Shower scene, Santa Kill, opening broken

The UK premiere of Damien Leone's holiday slasher “Terrifier 3” was like something out of a horror film.

Eleven audience members left the theater, nine during the opening scene, and one audience member lost his lunch while watching the latest escapades of series mascot Art the Clown, played by David Howard Thornton. While a screening like this would spell disaster for some, producer Phil Falcone celebrated the extreme reactions as a testament to the hard work of Leone and special effects lead Christien Tinsley.

“It’s a practical slasher gore film,” Falcone said. “So if you can get people to vomit and leave the theater, and they went there because they were afraid, then I think that’s a pretty good job.”

In Leone's latest episode, the bloodthirsty Harlequin spreads Christmas cheer and fear to “Terrifier” scream queen Siena Shaw (Lauren LaVera) and the rest of the residents of Miles County. Produced for $2 million ($1.7 million more than the first two films combined), “Terrifier 3” features the most vicious and complex kills in the series.

But before the blood can spill, Thornton needs an hour and a half in the makeup chair to transform into the killer clown. A makeup artist first prepares his skin and then applies a rubber face mask that forms the basis for Art's grotesque facial features. Then two sets of eyebrow tattoos are added before the blue eye and lip makeup is applied.

Tinsley emphasized that the hardest part of Art's makeup was “dealing with black and white and everything,” adding that “any mistake will show if it's not done right.”

As for his prosthetic teeth, Thornton wore the same pair for almost a decade before Tinsley made him new ones for “Terrifier 3.” “David, God bless him, has been wearing the same set of teeth for eight years. Every time they broke or cracked, it was simply repaired. I said, 'Well, let me get you some new teeth.'”

The opening scene of “Terrifier 3” shows Art making quick work of a young family dressed as Old Saint Nick. At the climax of the scene, Art cuts off the mother's arm with an ax before delivering a final blow to her head. Unlike other horror films, Leone, who serves as editor and director, refuses to cut away at the point of impact, giving the audience a full (and shockingly realistic) view of the carnage.

Tinsley explained that Leone shot at a fake body in profile, causing Thornton to swing downward just before impact. He then cut the camera, changed it to a three-quarter shot, and swapped the fake body for the actress with a prosthetic arm. Leone then captured Thornton using the ax to cut through the wrong arm, and when you cut the whole thing together, “It looks like they just saw an ax go through in one fell swoop and cut off an arm when you “Actually looking at him from two completely different angles,” Tinsley said. “Our brain connects it all and makes it feel like a whole.”

Another standout set piece is the bar sequence in which Art ties an off-duty Santa Claus (Daniel Roebuck) to a chair and freezes his limbs with liquid nitrogen before smashing them into pieces. Tinsley said Leone paid close attention to how she wanted the effect to look. The 42-year-old director didn't want “the limbs to shatter like glass,” but instead wanted them to appear like a block of ice, with “parts turning to dust but still remaining solid.”

“He went one step further and said, 'But the inside shouldn't be frozen, because freezing only goes so far, and the core of any living thing still remains warm and fresh,'” Tinsley recalls. “So we not only developed a concept of how to create something that can break, doesn't shatter or crumble, but also oozes out of the core.”

With the help of special effects artist Mark Killingsworth (“Watchmen”), Tinsley managed to “reverse engineer the casting and molding process” by layering bloody interior fillings with brittle exterior shells. Together they created several head, arm and leg elements that could be puzzled onto Roebuck's body, smashed and replaced for multiple takes.

One of the final and most gruesome scenes was the bathroom sequence, in which Art takes a chainsaw to two unsuspecting college students having an intimate moment in a communal shower. Tinsley recalled long discussions with Leone about how the scene should end. “My whole conversation with Damien was about how we have two naked people in an open space and a chainsaw, and this is in a 'Terrifier' movie. We have to see the contact,” he said. “We need to see a lot of body, flesh and skin. That would be really, really difficult.”

To pull off this incredibly complicated murder, numerous elements and prosthetics were required: head elements, arm elements, breast prostheses, false fingers, a leg that could be torn off, a leg that could be broken off, and two complete artificial bodies, one of which could be halve that completely. As if that wasn't difficult enough, each piece “had to do multiple things,” Tinsley explained. “We had all kinds of tubes and blood bags. Blood was coming from all directions, blood was connected to the chainsaw, blood tubes inside the body and blood bags that were pressurized so that they exploded when the chainsaw hit them.”

Of everything he accomplished in Terrifier 3's two-hour running time, the shower scene was Tinsley's favorite. He thinks it's pure “Terrifier fun” and hopes his chainsaw magnum opus will be part of the conversation when the future generation of horror fans look back on their favorite kills of all time.

“I think it will have a big impact on the audience, and that's what you strive for in a film like this,” Tinsley said. “When people sit around and say, 'Oh yeah, the murder in this movie or the murder in that movie,' you hope someone will say, 'Oh yeah, but the shower sequence in 'Terrifier 3.'” That's why you're making this movie , so people remember it.”