The Clown Whose Make-up Wouldn’t Wash Off… (Weird stop-motion short film) IDENTIFIED!

(Above: Random public domain image of a scary clown – NOT a still from the film we’re looking for)

We’ve all seen a good deal of weird stop-motion animated films from the 70s-90s era, often screened on Channel 4 in between programs or films. Some were fairly innocent. Others were downright weird or disturbing and not really “kids’ stuff” at all even if some sadistic TV execs were insistent on screening them as that. Paul Berry’s The Sandman from 1991 is one of my personal favourites in the latter category… here it is for anyone who wants to relive that particular nightmare…

But I digress… onto the main purpose of this blog entry. Over at the Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s) Facebook group one of the members, David McCarthy, has brought our attention to this particularly disturbing-sounding stop motion film, apparently from the mid-80s, about a circus clown who finds his make-up won’t wash off, and later hangs himself…

As David recollects:

“Saw it on Irish TV but I think it was British. It was about a circus clown who after a performance is in his dressing room and finds that his clown makeup won’t wash off. He goes to a funeral with a scarf over his face, the scarf falls off and the (unseen) mourners laugh at him. He runs through the streets trying to hide his face and we hear people laughing at him. The final scene shows him in the circus ring having hanged himself. It’s been driving me mad for years trying to find out what it was. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen on TV…

“I’m not sure that it was aimed at kids. The whole tone of the thing was very bleak, I don’t think there was any music. Had almost no dialogue except for a bit where the clown (minus makeup) calls to a chemists. That was before the scene where he was unable to remove the makeup. It was about ten minutes long.

“I think he might have been smoking as well in the dressing room scenes. There was a sort of cynical world weary vibe to the character. The whole thing had this sort of existential vibe. Its possible it was European, there was some dialogue in English in the scene where he calls into the chemists though that could have been dubbed. I’m pretty certain there was no music at all and some of the sounds in it stood out, for instance where we see him having hanged himself his body is slowly spinning on the noose and you hear the rope loudly creaking.”

“Just another detail about the funeral scene. It was an open coffin and you see the corpse in it, the clown (think he was wearing an overcoat and hat) goes up to the coffin and starts weeping over it. Its then that the scarf over his face slips off and his clown make up can be seen. Unseen mourners then start laughing at him and he runs out. (It was just a dark room from what I remember)”

This sounds particularly disturbing, and something that very much belongs in the archive of weird and twisted TV that scarred the minds of The Haunted Generation. Definitely something that needs to be preserved on YouTube I think.

So this post is an appeal to identify exactly what this elusive piece of weird TV could have been… if you have any recollection of this short film or know what it was, please let us know by commenting here or emailing us… and feel free to share this post far and wide, ask your friends etc., in the hope it reaches someone who knows the answer!

UPDATE 28/08/25

Thanks to David McCarthy’s continued searching, this elusive production has finally been identified – it is a Czech production titled Con una sonrisa – S ÚSMEVEM. Thanks to the members over at the Cookd & Bombd forum for identifying it for David!

And here is the film itself:

Great to have another UWTV mystery solved!