Terrifier

Monica Brown, a talk show host, interviews a severely disfigured woman who is the sole survivor of a massacre that took place the previous Halloween. Brown mentions that the body of the killer, known only as "Art the Clown", disappeared from the morgue, suggesting that he is still alive. However, the disfigured woman insists that she saw him die. After the show, Monica insults the woman's appearance, after which the woman attacks Monica and gouges her eyes out.

On Halloween night, two friends, Tara and Dawn, leave a Halloween party and drunkenly wander back to Dawn's car, where they notice a strange man in a clown costume. The man, Art the Clown, follows them into a nearby pizzeria. After a short time, the restaurant owner roughly escorts Art from the premises for smearing his own feces all over the bathroom walls. The girls discover that one of Dawn's car tires has been slashed, and Tara calls her sister Vicky to come pick them up. While waiting, Tara asks a pest control worker, Mike, if she can enter the derelict apartment building he's working in to use the restroom. Once inside, Tara encounters a deluded woman (credited as "Cat Lady"), who believes the doll she carries is her infant child. Art returns to the pizzeria, where he kills and mutilates the two workers before abducting Dawn.

Tara soon encounters Art inside the apartment building. He pursues her through the indoor mechanic's garage and stabs her with a scalpel. She tries to alert Mike but Art drugs her. Tara awakens bound to a chair, and Art reveals Dawn, suspended upside-down from the ceiling. He forces Tara to watch as he saws Dawn in half with a handsaw. Tara escapes but Art draws a handgun and shoots her to death. The Cat Lady witnesses this and begs Mike to call the police. Mike dismisses her as insane, but Art soon knocks him unconscious with a hammer. The Cat Lady discovers Art cradling her doll. In a plea for the return of her "child", she tries to show motherly compassion to Art by cradling him.

Vicky arrives to take Tara and Dawn home but is lured into the basement by Art. There, she discovers what she believes is an injured Tara, but it is actually Art, who has severely mutilated the Cat Lady and is wearing her scalp and breasts. Mike's co-worker arrives looking for him but is decapitated by Art. Vicky escapes Art but stops to grieve upon finding her sister's corpse. Art then attacks her with a makeshift cat o' nine tails, but Mike arrives suddenly and knocks Art unconscious. The two flee and call 9-1-1 but before they can escape, Art appears and kills Mike. Vicky retreats into a garage, and Art rams through the door with a pickup truck, causing further injury to Vicky. As she lies helplessly, Art begins to eat her face. Police arrive, but Art shoots himself in the head with a pistol before the officers can apprehend him.

Art's body is taken to a morgue, along with the bodies of his deceased victims. When the medical examiner unzips Art's body bag, Art reanimates and strangles him to death. One year later, Vicky is released from the hospital after rehabilitation from the injuries inflicted by Art; she is revealed to be the severely disfigured woman from the film's opening scene.

The character of Art the Clown first appeared in the 2008 short film The 9th Circle, which Leone wrote and directed.[3] Leone later wrote and directed a short film titled Terrifier, which featured Art and was released in 2011.[4] These shorts were incorporated into the 2013 anthology film All Hallows' Eve,[5] which marked both Art's first feature film appearance and Leone's feature directorial debut.[6]

In 2015, Leone launched a campaign on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo to finance Terrifier, a feature-length spin-off of All Hallows' Eve.[7] After being notified of the Indiegogo campaign, filmmaker Phil Falcone provided the necessary funds for the project in exchange for a producer credit.[8][9] In The 9th Circle, the short film Terrifier, and All Hallows' Eve, Art was played by Mike Giannelli,[6][10] but in the feature film Terrifier, Art was portrayed by David Howard Thornton.[11] Thornton was already familiar with All Hallows' Eve when he auditioned for the role of Art in Terrifier, and was cast in the role after improvising a kill scene in mime.[11]

Terrifier premiered at the Telluride Horror Show Film Festival in 2016.[2] It was later screened at the Horror Channel FrightFest on October 28, 2017,[12] and was subsequently picked up by Dread Central Presents and Epic Pictures for a limited 2018 release.[13]

In February 2019, Damien Leone stated that a sequel for Terrifier was in production, with the sequel's script having already been written.[22]

• Terrifier on IMDb
• Terrifier at AllMovie
• Terrifier at Metacritic
• Terrifier at Rotten Tomatoes