Before Terrifier 3, there’s one movie you should seek out: All Hallows’ Eve, Damien Leone’s first feature-length movie… and it stars Art the Clown.
Leone had one goal: to give horror fans a modern-day slasher icon. Freddy, Jason, Ghostface, Leatherface, even Pennywise the Clown – they’re all rooted in the 20th century, and while they’ve had contemporary updates, new characters have struggled to break through.
With Art the Clown, he’s achieved just that. He’s become a bona fide phenomenon, and this weekend, Terrifier 3’s box office is expected to outperform the entire franchise to date (it’s even been tipped to dethrone Joker 2 in the US).
Art’s backstory remains mysteriously vague, but his on-screen appearances go beyond the Terrifier movies – and that’s where All Hallows’ Eve comes in.
Why you need to watch All Hallows’ Eve before Terrifier 3
Leone introduced Art the Clown in two shorts: 2008’s The 9th Circle, where he appeared as a background character, and 2011’s Terrifier, where he stalks a young woman who witnesses one of his murders.
The latter short had been rejected by multiple film festivals, so the director dropped it on YouTube for free. It amassed hundreds of thousands of views, attracting the attention of producer Jesse Baget.
“The producer was looking for Halloween-based shorts on YouTube and he was just going to make an anthology based on them… I wanted to go from the Terrifier short film to the Terrifier feature, but this was the opportunity that was presented to me at the time,” Leone explained to SlashFilm.
“It was very exciting, hearing: ‘Hey, this is going to be in stores, it’s going to be on DVD!’ At that time it was the most amazing news I had ever heard.”
All Hallows’ Eve was released in 2013. It revolves around a babysitter who finds an unmarked VHS tape in a trick-or-treat bag. She watches it with the kids, discovering three horrifying stories, all featuring Art, and he exists outside the video.
There are three big reasons why you should watch it. One: its place in the Terrifier canon isn’t clear, but this was the first time Art showed up in a full movie, so it’s a box worth ticking off (it also fully leans into the idea of him being a supernatural being).
Two: it’s genuinely good! It doesn’t reach the levels of the first two films in the flagship series, but the third segment is genuinely frightening (not to mention extremely grisly).
And three… somebody else plays Art the Clown.
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All Hallows’ Eve has a different Art the Clown
Whether you love or hate them, the Terrifier movies are widely praised for David Howard Thornton’s animated, insidious performance as Art the Clown. But All Hallows’ Eve has another actor in the villainous role: Mike Giannelli.
Thornton didn’t portray Art until 2016’s Terrifier. Giannelli donned the black-and-white suit in Leone’s shorts, leading to his performance in All Hallows’ Eve.
To be clear, Thornton is incredible, but Giannelli arguably delivers an even scarier take on Art. The Terrifier movies made him a little goofy (albeit still a near-invincible threat), but he’s even more mysterious and creepy in his earlier iterations.
Speaking to the Austin Chronicle, Leone explained why the role was recast. “Mike may as well have been a guy dressed as a clown, whereas David is a clown,” he said.
“If you know him in person, he is a walking cartoon. He is Roger Rabbit in real life, and you’d never believe that he’s Art the Clown, but he knows how to flip the switch and bring it to a dark place.”
However, speaking to The Square Round Table, Giannelli revealed he was offered the part in Terrifier. “[Leone] always wanted to be a famous horror director, I always wanted to have a family,” he said.
“At the end of the day, we both won. I was offered the role to do Terrifier, I turned it down. I wasn’t a big fan of filming. It’s long hours, the makeup takes a long time to go on. It just wasn’t my thing.”
How to watch All Hallows’ Eve
All Hallows’ Eve is available to stream with a Shudder subscription, or you can watch it for free on Tubi.
It’s also included with AMC+, and you have the option to buy or rent it digitally or purchase it on DVD or Blu-ray.
Before it slashes cinemas on October 11, check out our Terrifier 3 review and how to watch Art the Clown’s Terrifier movies in order. You can also make sure you’re old enough to watch Terrifier 3, and read our interview with its Santa star.
If you want other films to watch, we’ve rounded up every horror movie streaming in October and broken down the best horror movies of all time.
