Ahh! Real (Common) Monsters: The Most Frequent Horror Movie Villains
Though they retain their power to surprise, delight, and generally scare the bejesus out of you, horror movies often resort to familiar tropes. No, you shouldn’t go check out that strange noise in the attic when you’re home alone at night. The abandoned mental asylum is not a good place to drink with your friends. Spending the night in a haunted house in exchange for a large sum of money will not work out in your favor. And just as some setups crop up over and over, certain villains seem to have caught our imagination, earning places as horror movie mainstays. From psycho killers to the undead, here are some of the evil entities most frequently found haunting our screens.
Count Dracula
77 different actors have portrayed Bram Stoker’s creation, with the earliest being Paul Askonas in 1921 in Dracula’s Death. However, according to IMDB, it is Christopher Lee who holds the honor of having played Count Dracula the most, starring as the iconic Transylvanian blood connoisseur on 10 different occasions. You have definitely seen or read about this vampire if you have been alive in the past 125 years (and you may have something in common with him if you *are* currently 125 years old.) Even if your only exposure to the outside world is the cereal aisle at your local supermarket, you couldn’t escape him. Same goes if your only contact with society is listening to disco music.
Frankenstein’s Monster
Mary Shelley’s character made his introduction way back in 1818 in the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, although it seemingly wasn’t until roughly 2011 when people began to realize the monster itself was not named “Frankenstein.” The character first jumped out of the book and into the three-dimensional world in a 1823 theatrical adaptation. Shelley approved of it and particularly enjoyed the fact that the play did not give the monster a name. Actors who have portrayed the creature include monster movie legends Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr., and some you wouldn’t put in that category like Phil Hartman, Robert DeNiro, Aaron Eckhart, and Kevin James.
Pinhead
Originally from Clive Barker’s novella The Hellbound Heart, Pinhead is a former English army officer who turned into a demonic “Cenobite” because he was able to solve a puzzle box that was actually a portal to an extra-dimensional realm. He has appeared in all ten Hellraiser films, including this past February’s effort Hellraiser: Judgment. You’ve seen him in the Motorhead music video for, well, “Hellraiser”; in cameo appearances on The Simpsons; and on MTV at the 1992 VMAs failing to get past David Spade’s receptionist character.
Freddy Krueger
Robert Englund recently ended a 15-year hiatus playing the serial killer who terrorizes people in their dreams by appearing as Krueger on The Goldbergs, an ABC sitcom set during the 1980s. The antagonist from A Nightmare on Elm Street was ubiquitous during the 80s and 90s. He appeared in nine Elm Street films, including the meta Wes Craven’s New Nightmares, where Englund played himself talking about the new Freddy Krueger, as well as the new Freddy Krueger who emerged after the film series was thought to be over. The character also appeared in a Dokken music video, and even got political on the late-80s show D.C. Follies.
Leatherface
Chef Drayton Sawyer’s killer brother appeared in all eight Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, including Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), which ignored the previous five movies and served as a new direct sequel to the 1974 original. The recent Leatherface (2017) was a prequel to the original, revealing Leatherface to have been born with the name Jedidiah before living most of his young life in a mental institution as “Jackson”. He’s also appeared in recent video games — Mortal Kombat X and Dead by Daylight.
Chucky
The world’s worst doll/action figure has terrorized in six movies so far, most recently in 2017’s Cult of Chucky. He was honored for his exemplary cinematic service by appearing briefly in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One. He’s also threatened lives on an episode of WCW and SNL’s Weekend Update.
Jason Voorhees
There have been 12 Friday the 13th films so far, and one would think the opportunity is too good to pass up for there not to be a 13th in the offing. Although his mom was the main killer in the first film, where she avenged her son’s untimely drowning, Jason dons the hockey mask and takes up the family pastime in the subsequent 11 iterations of the franchise. For a mass murderer, Voorhees is surprisingly comfortable in the spotlight. Here he is on The Arsenio Hall Show.
And here he is in 2003 in a “weigh-in” event in Las Vegas with Freddy Krueger, promoting Freddy vs. Jason.
The Leprechaun
The inaugural Leprechaun film featured Jennifer Aniston in her film debut, one year before the premiere of Friends. The title character will have appeared in eight movies by 2019, including a 2014 reboot starring the WWE wrestler Hornswoggle. IMDB claims that Warwick Davis, who portrayed the leprechaun in the first six installments, appeared twice in character on the short-lived The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.
Norman Bates
Believe it or not, your friendly neighborhood motel operator has appeared on screens more often than some monsters on this list. In addition to the four original Psycho movies (only the first of which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock), there was the 1998 Gus Van Sant remake starring Vince Vaughn, the 1987 made-for-TV movie Bates Motel co-starring Jason Bateman where Norman signs away the rights to the motel to his friend from the lunatic asylum, and Bates Motel, the A&E TV series that aired from 2013–2017 and served as a prequel to the original 1960 film.
Michael Myers
Myers has rampaged in ten of the eleven Halloween films (Halloween III: Season of the Witch being the exception.) Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, was revealed to be Michael’s sister in Halloween II (1981), but she had died offscreen by Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), so Michael spent his time searching for his daughter, Jamie. According to the sixth installment — Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), a cult was apparently responsible for Myers’ supernatural abilities, as deduced by a character played by Paul Rudd. In Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), the whole Jamie saga was ignored, and Laurie had faked her death all along and was living in California with her son (Josh Hartnett). Rob Zombie rebooted the original in 2007. Recently, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green made their own Halloween, which serves as a sequel to the 1978 original, is set in the present day, and ignores all of the other movies, including the Laurie-is-Michael’s-sister thing. It was #1 in the U.S. box office its first two weekends of release, so far making over $126 million.
Test your knowledge of these frightening, camera-loving creatures of the damned on Fleetwit. Unless you’re scared or something. . .
This story was written by Roger Cormier
