The following article contains bloody images and descriptions of torture and graphic violence.
Damien Leone’s increasingly popularTerrifierfranchise upped the murderous ante with the well-reviewedTerrifier 3, which may have outdone its predecessors when it comes to blood spilled by Art the Clown.Terrifier 3’s box office totalshave blown away most expectations, and a big part of the reason is the film’s tendency to encourage word-of-mouth recommendations. The extreme violence in the franchise and intensity of some of its scenes, includingTerrifier 3’s controversial opening scene, famously made audience members sick at its screenings; naturally, those incidents went viral and further piqued moviegoers' overall interest.
While the franchise’s famous (and meme-able) slasher, Art the Clown, was shockingly brutal in the originalTerrifier, he reached new heights, or depths, of depravity inTerrifier 2. Creator Damien Leone sought to outdoall other Art the Clown movieswithTerrifier 3,both in narrative and in sheer gore, and by many measures he succeeded in that endeavor. With three chapters of theTerrifiersaga now released, it’s worth re-examining all three movies to determine which of Art’s infamous kill scenes is actually the bloodiest.
Terrifier 3’s 9th Circle Book & Art The Clown Connection Explained
The ending of Terrifier 3 has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Art’s history as a book title, and it could point to what’s next for the clown.
10Art’s Pizza Shop Massacre
Terrifier
After the extended pizza shop encounter between Dawn, Tara, and Art at the beginning ofTerrifier, Art executes his first kills of the franchise on the two pizza shop workers. The owner, Steve, angrily throws Art out after he smears feces all over the bathroom, and shortly after, has his decapitated head turned into a jack-o'-lantern. While that kill happens off-screen, the next one doesn’t; Art cuts the fingers off the other employee, Ramone, as he attempts to call for help. He proceeds to stab Ramone’s face many times,making it more of a bloody brain mush than a skull.
9Ricky Gets Fed Up With Art At The Halloween Store
Terrifier 2
Art’s trash bag full of mystery weapons (and other assorted items, like spare change) is always bad news for whoever gets to see it open, and the first person to experience it inTerrifier 2is Ricky, the Halloween shop clerk. After playfully stalking Sienna through the store, Art attempts to purchase a bike horn from Ricky, and digs into his trash bag for money. While searching for a smattering of pennies,Art places a number of other items on the counter, including a glass bottle, a chain, and a cleaver.
2016
$35,000-$55,000
$416,000
60%
53%
2022
$250,000
$15.7 million
86%
80%
2024
$2 million
$49.8 million (and counting)
76%
A frustrated Ricky snaps on Art, which prompts Art to smash his face with the bottle. He then stabs Ricky’s eye with the top of the broken bottle and twists it around, and in the process hauls him over the counter and onto the ground.Art then takes the cleaver to Ricky’s skull, killing him instantly before continuing to hack away at his head until he decapitates him completely. Art makes further use of Ricky’s head by posing with it in the storefront, scaring a child attempting to enter the store.
8The Coroner Meets The New Art
Terrifier 2wastes absolutely no time in proving to its audience that the bar has been raised since the originalTerrifier. The newly-resurrected Art begins the movie by brutally massacring the first person he encounters: the coroner, Seth Bolton. After his resurrection at the hands of thedemonic entity that now possesses Art,the twisted clown cuts the throat of the coroner, although he manages to crawl to a phone to call for help before Art gets to him again.
Art throws the coroner to the ground and tears into his head, gouging out one of his eyes by the root so that he can place it in his own head to replace the one he lost in his suicide at the end ofTerrifier. Once it’s out,Art smashes the coroner’s face in with a malletbefore completely taking apart his head to retrieve his brain. It’s a breathtakingly brutal scene, and perfectly sets the tone forTerrifier 2.
7The Demo Workers Discover Art And Vicky
Terrifier 3
The two demo workers who enter Art’s house early inTerrifier 3may have actuallyrevealed Art’s backstory with a joke, but they didn’t last much longer than that. The two men discover and awaken the dormant Art and Vicky, who proceed to murder them in brutal fashion. The first one gets off relatively easily, as Vicky stabs him in the neck with a broken piece of glass. His partner is not so lucky; Art stabs him with a stake and bites his fingers off,then proceeds to cut open his head with a small knife so he can peel all the skin off his face in one piece.
While that’s happening,Vicky takes pleasure in the act by masturbating with a piece of glass, causing blood to pour from the wounds she opens. It’s a disturbing and bloody addition to the scene, and is a nod toThe Exorcist, in which the demon-possessed Regan does something similar with a cross. It’s an indicator that Vicky’s body is inhabited by something hellish, and ultimately makes it one of the most disturbing scenes inTerrifier 3.
6Brooke And Jeff At The Carnival
Art is responsible for a tremendous amount of pain and suffering in all theTerrifiermovies, but Sienna’s friends seem to get it worse than most. Her friend Brooke and her boyfriend Jeff accompany Sienna to the carnival that includes the Terrifier funhouse, and after Sienna leaves the car to find her brother, Jeff exits the car to relieve himself. Unfortunately, Art is waiting for him, andhe stabs Jeff in the crotch many timesbefore tearing his genitals off and smearing them on the car window in a twisted bit of irony given Jeff’s “Just the Tip” gag shirt.
