Time to crawl out from under your bridges, ghouls, because Damien Leone’s Art the Clown is back in TERRIFIER 3, hitting theaters October 11th. This time the terror is set against the backdrop of Christmas, with Art (David Howard Thornton) returning to hunt down Sienna (Lauren Lavera) after she cut his head off in the last installment. The film picks up right at the end of Part 2 before allowing Art to take a five year siesta while Sienna spends time in facilities piecing her psyche back together. Young Jonathan Shaw (Elliott Fullam) isn’t so young anymore, attending college near his Aunt and Uncle, Jessica and Mark (Margaret Anne Florence and Alex Ross), with whom Sienna stays after being checked out of the latest facility.
The film opens with Art dispatching a family while dressed in a Santa Claus suit, letting the audience know right away that no one is safe. The entire film plays out as a supercut of gory kills and dark humor, with occasional moments of genuine world-building that allows the supporting cast to really stretch their acting muscles. Plotwise, the film seems to be more focused on showcasing creative kills than telling a cohesive story, and the end seems somewhat rushed, as though the filmmakers had almost forgotten that they had to end the thing.
What a TERRIFIER fan is looking for, however, is exactly what they’ll find in 3: inventive kills, stomach-turning sound design, laughs that’ll make you question your own morality, and surprises. When I got the opportunity to talk to David Howard Thornton and Lauren Lavera, I had to break into spoilers right away, because to discuss TERRIFIER 3 is to discuss the world that lies beyond it. If you don’t want spoilers, skip the interview and come back after you’ve seen the movie, but even if you don’t mind a little spoiler, you’ll still want to see the third installment after hearing the cast talk about the family atmosphere on set, what they do to blow off steam after intense scenes, and their experience working with some of the horror royalty that showed up for this outing.
Eric McClanahan - Hi! How are we doing today?
David Howard Thornton - Doing great. How are you doing?
EM - I’m fantastic!
Lauren Lavera - Awesome!
EM - Nice to talk to you both. I watched the film last night with a couple of friends and some chinese food and some beer. [all laugh]
DHT - Bet that was fun!
EM - Yeah, and a bucket. We had a bucket in the middle of the room. Just in case.
DHT - That’s smart.
LL - Good. Did everyone keep it down, is what the people want to know.
EM - Yes, yes we did. We’re all very proud of ourselves. [all laugh] So, TERRIFIER 3, definitely upped the stakes. I talked to Damien last year and I asked him about a rumor that this might be the last one, and he said he knows how it’s all going to end and he doesn’t want to overstay his welcome. Going right into spoiler territory, this clearly isn’t the last one. Are you two going to be doing this until you’re ninety, to quote Deadpool?
DHT - [laughs] I’d be happy to. If I could do the Dick Van Dyke thing and keep working like that until I’m in my nineties I would be stoked. I love this character so much, as long as I can keep finding new fun stories to tell with him, I’m there.
LL - I agree. I mean, I will follow Damien into Hell, literally. [David laughs] And I don’t think I’d ever want to really retire from this job anyway, and to what David said, I love Sienna and I love acting, so… let’s see what happens.
EM - So Sienna was the Final Girl in the second film and she’s the Final Girl again in the third film, and there’s been such a legacy of Final Girls in Horror. Who do you see as inspiration?
LL - So many Final Girls I take inspiration from. I grew up watching them; I always loved Laurie, Ripley, Sidney, Nancy, I can’t even name all of them. Erin. I truly do love and am a big fan of Mia Allen from the 2013 version of The Evil Dead. I take inspiration from every single one of them, and of course infuse my own thoughts and love into Sienna, but definitely inspired by every single one of those people.
EM - Excellent. Now, moving forward, what does Sienna have to fight for? I mean, she has Gabby, maybe? She’s in another dimension, or whatever, but everything else is gone. How does she persevere?
