You Can Now Call A Horror Icon In Real Life 

What actually happens if you bother to give Art the Clown a call on your own phone? We hate to give away the fun, but here goes: you don’t hear this killer clown say anything. Instead, all you hear is a series of honking horns.

That may sound like a weird gag, but it’s one that many fans of Art the Clown predicted even before they picked up the phone. You see, Art has never actually said anything in either the two Terrifier films or the horror anthology All Hallow’s Eve that preceded them.

In this way, this corpse-making clown follows in the bloody veins of silent slasher killers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers (yes, that’s the sound of us very firmly ignoring those Rob Zombie Halloween movies).

If you’ve never really engaged with this franchise very much, it would be fair to ask a simple question: “what’s the gag?” Pop culture has prepared us for violent clowns with a weird sense of humor…after all, that’s basically the Joker’s whole deal. But this viral marketing stunt for Art the Clown’s latest adventure doesn’t have much of a punchline for those who dared to dial him on their phones, and in a very weird way, that’s the point.

In the Terrifier movies, the main thing that Art is known for is insanely over-the-top violence…in fact, one of the earlier marketing coups for the franchise was the early reports that some Terrifier 2 audiences had run out of the theater while actively vomiting from the nastiness they had witnessed onscreen.

But what sets Art apart from other killers is his bizarre sense of humor, like when he randomly sports flowery sunglasses to stalk someone or acts silly during the entire Clown Café sequence from the second film. In short, menacingly honking a horn for callers is perfectly in line with the series’ surreal humor.

Only time will tell if this marketing stunt proves successful, though Terrifier 3 may very well make a killing either way. That movie screams into theaters on October 11, making it an early Halloween movie that happens to take place during Christmas. After the successful crowdfunding efforts of the second film, Terrifier 3 has the film’s biggest budget yet, and legions of fans are waiting to see Art the Clown usher in a very red Christmas.

For fans like us, the wait for the third film in this trilogy is going to be a long one. Fortunately, we can pass the time by ringing up Art the Clown and hearing those horrific honks bleating out of our phones. It’s the next best thing to having this otherwise silent killer in the room with you, and if the idea of that doesn’t make your skin crawl, nothing will.