Nearly 30 years ago, on television. ISTR having the impression that it had been made in Italy.
Lots of night-time crowd scenes with people milling about in a Carnival-like parade (so maybe it was in Rio). There was a high-ranking police official involved, and he was making his way among the revelers, some of whom were wearing those huge papier-mâché heads that lets the audience know that this is taking place at a street party in a city where they don’t speak English. The police official was trying to chase down the (a) bad guy, whom he had reason to believe was wearing one of those huge heads.
There were quite a few cuts to different scenes, and it all looked quite disjointed to me. The bad guys were apparently space aliens who looked like clowns, and they would abduct humans and store them in juice pouches in their space ship, which may have been disguised as a warehouse. One memorable image I saw was that of a clown sneaking down to the juice-person-pouch locker, and sticking a huge Crazy Straw through the side of the pouch and drinking the blood from the victim inside (my sense was he was being sneaky because they weren’t supposed to start feeding off the victims until they had returned to their home planet – buncha commies).
At the end, the police official, thinking he has tracked down his target, shoots him, right there in the middle of the parade, in front of everybody. And it turns out he just killed an innocent reveler. As he’s being led away by cops who aren’t apparently rogue officers to face his consequences, the now-disgraced police official in voice-over, informs us that he is now doing time in some prison for the killing. But his story is completely TRUE! You all just watched it!!! To help him clear his name, please write to him at this prison (the address of the prison comes up on the screen), and he will give you the information you need to open an investigation of your own.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Killer Klowns from Outer Space, because I can’t find a plot synopsis for that which has the cop going to jail and making his appeal to the audience. OTOH, it was nearly thirty years ago, and I could be conflating KKfOS with another movie.
I’ll get my copy of KKFOS out tonight when I get home because I don’t remember it ending like this, but I haven’t watched it since the DVD was released.
It sounds to me like you’re conflating two films, but if so I’m not sure what the 2nd film is.
Definitely 2 different movies there. The part with the clowns is from Killer Klowns From Outer Space, one of the cheesiest horror movies out there. It’s currently on Netflix.
Not sure on the scenes from that other movie though.
Well, IIRC, I was a little tired while watching it. My FIL had just passed away (four months after our wedding), and we had gotten on a MAC flight from Hickam AFB to Edwards AFB. My brother had picked us up and brought us to his house, and we were sitting in his living room waiting for something before going to my parents’ house, but damned if I can remember what.
So I can accept that I conflated two movies in my OP.
Hey, it happens. I once fell asleep watching a movie where Jack Ryan was getting his family attacked by an Irish terrorist, and woke up watching a movie where Jack Ryan was fighting some druglord in a South American jungle, I was confused about the movie for a while, but then realized I’d fallen asleep during Patriot Games and woke up during Clear and Present Danger.