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There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.

Those words, often attributed to silent film actor Lon Chaney, Sr., speak to the potential evil that lurks behind every clown's irreversible grin. When removed from a world of balloon-making and children's birthday parties, clowns can be downright eerie. Their exaggerated physical features and movements make them human caricatures -- something alien and almost sinister.

Heath Ledger's turn as the sociopathic Joker in The Dark Knight, which opens today, is only the latest example of pop culture twisting the clown -- typically a source of wonder and comedy -- into something vile and sinister.

"The face of the clown becomes a mask, and that mask can be just as frightening as that of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees," says Barry Grant, a horror film expert from Brock University. "With a perpetual smile, the clown can be seen as an almost tragical figure cursed to entertain us. We're left to wonder what's beneath the surface."

From Stephen King's It and Seinfeld (in which Kramer fears clowns) to the possessed doll in Poltergeist, clowns are regularly portrayed as sinister. And everything from such classic books as Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked this Way Comes to the recent HBO series Carnivàle have portrayed the circus as a breeding ground for horror and dark magic. The fear of clowns is even a bona fide medical disorder known as coulrophobia.

But the villainization of clowns and all-things-carnival didn't happen until the 20th century, according to Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University. "The circus has not been a major part of childhood for some time," Thompson explains. "When was the last time you heard of a kid dreaming about running away with the circus ... When was the last time there was a circus to run away with?"

During the late 19th and early 20th century, travelling carnivals -- with their assortment of clowns, rides and freak shows -- regularly moved from town to town, Thompson says, but as they died off their "traditions, styles and norms began to recede into the creepy" in mainstream culture.

Although aimed at children, Grant says old-time carnivals always held an element of unpredictability and titillating danger -- from the fortune tellers and classic funhouse mirror, in which appearances deceive, to the carnies, who were often seen as disgruntled outsiders bent on playing tricks on customers.

Clowns are the ultimate personification of the lack of rules and decorum.

"The thing about clowns is that they get to break rules," Thompson says. "The classic jester or fool could say things to the king that would get others beheaded. They operate in a topsy-turvy order, and turvyness is always a little scary."

That same volatility is the foundation for The Joker's character, and explains why -- despite a lack of high-tech gadgets or superpowers -- he's one of the most successful villains of all time. He has no aim for world domination or riches; his only goal is chaos. He kills and destroys just for the fun of it.

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