The First Movie Featuring Art The Clown Explained (It Wasn’t Terrifier)

Demonic black and white clown Art has become a cult horror icon in the last few years, but the clown from Terrifier debuted in the 2008 short The 9th Circle. Clowns can often inspire fear and unease, and have made for some iconic villains such as Stephen King’s IT’s Pennywise and Batman villain The Joker. Art the Clown from director Damien Leone’s Terrifier trilogy feels to some like the newest killer circus performer on the horror block, but he has been around much longer than many fans of his antics realize.

Art the Clown, an evil black and white clown best known for the Terrifier movies — most recently 2024’s vomit-inducing Terrifier 3 — originally appeared in 2008’s The 9th Circle. Art the Clown was created by filmmaker Damian Leone, and his unsettling monochromatic design was inspired by a clown seen in The Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters In Search Of An Exit.” While Art is mute like other slasher characters like Halloween’s Michael Myers, he’s shown to take a great deal of delight in terrifying his victims before killing them. However, the Art the Clown in The 9th Circle is quite different from David Howard Thornton’s portrayal in the Terrifier franchise.

The 9th Circle Introduced The Black And White Clown From Terrifier

Art The Clown’s First Appearance Was In A Short Film

Art the Clown has been shown to be able to withstand a great deal of damage without dying, carry out Freddy Kruger-style dream invasions, and vanish without a trace. Art the clown has changed a lot since his debut though. The black and white clown may have his own solo franchise, but Art made his debut in The 9th Circle, a short film from Damien Leone that arrived in 2008.

Surprisingly, Art the Clown’s role in the short is relatively small, but he’s easily the most memorable part. The 9th Circle opens with a young woman named Casey waiting on a train when Art sits across from her. Needless to say, she’s quickly creeped out by Art the clown, and after tricking her with a gift, he injects her with a syringe and kidnaps her.

Art the Clown disappears from The 9th Circle following this opening, with Casey waking up underground and being tormented by a demonic cult. The second half of the short is still atmospheric, though some of the masks used for the demon characters don’t hold up nearly as well as the mute clown Art’s stark black and white mime-like makeup. The 9th Circle later served as the first entry in the 2013 anthology All Hallow’s Eve, which also restores a previously deleted subplot where Casey meets other kidnap victims.

All Hallow’s Eve’s makes Art the Clown the main star. The feature-length anthology movie features Art the clown in all three shorts, as well as the background narrative running throughout which connects them. With his growing stardom eventually leading to 2016’s Terrifier, and Terrifier 2. It’s doubtful Leone or anyone else involved with The 9th Circle knew just how popular the black and white clown would become, but with the second Terrifier movie — with returning star David Howard Thornton — blowing the box office wide open, his cult following is only more likely to grow.

In
The 9th Circle
and
All Hallow’s Ever,
Art the Clown was played by actor Mike Giannelli. David Howard Thornton first took on the role in 2016’s
Terrifier.

Why Art The Clown Should Make Horror Studios Take Note

Damien Leone’s Villainous Clown Is Reinventing Slasher Villains

The Terrifier franchise gained a lot of traction in 2022, with Terrifier 2 making back over 30 times its budget at the box office. What started out as a low-budget horror endeavor has turned into a viral sensation, with Art the Clown already touted to go down in horror history with the likes of Pennywise — and horror studios should take note.

The Terrifier franchise started out as a series of short films that grew in budget thanks to campaigns on Indiegogo. The black and white clown began as a figure only known by niche horror circles and has turned into a well-known source of nightmare fuel — and all on a shoestring budget. The Terrifier franchise makes its money in splatter, gore, and inventive kills, all with Art the Clown leading the way.

Marketing for the Terrifier movies has been especially viral, with reports of audience members fainting and vomiting in theaters during a particularly gruesome Terrifier 2 scene (with the same happening again when Terrifier 3 was released in 2024). Damien Leone has even gotten the approval of Stephen King, who gave Terrifier 2 a big thumbs-up. Art the Clown proves that it doesn’t take a Hollywood-sized budget to bring on the scares. Rather, it takes ingenuity, creativity, and a whole lot of blood. The 9th Circle was only the beginning, and audiences are sure to be terrified by Art the Clown for many Terrifier movies to come.

How Art The Clown Became An Iconic Horror Figure

Art Is More Than His Gory Kils

Art the Clown has quickly carved out a reputation as one of the most iconic horror villains of the 21st century, and it feels certain that he’ll eventually join the ranks of the likes of Scream’s Ghostface, Halloween’s Michael Myers, and Freddy Kruger from the A Nightmare On Elm Street movies. However, while it’s easy to attribute this to the incredibly gory kills in the Terrifer movies, brutality alone isn’t the reason Art has become so beloved among horror fans.

A key and surprising aspect of Art the Clown is that, as absurd as it seems given just how dark his antics are, he is funny. Art never says a word or makes a sound, and actor David Howard Thornton has used this to make the killer clown genuinely hilarious at points. Scenes like Terrifier 2‘s Halloween store sequence where Art uses various items in a prop-comedy sequence may have unsettled Sienna, but audiences found moments like Art smiling in novelty sunglasses absolutely hilarious.

David Howard Thornton manages to give the miming serial killer an incredible amount of personality with absolutely zero dialogue. Art the Clown isn’t a silent stalking killer like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees. He may say nothing, but he’s also not a faceless inhuman presence. However, he’s also not a borderline-tacky kind of comedic killer like Freddy Kruger (especially in the later A Nightmare On Elm Street films).

Art the Clown manages to be as endearing as he is terrifying, an incredibly watchable presence when he’s on-screen for reasons beyond awaiting his next act of carnage. It’s this that’s secured his place as an iconic horror villain, and is also why the Terrifier franchise has more to offer than the stomach-churning gore it’s become infamous for.

What’s Next For Art The Clown

Terrifer 4 Is Already In Development

Art the Clown last appeared in 2024’s Terrifier 3, and the iconic killer has come a long way since debuting in 2008’s The 9th Circle. However, Terrifier 3 isn’t the final time audiences will get to see Art go on a rampage. Actor David Howard Thornton has already teased that Terrifier 4 is in the early stages of development, and that director Damien Leone has plenty of ideas for more Art the Clown movies.

The Art the Clown actor revealed that there isn’t yet a script for Terrifier 4, and that Damien Leone is currently at the stage of brainstorming ideas for how to continue the franchise after the ending of Terrifier 3. While this makes the exact nature of Art the Clown’s future uncertain, it does seem almost certain that there’s plenty more to come featuring the silent-yet-hilarious killer, and that the legacy started by The 9th Circle is far from over.