Damien Leone

Damien Leone is an indie filmmaker who started his career as a special effects makeup artist who specializes in slasher-horror movies, starting with two short films, The 9^th Circle (2008) and Terrifier (2011), about a killer clown named Art the Clown. Leone was director/writer/producer/editor/makeup-special effects creator of his direct-to-video feature debut, All Hallows’ Eve (2013), an anthology horror movie made up of short films all featuring Art the Clown, which incorporated footage from The 9^th Circle; Leone was later producer only of the anthology sequel, All Hallows’ Eve (2015).

Leone was the director/writer/editor/makeup-special effects creator of his first single-story feature, Frankenstein vs. The Mummy (2015), the only movie pitting the two iconic classic horror movie characters against each other. Leone met actor David Howard Thornton, whom he cast as Art in the feature version of his 2011 short, also titled Terrifier (2016), with Jenna Kanell and Samantha Scaffidi and earned ten times its approximate $40,000 budget and launched a successful franchise.

Damien Leone continued as director/writer/producer/editor/makeup-special effects creator of the Art the Clown slasher-horror sequels, Terrifier 2 (2022)—grossing a spectacular $15.7 million (on a $250,000 budget) for distributor Cinedigm—and Terrifier 3 (2024), both starring David Howard Thornton as Art, with Lauren LaVera and Samantha Scaffidi, with the latter film premiering at Fantastic Fest and released wide by Cineverse.

Leone was a producer and special effects makeup coordinator on the slasher-horror movie, Stream (2024), from Leone’s Terrifier franchise collaborator Michael Leavy, who was director, co-writer, and co-producer of the crowdfunded production with a cast led by Jeffrey Combs, Charles Edwin Powell, Tim Reid, David Howard Thornton, Dee Wallace, Tony Todd, and Tim Curry.