More than six feet tall, and with a chin so distinctive that he once played Jay Leno, Daniel Roebuck, as befits a Santa Claus in the new splatter horror Terrifier 3, makes for a jolly and distinctive presence.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, his face should do the trick. With more than 250 credits on his CV, he ranks alongside David Dastmalchian and William Fichtner as a top-flight “that guy” actor. “Sometimes people say, ‘Did we go to school together?’” Roebuck says. “And I’ll say, ‘No, I’m on TV.’ And they go, ‘No, that’s not it. I never watch TV.’”
In the 1990s, playing Matlock’s investigator, he facilitated Andy Griffith’s gotcha courtroom scenes on a weekly basis. He was Tommy Lee Jones’s federal backup, Bob Biggs, in The Fugitive, a role he reprised in the 1998 spin-off series US Marshals. He played Julianna’s Crane’s secret-spy stepdad in The Man in the High Castle, a duplicitous survivor in The Walking Dead, Greez Dritus in the Star Wars Jedi universe, and the handy high-school science teacher Arzt in the first season of Lost. You have seen Roebuck in action.
“I’ve had such good fortune,” he says. “If you look at my career, every decade or so I end up in a thing that hits big. It was River’s Edge. Then about 10 years later it was The Fugitive. And then about 10 years later it was Lost. And then about 10 years later it was Man in the High Castle. And now 10 years later it’s Terrifier 3. Which is going to be huge.”
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The Terrifier is the little horror franchise that could. The passion project of the writer and Santa began in 2008 as a short about a homicidal mime artist named Art the Clown. The character returned in 2013 for a segment of the independently produced horror anthology All Hallows Eve. Fans were immediately hooked on the old-school video-nasty vibes and DIY SFX and gore. Terrifier, a crowdfunded stand-alone feature, appeared in 2015.
The sequence, featuring David Howard Thornton as Art, tipped its hat to a gaggle of gory genre tropes. Terrifier is a welcome throwback to the 1980s, when horror film-makers, often anticipating video release, combined spurting blood with slapstick humour. These are films best watched at night while shouting, “Don’t go into the basement!” at the screen. Like many of these unfairly abused films, the Terrifiers were made independently.
“People love an underdog, don’t they?” Roebuck says. “I’ve been an underdog film-maker myself. Damien is a nice guy. When you meet Damien you root for Damien. He’s a talented, smart, good guy. He’s not a douche. None of this has gone to his head. It’s really something to be part of that.”
Initial reviews for Terrifier were mixed overall, but not among the horror community. The film was nominated for three Fangoria Chainsaw Awards. Over the past decade, Terrifier and Terrifier 2 have gained enough of a following to have merited a limited re-release in advance of Terrifier 3. The sequence is developing into a durable, popular series.
The third feature in the franchise pivots on the same conceit as its predecessors. Watching Thornton channelling Marcel Marceau, you’re never sure if he’s about to flay someone alive (this happens) or pretend he’s in a glass box.
“I was a clown when I was 12 years old, in the Lions All-Star Circus,” says Roebuck. “I based my clown on Bela Lugosi: I was a vampire clown ... I was there at the beginning of the Nightmare on Elm Street saga. Robert Englund” – who plays Freddie Krueger – “is an old pal of mine. I watched how that took off. Terrifier 3 is going to do the same for David Howard Thornton.’”
In keeping with a trend that began with such decidedly underground Christmas horrors as the Silent Night, Deadly Night sequence and Black Christmas, Terrifier 3 features Roebuck as Santa Claus. And Art the Clown as Santa Claus. “Will slap a smile on your face so big it might as well be held there with meat hooks,” the upmarket website IndieWire remarks.
“I haven’t seen the finished film yet,” Roebuck says. “Damien gave me leeway. And I had great partners in the scenes. I think Tim Burton did everyone a favour by connecting Halloween and Christmas in The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
It’s a good point. That hugely popular stop-motion animation (which was actually directed by Henry Selick, using Burton’s concept) has the king of Halloween Town encounter Christmas Town. Bring the two festive periods together and you have a film that can play for months.
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Roebuck was raised Catholic. In 2020 he and his wife, Tammy Roebuck, founded A Channel of Peace, a nonprofit production company that makes faith-based and family-oriented movies, including the touching cancer drama Getting Grace. The organisation mentors film students across various disciplines, from storytelling to filming to editing. The actor is also the host of Classic with Daniel Roebuck on New Evangelization Television, in New York. “I’ve just made a film with a Catholic storyline that I’m showing to our bishop tomorrow,” he says. “It’s a very sweet film. I’m hoping to get an imprimatur.”
With Terrifier 3 you’re going to get a top-notch, well-produced, scary, weird, operatic, nutty horror show
Roebuck’s stardom in the Christian and faith community may come as a surprise to horror fans who know him from Phantasm Ravager or as one of Rob Zombie’s most trusted collaborators. Acting, says the star of Zombie’s Halloween sequence, is “just my job”. You can see a lot of what makes the United States the country it is in his story. He is both a prominent Christian and an underground icon of horror. The sacred and the profane are right there. His substantial presence is an obvious asset to this area of the horror genre. That sort of weighty character has long been lurking in the background of late-night classics.
He and Zombie, the sometime rock musician, have made five films together, starting with the cult classic The Devil’s Rejects, in 2005. He reprised his Rejects role in the bonkers animated movie The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, in 2009, and again in 3 from Hell, the concluding instalment of Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses trilogy, in 2019.
Most recently, Roebuck starred as Grandpa Muster in Zombie’s 2022 revival of the Gothic-themed 1960s sitcom. This is not the sombre, serious macabre genre known as elevated horror. This stuff is mad, bad and big with fans. Zombie – Robert Bartleh Cummings to his mom – is an icon of that world.
“Rob is a very sweet guy, but I’ve had the two scariest moments of my life making movies with him,” Roebuck says. “One was when were shooting Halloween. Tyler Mane was coming down the hallway at me. The camera was behind me. So there was no camera rig in my view: all I saw was Michael Myers coming for me. Tyler’s, like, 7ft 3in tall. All I can think is, F**k! Help!”
You don’t get that in a Richard Curtis film. Roebuck also remembers an incident from Zombie’s 31, another film involving killer clowns, when Richard Brake’s “Doom-Head” was looming over him.
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“I’m tied to the chair. There’s blood getting in my eyes and there is water dripping on me,” he says. “I start worrying: nobody showed me that the axe Richard Brake is carrying was rubber. Now he’s picking it up, and he’s really into it. I think, ‘This guy is going to kill me.’ But luckily it was rubber. And luckily I never get nightmares after. That has a lot to do with Rob as a director. He really genuinely loves to laugh.”
While shooting Terrifier 3, Roebuck produced and codirected the Santa-themed faith film Saint Nick of Bethlehem, about a man who lost his son and becomes a Santa for many. Don’t confuse the two.
“With Terrifier 3 you’re going to get a top-notch, well-produced, scary, weird, operatic, nutty horror show,” says Roebuck. “You can bring your family – but if you do we will turn you in to social services. That counts for Ireland. We can’t have Irish children watching this movie.”
Terrifier 3 is in cinemas now
