TERRIFIER 3: Writer/Director Damien Leone Talks About His Latest Entry!

Introduction

If you’re a horror hound, certain names take up massive real estate in your brain, such as John Carpenter, Wes Craven, George A. Romero, and likely Damien Leone. Leone’s Terrifier series of films has quickly taken the horror world by the throat with their emphasis on practical effects, extreme gore, and dark humor. Principal actor David Howard Thornton’s portrayal of Art the Clown has already garnered the character cult status in the pantheon of horror icons alongside Micheal Myers, Jason Vorhees, and Freddy Krueger.

With the third installment in the notorious series releasing Friday, October 11th, Art brings his signature terror to the Christmas season, clashing again with heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren Lavera) and what remains of her family after the events of Terrifier 2.

The London premiere of Terrifier 3 saw eleven patrons walk out of the film, nine of which did so during the film’s opening scene, and one patron is confirmed to have vomited in response to the film’s gore. It certainly earns its reputation.

We got the opportunity to have a Zoom interview with writer/director Damien Leone to discuss spoilers of Terrifier 3, how the characters came to life, and where the story may take these characters next. Here’s the transcript from that interview, slightly edited for clarity.

Interview

****WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD****

Eric McClanahan:

I first off have to apologize for my voice. I’m very sickly right now.

Damien Leone:

Oh, I’m sorry.

Eric McClanahan:

I feel like I sound like the movie trailer guy if he died but they made him keep working.

Damien Leone:

[laughs] Nah, you’re fine, man. And I apologize, too, I just got back at 1 am from doing a podcast in the city, but I’m good, man. I’m good to go. I’m having a good time. 

Eric McClanahan:

Well, speaking of people who died but we make them keep working, let’s talk about Art and Sienna. [laughs] Spoiler! This isn’t the last film. Obviously, they’re coming back – both of them, coming back for another confrontation. I did have one question. If you could help me understand Sienna’s power set? It seems like any injuries she sustains from the blade heal right away. 

Damien Leone:

Correct.

Eric McClanahan:

Yeah, so what’s next for her? Who is she fighting for?

Damien Leone:

Now she’s fighting for Gabby. She’s got to figure out how to get Gabby back and it looks like Gabby’s gone to some pretty, pretty dark place. So that’s exciting. You always have to raise the stakes for your hero and literally, if you can, bring them into the depths of hell. So it is not outside the realm of possibility that we will actually put Sienna in a hellish dimension at some point [laughs]. 

Eric McClanahan:

Nice. I had a question about Jonathan and the decision to dispatch him offscreen. Did you write something that was just so fucked up that you were like “I can’t? I can’t even do that”? Or was it just to keep the narrative going?

Damien Leone:

A few reasons. I never wrote what happened to him but I knew it would be the worst thing imaginable and I didn’t want to see that happen to the character on one level. It felt like it would be disrespectful; we spent so much time [with him] and hopefully, you care about that character and care too much about Sienna, too, to experience that even though she wouldn’t be experiencing it but we would, just to know what happened to someone she cared so much about in such a horrible way would just be so off-putting. If you’ve seen the movie you know that the most important thing is that there’s a misdirection that’s happening.

Eric McClanahan:

Yeah, the fake out.

Damien Leone:

You’re not supposed to know that it’s him. You’re supposed to think it’s another character. So that was another reason why it had to happen offscreen. And then another reason is that it would’ve had to take place right after, like immediately following, the biggest kill scene in the movie, where the audience would’ve been desensitized to whatever we did to that character. It would’ve been too overwhelming and with back-to-back massive kill scenes like that I think they would’ve just become numb if they weren’t numb already at this point in the movie. So those were the main reasons, but it’s interesting because it’s probably the biggest criticism that I’ve seen so far that the movie’s getting. So a lot of people wanted to see that character meet his demise. [laughs] 

Eric McClanahan:

I watched the movie with a couple of friends and we’re watching the closing credits and we see that the Humane Society oversaw all the animal care on the film and we just burst out laughing. We just thought that was so funny. We were like “Oh, I forgot there were rats” because everything that happens to the people is so over the top, like “Who gives a fuck?” [both laugh] So that’s just an aside. I wanted to share that.

