I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but Halloween is a pretty big deal in Lick Ness Monsterland. OK, maybe I've mentioned it once or twice.
Ever since I've been old enough to have conscious memories I've been aware of it. The earliest Halloween that I remember celebrating involved two full bags of candy (more on that later) and being dressed as - I shit you not - the king of clubs. Yes, as in the playing card. Proof of this momentous occasion exist somewhere in the inner confines of a photo album, and I'm sure that with minimal searching I could probably find and digitize them for everyone's viewing pleasure. But then I would have to kill each and every one of you. What do you need to know about this? Nothing, other than giant cardboard playing cards with a facehole ROCK!
Anyway, from my very earliest days, it was my favorite holiday, and since I love bold blanket statements, I can say without a doubt that I've had a better Halloween atmosphere than any of you. Because let me tell you a little something about Smith Avenue in Worthington, Minnesota during Halloween season (brother)...it's unreal. So unreal that NOBODY believes me when I tell them - until they check it out for themselves. People have come and gone from this street over the years, but somehow, some way, the tradition has always stayed the same. Even more amazingly, the effect of this atmosphere has multiplied exponentially over the years.
Almost everyone on this street decorates. A fair percentage go completely balls-out with their Halloween festivities, throwing huge ghost-and-witch filled displays in their front yard augmented by whatever cheapo crap can be had from Wal-Mart. And when five o'clock hits on October 31st, nobody is a cheapskate - every porch light is lit, every homeowner is ready to participate.
The result? Last year, more than 800 kids came, saw, and conquered. You know how you look at the unbelievably busy streets during "trick-or-treating" scenes in movies or sitcoms and say "that's bullshit - our street is nothing like that!" Well, sucks to be you, because mine actually is. For the better part of four hours, it's a gigantic, candy-filled, mirthified Halloween party, and it is, without a doubt, the thing that I look forward to most every year.
So yeah, it is under this environment that I grew up, the costumes getting more intricate as I went from Kindergarten to sixth grade (the mystical cutoff point for trick-or-treating in my household, and, IMO, this is the way it should be) and every Halloween being better than the next. As mentioned in
last year's mammoth Friday the 13th retrospective, I discovered the series featuring everyone's favorite hockey-masked psycho during the summer of 1994, and coupled with that AFOREMENTIONED Halloween atmosphere of Smith Avenue, this started a lifelong fascination with masked killers, stage blood and gratuitous nudity that continues to this day, probably serving as a primary reason why I'm 29, still single and have absolutely zero prospects of changing that anytime soon. There is also the slight possibility that it's due to the fact that I'm a shy pro wrestling-obsessed weirdo, but fuck it...I'm blaming the horror movies.
While I didn't outright say it in last year's manifesto, it should have been apparent that the one thing that drew me to
Friday the 13th more than anything else was the big guy himself. As a kid, Jason Voorhees was this bizarre antihero. Like, I knew that he was doing terrible, terrible things to people...but there was something about him, something about the way that he wreacked havoc on swathes of popular, happy, horny young kids that stood out to me as cool, even if watching his movies made me cower under the covers at night (this actually happened more than once). And he wore a goddamn hockey mask.
This is nothing unique - I'd be willing to bet that it's the villains who draw most horror fans in to the genre, as they are frequent faces in the pantheon of long-running series that dot the horror landscape amidst a sea of stock, sometimes sympathetic and almost always stereotypical victim characters. But enough of that. On Halloween night of 1998, I invited friends over just to watch the TNT MonsterVision
Friday the 13th marathon to do nothing more than pass out candy on my unbelievable street and watch a whole slew of movies about a mother-avenging psycho killing countless teenagers. The two just go hand-in-hand. It's almost primordial, in a way. And it's still my favorite Halloween ever.
So that's where we're at today, kids. During my college years, I had something of a dynasty going at a fairly prominent annual Halloween costume contest dressing as some of those very villains of my youth and adolescence. I was fascinated by them then, and I'm still fascinated by them now - a great number of them have been constants in my life for many years, serving as de facto childhood friends that I cling to for reasons unknown. Some of them have even been bastardized by myself in script or story form. I wish I was making that up.
Thus, for Halloween 2012, allow me to introduce...
Lick Ness Monster's Top Ten Horror Villains of All Time!
Note that this is not necessarily a "Best" list, but the ones that have been my favorites throughout the years, and the ones that have had the most impact on my life.
10.
First things first - I've actually met Doug Bradley. He was at a horror convention I attended sometime in 2008, and he's a super nice English gent whom you'd never suspect plays an S&M-obsessed, pasty-white helldemon. My first viewing of
Hellraiser was in October of 1994 (I know this, because it took place after an episode of Monday Night Raw involving Psycho Bob Backlund in all of his glory building up his upcoming match with Bret Hart), and it was one of the first horror movies I took in that didn't feature Jason and his pals. The
Hellraiser series is a very different beast from the other long-running horror franchises out there - much more cerebral, with a focus on high-fallutin' concepts like Lovecraftian elements and literal visions of Hades. But forget all that - Pinhead, the leader of the "cenobites" who inhabit a puzzle box known as the Lament Configuration promising the ultimate in pleasure and pain for anyone dumb/brave enough to open it, is like a more restrained Freddy Krueger clad in all-black male dominatrix gear. I've always found him to be awesomeness personified, and, of course, he looks all kinds of badass.
