Terrifier

Terrifier is a 2016 independent slasher film by Damien Leone in
which Art the Clown stalks two young women through Halloween night.

At a Glance

Overview

On Halloween night in Miles County, New York, Tara Heyes and her
friend Dawn stumble out of a party and into a late-night pizzeria,
where a silent clown in black and white sits staring at them. He is
Art the Clown, and after he
is thrown out for wrecking the restroom, the evening turns into a
fight to stay alive. Dawn’s tire has been slashed, Tara calls her
sister Victoria for a ride, and while they wait the two women are
drawn into a half-abandoned apartment building where an exterminator
named Mike is working and a disturbed squatter known as the Cat Lady
lives with a doll she treats as her baby.

The story is as simple as slashers get: one night, one building, one
killer who never speaks. What sets the film apart is Art himself. He
mugs, mimes and plays to an invisible audience between kills, and his
cruelty is so theatrical that the film often feels like a vaudeville
act staged in a slaughterhouse. It is a deliberate throwback to the
stalk-and-slash films of the 1980s, sharpened with the color and
excess of Italian giallo.

This page covers the 2016 feature. For the whole series, from the
early shorts to Terrifier 2
and beyond, see the Terrifier
Franchise page.

Production

Damien Leone created Art for
his debut short, The 9th Circle (2008). Audiences responded to the
clown more than anything else in it, so Leone made him the lead of a
second short, Terrifier (2011), and then folded both shorts into the
anthology All Hallows’ Eve (2013) with a new Art wraparound. A feature
built entirely around the character was the next step.

Leone launched an Indiegogo campaign in 2015 to fund it. The campaign
came up short, but producer Phil Falcone covered the budget in
exchange for a producer credit. Leone wrote, directed, edited and
co-produced the film and created its practical gore effects himself.
He has said he wanted to combine familiar American slasher elements
with the violence and atmosphere of giallo, and that he made Art black
and white on purpose to set him apart from the colorful Pennywise of
It (1990).

Mike Giannelli, who had played Art in the shorts and the anthology,
chose not to return, so the role went to David Howard
Thornton, then little
known, who won it by improvising a kill scene in mime. Leone later
said his biggest regret was not developing the heroines more,
especially Victoria.

Cast

• Jenna Kanell as Tara Heyes
• Samantha Scaffidi as Victoria Heyes
• Catherine Corcoran as Dawn
• David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown
• Pooya Mohseni as the Cat Lady
• Matt McAllister as Mike

Reception

Terrifier premiered at the Telluride Horror Show in October 2016,
screened at Horror Channel FrightFest in 2017 and reached a small
number of US theaters in March 2018 before finding its real audience
on home video and streaming. Critics were split. Rotten Tomatoes shows
63 percent approval from 27 reviews, with a consensus that credits the
kills and Art but faults the story. Reviewers widely praised Leone’s
effects and the performances of Kanell, Scaffidi and Thornton, while
others called the script thin. The film earned three Fangoria Chainsaw
Award nominations, including Best Makeup FX for Leone and Best
Supporting Actor for Thornton.

Its theatrical gross was modest, about $422,000, but word of mouth
turned it into a cult favorite and made Art a horror icon. After
Terrifier 2 became a surprise hit, the original returned to US cinemas
in July 2023.

Spoiler: The Ending

Art saws Dawn in half while Tara is forced to watch, then shoots Tara
dead when she tries to escape. Victoria arrives, finds her sister’s
body and fights back with Mike’s help, but Art kills Mike and runs
Victoria down with a truck, then begins chewing at her face. When
police finally arrive, Art shoots himself in the head. At the morgue,
his body reanimates and attacks the medical examiner. A year later,
the disfigured woman from the film’s opening talk show scene is
revealed to be Victoria, setting up her return in the sequels.

Trivia and Facts

• Art the Clown never speaks a word in the film.
• Art first appeared in Leone’s 2008 short The 9th Circle, where he
  was not meant to be the main villain.
• Jenna Kanell first auditioned for Leone years earlier, for The 9th
  Circle, and he remembered her when casting Tara.
• Catherine Corcoran’s hacksaw scene was filmed in short takes of
  about 40 seconds for her safety.
• A three-issue comic adaptation, illustrated by Steve McGinnis, was
  self-published between 2021 and 2022.
• The film was released on VHS in 2019, a nod to the 1980s slashers it imitates.