The seemingly meteoric rise of Art the Clown has managed to make the biggest, bloodiest dent in the ranking of the horror icon since Jigsaw plied his trade – but why is it that the gurning, vicious, face-painted prick has managed to muscle past such characters as Annabelle, Hatchet’s Victor Crowley and The Creeper from Jeepers Creepers to become a full fledged horror celebrity that’s practically nipping at the heels of the old guard (Jason, Freddy, Michael, et al) in only a fraction of the time.
Well, the newly released Terrifier 3 actually gives us a lot of reasons why this is so, as Damien Leone’s unfeasibly nasty slasher epic is practically going from strength to strength with every new installment. While Jason languishes in limbo bound by legal red tape, Michael rests after his Blumhouse trilogy split the fanbase, Ghostface weathers behind the scenes turmoil and Freddy, Leatherface and Pinhead all face uncertain futures after various reboots, Art has been free to grow from small, smash mouth slasher flick to big screen success story. How has this happened? Well judging by Art’s third feature length outing, it’s nothing short of a Christmas miracle.
After the brutal climax of Terrifier 2 that saw the demonic, serial killer known as Art the Clown decisively stopped after a classic case of decapitation, we immediately discover that the malevolent shit isn’t quite so easy to put down as we thought. While his severed bonce is literally reborn through horrifically disfigured and possessed former victim Victoria Hayes, Art’s headless body makes the trip across town to the asylum where she’s been kept for years in order to reassemble himself and carry on anew. However, before that can happen, both Art and Victoria need a place to take a moment to step out of the rat race of the frenzied mutilation of scream victims and seeming go into hibernation for five years.
But after we jump ahead a half-decade, we catch up with Art’s nemesis, cosplayer and part-time chosen warrior of good Sienna Shaw as she finally leaves hospital after the therapy needed to move past the murder of her mother and friends that occurred the last time she and Art tangled. But while is taken in by her kindly aunt Jess, her husband Greg and their daughter Gabbie, who worships the ground Sienna walks on, it’s evident that she isn’t as over her traumatic experience as she had hoped.
Well, that’s kind of a case of tough shit as both Art and Victoria awake from their slumber to find that the clown’s latest rampage is to take place on that most sacred of all holidays, Christmas. Immediately the inhuman lunatic snags himself a Santa suit and leaps into the spirit of the holiday season by continuing his rampage with a festive twist. Can Sienna manage to reconcile with her confused childhood and her similarly traumatised survivor brother, Jonathan, in order to protect Gabbie from Art’s ultimate slay ride?
Anyone unfamiliar with Damien Leone’s Terrifier movies may be somewhat confused at their rising, cult influence, especially considering that to the uninitiated, the series seems to be nothing more than an u relegated string of people meeting protected and unfeasibly shocking ends that test the boundaries of extreme, and graphic gore. I mean, that’s exactly what they are, but thanks to the murky, grainy filter the films use and the stark cinematography makes the franchise feel like what we all thought the video nasties were going to be like back in the 80s when collectors managed to find an uncensored copy. Even three episodes in, Keone has managed to sustain that blown out, soft picture quality that people would usually recognise from old VHS copies of Halloween or Black Christmas combined with the kind of bloodletting that would have given censors back in the day a fucking aneurysm.
Anyway, with Terrifier 3 there’s a real sense of the series really hitting its stride and as the franchise only really tried experimenting with something as fiddly as a plot as late a Terrifier 2 (Terrifier 1 was more of a formless globule of nightmare logic than an actual, coherent story), it feels like Leone is getting the hand of attributing an actual lore to character as uncontrollable and different as Art. To be fair, all this talk of demons, serial killers and weapons forged in heaven hold about as much water as a belly with numerous knife wounds in it, but while it’s white-faced poster boy still seems a bit too chaotic to be convincingly restrained by an actual backstory, the camp nature of it managed to fuse fairly well with the throwback visuals to make it sound like the sort of exposition you’d find in a later Nightmare On Elm Street movie.
However, blending in far better to the whole Terrifier aesthetic is the brand new Christmas setting which allows Leone to immediately pervert the season with more degrading brutality and devil may care gore than any Christmas themed horror flick ever has. Immediately bringing to mind memories of such sleezy movies such as Silent Night, Deadly Night, Don’t Open Before Christmas and, of course Black Christmas (which is directly referenced), not only does the change in season mean that Art can take a metaphorical – and literal – piss all over all the typical seasonal iconography (blood angels, sacks full of murder weapons, entrails used as tinsel, but he also takes frequent pot shots at some more religious imagery too.
Of course, a better plot for Sienna (a gutsy as ever Lauren LaVera) and a whole host of horror cameos proves to all be gravy, but the true selling point continues to be the continuing mountains of truly jaw-dropping gore and the continuing joy that is David Howard Thornton’s portrayal of Art himself.
The gore speaks for itself. Repeatedly and often. And anyone who reckons that the franchise peaked with the upside-down hacksaw kill of 1 or the prolonged butching of a girl (with added bleach and salt) from 2 may unbelievably have to eat their words after witnessing what the third installment has to offer, with a show stopping shower sequence arguably topping them both. However, gore if not used correctly, can be as empty as a hollowed out torso, to thankfully, Thornton’s portrayal of Art makes everything work down to his wordless, yet incredibly physical performance that borrows just as much from Charlie Chaplin as it does from more typical horror heavyweights. Mute and spiteful as Michael Myers, yet as expressive as Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger at his most broad, Art legitimately seems to be the killer clown to beat this year and the sight of his banana-shaped frown turning into that huge, rotten toothed grin, never fails to amuse as you just know that some poor fucker is about to have the worst day ever. But with an expanded role for the grotesque Victoria, Art now has a legitimate partner in crime (no sign of the Little Pale Girl, sadly) that weirdly frees him up to be funnier than he’s ever been even when the viscera and guts are spraying all over the place and he may truly be the next household name in horror when it’s all said and done.
With a cliffhanger ending in place, it seems that Leone has thrown down the gory gauntlet to top the grotesque excesses he himself has put in place, but at this point I’m not entirely sure that’s possible save having a fourth movie entirely be Art chewing the every bit of flesh off the bones of a screaming victim in real time. Still, in the Terrifier world, it’s Christmas and Christmas is when miracles happen – even fucked up ones like these…
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 
One comment