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How David Howard Thornton became a horror film icon

Posted on by Vanessa
How David Howard Thornton became a horror film icon

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Art the Clown has silently and sadistically fought his way to becoming a horror icon on the big screen. But the guy under the scary makeup and mini top hat also lives to freak people out in person.

“Terrifier” franchise star David Howard Thornton goes to fan conventions in full art attire and recalls sharing an elevator with a burly security guard who suffers from severe coulrophobia. “He stands in the corner and tries to blend into the wall as much as possible,” says Thornton. “And I slowly listen to his face as I descend because I’m waiting for the elevator door to open. When the time finally comes, I hit the horn and he just lets out the biggest girl scream.”

Art has returned to theaters for “Terrifier 3,” a holiday-themed episode in which the demonic clown dons a Santa Claus costume and hunts down heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera). He does the most despicable things to his victims – one heinous scene can only be described as that of a college guy undergoing a colonoscopy with a chainsaw – but Art has a lighthearted humor and lightness about him doing the dishes after killing a family.

“He’s considerate,” the actor jokes.

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While writer/director Damien Leone's “Terrifier” films have earned an infamous reputation for premiere failures and vomiting fits, Art has become a popular character that transcends the horror genre and includes Funko Pop toys, popcorn buckets , Halloween decorations and much more.

“It was fantastic for us that Art was so accepted into the cultural zeitgeist,” says Thornton. “We could never have imagined something like this when we made the first film (“Terrifier”) in 2015. We were a low-budget independent film: 'Who knows if anyone will see this?'”

The “Terrifier 3” actor hails from Alabama and has an inspiring origin story

In his artistic makeup, Thornton is a dark and menacing presence. In real life, he's anything but a good-natured Southern fanatic who loves comic books, Stephen King, and Legos.

Born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Thornton, 44, became involved in theater at his parents' church. He was bullied in middle school, and to get him out of his shyness, his mother recommended that he audition for a school choir performance of “Mickey's Christmas Carol.” In the role of Mickey, “I discovered my love for acting, especially comedy, because something went wrong on stage and I immediately started improvising and just making jokes,” says Thornton. “For the first time in this school, people laughed with me instead of at me.”

While he was an undergraduate at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, his mother died of cancer and “that experience changed my entire career,” Thornton says. “Life is too short not to do what you really want to do. That was my last conversation with my mother.”

After graduating, he moved to New York in 2006. Thornton waited tables, did odd jobs on television (he played an orderly on Fox's “Gotham” and a coffee shop customer on CBS' “Elementary”) and toured in the musical “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to “' “Terrifier' changed my life,” he says. “As hard as it was to go through some of this, I wouldn’t change a thing because that’s what got me to where I am now.”

Art the Clown is influenced by silent film actors and “great horror villains.”

Thornton isn't the first Art the Clown: Mike Giannelli played the villain in the 2013 anthology film “All Hallows' Eve.” But he turned down the role for 2016's “Terrifier,” so Leone held an open audition and was stunned by Thornton's physicality. The director asked him to pretend he was happily decapitating someone, and “he just did these Jim Carrey-esque, exaggerated theatrical mannerisms and all these wonderful gestures and big grins,” Leone says. “He was born to play this character.”

The art has evolved since those early days when Leone applied Thornton's makeup while the two talked about movies with yacht rock and '80s tunes playing in the background. The actor made a name for himself in his youth with physical comedy on children's shows, and he combined that with his appreciation for film actors like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Andy Serkis and an admiration for “the great horror villains that came before,” he says Thornton. Art becomes “more confident and arrogant, and I had so much fun fleshing him out and becoming more villainous.”

Playing art is also “a great stress reliever,” says Thornton, who enjoys the moments when he’s asked to “add a little extra oomph to a kill. They say, 'Wow, Dave, you really got a lot out of this.' anger pent up there.' This is my therapy, I guess you could say.”

David Howard Thornton dreams of putting his own spin on the Joker

There's more art in Thornton's future, with a planned “Terrifier 4.” He would also like to play his “dream role” one day, the Joker: While others have dabbled in the Batman rival (even one of them is in theaters now), Thornton wants to do “the actual comic book version” of his all-time favorite villain. That's why he hopes DC Studios boss James Gunn pays attention to a certain other clown: “He's a real geek and really appreciates the source material of the films he makes.”

But Thornton is enjoying his run as an artist, posing for photos with fans in character at conventions – where he is sometimes mistaken for a “pretty good” cosplayer rather than the real deal – and becoming a modern mainstream symbol for Halloween. The fact that you can actually buy Art the Clown slippers reminds him of his time as a kid when he went to the shoe carnival in the middle of summer and saw a mountain full of Freddy Krueger merchandise.

“It's kind of cool that maybe Art will be this younger generation's Freddy Krueger in some ways,” Thornton says. “I love this feeling.”

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