Characters / Art the Clown

Art The Clown (Short Films)

Portrayed By: Mike Gianelli

A brutish Monster Clown of unknown origin who appears on Halloween night to torment anyone unlucky enough to cross his path.

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• Ax-Crazy: He's a sadistic killer who takes pleasure in butchering his victims.
• Cruel Mercy: He leaves the Costume Designer alive...after cutting off her arms, legs, and breasts, and carving a number of misogynist slurs into her body.
• The Dragon: In "The 9th Circle", his only role is to capture unsuspecting travelers to bring to the coven. He becomes the Big Bad in "Terrifier" and the subsequent films.
• Dream Walker: In "Something In The Dark", he appears in an artist's dreams, leading to him painting a portrait of Art while in a fugue state.
• Evil Is Bigger: He’s a large, hulking man (if he can be called a man at all) whose only goal is to commit as much violence as possible.
• Faux Affably Evil: He honks his horn to annoy Casey, then brings her a fake flower (with a roach in it)...which also gives him the chance to knock her out and send her to the coven.
• For the Evulz: He kills without rhyme or reason, in particular cutting off a random driver's face and hands and leaving them on the side of the road just to add to the Costume Designer's distress.
• I Resemble That Remark!: When a gas station attendant angrily asks if he's "out of his fucking mind", he enthusiastically nods.
• Monster Misogyny: He's particularly cruel towards women, sending Casey off to be raped and impregnated by Satan, and terrorizing the Costume Designer before scarring her with derogatory terms for women. He also takes his time scaring Tia more than Timmy, hiding out in her closet and popping out to scare her specifically.
• Reality Warper: He's able to send Sarah phone messages from within the short films, somehow show a live feed of her on-screen with him behind her on the couch, and eventually cross into the real world to kill the children.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: His eyes start glowing a bright yellow color after he knocks out Casey.
• The Television Talks Back: At the end of the tape, he's shown in a basement, slowly walking towards the camera...and then puts his hands on the exact edges of the TV screen, knocks on it as if it's a window, and looks up at Sarah.

Art The Clown (Film Version)

Portrayed By: David Howard Thornton

The main antagonist of the series. He's an insane lunatic who goes on a rampage on Halloween 2017 in Miles County, New York, wearing a black and white clown costume and carrying a garbage bag full of sharp objects which he uses to inflict gruesome torture and murder upon his victims. In spite of killing himself at the end of the first film, he's resurrected by a demonic entity and goes on to commit another massacre one year later.

