Inside the academic conference taking Terrifier… | Little White Lies

Inside the aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence tak­ing Ter­ri­fi­er back to school

15 Apr 2025

Words by Barney Nuttall

Ornate library interior with clown mask atop stack of books.
Ornate library interior with clown mask atop stack of books.
A forth­com­ing con­fer­ence seeks to posi­tion the ultra­vi­o­lent hor­ror fran­chise with­in acad­e­mia – what might we learn from Art the Clown?

While the typ­i­cal aca­d­e­m­ic film con­fer­ence might unpick the oeu­vres of Robert Bres­son or Chan­tal Aker­man, film schol­ar Dr Reece Goodall and his­to­ri­an Dr Han­nah Straw are gath­er­ing the world’s finest in May to paint the hal­lowed halls of War­wick Uni­ver­si­ty with blood (fig­u­ra­tive­ly speak­ing of course). This spring, they’re pre­sent­ing the world’s first Ter­ri­fi­er Con­fer­ence: a con­trar­i­an aca­d­e­m­ic assem­bly dis­cussing Damien Leone’s tit­u­lar gore-sploita­tion clown-based franchise.

The franchise’s gra­tu­itous vio­lence is hard to digest, but Goodall and Straw are encour­ag­ing film stud­ies’ bright­est to get stuck in. Bru­tal­i­ty as art, cin­e­mat­ic after­lives on Tik­Tok and takes on fran­chise fig­ure­head Art the Clown (an anti-Chap­lin sadist respon­si­ble for Ter­ri­fi­ers bru­tal kills) are just some of the many scalpelled approach­es the con­fer­ence will take to Leone’s axe-swing­ing cor­pus. We aren’t doing any­thing stuffy and for­mal,” assures Goodall. Straw con­curs: We just want­ed to bring every­one togeth­er to talk about [Ter­ri­fi­er]; you don’t have to love it or hate it.”

While Leone’s stom­ach-churn­ing films are the main focus of the con­fer­ence, there is a sec­ondary oper­a­tion at play, one allow­ing aca­d­e­mics to shed their prover­bial tweed blaz­ers and seri­ous­ly address typ­i­cal­ly shrugged-off low art’. As much as it is about the Ter­ri­fi­er fran­chise, the con­fer­ence is also about ask­ing how, and not why, trash cin­e­ma’ should be stud­ied, rais­ing ques­tions about how val­ue is attrib­uted to art with­in academia.

Trash stud­ies seems like a con­tem­po­rary schol­ar­ly pur­suit, but aca­d­e­mics have exam­ined the bot­tom of the cin­e­mat­ic bar­rel since the 90s. When Jef­frey Sconce’s essay Trash­ing the Acad­e­my’ strut­ted onto cam­pus in 1995, it ush­ered in what lec­tur­er Dr Iain Robert Smith describes as a gen­er­a­tion of PhD stu­dents that were real­ly invest­ed in cult and trash cin­e­ma”. Thanks to Sconce’s sur­vey of para-cineast­es – those reject­ing elit­ist high arts – the field of acad­e­mia was split open. It was no longer a divide between art cin­e­ma and pop­u­lar,” explains Smith, Cult was this new area.”

Creepy doll with red coat, blonde wig, and menacing expression holding an axe.

Oper­at­ing on a lev­el miles from the accept­ed film stud­ies canon, yet work­ing under the aus­pices of its ter­mi­nol­o­gy, trash cin­e­ma stud­ies cor­rupts the foun­da­tions of cul­tur­al val­ue on which the field is built. Case in point, if Damien Leone and Yasu­jirō Ozu can both be auteurs, then what is the val­ue of that label? Fur­ther still, how is that val­ue ascribed? Straw says, In his­to­ry, we are a bit more reluc­tant to study things that are con­sid­ered – I hate this word – unim­por­tant. So I’ve always been real­ly inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of what peo­ple think is trashy and what peo­ple think is gos­sip and not worth­while.” Study­ing trash is the ide­al site for inter­ro­gat­ing what and why cer­tain art is deemed unim­por­tant, open­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for recon­sid­er­a­tions of once-repug­nant work as under­ground, art house and beyond.

Of course, putting trash under the micro­scope smooths its rough edges. The pope of trash, John Waters, has always been baf­fled by aca­d­e­m­ic respons­es to his work, writ­ing in Shock Val­ue: A Taste­ful Book about Bad Taste, I hate mes­sage movies and pride myself on the fact that my work has no social­ly redeem­ing val­ue.” Yet Pink Flamin­gos is enshrined in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion and is hailed as a land­mark piece of queer cin­e­ma. Gial­lo mas­ter­mind Dario Argen­to demon­strates a sim­i­lar muta­tion, as demon­strat­ed in the recent ret­ro­spec­tive of the once con­tro­ver­sial cre­ative at the BFI. Par­tial­ly thanks to schol­ar­ly reap­praisals, the pot-infused aura of irrev­er­ence once syn­ony­mous with trash is less pun­gent. Loads of peo­ple say that cult cin­e­ma is dead,” says Smith, cit­ing the inter­net and a recent uptake of inter­est in hor­ror as also con­tribut­ing to a decline in aca­d­e­m­ic interest.

This is why the Ter­ri­fi­er con­fer­ence is an inter­est­ing anom­aly. Just when trash schol­ars are hang­ing up their mor­tar­boards, mak­ing way for Tum­blr-mods-cum-aca­d­e­mics, Goodall and Straw hope to prove that there are new tricks to learn from this old dog. The ques­tion real­ly is, what ques­tions should we be ask­ing about the works that we engage with, and that’s some­thing that all our fields are still grap­pling with,” observes Goodall. Instead of blow­ing hot air debat­ing the worth of a film, this con­fer­ence is aim­ing for the jugu­lar, inter­ro­gat­ing the per­verse plea­sures of trash with­in the film’s boundaries.

Asked if any­thing is off the cards for study, Goodall imme­di­ate­ly stands firm on the val­ue of low art: If we ask the right ques­tions of things we look at, we are going to come up with many inter­est­ing, insight­ful things about our­selves and the world that we live in and the cul­ture that we engage with.” Con­sid­er that Ter­ri­fi­er 3 took 45 times its bud­get at the box office, opera and the­atre are strug­gling to put bums on seats, and that many upstart cineast­es are cut­ting their teeth on YouTube, Tik­Tok, and Let­ter­boxd to avoid tuition fees. While social media will nev­er sub­sti­tute for a lec­ture, and the eye-water­ing fees mak­ing acad­e­mia unreach­able for many aren’t get­ting small­er, this con­fer­ence does demon­strate that the elit­ist bound­aries which once des­ig­nat­ed the trea­sure from the trash aren’t inform­ing today’s tastemak­ers. It’s as John Waters said: To under­stand bad taste, one must have very good taste.” Who would dare dis­agree with the pope himself?

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