Damien Leone:

Nah, man, we gotta take care of those rats, man. They came with agents. They came with bodyguards. [laughs] They were fine. 

Eric McClanahan:

I wanted to take it back to the beginning, to talk about the creation of Art the Clown as a character and David Howard Thornton’s portrayal of him. Did you guys work together from the beginning to create this character or did you find him through Central Casting? Because he’s such a perfect fit, I want to know how it started.

Damien Leone: 

Yeah, he was born to play this character. I believe that. It’s hard to imagine anyone else. But he wasn’t originally the character. I’d made short films, two short films with Art the Clown, and then he was put into an anthology called All Hallow’s Eve. He was played by my buddy Mike Giannelli, who’s not an actor. I wanted him to continue playing Art the Clown in Terrifier but he just didn’t want to do it anymore because it’s just not what he does and he didn’t like spending all those hours in the makeup chair. Rightfully so. You have to be built for this sort of thing.

So then when I knew that we had to recast the role I was looking for somebody, now that I was starting from scratch, who was taller and much thinner. Because I had sculpted Art the Clown to be very gaunt, right? He had that bone structure almost like a zombie and I knew that I wanted someone very thin who would make that makeup work a lot better. As soon as David walked in the room I would’ve cast him based on his physicality. As soon as I saw him walk in. He was tall, super thin, especially back then, and he had this big grin, and I said “Oh my gosh, this guy, he would look great!”

I gave him very little direction. I just said “Could you act as if you’re decapitating somebody but you’re doing it very gleefully. You’re having a great time.” He just flipped this switch immediately and transformed into this Jim Carrey-esque Grinch kind of character that was hunched over. Very animated and theatrical and doing all this wonderful improv. Like cutting off the head and pouring salt on the wound. And I was just floored. It was one of those moments where you know it’s just magical and I forgot I was watching an audition. And I’m with my partner Phil Falcone and we’re elbowing each other and laughing and just loving what we’re seeing. When he left I turned to Phil and said “Well what else are we looking for? This guy is more than we imagined we could have.”

I said let’s just end this and have him come back to the apartment, I’ll put the mask on him, put him in the costume, and we’ll film him doing that all over again. And that’s what we did and I’ve been fortunate enough to experience that a few times in this movie.

Same thing with Lauren Lavera, who plays Sienna. There was never a runner-up. I saw her reel, I loved her. I loved her acting, her physicality, and the fact that she was a martial artist. And I knew what I was going to have to put this character through. Then when she did chemistry reads with Elliott Fullam and some other actors it was just clear, that nobody else could play that part. She just brought her character to another level in Terrifier 3. I put her in a dark place. I mean this is the darkest chapter in Sienna’s story. I’m surrounded by very talented people so I’m very grateful.

Eric McClanahan:

Well speaking of being surrounded by very talented people, I was able to talk to David and Lauren earlier in support of the film and one of the things we talked about was some of the heavy-hitters, some of the Horror Royalty that came in for part three. We’re talking about Clint Howard, Danny Stryker, Jason Patric, and Tom Savini. Tell me about directing some of these legends and how that felt.

Damien Leone:

It was so incredible. Of course, I grew up idolizing those guys. They were all in movies that influenced me. Tom Savini is my biggest influence. The reason I’m talking to you right now is because he is how I discovered what a makeup artist was. That set me forth on this trajectory which made me fall in love with filmmaking. To have him in the movie was an ultimate full-circle moment. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to work with Tom on the set. He had to shoot that separately in Pittsburgh, we just had a little conversation about his small scene, but he was fantastic. 

