Brace yourself for our favourite killer clown’s cutthroat comeback – Art the Clown is bringing his bag of guts and gore to scare up screams in theatres once more. This November sees the US theatrical re-release of the slasher sensation Terrifier 2, which unleashes a special blood-curdling surprise – an exclusive teaser for the next instalment! We sat down with the mastermind behind the murderous mayhem, director Damien Leone, to slice open the secrets of the saga’s next chapter and find out who Art could team up with…
STARBURST: With a new Terrifier film on the way, what details can you give us so far? How gory are you going to get with it?
Damien Leone: Oh, as gory as you can imagine! And then some! We always have to one-up the previous instalment, especially now, because the expectations just grow and grow. People are really expecting us to make them vomit the next time around. I’m going to do my best to make you throw up in the theatre this time! We’re also continuing to follow the journey of Sienna [Laura LaVera] and her brother Jonathan [Elliott Fullam], and this metamorphosis, so to speak. How they’re dealing with the trauma and the events of Terrifier 2 and how that’s affected their lives, and seeing how Art gets out of the situation that we last left him in. We’ll explore what that evil entity is that brought back Art and why Sienna was sort of appointed to combat him and all those things. It’s going to be exciting, but it’s tonally shifting back to the atmosphere of the first Terrifier in terms of being a more gritty, dark, grindhouse slasher film, and I want this to be the scariest one so far. I want to see if I can balance those this time around. It should be fun!
Think Freddy vs. Jason; who would Art’s rival be in the horror universe if you were to make this sort of meta film?
I have two answers for that. I think I would love to see Art team up with, more than fight, Freddy because I think Art is kind of a silent Freddy. They have a very similar, charming, sadistic black sense of humour. I think the jokes that the two of them could do and play off each other would be fantastic. They’re both operating in these supernatural realms, so there is a way to have them cross paths. But I would love it if maybe Art fought Ash from The Evil Dead, and I’m thinking Ash in his prime in Evil Dead 2 would be amazing because he’s one of my favourite heroes, my favourite horror protagonist. That would be really cool.
With Halloween coming up, what’s your go-to film is for the season?
Oh my gosh, it’s so it’s so cliché, but nothing embodies Halloween for me like the original Halloween. I feel like this movie shaped what Halloween is and how we perceive it. It’s just an unmatched atmosphere that the movie was able to capture. It just does something so nostalgic to me. I love watching that whole franchise this time of year. It’s like part of my ritual.
We completely agree. We’re big fans of Halloween 3 – that’s our go-to!
One of the best Halloween atmospheres in that movie! It’s almost impossible to capture that nowadays in movies; there’s just something so magical and they nailed it. I always throw that one on as well.
TERRIFIER 2 is in select US cinemas from November 1st. You can read more from Damien Leone in the upcoming Issue 484 of STARBURST – available from November 30th here.
