Even if you’ve never seen Damien Leone’s Terrifier movies, you’ve probably heard about them — news of walkouts and freakouts regularly accompany his screenings, including for the new Terrifer 3, the latest to feature slasher villain Art the Clown. Making truly horrifying movies may have been inevitable for a Staten Island kid whose mom named him after the Antichrist in 1976’s The Omen.

“I was introduced to movies in general at a very young age, because my mother just loved movies. And she’s curious now, seeing what’s happened and why everybody loves Art the Clown. She’s like, ‘What the hell is the matter with you? Like, what are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean? First of all, you named me after The Omen.’ She named me after the character Damien in The Omen.”

The writer-director’s mom is very proud of his DIY success — 2022’s Terrifier 2, made for $250,000 and heavily reliant on Leone’s commitment to extraordinarily detailed gore — made $15 million at the box office. And box office analysts believe the new Terrifier 3, now in theaters, could knock Joker: Folie à Deux from the top of the box office this weekend.

If the Terrifier 3, made for $2 million, unseats the Joker 2, made for $200 million — it won’t just be a brutal battle of clown vs. clown: It will also be one of the biggest upsets in the history of the box office.

You can listen to our full interview with Terrifier 3 director Damien Leone on Apple, Spotify, anywhere else you get your podcasts, or here:

Damien Leone on Crossing Lines in Terrifier 3

As his films gain a wider and wider audience, Leone struggles with how to deliver on the shocks his audiences have come to expect without succumbing to pressure to sanitize things.

“That’s my big fear with this franchise, because we’re in a very unique situation where we’re known for pushing boundaries, and we’re expected to push boundaries, especially with the graphic violence, with the kill scenes. It’s why we became famous in the first place.

“So to suddenly stop doing that again is disingenuous to what we are. So I’m always trying to walk the line, step right over it, just push the boundary a little bit. But on the other end, I’m trying to retain some sort of mass appeal that I believe Art the Clown has.”

He’s right: The films are known for gore, but their secret weapon is character.

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Art the Clown’s mugging and idiosyncrasies make him the most fascinating horror villain since Freddy Krueger. But the film’s heart is Sienna, played by Lauren LaVera, a stuntwoman and actor whose mastery of martial arts imbues her character with resilience and ferocity. She’s a new kind of final girl.

Leone is also good at small,. real moments unusual for the sometimes cartoonish dialogue of slasher movie characters. For all the insane, ’80s tinged atmospherics, Terrifier 3 finds time for a grounded, character-building story about a little girl who finds all her Christmas presents early.

The Terrifier 3 Scene Inspired by American Psycho

In the podcast, we talk with Leone about what if anything is over the line, little moments with Art the Clown, and the Terrifier 3 scene inspired by the novel — but not the movie — American Psycho.

The 1991 novel, by Bret Easton Ellis, contains a scene that is far too graphic and horrifying to have made it into Mary Harron’s 2000 film adaptation. Leone offers his own spin on it near the end of Terrifier 3. (We aren’t saying what it is, but he drops a hint in the video above.)

“I actually never read American Psycho. I’m obsessed with the movie American Psycho, one of my favorite movies ever,” Leone says. “Me and my buddy, my childhood friend, were obsessed with that movie when it came out, and obsessed with Christian Bale in it. And he went off and read the book, and he told me all the crazy scenes in the book. … It left such an impression on me that I never forgot about it. And I said, One day, I’m going to try and circle back to that somehow. And this was, this was an opportunity to sort of toy with it a little bit.”

Terrifer 3 is now in theaters, from Cineverse.