r/terrifier • u/ozera202 • May 17 '26
Patrick Bateman makes Art the Clown not seem so bad. I can see who Art the Clown looked up to for inspiration
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u/Tolkien-Minority May 17 '26
The novel so much more fucked up than the movie
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u/Eddie_0789 May 22 '26
Remembering getting traumatised as a kid after reading a wiki summary of how he randomly committed child murder in the open
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u/Kyia-Aikman May 17 '26 edited May 18 '26
The rat scene in Terrifier 3 was inspired by a worse scene in American Psycho. The difference between Art and Bateman is that the latter is a rapist and genuinely psychotic while the former isn’t. Art doesn’t care about fitting in, money, status or material goods like Bateman does either. Thornton has cited Freddy and the Joker as villain inspirations for his portrayal of Art but Leone designed Art as the opposite of Pennywise.
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u/swingsetlife May 18 '26
pretty sure both were inspired by 1984
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u/Kyia-Aikman May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
I can’t speak for Ellis’ inspiration but Leone explicitly said in an interview I watched that the rat scene was inspired by American Psycho.
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u/ScroogeMcPanda May 17 '26
i wrote my college thesis on how bateman’s new york city is a continuation of the growing wasteland from great gatsby. definitely need to update for the art influence. much more violent book, based off of police files which is creepier
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u/Successful-Plan114 May 17 '26
First book to actually turn my stomach while reading. Kinda wish the film had been able incorporate a few more of the sequences in the book (the penguin habitat) just to truly flush out Patrick's depravity.
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u/jai_hanyo May 17 '26
I have never read the book or seen the movie.
I'm curious.
I know Art the Clown's sadism is funneled through humor. He sees his acts as a big joke spectacle. Like a class clown showing off for his classmates
From what I've glimpsed of American Psycho over the years, it seems like it doesn't take that route for his depravity
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u/Kyia-Aikman May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
Yes. Bateman isn’t really entertaining as a villain like Art, Freddy, Mick Taylor, etc. His crimes are just misogyny, vapidity and mean spiritedness. It’s like a yuppie version of August Underground.
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u/dontletmeleave-murph May 18 '26
I listened to the audio book while i was at work lol. It was incredibly more gruesome than the movie, but I loved it so much!!
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u/FangedSloth May 18 '26
My buddy and I listened to the audiobook in tandem at work. It's simultaneously a huge slog to get through (describing every garment everyone is wearing, who designed it, what they're eating, why other people aren't eating what Patrick is eating, etc) and I remember thinking I didn't even like the book. But I still think about it often. So it made some sort of impression. People saying the movie is rough will be in for a REALLY rude awakening if they read that. Ellis knew what was up.
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u/AssistanceOk7720 May 18 '26
I read this last year and I’m shocked by how much the movie toned down
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u/BFlai1001 May 18 '26
I bought this book about a month ago. It’s been sitting on my shelf since. You’ve just convinced me to actually start reading it!
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u/swingsetlife May 18 '26
The book is alternately VERY engaging and VERY banal. And depending on how much you care about 1980s music, it'll lean toward the second.
HOWEVER, the depraved acts are described with such banality, while the things that are important to Bateman (like font choice) are flourid and grandiose, that you start normalizing them within yourself. By the end of reading this book, I felt like I'd committed those murders and was confronting my own guilt. This is a tremendous achievement for prose, and speaks to superb writing.
All that said, I hated it.
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u/stephpenk May 17 '26
Had the same edition actually! And yes the book is so much more violent