JACKSON, Mich. — You may not recognize him without the makeup, but behind the mask is David Howard Thornton.
“I would really love to play the Joker. That’s a lifetime goal of mine,” he said.
The Alabama native was a restaurant server for 13 years and did acting on side.
“I was like well, this is what I really need to do with my life, so I decided to finish up my degree, so I had something to fall back on just in case, and then I moved up to New York City, and the rest is history,” Thornton said.
He got his big break in the horror film Terrifier.
“I was actually an elementary education major, and I was basically finished with my whole entire run in college,” he said. “I was in my internship in school, and I realized I got more fulfillment out of entertaining my students than teaching them. I was like well, this is what I really need to do with my life.”
Now with Halloween fast approaching, he’s brought back his character Art the Clown to movie theaters across America in Terrifier 2. But fair warning, the slasher pic is not for the faint of heart.
“It’s a killer clown that encounters some people on Halloween, especially this one family in particular,” he said. “Sienna, her brother Jonathan, their mother Barbara, who have been going through their own struggles because they recently lost their father, and this clown finds his way into their lives and gives them a hard time, I guess you could say, and everybody else he comes across.”
But how did he get into the horror genre?
“I was a little bit late to the game because my mom was a big chicken when it came to horror movies growing up, so I didn’t really watch them until my senior year in high school when Scream 2 came out,” he said. “When I went to college the next year, I just started watching tons of those because my roommate, and I would just rent stacks of tapes from the local movie gallery and watch them all weekend. That’s when I really fell in love with the genre, but I never imagined I would be one of the killers in one of those movies one day.”
Thornton says the small-budget film has become a success not because of him but because of others.
“Our film was totally funded by fans, made for fans, and it is the fans that have made us the success we are, and like most of the press we’re getting right now has been the fans spreading the word now. Main media outlets have picked us up, and they’re all talking about us,” he said.
You’ll be able to catch Thornton, or should I say Art the Clown, in person at Leslie’s Awaken Haunted Attractionthis weekend through Sunday night. He will be signing autographs and taking photos...If you dare.
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