WORLD OF TERRIFIER

ATTACK OF THE BLOG FROM BEYOND—My introduction to the Terrifier movies came somewhat late in the game. I had heard rumblings about them within the horror community. So when I came across Terrifier 2 on Tubi, I watched and enjoyed it. Later, I saw the first Terrifier. From there, I circled back to the anthology film All Hallows’ Eve (which includes The 9th Circle) and finally the Terrifier short film.

By this point, I had heard rave—or was it rabid?—reviews from fans, and the films had already achieved underground cult status. The supernatural slasher Art the Clown was the brainchild of director Damien Leone. Art was originally played by Mike Giannelli in the two short films, but the role was later taken over by actor David Howard Thornton, who made it his own with some bone-chilling humor.

My reaction to the movies was that the director was clearly a horror fanatic. In the short film, I noticed tonal flashes of one of my favorite scary movies, the original Night of the Living Dead. The first feature-length movie served as a true introduction to the character Art the Clown. The shot composition was artistic and well thought out, the actors were believable, and the horror and gore were continuous throughout the movie.

The fatal flaw of many indie horror films is that the shots often look amateurish (mainly single shots of actors delivering dialogue), the acting can be subpar (like someone just hired their friends), and the horror and gore are not sustained throughout the movie (in other words, boring). I’ve been watching a lot of indie horror films on Tubi recently, and when you have to wait thirty-eight minutes for the first horror sequence, that is not a horror movie.

On rewatching the second movie, I discovered something I had missed the first time. After the end credits, there was an additional sequence set in a mental hospital, where Victoria—a surviving victim from the first film—gives birth to Art’s head after he was killed by Sienna, the heroine of the sequel, thus setting up Art the Clown’s supernatural reanimation. I was very excited and nervous to see the third film, hoping it wouldn’t be a letdown. It wasn’t.

I love the Terrifier films because they felt like vindication and validation for me. As a writer who lived in Los Angeles for over twenty-five years (the first ten years as a stuntman), every time I had a horror project in development (none of which were ever made), producers would ask me to tone down the horror and gore to PG-13 levels. So I wholeheartedly appreciated the unabashed gore and sadistic violence in the Terrifier movies. There is an adult horror film audience that Hollywood largely ignores in its whoring for the widest possible audience. I don’t mind that Hollywood is a business, but sometimes you have to bow to the art of moviemaking—though fat chance of that in Hollywood nowadays.

So I wasn’t at all surprised by the enthusiastic fandom for Terrifier.

What clinched it for me was the use of practical SFX. I was once developing some horror material for the VP of development at an independent entertainment company in LA. The company had a deal to produce horror films for the SyFy Channel, and I was told, in no uncertain terms, that all the SFX would be computer-generated. I hate CGI, which made me appreciate the Terrifier films even more.

Having become disenchanted with Hollywood and able to make a living writing indie scripts, treatments, and synopses online, I began traveling around Europe to develop my indie genre films for an international audience. Europeans seem to be more interested in the storytelling and art of filmmaking than Hollywood. I spent the past summer in Marseille. I was in Montenegro (which, btw, has no American movie theaters) when Terrifier 3 came out. Starting Labor Day weekend, I have a tradition of binge-watching horror flicks through Halloween and often extend the marathon until Thanksgiving. I usually relent after turkey day and start watching Christmas films—you know, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Black Christmas.

Going into movie withdrawals in Montenegro, I bought a plane ticket, rented my friend’s flat in Manchester while she was in Spain, and flew into the UK on Halloween night. The next day, I caught a matinee of Terrifier 3 with a big, cheesy smile on my face (fyi, they don’t put butter on popcorn in the UK, yikes). The movie didn’t disappoint. The jump from a $250,000 budget to a $2 million budget allowed the director to ramp up the body count, intensify the gory SFX, and focus on some truly terrifying scenes. The day after, I saw Smile 2 (huge disappointment, even with low expectations). The day after that, I watched Salem’s Lot, which was fun (studio horror from the granddaddy Stephen King).

When I went to see Terrifier 3, I felt a bit of apprehension as I took my seat in the sparsely populated matinee. I always strive for uncrowded theaters—some would call me antisocial. But I dislike packed theaters where the audience laughs at a scene, causing you to miss the next three lines of dialogue. I prefer the empty pitch black to help transport me into the world I’m watching.

The reason I felt apprehensive was that, now that we had been introduced to the anti-hero in the first film and the female protagonist in the second—the proverbial final girl—the stage was set for a showdown  in the third film. It was also set for something else, and I didn’t want to be disappointed. This was the moment where the audience would find out whether Terrifier would become something truly unique or just another Friday the 13th, Halloween, or Hellraiser.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed taking a date to see Jason and laughing our asses off as he killed teens while they were having premarital sex. The first Halloween is one of my all-time favorite horror films. And one of my cherished horror stories is The Hellbound Heart, the novella by Clive Owen that the Hellraiser movies were based on. It’s just that the sequel of each of these films was essentially the same movie with a different group of characters being chased by the film’s boogeyman. They never expanded on the world-building or mythology.

Would Damien Leone expand on the mythology in the latest film? The answer was yes. There was enough world-building for me to have very big expectations for the fourth film.

Now, my predictions for the fourth film.

By the time Terrifier 3 finishes its theatrical run, it will probably have made north of one hundred million dollars, which means one thing for sure: Terrifier 4 is going to have a substantially bigger budget. Leone has set the stage, at least in my mind, for where the fourth film will go. At the end of the third film, Sienna’s niece, Gabby, falls into the Hellmouth—let’s call it that—taking the sword with her. Sienna, knowing that Gabby is still alive because of her brief experience there in the Clown Cafe, vows to find her.

Tagline for Terrifier 4: “Sienna Goes to Hell” (although not really). At least, that’s what I hope happens. We got a glimpse of Art’s corner of Hell in the second film with the Clown Cafe. I hope we get to see the terrifying world beyond that, populated by nightmarish, warped apparitions of all Art’s victims.

Decades after Clive Barker wrote The Hellbound Heart, he wrote The Scarlet Gospels. It ignores the flawed world-building of the Hellraiser movies and serves as a direct sequel to the novella. In this sequel, Barker takes the audience literally to Hell, presenting a visionary landscape of death and horror.

I also want to know more about Sienna’s sword and her late father’s connection to the story.

Oh, and Damien, keep the X rating. Don’t let Hollywood talk you out of it—they don’t know shit.

And yes—we’re going to need more blood, gore, and demonic animatronics.

#exilecircus #horror #terrifier