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The Terrifier franchise has earned a special spotlight in the film industry in the last few years not just because of the extreme violence that is depicted, but also because of their extreme indie-ness. The movies aren’t produced by major studios, but they have impressive production values via impressive practical effects, and a large fanbase has been developed. It’s a cool Hollywood success story – but the creation of what is to date the most insane moment in the franchise perfectly demonstrates the fragility of the whole enterprise.
Writer/director Damien Leone is currently in the process of making Terrifier 4 – a chapter he has referred to as the finale of the series – but he took a look back at the history of the franchise as a recent guest on the podcast Inside Of You With Michael Rosenbaum. The host asked the filmmaker about the most complicated sequence to create thus far in the movies, and Leone identified the bedroom sequence in Terrifier 2 before explaining how it was almost an underwhelming mess:
I think we started filming it when we weren’t prepared with the effects, and I remember shooting the scene – and it was intended to be the big scene in the movie, the big kill set piece. The first movie was, whatever you want to call it, notorious for that hacksaw scene, so I knew going in we have to try and rival that or do something as cool.
If you’ve seen the Terrifier movies, I have no doubt that you know what scene is being discussed here, but I’ll paint a picture of the Terrifier 2 sequence for the uninitiated: Art The Clown, portrayed by actor David Howard Thornton, breaks into the house of a teenager (Casey Hartnett), and chases her up to her bedroom before proceeding to slash her face, scalp her with scissors, slice open her back, and rip off one of her arms before tearing the other in half. It’s utterly gruesome, but the earliest versions of the scene apparently just didn’t work at all.
Damien Leone had ambitions to top the sequence in Terrifier where a woman is literally cut in half vertically with a hacksaw, but issues behind the scenes threw the whole idea into jeopardy. He continued,
There were so many issues making Part 2. I tried to get a makeup crew to help me, but they bailed out, and then we were all kind of prepped to start shooting, so we just had to jump in and figure it out as we were going. So when we got to that scene, we just weren’t ready for it, and I remember being so disappointed as it’s happening.
In addition to writing, directing, producing and editing, Damien Leone also credited for the practical effects and makeup work for All Hallows Eve (the film that introduced Art The Clown) and the first two Terrifier movies… but his first crack efforts on the bedroom scene for Terrifier 2 were not up to his own standards. He recalls the experience on set, saying,
None of the effects are working, and I’m just by the monitor, and I pulled by producer over, a couple of other people… not freaking out, but just saying we’re going to have to come back and get inserts and figure this out, because this is not up to snuff.
Of course, fans know that this story has a happy ending. Because of insanity like the finished cut of the bedroom sequence Terrifier 2 earned a reputation for being so gross and scary that it had people vomiting in theaters. That news earned the film the curiosity of movie-goers looking to experience a cinematic endurance test, and a production with a reported $250,000 budget made $15.7 million by the end of its big screen run.
Terrifier 3 was an even bigger success when it was released in the fall of last year, and Terrifier 4 is now in development and will bring the blood-soaked canon to a close while revealing key details about Art The Clown’s backstory. The sequel doesn’t have an announced release date but, but it’s always a good idea to stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for big news about the most exciting upcoming horror movies.