Catherine Corcoran, who starred in Terrifier as Dawn, has launched a lawsuit against the horror flick’s director, the production company, and an executive producer.
In arguably the most famous scene of the original Terrifier film in 2016, Catherine Corcoran’s character Dawn was hung upside down by her ankles before being viciously killed by the now-iconic Art the Clown. The franchise has become known for its brutal death scenes, and following the release of the sequel in 2022, people actually threw up inside cinemas because of Art’s antics.
Last weekend, Catherine’s lawyers filed the lawsuit in California federal court, naming director Damien Leone, Dark Age Cinema, Fuzz on the Lens Productions, and producer Phil Falcone.
Credit: John Salangsang/Shutterstock
One portion of the lawsuit was over pay disputes. She claimed that she agreed to work for a daily rate of just $100 on the basis that she’d receive “1 per cent of profits generated from Terrifier”, including box office, streaming, live events and merchandise.
Damien Leone and Phil Falcone allegedly failed to pay her sufficient royalties, with her payout from the sequel intermittently amounting to a measly $8,300. The payments “became more and more sporadic and dwindled to amounts nowhere near commensurate”, but when she challenged her former bosses, they “brushed” it off.
“This case presents an all-too-common story of low-budget film producers taking advantage of a young actress through fraud, sexual harassment and, ultimately, betrayal,” her lawyers said, as per Variety.
Catherine Corcoran is also suing over the Terrifier’s nude scene
Credit: Epic Pictures
Another aspect of Catherine Corcoran’s lawsuit against her former employers was the nude scene in the first Terrifier film, where she was topless before her death. Her lawyers alleged that the film “never obtained Corcoran’s informed written consent” to be filmed nude, which is required by the Screen Actors Guild. The lawsuit also revealed one alleged moment when Phil Falcone took “numerous still photographs” of a topless Catherine without her written consent.
The final point of the lawsuit was the inhumane conditions in which she was expected to work. These allegedly included “long hours in below freezing temperatures in condemned buildings, all without heat and some without bathrooms”, having “prosthetics with actual rat faeces put on her skin and duct tape over her mouth”, and facing a “long, painful process” to be removed from a piece of plywood.
“Were it not for Corcoran’s 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 shoestring budget otherwise,” the lawsuit claimed.
Following the nude scene in Terrifier, Catherine Corcoran was diagnosed with cranial swelling and eardrum damage.
Rejecting the claims in the lawsuit, a lawyer for the director and producer said: “Damien and Phil deny the claims in the complaint and will vigorously defend this lawsuit.”
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Featured image credit: John Salangsang/Shutterstock