But Jason Patric, like I still can’t believe that he’s in this movie. He’s one of the best actors of his generation and he’s also in my favorite movie, which is The Lost Boys. I have a magnet on the side of my fridge there. I found out through a mutual acquaintance that he was a fan of Terrifier before we ever met or anything. He and his son love Art the Clown. Then I was able to meet him and we talked movies and we became good friends. And he just happened to say “If you ever have a role for me or something I would be in one of these movies, “I went home and [mimics typing] “I’ve got the perfect part for this guy.”

Working with him, I was so nervous because I didn’t know how he worked and I hadn’t really worked with an actor of that caliber who had been in these amazing movies and had delivered these amazing performances and it was just so amazing to collaborate with an artist like that who is so talented and cares so much. He brought so much to his scenes. So many details, these beautiful details that fleshed out his character and little Sienna, so it was wonderful, yeah.

Eric McClanahan:

Nice. I think we probably have time for one more question so I’m going to ask How far along are you in Terrifier 4?

Damien Leone:

Not far. Once I wrote part two I knew where I was going to end the franchise, which is huge, because the worst thing you can do is not have an endgame in sight and you’re just sort of meandering or you start killing off characters.

Eric McClanahan:

Art in Space!

Damien Leone:

Yeah, like Art in Space or jumping the shark. All those things I’m trying to learn from the mistakes of franchises that I adore. Even if they make those mistakes, we all still watch the movies, we all still love the part tens and whatever, but ultimately I don’t want to make timelines… have like three different timelines of this character, or follow somebody for eight movies and then kill them off and you just question “Why did I invest so much energy in empathizing with this character when they ultimately served no purpose?” I’m desperately trying to avoid those traps.

I want to have a nice, concise story with a beginning, middle, and end. A saga where you know what it is and you’re satisfied with it. And that’s one of the reasons that I’m revealing puzzle pieces as I go because I know where it ends so it’s just a matter of how many of these films is it going to take to fit these cool ideas that I have. Because I also have lists of kill scenes, I have lists of scenarios that I want to put Art the Clown in, so it’s like those boxes that I know we have to check and then it’s the actual story that I’m trying to tell.

So it’s always a tricky balance of putting all those cool set pieces in your movie while telling the same story, and you run the risk of these long run times that everyone has a really hard time sort of accepting these days in a slasher film. In this movie, Terrifier 3, I think my original cut was two hours and twenty minutes and everybody was desperately asking me to keep it under two hours. I laugh when people say it’s “filler.” “Filler” is when you purposely try to pad out the run time, because you don’t have enough time to get to a feature-length movie.

I have too much stuff going on. So, I had to cut out five or six scenes from Terrifier 3 to have a more palatable run time, so it’s tricky. But at least I know where it’s going to end, I have a lot of ideas, also just scenes that I wrote for part three that I didn’t even bother shooting because I just knew it was going to stretch out that run time, so now I can put those into the subsequent film or films, but we’ll see. I’m just happy to know that I have the end in sight. 

Eric McClanahan:

In the last couple of films, Art has had some help, from some compatriots. Would it be outside the realm of possibility for someone to step in and help Sienna?

Damien Leone:

Oh, that’s a great question. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility, just so you know, but I am going to say that Art the Clown is done with having any sort of sidekicks or anything at this point. This was, Terrifier parts 2 and 3 were sort of Art’s supernatural detour, to explore what brings the boogieman back, but now it’s important that I get him back on track to what he was in the original Terrifier. I think that’s good, I think it’s a healthy approach. 

Eric McClanahan:

Alright, well that is time. Thank you so much for talking to me today and I’ll talk to you for the fourth one.

Damien Leone:

Thanks, Eric. Appreciate it, buddy. Take care, man.

Terrifier 3 opens in theaters nationwide on October 11th.

Watch the video version of the interview below on the Cinema Scholars YouTube channel, and don’t forget to like and subscribe!

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