‘Terrifier’ is a 2016 slasher horror movie that was directed by Damien Leone. The narrative opens with a talk show host interviewing a woman with severe scars who was the lone survivor of Art the Clown’s deadly rampage the previous Halloween. It is later discovered that Art himself was one of the viewers watching the interview at their house. Despite the survivor’s insistence that she witnessed his death, he is still alive.
The focus then changes to Halloween, when Art starts following two teenage girls. Terrifier, a film with a meagre $35,000 budget that had a limited theatrical run and earned mixed reviews from critics, has subsequently gained cult status. We’ve got you covered if you’re wondering whether “Terrifier” is based on real events because of its plot and surroundings.
Is Terrifier a True Story?
The movie “Terrifier” is not based on a real event. From a script he authored, Leone developed the movie. In the 2008 short film “The 9th Circle,” he debuted Art as a character for the first time. The main adversary of the 2011 short film “Terrifier” is Art. The anthology movie “All Hallows’ Eve,” which was released in 2013, included the films “The 9th Circle” and “Terrifier.” Leone and the character he invented both made their feature debuts because it was his first full-length movie.
The director acknowledged in a Fangoria interview that he was unsure of where the concept for Art the Clown originated, saying, “I can’t recall if there was a point when the character hit me like a bolt of lightning. Clowns have always seemed to me to have a lot of scary potential. I think the initial concept I was experimenting with was this scene of a woman returning home on Halloween in the middle of the night in a sketchy neighbourhood on a city bus. At the next-to-last stop, a clown boarded the bus with just her as a passenger and immediately began tormenting her. That would be pretty scary, in my opinion.
“We tried to get our hands on a bus to film in, but it wasn’t happening,” concluded Leone. As a result, we transformed it into a waiting area, which serves as “The 9th Circle’s” new opening. He’s just this figure that gets her from point A to point B; he was never really meant to be the main antagonist. He’s undoubtedly the highlight of the film; everyone kept praising him. That is why, a few years later, we produced “Terrifier.”
The standalone anthology sequel to “All Hallows’ Eve,” released in 2015, featured short films created by various directors. Jesse Baget and Leone served as the film’s producers. That year, Leone started an Indiegogo effort to raise money for a feature-length adaptation of “Terrifier,” a spin-off of “All Hallows’ Eve.” The campaign’s initial aim was $15,000, but it was not met. Fortunately, movie director Phil Falcone learned about the initiative and stepped in to help fund the endeavour. He was then listed as a producer alongside Leone and the movie’s cinematographer, George Steuber.
Art has been played by Mike Giannelli in earlier incarnations. He didn’t play the part again, though, as he had given up acting by that point. The role was instead played by David Howard Thornton, who was already familiar with “All Hallows’ Eve,” in the film “Terrifier” and other following works. Thornton admitted in an interview with Dread Central that he acted out an improvised kill scenario during the audition. The hacksaw death scene is arguably the most unsettling and talked-about sequence in “Terrifier.” In an interview with Dread Central, Leone listed the ‘Day of the Dead’ epilogue and vintage slashers like the ‘Friday the 13th’ films as some of the inspirations.
The director said, “I tried to approach Terrifier with the Italian giallo aesthetic of ‘Suspiria’… Therefore, I would claim that the kills in “Terrifier” were inspired by the first kill in “Suspiria” that involved the heart. The scene is simply never-ending and relentless. When they should have passed away, the person is still living. The excellent stuff is that! It’s almost absurd to watch a slasher movie and not get to see the most thrilling aspect of the kill since that’s what we all want to see, especially in slasher movies. In essence, that is what we accomplished. With all of this in mind, it is safe to say that “Terrifier” is not based on a real event but rather is the result of the writer, director, and producer’s incredibly creative imagination.
