Halloween Horror Nights’ Terrifier House Lets Art the Clown Be a Silly Little Guy

Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights has been serving up high-quality scares for decades. The fright-inducing Halloween event opened its 34th season on August 29 and just keeps getting better. Case in point: this year’s haunted house lineup, which includes scary walkthrough experiences based on popular intellectual properties like Prime Video’s Fallout TV series, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, and one of this writer’s favorite horror movie franchises, Damien Leone’s Terrifier.

“When you look at all three Terrifier films, there’s so much rich content for a haunted house experience,” Ramón Paradoa, one of the masterminds behind Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Orlando Resort, tells Den of Geek. “The vibe of the films — not only the kills, but the character of Art the Clown — lends itself beautifully to what we do at Halloween Horror Nights and to an immersive haunted house experience.”

While the Terrifier franchise is incredibly gory, its antagonist, Art the Clown, is wildly fun to watch. Sure, he’s utterly horrifying and has given me literal nightmares, but he’s also just a silly little guy who’s misunderstood. After all, how can someone who wears a funny hat and has a penchant for wearing comedic sunglasses be all that bad?

Not familiar with Art? The clown first appeared in Leone’s 2008 short film, The 9th Circle, then received his very own short film with Leone’s 2011 Terrifier, a 20-minute introduction to just how sinister a slasher the harlequin could be. Both of Leone’s shorts were incorporated into the 2013 film All Hallow’s Eve, but Art really started to shine when the first full-length Terrifier movie debuted in 2016 with actor David Howard Thornton portraying Art the Clown. Thornton gave Art the personality he’d previously been lacking, and the sadistic clown reappeared in 2022’s Terrifier 2 and 2024’s Terrifier 3. Now Terrifier 4 is in the works and Art the Clown has gone fully mainstream, taking his well-deserved place in a list of horror icons alongside the likes of Michael Meyers, Leatherface, and Jason Voorhees who have graced the halls of Halloween Horror Nights with their very own haunted houses.

“Art the Clown is just such a lovable character,” Paradoa says. “When you think of iconic slashers in the horror zeitgeist, primarily they existed and came to the forefront in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. It wasn’t really until the Terrifier films and Art the Clown that we had a new, modern day slasher that’s reached this level of popularity.”

So what was it like to work with horror mastermind Damien Leone on the Terrifier Halloween Horror Nights house? “He was just a fantastic partner from jump street,” Paradoa says. “He was so involved from the beginning. We were going back and forth with ideas on how to adapt existing moments from the films and implement new moments into the haunted house. We got to collaborate with him on a couple of new kills and experiences. He was very, very excited and it was an honor for us to have his trust because really, these films still have a very close-knit feel to them even as popular as they’ve become.”

The bulk of the experience is based on Terrifier, Terrifier 2, and Terrifier 3, so one doesn’t have to dig into Leone’s early Art the Clown-related works unless they want to. But the house still plays heavily into the lore of those three films, creating “one of the most visceral experiences in our event’s history, per Paradoa.

“What’s really cool is we’ve recreated some of the environments pretty much one-for-one from the films,” he says. “A perfect example of this is the Clown Cafe … you feel like you’re stepping into that moment from the film. It looks exactly like it does in the movie, but then, you’re also going to get to experience some of the kills from the films that we’ve designed in a new way.”

“We knew we wanted to set the environment of the house as the funhouse from the end of Terrifier 2,” he adds. “The idea is that you are traversing through this run down funhouse and some of the scenes are actual scenes from the funhouse proper and some of the scenes are the backstage area. We’re taking kills from the film like the hacksaw kill from Terrifier, the bedroom salt-and-bleach kill from Terrifier 2, and the chainsaw kill from Terrifier 3 and recreating these iconic moments in newly-immersive ways.”

Paradoa says to expect more than 20 victims from the Terrifier franchise to be represented within the house, “as an active kill, a body, or a severed head.” But other than the 20+ victims of Art the Clown, will we recognize other familiar faces in the Halloween Horror Nights house? Paradoa says yes, there’s a 100% chance of seeing characters like Vicky, Sienna, and the Little Pale Girl.

“We loved the idea of Vicky and Little Pale Girl being Art’s sidekicks to lure us into this bloodbath, so we knew they needed to have a big presence in the experience,” he says. “And then Sienna Shaw: Of course we had to represent her because she is, in my opinion, one of the coolest, most headstrong, and most badass final girls we’ve had in horror in quite some time, if not ever. We knew she had to have a big part in the experience and really play into the ending of the experience.”

What’s more, Paradoa says to expect, “the highest number of bodies ever at Halloween Horror Nights, by almost more than double,” in addition to lots of Easter eggs that pay tribute to the films 

Walking through the house, I noticed the Terrifier Easter eggs were plentiful. In fact, I’m tempted to go on one of Universal’s Unmasking the Horror tours, where you can walk through the houses with the lights on, to hunt for more of them. In my two times through the house, I spotted things like the creepy “circus” hitchhiking sign Art holds in the original Terrifier short film, a wall emblazoned with “Vicky + Art,” a throwback to Vicky’s moments in the asylum before she gives birth to Art’s reanimated head at the close of Terrifier 2, and lots of smeared, partially-mopped blood around Allie’s bed in the salt-and-bleach bedroom kill scene, because Art always cleans up after himself, silly little guy that he is.

The Terrifier franchise seems to have eased up over the years in its portrayal of violence towards women or, at the very least, has started incorporating the killing of men into the films too. With many critics of Leone’s works saying they go too far in their exploitation of women, I asked Paradoa if Art’s haunted house would show an equal number of men and women being slaughtered.