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• Adaptational Jerkass: In his debut appearance, Art "only" terrorized a woman at a subway station and drugged her. In all of his appearances afterwards, he's a much more hands-on savage butcher who rejoices in every second of both physical and mental anguish and misery he causes.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Mike Gianelli's take on Art was a lot more blatantly misogynistic and generally came across as more angry and spiteful, and seemed to be just as giddy with using a gun (or at least at crushing his intended victim's hopes of escape) as he was at using knives and hacksaws, whereas Thornton is much goofier and seems to absolutely hate being forced to resort to firearms.
• Ax-Crazy: Art absolutely loves wallowing in the carnage he leaves behind, often miming laughter when it particularly amuses him.
• Bald of Evil: His tight white hood creates this appearance, and he seems to be bald underneath it as well.
  • Terrifier 2 confirms this, showing his head to be completely bald beneath the hood.
• Berserk Button: Art seems to have an enormous ego and reacts with nothing short of fury at the notion he can be bested, destroying a TV when Victoria states he died a year prior. Likewise, resisting and fighting back provokes an unusually savage fury in him. And don't act rude to him, even if you're justified for acting rude to him because he's being an obnoxious creep. As that's a great way to earn a very Cruel and Unusual Death for your rudeness.
• Beware the Silly Ones: He acts goofy, comical and buffoonish...and then he ruthlessly tortures you and kill you like an animal to the slaughter.
• Big Bad: Of the first film. As of Terrifier 2, he seems to have been Demoted to Dragon to an unnamed sinister entity, but he still is responsible for multiple murders.
• Blood Is the New Black: Art is frequently covered in the blood of his victims, going from clean to blood-dredged by the end of the film.
• Breakout Character: Believe it or not, he was once just a minor villain in a short film, but he was an instant hit with audiences.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Dismemberment, face mutilation, torture, bisection, decapitation, cannibalism ... you name it, Art's done it. He even manages to turn a gun into an implement of torture.
  Damien Leone: Even if he pulls out a kitchen knife, you'll never see him simply stab someone in the stomach and walk away. He's gonna use that knife in the most hideous manner.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Damien Leone and David Howard Thornton have stated that the intention of giving Art a black and white suit and face paint was to contrast him with the flamboyantly colorful Pennywise.
• Denser and Wackier: Thornton's take on the character is considerably a lot less blatantly hateful than Gianelli's, instead expressing his violent madness through humor that at times, veers into genuinely funny territory, both to the audience and the In-Universe characters.
• Dirty Coward: Art doesn't seem to believe in fair fights. As soon as Tara has him pinned down, he whips out his pistol and shoots her. Then he takes his own life once the cops have him cornered.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • After giving some candies to trick-or-treaters he silently scolds a kid for having tried to take one more candy from him.
  • While he has a fetish for feces and enjoys smearing it on bathroom walls he's rather repulsed by Little Pale Girl openly relieving her bowels of bloody diarrhea right in front of him.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: It's heavily implied that Art's entire motive is that he finds humor in the most hideous acts of torture and murder imaginable. He bursts into silent laughter at his worst crimes.
• Evil Is Hammy: A rare silent example. Art's body language and general mannerisms go to show how much he's enjoying his murder sprees. Thornton takes it even further, citing Jim Carrey and the Marx Brothers as influences.
• Evil Is Petty: He kills people for no reason, but is just as brutal to those who mistreat him in the slightest sense, which is usually justified because he acts likes an asshole.
• Evil Laugh: A unique silent one. Art mimes uproarious laughter when he does something especially violent or cruel, but never actually makes any noise.
• Evil Overlooker: Shown as such on the Terrifier 2 theatrical poster, with his face looming over everything else.
• Facial Horror: For whatever reason, he really likes disfiguring faces.
• Faux Affably Evil: Art at first likes to give his victims the impression that he's a Non-Ironic Clown, but nobody ever buys it for long, if ever. Notably, he pats Tara's arm in a mockery of reassurance after pretending he was about to smack her in the face with a hammer hatchet.
• For the Evulz: All but stated to be the only reason why Art loves killing so much. He imitates laughter if he finds a murder especially funny.
• Gun Nut: He packs a 1911-style pistol that he uses to kill Tara when he start losing a fight with her and to ultimately kill himself to avoid capture by the police. In the sequel, he uses a Tommy Gun in the Clown Cafe nightmare and in real life, a double-barreled shotgun cut down to pistol size and uses it to kill Barbara.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: All of Art's killing sprees have taken place on Halloween night, and the third movie will be set on or around Christmas.
• Humanoid Abomination: In his initial appearances, at least. His eyes glow in The 9th Circle, he's capable of teleportation and surviving serious wounds in the Terrifier short, and is summoned into the real world when Sarah watches the videotape featuring the aforementioned shorts in All Hallows' Eve. An artist also painted his face on a canvas in an unnamed short, despite having no recollection of ever doing so. Whatever he may have been, he's clearly not human in those appearances. Averted in the Terrifier feature length, where he's completely human up until his resurrection at the hands of a sinister entity.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Art is shown eating Victoria's face while she's unconscious and in the sequel, eats Brooke's heart and nibbles on Jonathan's hands and legs.
• Improvised Weapon: A majority of his weapons consist of rusty tools, garbage, or some messed up creation made to inflict as much pain and bodily destruction as possible; for example, he creates two cat-o'nine tails, one made from human hair with used needles, scalpels, and scissors tied to the ends, the other made from string with scissors tied to the end, which gets used against him by Sienna, and a massive club made from a wooden furniture leg with a bunch of sharp objects (forks, screws, nails, and knife blades) stuck into the end of it.
