DAILY CALL SHEET: MAY 27, 2024

The Alien Factor (1978) A craft of extraterrestrial origin carrying specimens for an intergalactic zoo crash lands on Earth, loosing three murderous mutants into the woods of Maryland. The monsters soon find a small town to terrorize and all seems lost, but thankfully doughy stranger Ben Zachary shows up to try and put things right. Like most of Don Dohler's low-budget regional efforts, this one has some dull spots and questionable acting, but this unapologetic love-letter to 50's sci-fi gets by on nifty creature designs and just plain old heart.

TIL: The Church has no official position on zoos per se, but writing for Catholic Answers, Prof. Paul Gondreau notes, "To inflict needless pain and torture on animals or to place them in inhumane living conditions is to engage in insensitive cruelty and to foster a kind of hardness of heart - which is very bad for our souls. It corrupts and perverts our moral character, and thereby disposes us to treat others with an adjacent hardness of heart or insensitive cruelty." Under this reasoning, zoos should take care to see their animals are well cared for and have humane habitats.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) In a setup that's like Goosebumps on steroids, space aliens resembling grotesque circus clowns descend upon a town and begin collecting the citizenry in order to turn them into cotton candy. Their weapons of choice include carnivorous popcorn ray guns, flesh dissolving ice cream, and a very lethal version of the old spring loaded boxing glove in a gift box gag. Uniquely surreal horror flick that guarantees good, clean PG-13 fun for everyone except maybe sufferers of coulrophobia.

TIL: Secretly baptized by Polycarp against the wishes of his Christian-killing father, St. Maturinus grew to be a performer of miracles, an expert at calming the over-excited, and a renowned exorcist. It's said he even drove a demon out of the stepdaughter of the Roman emperor Maximian. That this would lead St. Maturinus to being invoked against mental illness is no surprise. For some reason, though, he is also the patron Saint of clowns, which probably says more about clowns than it does the Saint himself.