Art the Clown Is Better Than the Film Around Him
Nerdy Up North
The setup
On Halloween night, two friends cross paths with Art the Clown, a silent killer whose increasingly brutal attacks turn a late night encounter into a relentless fight for survival.
Terrifier is not complicated. There is a clown, he is horrible, and the film spends most of its runtime finding increasingly disgusting things for him to do to people.
David Howard Thornton is the entire reason this became a franchise. Art does not speak, but he has more personality than most talking horror villains. The little smiles, exaggerated reactions and almost childlike excitement make him funny right up until he does something absolutely vile.
The practical gore is also impressive when you remember how little money the film had. Damien Leone clearly knows effects, and there are moments where you can practically feel the movie daring you to keep watching.
The problem is that the characters around Art are nowhere near as interesting. They mostly exist to wander into danger and become another effects sequence. The story is incredibly thin, and once the shock value wears off there is not much underneath it.
That does not mean it fails at what it is trying to do. If you want an old school nasty slasher with no interest in being respectable, Terrifier delivers exactly that.
I just think Art deserved a slightly better film around him. Luckily, the sequels had plenty of opportunity to build on what works here.
Positives
David Howard Thornton creates an instantly memorable horror villain, the practical gore is impressively nasty and the film has a proper grimy low budget slasher feel.
Negatives
The characters are thin, the plot barely exists and the film relies heavily on shock value.
Verdict
Terrifier is rough around the edges, but Art the Clown walks out of it as a genuine modern horror icon. That alone explains why the series survived.