As bad as that seems,Brooke’s death is far more bloody and painful. Art chases her into the carnival and manages to corner her in a bathroom, and appears ready to bludgeon her with his custom-made bat. However, he first throws acid in her face, causing her skin to melt as she screams in agony. At that point he follows through with the bat, destroying Brooke’s arms and legs before smashing into her chest and stomach. Once she dies, he reaches into the open chest cavity, pulls out her heart, and takes a healthy chomp out of it.
5Art Gets Back At Dawn
Art is subjected to the drunk antics of Dawn in the pizza shop when the audience first meets him inTerrifier, and it doesn’t take long for him to take vengeance for her annoyances. After pursuing Dawn and Tara to an abandoned building, Art captures Dawn off-screen. After he also subdues Tara, she wakes up to find a naked Dawn suspended by her ankles.Art then takes a hacksaw to the young woman, bisecting her from the groin to the head. It’s the defining kill of the originalTerrifier, and it’s among the bloodiest single kills of the series.
4The Mall Explosion
Once Santa Art uses liquid nitrogen and a hammer to steal a holly jolly costume off the man that Art treats like the real Santa, he makes his way to a mall so that he can play Santa for himself. Art sits on Santa’s seat, and reveals a number of wrapped gifts that he hands out to the kids waiting for Santa at the mall. The tension builds, andit’s extremely obvious that there is something unsettling inside the packages.
At least one of them contains a bomb, which explodes and kills all the children in the area.A slow reveal shows the mutilated piece of the children’s bodies, and blood…is…everywhere. It’s perhaps the most shocking moment of the entire series, based on the fact that Art kills a number of children, and he does it en masse instead of one at a time.
3Santa Art Visits For Christmas
Terrifier 2rocked the horror world with its viral violence, and was kicked off by the eye-opening Coroner kill.Terrifier 3had the challenge of somehow raising the bar from that level of shocking violence, and Damien Leone found a way in the opening scene.The movie opens with Art visiting a sleeping familya few nights before Christmas, dressed as Santa Claus but with an axe instead of a sack full of gifts.
Damien Leone has said that the one line he will not cross in theTerrifiermovies is actually showing kids being killed in any kind of detail. While Art killed plenty of children inTerrifier 3, none of their deaths were directly shown, only the aftermath or the sound of the murder occurring.
Art takes the axe to each member of the family, hacking the father to death in his bed alongside the sleeping mother, who wakes up to the carnage and manages to at least make it downstairs before Art chops off her arm and hacks into her stomach. The far more disturbing part of the entire affair is his murder of the son, Timmy. Leone graciously spares the audience from seeing Art hack apart a child, but they are allowed to hear it, which feels just as unpleasant. The copious blood and violence sets the tone for the entire movie.
2The Bedroom Scene
While it comes in at #2 on this list,the highly disturbing “bedroom scene” is probably still considered to be the “worst” of Art’s many kills, even if it isn’t technically the bloodiest. The scene, which many people find hard to watch, is marked by the unchecked cruelty and elongation of suffering. Art takes so much pleasure in Allie’s pain that it is truly unsettling, even for the most seasoned of slasher fans. As bad as the dismemberment is, the fact that Allie stays alive for so long is the worst part of the entire extended scene.
Art slashes Allie’s eye before literally ripping off one of her arms and then splitting the other one down the middle and pulling it apart. He then proceeds to slash and stab her back, spraying blood everywhere. After a break in the scene,the audience returns to find Art pouring bleach and rubbing salt into Allie’s open woundspurely as a way to exacerbate her pain. When Allie’s mother finally comes into her room, she finds Allie’s mostly ruined body sitting in bed, the walls completely coated in a layer of blood, and shockingly, Allie is still alive.
1Art Interrupts Cole And Mia In The Shower
The bedroom scene is what made audience members sick during screenings ofTerrifier 2, but Damien Leone crafted a scene that blew it out of the water in terms of bloodshed forTerrifier 3. Art sets upon a young couple (Jonathan’s roommate and his true crime-obsessed girlfriend) doing what college kids do in a dorm room shower, andhe enacts his own homage to Alfred Hitchcock’sPsycho,albeit with a chainsaw and not a kitchen knife.
There is so much blood on the floor from the two bodies that Art is able to literally make a “blood angel” in the carnage.
Mia might take the title for total blood emptied from a human body in theTerrifierfranchise, as Art cuts her in half and keeps stabbing at her body until there isn’t much left but a mass of flesh, bone, and blood. Her boyfriend Cole, however, fares worse somehow. The audience is treated to a gut-churningly detailed view of Art’s chainsaw cutting through Cole’s backside and groin, and then up through the rest of his body.
There is so much blood on the floor from the two bodies that Art is able to literally make a “blood angel” in the carnage. While Allie’s torture and murder in the bedroom scene might be the most disturbing kill,there is only the blood of one person in her room. There are two in the shower scene, which makes it the bloodiest scene inTerrifier 3, and the entireTerrifierfranchise (so far).
Cast
Terrifier 3 follows Sienna and her brother as they attempt to move past the traumatic events of Art the Clown’s Halloween massacre. As they embrace the Christmas season, Art reemerges, intent on turning their holiday into a nightmare, continuing his reign of terror.
