Who Is Art the Clown and Why Has He Convinced So Many People to See ‘Terrifier 3’?

Is it possible to reverse-engineer a slasher classic, starting with the slasher and working backwards into a great movie to hold them? Horror history suggests that maybe it’s not. Proto-slasher classics like Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre spun off from real-life horrors (the same one, in fact, illustrating just how different their directions were, only 14 years apart). Many of the most popular ’80s slashers started off in more atmosphere-forward movies, only for their perceived personalities to emerge after several sequels; Freddy Krueger is far less of a quipster in the first Nightmare on Elm Street , Michael Myers chillingly remains part of the Haddonfield scenery for much of Halloween , and Jason Voorhees barely even appears in the first Friday the 13th . On the other side, there are plenty of unmemorable slasher movies where attempts to generate an iconic look more or less fell flat. Sure, you might faintly recall a hook-wielding figure in a fisherman’s coat, but more people likely associate I Know What You Did Last Summer with Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cleavage. Even that Scream mask doesn’t belong to a particular personality; part of the gimmick is that it’s always someone new hiding underneath. The death of Jigsaw in Saw III suggests that sometimes the filmmakers sometimes stumble into slashers without realizing how beloved they are.

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What dark magic, then, explains the rise of Art the Clown? The malevolent demon-clown (played by David Howard Thornton, a surprisingly normal-looking fellow) made his debut back in 2013 in All Hallow’s Eve , an anthology (of sorts) that featured multiple gruesome tales featuring Art. From there came the indie slasher Terrifier , which made its festival debut back in 2016, came to a few U.S. theaters in 2018, and slowly gathered a cult reputation as a cutting-edge title in practical-effects gore. True to its scrappy roots, Terrifier has been available to watch on the free streaming service Tubi for ages, as well as the similarly free Pluto TV – the digital equivalent of a passed-around VHS bootleg. The movie itself is about on that level: It feels like something you’d watch after hearing from a hardcore horror fan that a friend of a cousin of another friend worked on, and something that requires that level of leeway to really love. It follows the mysterious Art as he stalks and gorily kills (and in one rule-breaking moment, just shoots) a bunch of people, mostly women, in and around an under-construction apartment building. That’s pretty much. It is not thrilling, though the effects work from writer/director/editor/producer Damien Leone is terrific and sometimes nauseating.

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Art himself, however, is a real eye-catcher. No battered rain slickers for him; he looks more like a Rob Zombie creation scrubbed of grime and leaving only the simplest pen-and-paint linework behind, with black-and-white makeup, a cartoonishly too-small tilted top hat, and an aggressive, hateful rictus grin — all of which really highlights the blood he inevitably gets splattered with while doing his horrible work. I’ve seen both Terrifier movies and I’m still not quite sure what Art actually is, apart from able to resurrect himself. But Terrifier 2 , the 2022 sequel that received a higher-profile theatrical release, makes a stronger go at being a real movie, with characters and a story of sorts. There’s even a proper Final Girl, outfitted in some metal (costume) angel wings, no less, and the presence of Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera) makes Art’s over-the-top antics far more palatable and less like a torture reel. (That said, there is some absolutely gnarly, disgusting, intentionally ridiculous gore in this one, too, and if the black-comic tone wasn’t clear, Art at one point literally pours salt on a series of fatal wounds.)

The movie made $15 million worldwide – not a huge number, but a ton of cash for something well outside even the established indie studios, let alone the majors. Hence Terrifier 3 , opening wide this weekend – though still not necessarily round the clock, with limited showtimes still giving the impression of a specialty item that might be best not shown during respectable daylight hours. It arrives with reports, like something out of a vintage William Castle promotion, that some audience members have vacated the movie within its first 10 minutes, feeling ill from the pure extremity of the violence on display (and, you know, possibly because they were already sick).

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And that, folks, is really what Art the Clown is: a specter who demands theatrical attention, in both senses of the word. Terrifier may have become a cult attraction from the dank bowels of Tubi, but the true extent of Art the Clown’s madness must be seen in a theater, with other, similarly-minded freaks. At least, that seems to be the idea, and the reason why Terrifier 3 is expected to do quite well this weekend at the box office: You almost can’t believe such a grindhouse-y provocation is allowed to run amok at a multiplex, so you gotta see it before it’s gone.

The arc of Art the Clown going from great slasher design to actual well-liked slasher series ( Terrifier 4 is already in the works, Leone says) is relatively unusual, but not entirely unprecedented. It’s a bit like old exploitation movies where producers may have had a killer poster idea before the movie itself was fully formed. It also speaks to a hunger for new movies in a genre that has often relied on reviving old guys in their familiar masks or in some cases – looking at you, Fear Street trilogy – feels as if it’s succumbing to poorly considered faux-nostalgic pastiche aimed at 14-year-old binge-watchers, rather than horror fans. Maybe that’s what Art the Clown really is: He’s a gatekeeper, warning people that horror can, in fact, go way too far, and maybe even make you sick with its depravity. After all, what’s a horror movie without a dire warning?

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

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