• Jerkass: Besides all the savage murders, Art is, quite frankly, an asshole who lives for the sole purpose of amusing himself at the expense of everyone else.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Whenever you think Art is about to show a sliver of human decency, he's just doing it to bait his victims and usually follows it up by doing something exceptionally cruel.
• Kick the Dog: If Art has an opportunity to crush his victims' hopes, he will take it just because he can, and he will "laugh" in their face when he does it. He also goes out of his way to mock their misfortunes, like miming playing a violin while Jonathan is crawling away from him.
• Laughably Evil: He can be genuinely funny, though usually before or after he does something horrible.
• Lean and Mean: He has a much more slender build than his short film counterpart, but is no less violent.
• Light Is Not Good: Also Dark Is Not Evil. He wears a black and white clown costume and is a completely depraved motherfucker.
• Misanthrope Supreme: According to Thornton, Art Hates Everyone Equally. While he seems to particularly despise women and draws out their deaths in the most grisly ways he can think of, he can still be rather brutal to men when he feels like it. Children aren't off limits to him, either.
• Monster Clown: He's never fully seen without his trademark clown makeup, which he dons every time he goes to kill someone.
• Monster Misogyny: Sure, he'll kill men violently and even enjoy it, but when it comes to killing women, he goes the extra mile of terrorizing, torturing, and sexually mutilating them.
• Naked Nutter: In the first film, he goes around with his costume between his legs, wearing the flayed breasts and scalp of a woman he mutilated and then spends some time naked in the beginning of the sequel after putting his blood-stained clothes in the wash.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: In Terrifier 2, he seems completely unaffected by any injury, walking off a point-blank shotgun blast and two separate blows to the head that each should have instantly killed him. The only thing that hurts him like it should is Sienna's sword, and even then the Little Pale Girl can just bring him back again. This is a significant upgrade from Terrifier, where he has a high pain tolerance but no actual Super-Toughness.
• Nightmare Weaver: It's implied that Art can infiltrate people's dreams, giving Sienna Shaw a wicked nightmare where he kills a studio full of people before burning the whole place down with a flamethrower. When she wakes up, she finds her dresser in fire in the real world.
• Off with His Head!: He gets his head hacked off by Sienna with the magic sword, but he's brought back to life at the end by the entity once more.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • He has a completely stoic and unhappy expression when he guns down Tara, suggesting that he hates resorting to use firearms or he's pissed that he was almost defeated.
  • When Jonathan steals his shotgun and aims it at Art, the latter does nothing. He doesn't attempt to kill Sienna before he's killed, run away, or fight back, he just holds up his hands and cheerfully waits for Jonathan to shoot him, because after being brought back by the Little Pale Girl, he can't be killed with normal weapons.
• Practically Joker: Ticks all the boxes, including being a Monster Clown with a penchant for doing all sorts of unspeakably horrible things For the Evulz, having an extremely demented and twisted sense of humor, being able to pull off a friendly facade to lure his victims, and engaging in maniacal laughter. The only differences are that Art never speaks (unlike the hammy Talkative Loon that is the Clown Prince of Crime), and his suit and face paint are black and white, contrasting heavily with Mister J's vibrantly colored purple suit and blood-red lips.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Art shows a few traits of one. He "laughs" when he does something particularly mean-spirited and seems to generally view his murderous tendencies as all good fun on his part, even stopping in the middle of chasing after Victoria to ride around on a trike for no reason. At one point, he even exploits this by letting a woman comfort while he sucks his thumb only to flay her alive when she least expects it.
• Red Right Hand: In case you didn't already glean that there was something sinister about Art, he's got rotting teeth and a hooked nose as a friendly reminder.
• Revenant Zombie: Maybe. After his resurrection at the end of Terrifier, he's impervious to everything except for Sienna's sword, but doesn't show many trademarks associated with The Undead.
• Sadist: Art lives to cause suffering for his own amusement. He barely even seems interested in killing by itself, just in hurting his victims as much as possible, with the killing being a mere byproduct and an end to the means. Notably, in the Terrifier feature length, he looks bored and unhappy when he has to use a gun to kill Tara.
• Silent Antagonist: Art never speaks, and it's never made clear if he can.
• Silent Snarker: Occasionally, Art shows traits of one. Like rolling his single eye when the cops show up to arrest him all while threatening to shoot him.
• Sinister Schnoz: Art has a very long and unnaturally pointed hook nose, which may or may not be a prosthetic.
• Slasher Smile: Art's favorite facial expression.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Intended to be one to Pennywise, particularly as portrayed by Tim Curry. Whereas Pennywise is colorful and vibrant, Art wears a black and white jumpsuit and appears to be completely bald. Pennywise is talkative, but Art is completely silent, possibly even mute. Both are examples of Evil Is Hammy and Laughably Evil, but Art's hamminess and humor is derived more from his body language and pantomimes than by speech and cheesy puns.
• Spree Killer: The way he takes his time with his killings and his m.o. in general is more akin to that of a Serial Killer, but Art's murders usually only take place over the course of a single night.
• Tom the Dark Lord: He's an Ambiguously Human Spree Killer named Art.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: He's pestered the pizzeria owner for taking up a table for a while and not ordering anything (or even talking).
• Troll: Art likes to play with his victims and make them as uncomfortable as he can for his amusement before he gets serious.
• Villainous Friendship: He forms one with the entity that brought him back to life, the Little Pale Girl, spends some time laughing silently with her as they mess around (i.e., torture, kill, and do gross things with each other).
• Villains Out Shopping: He takes time to wash his clothes after being brought back to life in the second film.
• Would Hit a Girl: More like would torture, eviscerate, whip, or flay a girl. In fact, he seems to be exceptionally violent and cruel toward female victims, though it’s not clear whether he targets women specifically.
• Would Hurt a Child: Art doesn't take any issue with his victims' ages, just as long as he enjoys it.

