Speaking as a longtime horror fan, I cannot think of a villain who has unsettled me quite as ferociously as the Terrifier movies’ Art the Clown, and can’t think of any upcoming horror movies that’ll change that. Not because I generally get scared at creepy clown movies — at least, I didn’t before — but because actor David Howard Thorton’s horrifying harlequin has perpetuated some of the most shockingly brutal and relentlessly grotesque kill scenes I have ever seen in a slasher movie or otherwise.
With some calling franchise creator Damien Leone’s latest horror sequel Terrifier 3 the grisliest installment yet — read our review here — it begs the question if the 2024 Christmas-set horror film truly does offer the modern horror movie villain’s best (or, more accurately, worst) work so far. Upon revisiting these new horror movie classics, I think I have come up with the ultimate ranked list of the most intense and egregiously gory crimes that Art the Clown has committed, in ascending order.
10. Art Turns Steve’s Head Into A Jack-O-Lantern (Terrifier)
Sometimes just seeing the aftermath of Art the Clown’s bidding is as effective as witnessing the carnage itself, such as the murderer’s first kill in the original Terrifier from 2016. While we never actually see him decapitate pizza shop owner Steve (Gino Cafarelli), carve that grim-grinning face into his head, or place lit candles in his disemboweled orifices, the result is memorably grotesque nonetheless.
9. Art Decapitates Ricky (Terrifier 2)
Terrifier 2 from 2022, however, does not hold back from showing Art the Clown removing someone’s head n a particularly messy fashion, which is precisely how a nice costume shop employee named Ricky (Johnath Davis) meets a bitter end. Art starts off by breaking a glass bottle over his head before stabbing the bottle’s jagged remains in his eye socket, hacking through his cranium, and finishing him off by fully removing his head. By the sight of his mouth moving and audibly grunting, it’s clear he can feel the whole shebang.
8. Art Decapitates Will (Terrifier)
I actually believe the franchise’s most intense decapitation yet occurs in the first Terrifier when Art the Clown sneaks up on exterminator Will (Michael Leavy) and, without warning, stabs the dude through the top of his skull, making him catatonic. With his other hand, Art then makes his way through the neck but stops halfway to bend Will’s head back and let the blood gush out before bare-handedly ripping the rest from his shoulders.
7. Art Sprays Santa With Liquid Nitrogen (Terrifier 3)
The box office smash Terrifier 3 proved that Art the Clown’s murderous operandi is not limited to traditional weapons, based on his use of liquid nitrogen to freeze a fake Santa Claus (frequent Rob Zombie movie star Daniel Roebuck) from the neck down after tying him to a chair. If that was not painful enough, he then bludgeons the not-so-jolly St. Nick’s wrists and kneecaps down to the bones, likely earning himself the top spot on the real Santa’s naughty list.
6. Art Hacks Jennifer Limb By Limb (Terrifier 3)
Early reports of audiences walking out of Terrifier 3 during the opening scene are no surprise after seeing what Art the Clown does to Krsy Fox’s Jennifer. The sickening aftermath of her son’s offscreen death and her husband losing his head are tough enough to stomach, but having the camera locked on Art essentially turning this innocent mother into Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Black Knight? That’s cold-blooded.
5. Art Melts Brooke’s Face… And More (Terrifier 2)
In Terrifier 2, Lauren LaVera’s Sienna Shaw (one of the most resourceful horror movie characters in recent memory) loses her friends to Art the Clown in deeply disturbing ways, including Brooke (Kailey Hyman). Cornering her in a theme park restroom, he throws acid in her face and knocks her onto her back with a table leg weaponized with various sharp objects, which he then uses to beat her kneecap to a pulp before pulling her still-beating heart from her split chest and taking a huge bite out of it. And it’s not even the worst kill in the sequel, which we will get to.
4. Art Hacksaws Dawn In Half (Terrifier)
Easily cementing Terrifier as an all-time shock fest, and earning Art the Clown a place among the top horror movie villains was the original film’s grisliest sequence: Dawn’s bisection. Tied to a chair, Tara (Jenna Kanell) is forced to watch as the killer tears away a sheet to reveal her best friend (Catherine Corcoran) hanging by her feet and almost completely nude. As the surreality of the sight sets in, Art brandishes a dirty hacksaw and cuts through Dawn from between her legs and through most of her head. Corcoran, later told Halloween Daily News that she somehow never expected the provocative scene to have the impact it did.
3. Art Feeds Jess Rats (Terrifier 3)
A Terrifier 3 moment that would haunt CinemaBlend’s Nick Venable long after witnessing it involves Sienna’s aunt, Jess (Margaret Anne Florence), a litter of rats, and a blow torch. Only Art the Clown would know how to combine those elements into such a stomach-churning atrocity and does so by hammering a plastic tube down her throat, placing the rodents in the tube, forcing them to the bottom by igniting the blow torch inside, and cutting her neck open to let the rats crawl out. Jess was skeptical of her niece’s warning about Art’s return but there was certainly no doubt in her mind at that point.
2. Art Chainsaws Cole In Half (Terrifier 3)
If Damien Leone appeased studio requests to tone down Terrifier 3’s gore, we would have never gotten a moment that not only blows Dawn’s death out of the water but rivals Psycho for cinema’s most intense shower scene. Then again, Cole (Mason Mecartea) is already out of the shower and crawling away on the porcelain floor with half of one leg missing when Art the Clown takes a chainsaw to his perineum and works his way through the rest of his body until he is split completely in two. Art caps it off by gleefully making a “snow angel” in the college student’s blood. That guy t’aint right.
1. Art Tortures Allie (Terrifier 2)
To really get readers to understand my choice for the most unbelievably barbaric and shamelessly vulgar kill in the entire Terrifier franchise so far, I think it is best to take things one step at a time. In Terrifier 2, Art the Clown breaks into the home of Sienna’s friend Allie (Casey Hartnett) and chases her into her bedroom, where he slashes her left eye open, snips off her scalp with a pair of scissors, carves out a chunk of her back, breaks her left arm, pulls the snapped portion off by hand, and rips her other hand in half.
He then scalpels her multiple times and douses her with bleach and salt (which he also takes time to vigorously rub into her back) before ripping half her face off. When her mother (Amy Russ) comes home to find Art slicing the skin from her legs, she weakly calls out to her, indicating that, after all of that carnage, SHE IS STILL ALIVE! By that point, you would be praying for death but this moment assures us that this clown does not have a merciful bone in his body.
If you, for some ungodly reason, still do not find any of these scenes gory enough, there are other movies like Terrifier that might deliver the bloody goods for you, such as Damien Leone’s 2013 anthology horror movie favorite, All Hallow’s Eve, which is the first feature-length film to feature Art the Clown. Now that Terrifier 4 has been confirmed, according to Variety, I can only imagine how this sadistic killer intends to up the ante.
