just a regular clown," he reflects, in the trailer's closing moments. "I just thought, hey, maybe I'll give it a little edge.