All Hallow's Eve

Protagonists

Sarah

• Adults Are Useless: A rare example where the adult in question is the movie's primary focus. When Timmy unknowingly informs her that there's an intruder in the house, Sarah's response is to tell him to go to bed. In doing so, she unwittingly doomed the children to a gruesome death.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: Of the emotional variant. She's clearly on edge from babysitting on Halloween and is progressively more and more horrified by what she sees on the tape. She's left a screaming, crying mess by the end, as Art crosses into the real world and murders Tia and Timmy.

Tia and Timmy

• Creepy Child: Timmy moreso than Tia, as he's shown watching the tape with something close to glee, and admits he finds Art's behavior funny.
• From the Mouths of Babes: When Sarah tries reassuring Tia that nothing on the tape is real, she responds that Art, being simply a costumed Serial Killer, very well could be.

Short Film Characters

The 9th Circle

• Determinator: Casey is dead-set on finding her way back home, no matter what she encounters.
• From Bad to Worse: Casey is just trying to commute home when she's harassed by a strange man in a clown costume, who then kidnaps her to a strange underground world where she crosses paths with Satan.
• Named by the Adaptation: In the original cut of The 9th Circle, she's not given any name.

Something In The Dark

• Mad Artist: John, the protagonist's husband, has horrible recurring nightmares, leading to him painting Art's face while in a trance.

Terrifier

• Fate Worse than Death: The Costume Designer is left alone with Art in his lair, limbless, with a multitude of painful-looking injuries.
• No Name Given: The Costume Designer is never named onscreen.
• Too Dumb to Live: At one point, the Costumed Designer gets out of her car when she sees another stalled car off road, only to find a mutilated, barely-alive woman inside. This grants Art the opportunity to sneak into her backseat and get the upper hand over her.

Terrifier

Tara

• Decoy Protagonist: Just as she's shaping up to be an ideal Final Girl, she's gunned down by Art, leaving her sister to take her place
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She visibly hesitates when Mike tells her he's fumigating for rats.

Dawn

• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: While she and Tara were both partying, she's notably more intoxicated, and has more of a fun, flirtatious energy about her.

Victoria

• Demonic Possession: In the mid-credits scene in Terrifier 2, her single remaining eye glows yellow, just like the Little Pale Girl's did, implying that she's been possessed.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She starts the film as an ordinary college student doing her sister a favor. After Art mutilates her face, she ends up dishing out similar misfortunes, and after being institutionalized gives birth to a new incarnation of him.
• Laughing Mad: She starts cackling after she mutilates Monica.

Monica

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When we first meet her, she seems like a kind, compassionate talk show host. In private, she mocks Victoria's disfigurements. The sequel reveals that she's known for being rather controversial and has a nasty habit of being exploitative towards her guests.
• Tempting Fate: Says she would rather die than end up like Victoria. Shortly after, Victoria stops by to gouge out her eyes.

