Terrifier 3’s goriest scene channels Psycho — and Passion of the Christ

Don’t get too attached to any characters in Terrifier 3, the latest movie in Damien Leone’s viral-hit splatter series about evil murder-mime Art the Clown. This installment features a clearer sense of what series mainstay Art the Clown actually is, plus more narrative, more background lore, and more character work, particularly with previous survivors Sienna (Lauren LaVera) and Vicki (Samantha Scaffidi). But it’s still devoted to practically shot, lovingly rendered, grotesquely over-the-top eviscerations, and in most scenes, anyone who encounters Art is likely to become chum fairly quickly.

That’s particularly true for pushy true-crime podcaster Mia (Alexa Blair) and her boyfriend Cole (Mason Mecartea), heavily foreshadowed in as the kind of horror-movie jerks who won’t be mourned when the worst happens. Mia and Cole are the center of Leone’s showpiece kill: They’re having sex in a university shower stall when Art comes after them with a chainsaw.

As Leone explained in a Q&A after the movie’s world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, that sequence was the most challenging part of Terrifier 3, and the sequence most aimed at the series’ hardcore fans: “We shot it for maybe five days, and then we went back and shot it for an additional three days. That’s a lot of work. I mean, those effects, you could spend a whole day just cutting an arm off, trying to hit it right.”

Horror buffs might guess some of the scene’s obvious influences, from Psycho to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But when Polygon sat down with Leone to discuss the sequence, the big surprise was how Terrifier 3’s goriest scene connects with The Passion of the Christ.

This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Polygon: You mentioned at the Fantastic Fest screening of Terrifier 3 that you had to keep refining and reshooting the chainsaw-murder sequence to get what you wanted out of it. What went into planning that scene?

Damien Leone: Well, from the very start, of course [we’re always asking], “What is the next big kill scene?” Everybody wants me to one-up what we did in the previous movie, so I’m always trying to find inspiration, whether it be from a medieval torture method or just something I stumble upon, or if I really go out of my way to pay homage to a horror film I love. If I can take something like that and put my own spin on it… That’s exactly what I did for this kill scene.

Psycho is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it has the most iconic kill scene in horror, arguably. Before deciding to go in that direction for my own film, I would question: That scene is so iconic and perfect, but if Alfred Hitchcock was given the opportunity to make that movie today for the first time, would he be more graphic about it? Would he shoot it the exact same way? I know if I was given that opportunity, clearly I would show everything that knife could possibly do to flesh.

I know nobody’s going to give me the opportunity to remake Psycho, so I said, “Well, I’m just going to take my crack at the shower scene, where I’m not just so blatantly [imitating Hitchcock].” You got to switch some details up. So I said, “I’ll give him a chainsaw this time,” because I’ve always had the chainsaw in my back pocket. It was always too sacrilegious to give Art the Clown a chainsaw, because that’s so sacred to Leatherface in Texas Chain Saw Massacre. So I felt like we needed to prove ourselves in a couple of films before we could really touch a chainsaw. And then it was also a little bit of an homage to Scarface, which has a shower chainsaw scene that really affected me as a kid. So it starts there.

I wanted to make the most graphic chainsaw kill I’d ever seen in a movie. Now I’m locked in, I know we have this. I’ve never also seen Art the Clown kill two people at once before, so instead of one person in the shower, I’m going to incorporate two people. Then I storyboard everything like a comic book. This was the first time I wasn’t doing my own makeup effects, so I had to be very detail-oriented for other artists.

Why did you want a new team on the practical effects this time out?

We hired Christien Tinsley’s makeup team — he’s done Passion of the Christ, No Country for Old Men, Westworld, Renfield, his people do huge Hollywood movies. I still can’t fathom that they worked on this. So it just becomes showing them the storyboards, detailing exactly what I want to see and how we’re going to film these things, and what angles, so they’re not wasting their time building things they don’t have to.

And then they go off and start scanning the actors’ bodies. Nowadays, you can actually 3D scan people. They’d hop on Zoom and send me videos and pictures of what they were building, and I’d give them notes, and then we just get to set and we really execute these things that take a long time.

What was Christien’s method like on Terrifier 3?

Specifically, I wanted to work with him because he deals in very realistic gore in dramas, not typically slashers. I don’t think he’s ever worked on a slasher before. So I wanted to really see if we could bring that level of realism to a slasher movie.

This one still is ultimately over the top, but if I could get some of that realism in there, the level he’s put into his other films, I thought that would be really effective — and it did prove to be effective. There’s just so much trust and so much alleviation, this weight off my shoulders, knowing that he’s taking care of that and I’m going to get these wonderful dummies, and the way they’re going to execute it on set is just going to look fantastic.

I mean, there’s even a crown of thorns in Terrifier 3, and it’s the same artist who built the crown of thorns for The Passion of the Christ. Someone who works in their shop built that for this movie. So that was so freaking cool, and to see what it was made out of — he made that out of just tubing, the crown of thorns. It’s very lightweight, simple plastic tubing, and it looks so incredible.

What about the reshoots you mentioned? Where did you feel a need to improve on what you’d already shot?

Originally, I don’t think we had the onslaught on Mia, when Art’s just going wild on her with the chainsaw. I think originally, we actually filmed it where she crawls out of the shower while he’s hacking up Cole, and then Art goes back over to her and I think cut her in half. And I felt like we were missing that moment of pure insanity, where there’s just an onslaught, like a barrage of an attack.

We went back and filmed with a dummy and a double, basically, maybe even putting the glasses on the dummy. That’s actually a dummy, when he does that, but we digitally put her eyes on it. I’m very proud of that effect as well.

What kind of limitations did you face with that scene, as an indie horror movie trying to outdo everyone else in horror?

[Prosthetics shots] are very difficult, and they don’t always work. That’s the tricky thing. You only maybe have enough money to build one or two, say, arms that you have to hack through with a chainsaw. So you only have two takes to try and get that right. And things go wrong many times, so you got to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing. And if something does go wrong — it’s good that I’ve been in that situation many times. I usually know how to make a mistake work, or shoot it from another angle if I have to, or I could fix it in the editing room with the way I cut it. So that’s a relief as well. I usually make things work in an emergency.

What’s the price tag on a believable custom-made replica ass that can be chainsawed apart from several angles?

I never really looked at it itemized like that, but I would say the whole makeup budget — practical effects was maybe like a quarter of our budget. It was a huge portion of our budget. Maybe something like that [body double] could probably cost $25,000, something like that, more or less. I mean honestly, it depends.

While you’re doing detailed storyboarding, Art’s action feels very improvised, very spontaneous. What’s your balance on the set between free-form and pre-planned action for David Howard Thornton, who plays Art?

It’s storyboarded, but really just for the blocking of what the shots are going to be. Once we have the shots set up, I really just let Dave go, many times. I mean, there’s a blueprint for everything — I know what I want him to do, sometimes even down to exactly what face I want him to make in the scene. As long as we get what I have for my blueprint down first, and we have time, then I just let Dave go crazy and improvise. And we get wonderful character moments out of that, of course, many times. So it’s so much fun. We try and have as much fun and as much exploration on set as possible.

It’s not always possible, just because the clock is always ticking, and you have so much stuff to do. I wish I could get to play more with the actors, and breathe a little more, especially for the finale of this film. We had to just rush so fast, and it was so important and so intense, and we had so little time to just really gather ourselves and explore. So you always wish you had more time. If I could change one thing, I would love to have maybe 10 more days of shooting on this.

Terrifier 3 is in theaters now.