Holloween Poll:
Which is more disturbing to you Clowns or Ventriloquist Dummies?
For me it is the dummies. I have met some nice clowns. Ventriloquist Dummies are consistently evil.
I do not like clowns, but I find them more weird than creepy (although a good effort at producing a ‘scary clown’ can be quite chilling). Dummies, however, create the illusion of life in an inanimate object, and that’s a bit offensive to the senses anyway. When they misbehave, the scariest portrayals are when the face remains inanimate and vacant (preferably with the cherub smiles of Charlie McCarthy or Mortimer Snerd) while the doll’s actions are hostile. Sort of suggests a true malevolence working the doll.
That’s like asking would I prefer to drown in a bathtub rather than a hot-tub. They both suck.
At least the dummies are short.
Clowns as actual people acting like freaks are slightly creepier. Neither hold a candle to mimes.
Clowns don’t bother me at all. Thanks to Magic, I’ll always be scared of those ventriloquist dolls!
I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate clowns. At that, I hate them a teeny bit less than when I was a young child, when I would literally scream when confronted with one.
The dummies can be creepy, too, but I don’t have nightmares about them.
…wait, how have I never seen a clown working a ventriloquist’s dummy? Or a ventriloquist’s dummy that’s a clown? You could creep out twice as many people!
I love them both as well as spiders, bats and things going bump in the dark. The only thing I’ve ever found really disturbing are those who vote a <shudder> straight ticket. 
Dummies and devil dolls are what always freakered me out.
I didn’t know people were scared of clowns until hearing people complain about them. I guess I can see why they are creepy.
Yeah, that’s the stuff. The commercial for that movie always got me.
Neither are scary at all. Sadly people are so enamored of their own fear that they’ll used any excuse they can find to be afraid. People would brag about their fear of paper towels just to let others know how cowardly they are, since being afraid is considered such a virtue.
Both are equally disturbing.
Like RealityChuck, I’ve always been puzzled by the whole “clowns are scary” thing. Although I’ve known many people who said they were afraid of clowns as a child, I’ve been to many, many events where clowns and children were present, and I can count the number of children who expressed any fear on the fingers of one finger. And in that one case, the clown made a sudden and boisterous entrance that probably would have scared him (the child) no matter how he (the clown) was dressed or looked.
The sad fact is I associate clowns more with Pennywise (from Stephen King’s “It”) or John Wayne Gacy than any “good” clowns. Has there ever been an evil ventriloquist dummy?
I’ve never understood the whole clowns-are-scary meme, even when artists go out of their way to make them look extra threatening. I do remember being scared by a short movie in which a random guy suddenly turned into a (friendly) clow but I was 4 or 5 perhaps.
On the other hand, some of the movie scenes the scared me the most as well as my most terrifying nightmares all involved dolls, puppets or dummies.
After all clowns are just humans in disguise (yeah, I know that there are several cases of “alien clowns” in fiction but bear with me). Their nature is clear and so is the way you can deal with them. But walking, talking, evil objects that should by definition be inanimate? WTF are they and how do you get rid of them?
Dummies. Not when they’re being used - when the ventriloquist leaves it leaning against a wall, smile plastered on its face, eyes illuminated by a single moonbeam . . .
A better question is “has there ever been a not-evil ventriloquist dummy”. The first dummy I ever saw was on the Twilight Zone and they’ve gone downhill from there.
I was a ventriloquist when I was a child, and my dummy was definitely evil. (Actually ventriloquists refer to their puppets as “figures”, like how cops refer to their badge as a “shield”)