Santa Claus is coming to town to make you puke up all the popcorn you just ate. In his review of Terrifier 3—the "best Terrifier yet"—for The A.V. Club, Matthew Jackson hailed the film as "a relentless, gleeful gauntlet of practical effects and gore that’ll make you gag in your seat." That is, if you're able to stay in your seat at all, as Art the Clown (the Christmas edition!) decks the halls with blood, guts, and other nameless viscera.
11 people couldn't pass the test at the film's first official UK screening, the film's PR team told The A.V. Club today. Nine of those walkouts apparently occurred during the first five or so minutes of the film, which might sound like those people somehow wandered into a very wrong theater if Leone himself hadn't previously said that the opening scene was so gory he knew no major studio would ever finance it.
"I got to meet with studios, like legit Hollywood studios, who wanted to make Terrifier 3… [but] I knew they weren’t going to let me make this movie based on the first five pages. Like that’s how insane Terrifier 3 is," the director told YouTube interviewer JoBlo last year. "Mark my words, I guarantee you the first five minutes of this movie is going to be very controversial. But that’s not even the big kill scene. So that’s why I was like, 'I need to just make this movie on my own,' because it’s just too… it’s too insane."
In a statement shared with The A.V. Club, Leone also lauded the film's makeup team for doing scary good work. "Typically people walk out of a movie because it sucks. When someone walks out of a Terrifier film, it’s a testament to the special makeup fx team. I guess we’ve done our job!" he said.
One fan (or maybe ex-fan) was also confirmed to have puked during the film, which is one more person than should be puking in any normal movie but a real step down from Terrifier 2, which also counted a few faintings among its stats. Of course, many slashers over the years have used audience disgust to market their films—some more effectively than others—but this franchise does seem to be the real deal. Terrifier 2 audience members came with receipts and photos showing EMTs responding to faintings on-site, and even a 30-second clip from the second film made this writer think she'd probably be among that group if she were to watch it live.
The run is still young for Art's third outing, which opens to the public October 11. That means that the walkouts were among the select group of people invited to the premiere, many of whom likely have at least a passing familiarity with Art and his antics. When he slides down everyone else's chimney later this month, those numbers are only subject to grow. Maybe this movie should have been called Nightmare Before Christmas instead.
