September 19, 2018
Written by: Damien Leone
Starring: Jenna Kanell, Samantha Scaffidi, David Howard Thornton
Quote: "That guy is harmless. He is just some douche bag in a costume, acting like a retard because it is Halloween."
Trivia: David Howard Thornton who portrays Art the Clown has previous mime experience, which he utilizes in his performance.
Terrifier is the Art the Clown spinoff from the 2013 anthology All Hallows' Eve. While this movie also suffers from some of the same problems as All Hallows' Eve (no character development, very little plot, and a reliance on shock rather than substance), it is able to capitalize on the scares of one of modern horror's great villains. Art the Clown was what we wanted throughout All Hallows' Eve but since it was an anthology we only got tastes of him until the end. In Terrifier, the clown is here mutilating his victims throughout the film. David Howard Thornton, who plays Art, does an incredible job of creating a menacing individual. Some of the scarier moments in the film are those when Art is just staring at individuals. It's the makeup, the costume, the mime routine, and the facial gestures that Thornton is able to deliver that make the film fun to watch. However, the shocking moments largely fall flat.
The film begins with an interview (the interviewer is played by the same woman who played the babysitter in All Hallows' Eve) with the lone survivor of Art the Clowns' massacre, a severely disfigured woman. The interviewer later mocks the victim's disfigurement and the victim gouges her eyes out as punishment. Hard cut to two drunk twenty somethings, Tara the brunette and Victoria the blonde, on Halloween night who decide to get some pizza to sober up before driving home. At the pizza shop they encounter Art and menacingly stares at one of them before being kicked out after smearing his poop all over the bathroom walls. Before stalking the two drunk girls, Art decapitates one of the pizza shop workers and repeatedly stabs the other in the face (brutal). The girls find their car tires slashed and Art eventually chases them into an abandoned building that he locks up (for some reason there is a pest control guy working in the building even though the place is obviously abandoned).
The rest of the movie is a cat-and-mouse game between Art and the girls. He catches Victoria, hangs her upside down naked and saws her in half starting at her crotch. Tara manages to escape and even almost overpowers Art beating him senseless with a two by four board. Art manages to get up and shoots her several times in the face. Tara's sister now enters the scene and is lured in by Art who wears Tara's face over his. He cuts Tara's sister up, kills the exterminator, and when the cops show up they find Art eating Tara's sister's face. He ends up shooting himself in the head but comes back to life in the morgue to go out and kill again.
Like its predecessor, Terrifier is meant to shock audiences. Wearing and eating a woman's face, turning a man's skull into a jack-o-lantern, and butchering anyone Art comes in contact with are certainly horrific. The film's violent coup de grace is the sawing of Victoria in half. The scene goes on a for an obscenely long time. The filmmakers spared no expense at making a disgusting film.
One on hand, the film is great in that it disregards movie conventions and instead thrives on its use of senseless violence. Art the Clown, the depraved killer, has no backstory and no motive other than a desire to kill as violently as possible. Too, Tara and Victoria, have very little backstory or character development. They are in the film for no other purpose than to become victims of Art. The movie at its core is a celebration of splatter and exploitation films, especially those of the 1980s. However, this also leaves the viewer with a feeling of "who cares." Without any character development, it is difficult to feel fear, empathy, or anything really for the characters in the film. This also makes the more vile moments look stupid. Like All Hallows' Eve, the movie goes so far into gory excessiveness that it starts to become a parody of a horror movie.
As I wrote the above paragraph, I couldn't help but think of Hershell Gordon Lewis and his gore flicks from the sixties. The faults in this film are no different than those in Lewis' Blood Feast, and I fucking love that film. Maybe that is the mood in which to watch the film. Simply sit back and enjoy the film for what it is, a masterpiece of sleazy gore.
...what's your thoughts?
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