LL - I think that she is truly a person that fights for family. I think her main focus right now is Gabby. But I also do think, and I don’t know - I’ve grappled with this thought - I don’t know how much she fights for herself as a person. It might be a bit of a character flaw for her, but I also think that, in her mind, she is the only one that can defeat Art the Clown, and knows that he will continue to kill people outside of her family, as we see, so I think she has that weight on her shoulders to Save the World.
EM - Now, David, I heard a story that there was a scene in TERRIFIER 3 that turned even your stomach. Now, having seen the film, I have some guesses but I want to hear from you. What was the turning point?
DHT - I want to know what your guess is.
EM - Well, my friends thought it was the shower scene and I thought it might actually have been the opening.
DHT - No, neither one of those. It was Aunt Jess.
EM - Oh, okay.
DHT - I cannot handle vomit. [laughs] So when the vomit is coming out of that tube and the whole - I mean the vomit, alone, gets me but that whole notion that I am shoving this plastic tube through this woman’s mouth and hammering it in, the whole entire time she’s screaming and all of her insides are starting to come up through that tube and that’s just so gross to me. And the stuff they were using was just so gross, too; they were using this mushroom soup that just smelled horrible and we are in a very hot, humid, smelly house and that was bad enough. Then Samantha [Scaffidi] comes in, wanting to watch the filming and see what’s going on, and she’s eating this horrible smelling bag of Corn-Nuts, which just disgusts me anyway, and she’s just right up in my face breathing that on me like “Heeeey, Daaaave. You okaaaaaay?” And I’m just like “Ohhh… God.” I was not handling it well. Also, I’m a very empathetic person, so that was a bit where I was really just imagining this poor woman watching what she was going through. Usually I can turn that off in my head, but that was just “Ahhh…” Too many factors all at once. I was really trying to contain it and I was very happy I did, and what got me through it was knowing that if I threw up after being in that makeup chair for so long, the makeup artist Heather was going to kill me. And she was already getting mad, like “Guys, stop that! Do NOT make him throw up!” [laughs] Because everybody else was pushing for it, they were all like “C’mon, Dave! Come on!” “Stop it, guys!”
EM - That perfectly feeds into my next question, which came from a lot of people who said hey, if you’re going to talk to those two, you have to ask How do you decompress after a day of filming a movie like TERRIFIER 3? Like, do you adopt a litter of kittens? Do you listen to the whole Gene Kelly catalog? What do you do after a day of work?
DHT - I go on Twitter. No, I’m kidding.
LL - Oh my God! [laughs] I try to turn it off after Cut. I immediately like to put it behind me and regroup in between until it’s Action again and I try to take it on again. But for the end of the day I’ve definitely developed some breathing exercises to really decompress. I might take a bath, wear one of those face masks, just do some self-care things. Or just watch a really funny show. But, I’m usually fine, and in between takes, the cast and crew are all really hilarious and we have a lot of fun and really love each other so it definitely helps us get through the day.
DHT - I’m pretty much the same. I just gotta decompress when I get a day off. I do a lot of video games. That’s always been my therapy, ever since I was a bullied kid. As a kid bullied, I got my aggression out or whatever was bothering me out in video games and that’s what I do. Something creative. I also recently got into building LEGO a lot again so I’m having fun with that. Doing something where I can either play games, because I love games and I love to read, or be entertained. So as long as something entertains me, I’m good.
EM - What is the vibe on set like? Clearly it’s a lot of the same people on this production as the beginning, it’s a family affair, so what do you do for team building? Karaoke night? What happens?
DHT - I tell you it’s a lot of just joking around. We’re constantly just joking around. It’s a rag-tag bunch of goofs and I think that lends itself to it. We just have fun, we’re all very close, and like I said, everyone there is just trying their best to make me throw up. ‘Cause they think that’ll be funny.
