SHRINK CHAT: Art the Clown’s Origin, Baby Jane, Housebound & Joe Bob

Where did Art the Clown come from before Terrifier made him famous?

Trigger warning: The cyberstalking case (about 17:17 to 21:07) includes quoted threats of rape and murder. Content note: the All Hallows’ Eve review describes mutilation, and two short film titles at Joe Bob’s drive-in (about 6:48 to 7:28) are explicit.

It’s Shrink Chat, our weekly horror roundup, from the second week of November 2020, and Halloween isn’t over for us yet. Our buddy watch is All Hallows’ Eve (2013), the indie anthology where Art the Clown first appeared, years before Terrifier. We report back from Joe Bob Briggs’ Haunted Drive-In at the Rose Bowl and a year-round Halloween store in Burbank, tally a 150-movie October, and recommend Housebound, One Cut of the Dead, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Channel Zero and Darcy Coates’ Craven Manor. Plus Cathy’s Horror Facts lead to one of our top five scariest films.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy talk about why nightmares may be practice for the real thing, how video games and virtual reality are being studied to help people with PTSD learn lucid dreaming, why dreams are rarely about their content, why cyberstalking law is still catching up with the internet, and the dependency and abuse at the heart of Baby Jane.

Covered in this episode:

• All Hallows’ Eve (2013), Art the Clown and Terrifier
• Joe Bob’s Haunted Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, Darcy the Mail Girl and Felissa Rose
• Halloween Town in Burbank
• The Babadook (2014) in Horror Facts with Cath
• Nightmares as rehearsal, and lucid dreaming for PTSD
• A federal cyberstalking indictment from Los Angeles, November 2020
• Tubi’s free horror library
• The 100-movie October challenge, and how to watch 150
• Channel Zero: Candle Cove
• One Cut of the Dead (2017)
• Housebound (2014)
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, plus a Mommy Dearest idea
• Craven Manor by Darcy Coates

Clinical themes: threat rehearsal in dreams, lucid dreaming and trauma, dream metaphor, distress tolerance, stalking and online misogyny, caregiver dependency and abuse, shyness and social anxiety.

Updates: The man charged in the cyberstalking case pleaded guilty to two counts of stalking in 2022 and in February 2023 was sentenced to 85 months in federal prison, more than the five-year maximum discussed on air (the sentence also covered a separate case). Art the Clown has since returned in Terrifier 2 (2022) and Terrifier 3 (2024).

Related episodes:

• SHRINK CHAT: Revenge, Scare Me & Assassins, the Kim Jong-nam Murder
• HALLOWEEN: Devil’s Night, Samhain & the Real Origins of Halloween
• Female Psychopath Series: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

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Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴
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