Art the Clown— once the prince of Halloween, based on early Terrifer franchise lore— has now become the Clown that Stole Christmas, thanks to the massive success of Terrifer 3, and Fango bore witness to a day of Yuletide fun with Team Terrifier.
ScarePros Halloween & Christmas store— located in Levittown, Pennsylvania and just 35 minutes outside of Philadelphia— has been a prime outlet for horror and holiday fans alike for over three decades, and store owner Chris Sembrot recently welcomed Terrifier mastermind Damien Leone, along with Art portrayer David Howard Thornton, as well as franchise producer Phil Falcone and Stream creators Michael and Jason Leavy, for a special photo opportunity for fans to take pictures with Thornton dressed as Santa Art, complete with a dazzling Santa mall setup, akin to that scene in the movie.
“This area is a hotbed for Terrifier,” Sembrot tells me, with the store walls adorned with the most hyper-specific Terrifier merch imaginable. “This is a breeding ground. Everybody involved with making the movies is within an hour (of here), and a lot of the cast and crew were customers of the store for a long time, so we’ve been rooting for friends.”
Inside, I find king-of-the-franchise Leone sitting on a fitting throne (which Sembrot playfully insists Leone sit in for today) as he meets and greets fans, some of which have traveled from across the country, as well as Canada, to be in attendance this weekend. (Even T3’s memorable little rat costars were brought in for a mini reunion.) “I know this can go away at any second, so I’m very grateful,” a humble Leone, a former flower delivery boy while writing the screenplay for the first film, says to me. “I’m too old not to be. (Laughs).”
The vibe is filled with (dark) Christmas cheer, with one side of the store fit for a horror collector’s dream, as every niche horror figurine and movie icon mask adorns ScarePros’ walls, while the other side is decked out with lovely Christmas lights and decorations. Fans admire the merchandise while they wait in line to meet their heroes, with many donning their bloodiest holiday Art fits— but they will pale in comparison when it’s finally Thornton’s turn to put on the Santa suit.
For the next portion of the afternoon, I join Leone and Thornton as an eyewitness to Art’s getting ready routine, as hundreds of fans line up for their turn to sit in Santa Art’s lap. With Leone’s first love of SFX, he’s responsible for applying Art’s makeup today, as he still typically does for events like this one. We’re skipping pre-prosthetic skincare products and heading straight for “down and dirty,” as Leone calls it.
Art drag takes about an hour of application and approximately half of that for removal. Today’s a long one, as Thornton will be in makeup for at least six hours for this event. The guys tell me that Art’s eyebrows are always the one little detail that’s hard to get exactly right every time, and keeping continuity with Art’s Santa look for the third installment has been tricky (as the ball of the Santa hat has to be on the same side his tiny black hat usually is.)
“The entire prosthetic was changed for 3,” Leone explains, as the most recent film was the first time the Art mold was fit for Thornton’s face, as opposed to the previous iterations, which were sculpted for original Art portrayer Mike Giannelli’s face. “So, for this one, we took my sculpture, and we made a clay press so they could study it and measure it, and one of Tinsley Studio’s crew members sculpted it again from scratch and made it identical. The way it’s sculpted now is from (Thornton’s) lifecast.”
Between makeup layers drying and casual movie chat, the guys lament about the SFX challenges on the set of T3. Leone immediately mentions the dual chainsaw kill as its most exhausting, as well as the scope of the film’s ambitious third act. “The entire climax— everything in that house, from the moment he’s torturing Sienna, was just brutal. It’s just such a big scene, and so much to it, with characters moving this way and that way. I was cutting things out of the script before we even shot it just because we knew it was turning into another two-and-a-half-hour-long movie.”
To that point, Thornton adds that many fans seem to have ironically wanted more time with 3, even though they made it a point to keep it shorter in length than its predecessor. “(The climax) was a lot darker in the original script,” he notes.
“That’s alright because I’m going to put all of that into Part 4,” Leone teases. “Even when I wrote Part 2, I knew where the finale was going to go. I still have to fill in a lot of puzzle pieces, but there’s one major thing that was crucial to the entire franchise that I just figured out, like three weeks ago. It was the hardest thing for me to figure out, and I’m so excited for it.” He promises an epic that will answer questions you may have about the Art lore, but assures me it’s too soon to know if we’ll be getting a Part 5.
Only Leone knows what Art’s future entails, but for now, his turn as a demented Santa is complete with a costume pieced together from various sources. Thornton is goofily singing “O Christmas Tree” in a Jerry Lewis-impersonating voice. He loves making people laugh, as he reminds us. And humor might be the only thing he and Art have in common, as Thornton refers to Art’s motivation for his antics from a line from the first film: “He does it because he thinks it’s funny.” Leone insists he’ll never give fans an actual motivation for Art’s violence, though. That’s all a part of his slasher mystique.
As Leone places the white wig on Thornton’s head and applies the finishing touches, he speaks to the creative risks he’s taken for his latest iteration. “[The Santa costume] was such a gamble,” Leone explains. “It’s a risky thing to do to a slasher and them out of their costume. We’re completely changing the look of Art the Clown, taking him out of his element. That’s always the risk, but it’s rewarding when it works.” (And enjoy it now, kids, as we likely won’t see Art in a Santa getup again for foreseeable sequels, Leone informs.)
“People love it,” Thornton declares, evidenced by the throngs of cheering Art fans present today, including dozens of families hoping to make this photo op their 2024 Christmas card, as well as a few soon-to-be families with sweet marriage proposals in front of the guys. Producer Falcone and wife Lisa are amazed at the amount of excited young children (including toddlers!) here to tell Art if they were naughty or nice today.
Thornton remarks how much little girls, in particular, love these movies. T2’s The Little Pale Girl’s inspiration origins might have begun from Leone’s love for the 1968 film Spirits of the Dead, but it blossomed once he noticed how many young girls approached him at cons dressed as Art the Clown.
On a serious, but touching note, when asked about the most sentimental fan story the pair has had in the wake of 3’s success, Leone recounts a recent horror con interaction with a police officer. The officer had received a domestic disturbance call involving a 9-year-old girl, to which she was extricated from her parents. When asked if she was okay, the brave young girl simply said, “’I’m going to be okay— I’m going to stay strong, just like my hero, Sienna,’” Leone recalls.
“That’s something you can’t really process. It was beautiful.”
For some, the Terrifier films may be little more than gory killer clown movies. But for others— like those who have traveled far and wide to be here this day and share their families and personal stories with those who created these movies— they’re Christmas miracles.