LL - Yeah, we’ve all known each other for half a decade now. I’ve known Dave for five years, and with most of the crew and cast - well, I guess mostly crew, returning, yeah, we’re all a family, so we all have a comfort around each other, we can let our guard down around each other, there’s no real, like, saving face, we don’t have to really “try” in between takes. We just exist with each other, when we’re not goofing around, we’re just very comfortable.
DHT - And that’s the thing, it’s like because of that comfort level, we’re able to be our real selves, so if we aren’t comfortable with something we can express it and no one thinks anything of it. Like, for instance, I get stressed when we get behind schedule. I’m a very schedule-oriented person, it’s part of the spectrum for me, and I’ll sometimes let them know, like “Guys I’m very worried right now. We’re very behind schedule. We gotta get on top of things.” In the past when I’ve worked on other productions I’ve been too afraid to say stuff like that, to air my concerns, because I’m afraid someone’s going to think I’m difficult to work with so I keep that bottled up, but here I can say that and they’ll say “Oh yeah, you’re right. Let’s make sure we’re on schedule and we’ll get all this stuff taken care of.” I feel very free to actually be myself which is great.
EM - So for this third installment we were able to bring in some royalty: Jason Patric, Clint Howard, Tom Savini. What was it like welcoming these legends onto the set?
DHT - Oh, that was incredible. My favorite week on set was the whole entire bar scene, because that was me, Clint Howard, Bradley Stryker, and Danny Roebuck, and I’d watched all three of these guys in so many movies and TV shows my whole entire life and they are so funny. And we had so much fun together. And Damien, with the atmosphere we have on set, Damien allows people to experiment and play and especially this particular week. He just said “you guys, here’s the script, if you feel like adding anything to it, just have fun!” And that’s what we did, especially Danny and I. The whole entire torture bit with him, he was constantly throwing things out, he’s such a great scene partner, in that regard, because he’s a former stage actor, as well, and he did a lot of comedy, so he knows how to be a good “straight man,” and how to “throw” you the joke, so it was just constant back and forth with us. That was just pure joy for me. At the end of that week I was in the car going back to the hotel and I almost started crying because I was just so happy. It was just magical. That whole week was pure magic for me. Being able to share the screen with a bunch of actors that I have respected over the years was just… wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!
LL - I was lucky in that I actually met some of the actors before we even got to set. And some of them I didn’t even know that I was working with. Like Danny Roebuck, we both really love Halloween, and we were both exploring this halloween store near me and he said “Oh, Lauren Lavera!” and I said “Oh, Danny Roebuck, holy shit!” and he said “We’re going to be working together” and I said “We are?” I had no idea. He said “Ask Damien,” and I was so excited. And same with Clint Howard - I met him for the first time this past weekend and he’s just amazing. He and his wife Pat and his family are just so beautiful. Then, with Jason Patric, we’ve met at conventions in the past and he’s such a wonderful person and though I unfortunately didn’t get to work directly with him I did come to visit him on set when he was working with the younger version of me, and I was floored by the performance. When he calls young Sienna “Sisi,” I said “Oh, Damien, that’s really smart. I love that nickname!” and he said “That was Jason’s idea. I didn’t have that written in the script.” I was just so impressed, and seeing him onscreen, I was floored; he has this beautiful paternal energy, like “I want him to be MY dad!” I was so psyched. Oh, and Tom Savini! Holy shit! Tom Savini, when he came on screen, and Dave can attest to this, it was like uproarious in the theater. He’s just amazing! We were just so honored that these people that we’ve always loved wanted to be a part of our project.
EM - Yeah, it was definitely an “Aha!” moment when he shows up on screen.
LL - He’s so good in that scene! He’s so good at being expressive!
EM- Well, we are out of time. Thank you both so much for talking to me today. Obviously the film delivers on all fronts, so everyone who is looking forward to it is going to enjoy it. Again, do it until you’re ninety, and I’ll see you on the next one.
DHT - Thanks, man. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
TERRIFIER 3 hits theaters October 11th.
Until next time, take scare!
-McEric, aka Eric McClanahan-
