Terrifier star David Howard Thornton is bringing his brand of horror mayhem to another slasher universe. The actor best known for playing Art the Clown has joined the cast of Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon, the long-awaited follow-up to the cult 2006 horror mockumentary Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.
According to Variety, Thornton will appear in a key role in the sequel, which reunites original director Scott Glosserman and writer David J. Stieve with returning stars Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals, and Robert Englund.
What is Behind the Mask about?
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was a slasher movie that deconstructed the slasher sub-genre, telling the story of the next great psycho horror slasher, who has given a documentary crew exclusive access to his life as he plans his reign of terror over the sleepy town of Glen Echo. Scott Wilson, Bridgett Newton, Kate Miner, and Zelda Rubinstein starred alongside Baesel, Goethals, and Englund.
Set twenty years after its precessor, the sequel picks up in a horror landscape that has changed dramatically since Leslie first emerged, as the old rules of the genre collide with a new wave of modern slashers, viral killers, legacy sequels and blood-soaked icons built for the internet age.
Glosserman had this to say about Thornton joining the cast: “David is one of the defining faces of the modern slasher era. If Behind the Mask was about deconstructing the classic rules, then a sequel 20 years later has to reckon with what the genre has become. Bringing David into Leslie’s world lets us put the old guard and the new blood in direct conversation, which is exactly where this movie should live.“
Paper Street Pictures, a genre company led by Aaron B. Koontz and Cameron Burns, is producing the sequel with Glosserman and Stieve. Adam F. Goldberg and Hans Rodionoff serve as executive producers alongside Carmelo Chimera and Syed Ali Saeed of Act One Media. Kristy Jett is an associate producer on the film.
Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon will be filming this year. More than $400,000 of the budget was raised through a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Are you looking forward to this sequel, and are you glad to hear that David Howard Thornton is in the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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