Terrifier 2

Little Pale Girl

A mysterious demonic entity who is heavily implied to be responsible for resurrecting Art.

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• Ambiguous Situation: In a blink-and-you-miss-it scene, the Little Pale Girl resembles a 10-year-old girl who was kidnapped and most assuredly murdered by Art. Does that mean that the Little Pale Girl was the soul of the girl that Art somehow captured and corrupted, or was she merely a demon taking her form? Given her other abilities, the evidence points more toward the latter.
• Creepy Child: Much like Art, she dresses in a similar aesthetic and is mute.
• Devil in Disguise: Though it's not clear if she's the Devil, she's definitely a demon of some sort. According to Damien Leone, she was originally going to manifest as a standard horned and winged demon.
• Facial Horror: She does this to herself, carving up her face like a jack-o-lantern to scare Jonathan after he wakes up in the Terrifer. Being supernatural, her face is back to normal in her next scenes.
• For the Evulz: The most likely reason for the Little Pale Girl resurrecting Art was because he provided her with endless entertainment.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She was the one who revived Art the Clown and is an accomplice in his murder spree.
• Humanoid Abomination: She is heavily implied to be one. She may look like a creepy little girl, but her resurrection of Art and other supernatural powers indicate she’s some sort of demon or dark force that just chooses to look like that.
• Monster Clown: The Little Pale Girl wears a clown outfit much like Art and appears to have resurrected Art because of their shared love of carnage.
• Slasher Smile: Her default expression.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: She has yellow, glowing eyes that she flashes at Jonathan after he runs from home and again at Sienna and Jonathan, after Sienna (temporarily) takes out Art.
• The Voiceless: Like Art, she never speaks. Subverted, though, in that she can mimic the voices of others - she just doesn’t seem to have one of her own.
• Voice Changeling: She imitates Jonathan's voice in a phone call to Sienna, in order to lure her to Art's hideout.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: She can shapeshift into other people, a power she uses to mimic Barbara after her death.

Sienna

• Ambiguously Human: After regenerating her seemingly fatal wound and emerging from the water, she's implied to have become Art's equal. How much of the old Sienna is left is not yet clear.
• Empowered Badass Normal: She was already plenty badass with her relentless beatdown of Art, but when she rises from the depths of what seems to be Art's personal Hell, she's imbued with supernatural abilities.
• Final Girl: Not even death stops her from coming back to finally become the one to kill Art.
• Took a Level in Badass: She spends most of the movie on edge and only vaguely aware of the threat that Art might pose to her, but the proceeds to beat the everloving shit out of him, then finally beheads him.

Jonathan

• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He's obsessed with Art the Clown and plans to dress like him for Halloween, to the objection of both their mother and Sienna. Ultimately subverted; he's clearly grossed out when he sees the rotting, mutilated corpse of the possum and Art quickly becomes a Broken Pedestal to him when they meet.

Allie

• Cruel and Unusual Death: This poor girl. She's scalped, stabbed, gets salt and bleach poured in her wounds and has an arm ripped off, and is flayed beyond recognition. She's still alive at the end of it and her exact fate is left up in the air, but if she's lucky, she won't be alive for much longer.

Brooke

• Asshole Victim: Downplayed. She wasn't the nicest person and could have been a much more supportive friend to Sienna, but she did not deserve to die like that.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Gets the second worst death in the movie. Art splashes acid in her face, savagely beats her with his club, then caves in her chest and rips her heart out.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Takes after Dawn in this regard, perhaps even more strongly, given her fondness for molly.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's really questionable friend material, to say the least. Openly jokes about Monica Brown's mutilated face in front of Sienna, drops molly in Sienna's drink without her consent, then callously derides her for her past behind her back. Still, she expresses some concern for her well-being and feels bad when her remarks about Monica upset her.

Barbara

• Abusive Parents: Not that she isn't trying to be a good parent, but she's high-strung and quick to resort to yelling and occasionally hitting her kids when they do something she doesn't like.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: The first and only time we see her display any real affection and tenderness, she gets her head blown off by Art just a minute later.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She does show a few moments of genuine kindness, like offering to watch a movie with Jonathan and having a heartfelt conversation with Sienna on the phone.

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