If there were an Academy Award for the best performance by a silent harlequin in a white clown suit who can mimic a giggle fit while gruesomely slicing people’s faces off (seriously, don’t try this at home — both the slicing and the silent laughing), Art the Clown would undoubtedly take home the trophy. He’s the depraved mascot and killer of “Terrifier 3,” representing a level of slasher mayhem that’s beyond anything you’ve ever witnessed.
Art the Clown is to Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers what the Sex Pistols were to The Who and The Rolling Stones: the punk rock culmination of horror. Back in the day, slasher films revolved around masked giants hacking off limbs or stabbing victims with butcher knives. (How quaint, right?) The “Saw” franchise raised the stakes with its elaborate, machine-crafted tortures that featured every imaginable form of dismemberment, all while suggesting that each victim had it coming.
You might wonder: How could the “Terrifier” films possibly outdo that? The answer lies in a shared trait between Art the Clown and Kamala Harris: the joy factor. It’s a theme present in every slasher film — dating back to the original, “Psycho” — that the men wielding kitchen knives and chainsaws derive pleasure from their gruesome work. That’s part of what makes it terrifying; they enjoy what they do, and there’s no convincing them to stop.
But Art the Clown elevates the idea of enjoying homicidal sadism to a new level of twisted insanity. Portrayed by David Howard Thornton in all three “Terrifier” films, the character is a striking figure: with white makeup, a hook nose, and a bald clown head, complemented by a black-lipsticked mouth and grimy, rotten licorice teeth that seem borrowed from the Nun, all topped off with a tiny top hat tilted just so. Inside that costume, Thornton delivers a remarkable performance, reminiscent of Marcel Marceau infused with the malevolent spirit of Charles Manson, mixed with a hint of Divine. In his silent-clown manner, he mimics ordinary human emotions — the grins, wide-eyed surprise, innocent pouts, and cartoonish sad frowns — all with a stylized playfulness.
He’s set to reflect your feelings right back at you, just moments before he saws your legs off or disembowels you like a stuck pig. The “Terrifier” films, notorious for their extreme violence, started as an underground sensation but have now evolved into a mall-theater franchise with a complex backstory, akin to the “Scream” series. At the New York premiere of “Terrifier 3” that I attended earlier this week, the audience was a mix of cult celebrity and goth party style, indicating that these films have truly become a brand. (The novelty dolls of Art the Clown available at the event also signified this.) In “Terrifier 3,” Sienna (Lauren LaVera), who has become the series’ heroine and final girl, is released from a psychiatric hospital (she has been in and out of them) and goes to stay with her Aunt Jessica (Margaret Anne Florence), Jessica’s husband, Greg (Bruce Johnson), and their daughter, Gabbie (Antonella Rose). There’s a lot of kitchen-table conversation, perhaps too much, about everything that has happened before.
Damien Leone, the series’ wildly creative writer-director, knows how to kick off a splatter fest with a bang, showcasing a family getting brutally taken apart. However, he isn’t exactly a master of delivering expository dialogue. He produces these films on a tight budget, giving them a raw, independent feel; they essentially consist of a series of striking scenes. The flashbacks featuring Art the Clown, who met his end in the previous film, being bizarrely reassembled by Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), his one-eyed, decaying assistant, come off like a jumbled highlight reel reminiscent of “Re-Animator.” In contrast, “Terrifier 2,” with its runtime of two hours and 18 minutes, felt like a more cohesive film.
Yet “Terrifier 3” cranks up the intensity, introducing a clever twist that both nods to and meets franchise expectations by presenting Art the Clown as a phony Santa Claus who wreaks havoc during the Christmas season. He swipes his costume from a store Santa on break after using nitrous oxide to freeze his limbs, causing them to shatter like dust when struck with a hammer. The film’s prosthetics and makeup effects, crafted by Christien Tinsley, showcase a twisted kind of practical magic that brings to mind the early work of Rob Bottin in “The Thing.”
A little later, as we’re recoiling and perhaps marveling at Art the Clown’s gruesome creativity, he pulls out a classic instrument of death — a chainsaw — leaving us curious about what new twist he might bring to it. Here’s the thing: in every chainsaw murder you’ve ever witnessed on screen, you only see… so much. (“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” with its haunting brilliance, is known for its understated approach to gore.) But Damien Leone, along with Art the Clown, is about to show us what no “Chain Saw” sequel or any scene that helped “Scarface” earn an X-rating ever did. We start with two naked college students getting intimate in a shower, at which point Art, dressed as Santa, saws through the shower door, then begins severing hands and limbs, ultimately placing that chainsaw right between the guy’s buttocks — and that’s just the beginning of the chaos.
The movie’s climax features wriggling rats, a large glass tube forced down someone’s throat, and a head that’s been reduced to a brain, prompting us to wonder, “Who was that?” (The detail that reveals the identity is, in a disturbingly clever way, witty.) “Terrifier 3” runs for two hours, and you might question why a violent exploitation film, typically on the shorter side, would be such an extended feast of gruesomeness. But that’s part of what “Terrifier” fans desire: a total immersion in depravity. The horror unfolds on screen, but in another sense, it resides within the audience. It’s in the fact that a significant portion of mainstream viewers now sees this as entertainment. I don’t mean to sound overly critical; I’m one of them. Reflecting on the days of “Friday the 13th Part III” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4,” I always found slasher sequels to be tedious. Yet the thought of another “Terrifier” film doesn’t dishearten me in the same way. Instead, it leaves me in a state of suspense: What, in the name of all that’s unholy, will Art the Clown do next?
