ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
The ultragory, low-budget indie slasher film "Terrifier 3" was No. 1 at the box office this week. It stars a killer clown.
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ALEXA BLAIR ROBERTSON: (As Mia) The most famous serial killer since Jack the Ripper.
SCHMITZ: NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports.
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MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Art the Clown is on the rampage again, this time, dressed up as Santa...
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UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (As character) Hey, Santa's handing out presents.
DEL BARCO: ...With an axe. Filmmaker Damien Leone doesn't show those children at the mall getting killed, but he does include lots of grisly images in "Terrifier 3." There are rats, chainsaws, even a shower massacre.
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DAMIEN LEONE: That was sort of my homage to "Psycho" and "Scarface," two of my favorite kill scenes in a movie. Of course, I asked myself, what would Alfred Hitchcock do today? And I said, I would go a lot further.
DEL BARCO: The 40-year-old filmmaker, named after Damien in "The Omen," has been making horror films since he was 12, when he first put fake blood on his friends to scare their parents. Leone didn't go to film school and made his low-budget movies while delivering flowers for a living. In 2008, he introduced Art the Clown in a 20-minute film he made for $5,000. And with each "Terrifier" movie in the franchise, he's pushed boundaries.
LEONE: Why is somebody going to come see my $30,000 slasher film when they can go watch the next big, you know, $50 million Hollywood movie? I said, I have to put things in mine that they'll never be able to show and things that will really get people talking and get something controversial out of it.
DEL BARCO: Leone considers it a badge of honor that theatergoers are reportedly passing out or throwing up during his movie. As an independent filmmaker, he says, he wanted "Terrifier 3" to go unrated.
LEONE: That was one of the reasons why I didn't want to go with a studio 'cause I knew they were going to make me cut a lot of things out of this movie. And I knew that was not the right decision 'cause I did know that it would get that organic hype and that organic buzz.
DEL BARCO: The buzz has grown with each "Terrifier" movie as Art the Clown became a slasher icon like Jason, Chucky and Freddy Krueger. And while it's normal for studios to spend tens of millions of dollars on marketing wide-release films today, distributor Cineverse did not.
CHRIS MCGURK: We only spent $500,000 in marketing out of pocket.
DEL BARCO: Chris McGurk is chair and CEO of Cineverse.
MCGURK: We focused on the character of Art the Clown and his humor as much as we possibly could. And I think our secret weapon to the whole thing is, you know, we're a streaming company.
DEL BARCO: McGurk says on its 30 streaming channels, Cineverse specifically targeted horror fans and women, also Latinos, who so far have made up half the audience. And Cineverse runs an online horror company called Bloody Disgusting, which promoted the film on social media.
REBEKAH MCKENDRY: Everybody is clamoring to go see how crazy this movie gets.
DEL BARCO: Rebekah McKendry is a filmmaker, writer and professor at the University of Southern California. She says it's unusual to see a completely independent slasher film hit so big, but she's also not surprised.
MCKENDRY: We have been seeing horror get increasingly more violent, more grotesque, more gory, more absurdist over the past couple of years, slowly on the independent market.
DEL BARCO: McKendry says "Terrifier 3" is not the most intense, gory film she's ever seen. But she says violent films always do well in dark times, and coming after the pandemic in a politically divisive era, there's an appetite for this kind of movie. Filmmaker Damien Leone agrees.
LEONE: Putting the worst possibilities of reality sort of up on the screen and just laughing at the absurdity of it and that there's nothing you can do is sort of like looking the devil in the eye and just daring him, what do you got for me? I think it's like a big communal, cathartic release.
DEL BARCO: Leone is already working on "Terrifier 4." But this weekend, his movie is competing with another gory film, "Smile 2." Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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