We know we shouldn’t root for the bad guys in movies, but sometimes we can’t help it.
Did you ever silently cheer when Jason Voorhees took out another empty headed coed in any given “Friday the 13th” installment? Or chuckle when Hannibal Lecter announced he was having an old friend over for dinner at the end of “Silence of the Lambs?”
This week, Ghostface makes his (or her??) return to the cineplex courtesy of “Scream 4.” In the pantheon of movie serial killers, Ghostface ranks pretty low in my book. Maybe it’s because the “Scary Movie” franchise knocked him done a peg or three.
What’s your favorite movie-based killer, and why?
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Does Harry Plinkett of ‘Red Letter Media’ count?
I had a lot of fun watching Kurt Russel as Stuntman Mike, to be honest. Not a superb movie, but an entertaining concept that didn’t rely on any movie-killer stereotypes.
Ted Levine’s Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb in Silence of the Lambs. The look, the voice, the MO: all pure creepy.
Good choices. I aways have a soft spot for Jeffrey Combs’ “Herbert West” of the “Re-Animator” series.
Combs brings to life the over-the-top mad scientist with only one goal: keep trying to perfect his re-animation of the recent dead to “study life and death” (and to wreak chaos on everyone around him with the angry blood drooling “zombies” so re-awakened).
I love the glowing “serum” in injects into the dead and the fact that no matter how much he tries to re-adjust the potion, the results are hilariously the same.
Great fun film series…a true guilty pleasure for me. If you don’t know it, catch it some late night!
Michael Meyers from the original Halloween. He doesn’t make wise cracks or smart remarks a man of action not words. Meyers is focused and relentless, he knows what he wants and goes after it. The Meyers from the first film is scary as crap.
Captain Stottlemeyer from Monk was Buffalo Bill, didn’t know that. I would never have even made the connetion.
Michael Wincott was so good as the villain of The Crow, I wanted him to stick around for the sequel. Creepy but very entertaining to watch.
I, too, like the Silence of the Lambs guys. I also thought the villain in the Robert Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes was creepily delicious.
I was just pondering this last night as I was watching one of the Friday the Thirteenth movies. Part III to be precise. I will admit I was even rooting for Jason a little bit. Although in that film at times he acted like a buffoon.
The Evil Dead. All of them, I mean. Also the various evil versions of Ash.
And, yeah, Herbert West, too: did y’all know Jeffrey Combs was the Scarecrow in the last season of the animated Batman? Yeah, at that point, his fear gas becomes superfluous, he can just use his voice. Really he’s good in anything, he’s in two different Star Trek series (he’s a Dominion apparatchik in Deep Space Nine, and the blue dude with antennae in Enterprise).
I’m not really into horror films (mostly because too many of the modern ones confuse fear with revulsion—a gross-out is not a scare), though, unless they’re tongue in cheek.
How about Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Bladerunner?
Or Rutger Hauer in The Hitcher.
Hmm, do the eponymous hunters in the “Predator” movies count? ‘Cause the first two of those are okay, in the movie killer department.
Of course, it’s stupid for a species to have glowing blood: becoming more visible when injured (“huh, I bleed glow-stick filling, it’s like some Goth kid’s fever dream”) is not a winning strategy. And that species breathes oxygen, you can’t write it off like the Grunts in Halo; their blood might not glow in a methane atmosphere.
The Predator species, incidentally, are called Yautja. Yes I’m a nerd.
Halloween the original is always going to be my favorite. Add in the Thing and you have an unstoppable pair.
Louis Mazzini, 10th Duke of Chalfont
The devil in “Rawhead Rex.” just a sick flic.
Rawhead Rex! What a killing machine! That takes me back, especially the satanic “Baptism” scene (I won’t describe it here, let me just say that Douglas understands. Everyone’s choices are excellent. There are too many to mention! What about Norman Bates (“Psycho” like I needed to tell anyone here) in the Psycho’s sequels? Great stuff!
I’m going to cheat and put my choices into categories:
Favorite killer, artistically speaking: The shark from “Jaws” (the initial movie), for a number of reasons but particularly because of the way it starts pounding on the ship after Quint’s “Indianapolis” story. No real shark should do that, and especially not one wearing shark hunter barrels for bling.
If it must be humans, then for the artistic category, the assassins in “Hero.”
Favorite killer, fear factor: I am a weenie, and by “fear factor” mean that I can’t watch it, it’s so scary (don’t laugh, please, you hardened veterans!). The Joker’s snuff movies and “why so serious” scene in “Dark Knight” fit that description (only watched them once, though I’ve seen the rest of the move multiple times), but the favorite has to be the beasts in “Dog Soldiers” — from the moment you hear the tent material slowly ripping, early on. (I have not ever seen the end of that movie…can’t see the screen with hands over my eyes.)
Favorite killer, classics: The Man in “Sunrise,” even though …
(****spoiler alert!****)
… he doesn’t actually kill anybody. George O’Brien plays him as such a brute, you know The Man is capable of it (and you so pity The Woman whose whole being is wrapped up in the terrible effort to keep the spark of what little humanity remains in him alive).
Speaking of enablers, I think James Mason should get honorable mention for his work in “Salem’s Lot.”