{"id":337459,"date":"2025-10-28T03:06:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/337459\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T03:06:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T03:06:23","slug":"terrifier-actress-claims-breach-of-contract-sexual-harassment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/337459\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Terrifier’ Actress Claims Breach of Contract, Sexual Harassment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catherine Corcoran<\/a>, the actress whose brutal death scene in \u201cTerrifier\u201d<\/a> (2016) helped make the smash-hit horror franchise a success, has sued filmmaker Damien Leone<\/a> and producers for breach of contract. The case was filed in a California federal court on Sunday, beginning legal proceedings that will determine whether Corcoran has been wrongly denied her fair share of profits. <\/p>\n

The lawsuit also alleges extreme working conditions<\/a>, a broken SAG-AFTRA<\/a> agreement, and on-set sexual harassment \u2014 naming producer Phil Falcone<\/a> in a reported incident that Corcoran says involved Falcone photographing her nude without her consent while she was trapped in a special effects rig. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a> \"IndieWire\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cWere it not for Corcoran\u2019s willingness to take a risk on this production and receive her compensation on the back-end, the series would not exist as it could not have been made on a shoe-string budget otherwise,\u201d the plaintiff\u2019s filing argued. \u201cWhen it came time to pay what was owed, the producers chose to cheat her. This injustice must be rectified.\u201d <\/p>\n

An attorney for Leone told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> (which broke this story), \u201cDamien and Phil deny the claims in the complaint and will vigorously defend this lawsuit.\u201d Neither responded to IndieWire\u2019s request for comment. <\/p>\n

Corcoran claims she\u2019s entitled to 1 percent of proceeds from a backend deal that covers ticket sales for all three films in the series \u2014\u00a0as well as any money made from the licensing and use of \u201cTerrifier<\/a>\u201d IP. To date, the actress says she\u2019s been paid less than $8,400 for her contribution to the killer clown<\/a> icon.<\/p>\n

\"TERRIFIER,Catherin Corcoran in \u2018Terrifier\u2019 (2016) Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201cTerrifier 2\u201d and \u201cTerrifier 3\u201d were distributed theatrically by Cineverse<\/a>, and the franchise has a lifetime gross of more than $106 million at the box office. The suit lists major brand names in horror, including Spirit Halloween and Hot Topic, as proof of the artistic success Corcoran\u2019s scene helped spark. Dawn\u2019s death is currently featured as part of the walk-through \u201cTerrifier\u201d attraction at Halloween Horror Nights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe producers of the film<\/a> paid Corcoran her royalties for a brief period of time several years after the release of the film, but when the film series\u2019 success started to grow exponentially and exceeded the producer\u2019s original expectations, the royalty payments became more and more sporadic and dwindled to amounts nowhere near commensurate with the revenues generated,\u201d read the complaint, which also lists Dark Age Cinema, Fuzz on the Lens Productions, and the Art the Clown<\/a> trademark as defendants. <\/p>\n

Among the first victims of Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton<\/a>), Corcoran sys she played Dawn \u2014\u00a0notoriously vivisected from crotch to cranium, while the actress was suspended upside-down \u2014 for just $100 a day. Corcoran\u2019s performance reportedly fell under a special SAG contract for ultra low budget performers that, coupled with the terms of a mutual nondisclosure agreement Corcoran\u2019s team has submitted as evidence, lead her to believe she would be compensated more robustly if the $35,000 film became a success. The suit claims Corcoran was later told Falcone \u201cdidn\u2019t keep records.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe low-budget nature of the production carried over into the working conditions on set, including long hours in below freezing temperatures in condemned buildings, all without heat and some without bathrooms,\u201d continued the complaint. \u201cThe so-called \u2018practical effects\u2019 that made \u2018Terrifier\u2019 so compelling on screen involved the director placing prosthetics with actual rat feces on Corcoran\u2019s skin and real duct tape over her mouth.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cFurther, when creating the silicone mold for Corcoran\u2019s body cast, the producers of the film required Corcoran to lie nude on a piece of plywood while she was covered with a quick-drying liquid silicone agent,\u201d the court document said. \u201cHowever, the process was done incorrectly and the silicone dried and essentially glued Corcoran to the plywood, requiring a long, painful process to remove the dried silicone from her body. To make matters worse, Falcone took numerous still photographs of Corcoran\u2019s nude body while she was glued to the plywood sheet without her consent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The case further challenges the terms of Corcoran\u2019s employment on \u201cTerrifer,\u201d arguing that Leone and producers never got her written approval for the nude scene as required by SAG. The actress claims that Leone, Falcone, and more \u201cTerrifier\u201d contributors have continued to profit off the unauthorized use of her nude image by using it to sell products. Corcoran says the sawing scene for \u201cTerrifier\u201d took ten hours to shoot and caused blood to pool in her head, resulting in reported cranial swelling and eardrum damage. <\/p>\n

The public disagreement comes on the heels of more \u201cTerrifier\u201d controversy<\/a>, involving the treatment of sequel stars Lauren LaVera and David Howard Thornton earlier this year. Neither actor has commented on the case. Production on \u201cTerrifier 4\u201d has not yet started and the film does not have a distributor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Catherine Corcoran, the actress whose brutal death scene in \u201cTerrifier\u201d (2016) helped make the smash-hit horror franchise a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":337460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[166754,166755,100904,171,1020,50,166756,77919,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-337459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-art-the-clown","9":"tag-catherine-corcoran","10":"tag-damien-leone","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-film","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-phil-falcone","15":"tag-terrifier","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115449587035765621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}