“One hundred percent,” he says. “When you go through the hacksaw hallway and you see those two hacksaw rigs going back and forth, that’s happening to two male victims that have unfortunately been captured by Art the Clown. It’s definitely well-balanced in the haunted house because I think the beauty of Art the Clown is he does not pick and choose, he just kind of kills as he goes. He is a tornado and he is going to run past anybody in his path.”

And Paradoa’s right. Yes, I saw some of Art’s cringiest female kills, like a naked Dawn being sawed in half upside down in Terrifier, but there was plenty of violence inflicted upon guys in the house as well, from Cole’s chainsaw shower death in Terrifier 3 to those hacksawed male victims Paradoa told me to keep an eye out for. In this version of Terrifier, Art the Clown is an equal-opportunity slayer. Additionally, the Terrifier haunted house will end with the opportunity for guests to choose between a wet and dry path. Since this feature was announced, Universal has been hinting that those who choose the wet path will get completely soaked.

“When we were thinking of ways to make this experience viscerally immersive, we were playing with the sights and smells, but we wanted to go beyond that,” Paradoa says. “We thought, ‘What if we made it feel like you were being bathed in the blood of Art’s victims throughout the experience but especially in the finale?’ So in the finale you have the opportunity to choose between the blood bath and the dry path.

“That spiraled into what eventually became the most advanced water effects integration we’ve ever done at Halloween Horror Nights. Throughout the experience, you’re going to get water blasts and feel the blood spray from some of those kills, but once you get to the finale, which we’re calling the ‘Symphony of Blood,’ you’re going to go into this open warehouse environment at the very back of the funhouse and see an iconic visual of Art the Clown standing over a waterfall of blood … on either side of him are two paths and you have a choice. If you’re brave enough to go through the blood bath, you will get very wet. You’ll smell the iron-y smell of blood and it’s going to make you think you’re being doused in the blood of Art’s victims. We have intensified driplines, rain curtains, and water blasts — so you’re going to get very wet.”

Because I was committed to the bit, I went through the Terrifier Halloween Horror Nights house twice in a row, once along Art’s “blood bath” and once on the dry path. To get it over with, I donned a plastic poncho (which was on sale at the house entrance for around $10) and went “wet” first. I did, indeed, get soaked. Everything Paradoa promised came to be: I smelled blood, I was splashed senseless, and as I exited the house, I stumbled upon an actor playing Sienna Shaw, holding up Art’s severed head and wearing her iconic Valkyrie-style angel costume from the films.

The dry path felt shorter, with less of a blood smell and a different representation of Sienna’s short-lived victory: Instead of encountering her in the flesh, the dry path shows a silhouette of Sienna beheading Art behind a panel. But hey, it’s hard to keep Art down: Both paths end with a beheaded Art the Clown, still alive and ready to wreak more havoc on Sienna Shaw and her family and friends.

Art won’t just be terrifying guests in his own haunted house at HHN. During the event, Universal announced there will be a roving Art the Clown character who will interact with guests throughout the park. Paradoa calls this addition “a really early idea” that came up when Universal first began their partnership with Leone and his team.

“We knew we wanted Art the Clown to have a presence in the event beyond the haunted house because what makes Art so iconic are the one-on-one interactions he has with people,” says Paradoa. “We wanted to give guests an enhanced way to interact with Art the Clown beyond just seeing him come out and scare you in the haunted house.”

But Art won’t appear in set times and places during the event. “We wanted to play into the unpredictability of the character,” Paradoa says. “You don’t know how you’re going to encounter him as you’re making your way through Halloween Horror Nights. Art the Clown might pop up in a dark alleyway or in a restaurant while you’re eating or in a store while you’re buying merchandise. No two nights of operation will be the same.”

There’s also a food kiosk in this year’s HHN line-up that’s a fun twist on the Clown Cafe. At the food truck-style booth, guests can purchase everything from a cookie that looks like Art’s iconic sunflower sunglasses to popcorn doused with sauce-topped chicken bites that resemble bloody body parts. And then there’s the merchandise: I spotted things like Art masks and popcorn buckets, Terrifier Christmas ornaments, and a crossbody bag featuring lots of characters from the franchise.

While I didn’t stumble upon a roving Art in the park, plenty of people have been sharing videos of their own interactions on social media. It’s been delightful to watch Damien Leone share these posts and others, including a viral trend of people showing how they look before getting soaking wet in the Terrifier house and how they look after.

The Terrifier house itself is one of the goriest HHN houses I’ve seen, but it’s also wildly fun. Walking through, you encounter Art countless times, and he’s always his typical smiley, cheerful self, whether he’s showing off his bottle of bleach in the Allie kill scene or wearing Santa Claus’ face in the Christmas kill scene. I lost count of how many actors portraying Art I encountered, but loved seeing them clap along to the Clown Cafe jingle, show off their zany sunglasses, and laugh as they sawed through their victims. 

“Oh no, Art!” I exclaimed several times as I discovered the clown torturing a victim. Each time he’d laugh and clap while showing off his bloody handiwork. Truly, it’s the first Halloween Horror Nights house where I remember the actors being that interactive with guests throughout. And, blood and guts or no blood and guts, everyone working inside the house seemed to be having just as much fun as guests were having walking through it.

But I also wanted to know: Is there a chance David Howard Thornton himself will put on his Art the Clown suit and surprise park-goers? 

“I’d really hope if that happens, we’d keep it under wraps because fans would freak out if they encountered Art the Clown and went, ‘Wait a second, is that the man himself?’” Paradoa says. “I don’t know what plans are in motion but I hope if it does happen, it’s kept under wraps because it’d be a really fun surprise.”