9.
More nitpicky readers out there (and you know who you are) might say that this guy isn't a HORROR villain, per se, but in my world, the first two
Predator films have a prime directive - scare audiences. This makes them horror films. The first movie in particular has a very slasher-movie style execution, with its band of characters (a likable group of elite Special Forces soldiers led by the king of asskicking himself Arnold Schwarzenegger) getting picked off one-by-one until a sole survivor remains to do battle with the unstoppable villain. Back in my middle school years, this was one of my favorite movies, and I still dig out the original 1987
Predator at least twice a year to partake in its excellent script, memorable characters...and the Predator himself. Films that feature an alien villain take vastly different avenues; while the rival
Alien franchise made the villains malevolent and primitive, the civilization of hunting aliens seen in these films are technological terrors, boasting all kinds of cool weapons and sophisticated killing techniques. You just can't get much cooler than a heat-seeking killer discus. That combined with the amazing makeup work to create the signature visage seen above is enough to make him one of my favorites.
8.
For a very brief period of time (I'd like to say 2004, but this timeframe is uncertian), this guy was my absolute favorite horror villain. I discovered the charms of Full Moon's low-budget but earnest
Pupper Master series long after their heyday, but the cheesy-yet-honest special effects, interesting story taking place during the World War II era and unforgettable group of villains instantly won me over. For the uninitiated,
Pupper Master focuses on puppetmaker Andre Toulon and his ability to transfer souls into inanimate objects, an ability he utilizes to perfection in the back-story filled third film which concerns his revenge on a group of dastardly Nazis for the death of his wife. Each puppet has a distinct look and weapon (type "Miss Leech" into Google and get ready to be disturbed), but Blade is definitely the coolest of the lot. With a hook for one arm, switchblade knife for another, glowing red eyes and trenchcoat, Blade is recognized as the leader and most sadistic of the puppets and is the point man for one of the single best kills in horror movie history - the human villain's death in the original movie. All of that said, it's no wonder why I went as this guy for Halloween 2006.
7.
Freddy was the hardest villain to pinpoint on this list; after all, I've written an entire freakin' FAN SCRIPT about him - my version of a remake film that, fortunately or unfortunately, Platinum Dunes made impossible with their incredibly banal 2010 reboot. On the other hand, I saw my first
Nightmare on Elm Street film comparatively late - 1998, again, long after the series' heyday - and I've come to hold the series in a different light in recent years, seeing only the third film as a genuinely great horror film with many of the other movies fitting the "ambitious but flawed" banner...but that doesn't take anything away from Freddy Krueger himself. The original vision of Freddy - a scarred, hideous undead dream stalker exacting revenge on the angry mob responsible for his death by killing their children...in their goddamn sleep. Brrrr. Robert Englund's portrayal of Freddy was, and still is, irreplaceable, with the veteran character actor giving malice, menace and just the right mix of humor to the opening cycle of the series. Eventually, the powers-that-be made Freddy a wisecracking antihero in the later films, but it's the Freddy of films 1-3 that still stand as the definitive version of the character to yours truly. Oh, and I dressed as him for Halloween 2005.
6.
I really feel sorry for people whose only exposure to the Story of the Cursed Videotape (capitalization intended) is the American films
The Ring and
The Ring Two. The first is perfectly passable, but the second...well, it sucks. Although it does include the unintentionally hilarious deer attack scene, so there is that. Nope, kids, for the uninitiated out there, this story had been unfolding for many years in the land of the rising sun in no less than four theatrical films and a whole host of TV movie and television series adaptations, all based on Koji Suzuki's epic series of novels about a deadly urban legend that spreads like a virus through the once ubiquitous and now almost forgotten VHS tape. Stateside, you knew the crazy chick who crawled out of the TV screen as Samara; in the Japanese films, we get to know Sadako Yamamura on a much more than cursory level, with the fourth film,
Ringu 0, serving as the rare horror prequel that is both entertaining and scary. In late 2007 when I started seriously building my J-horror collection, the
Ringu series was the first series that I sought out. It's still something that I have to experience in its entirety at least once a year, mainly due to the lady of the hour herself; she might not talk much until
Ringu 0, but actions speak louder than words.
5.
Whoo boy, this one takes me back. Late in 1995 (for those keeping score, I was 12 at the time), I checked out one of the annual gigantic Roger Ebert movie companions from the library. Of course, as a punk kid fascinated by any and all things scary, the first thing I did was look up the various horror franchises that enticed and terrified me from the video shelves, and in the review for the original
Halloween, Mr. Ebert proclaimed "this is a film so violent and scary that, yes, I would compare it to
Psycho." That was all it took to sell me - I'd seen
Halloween a short time earlier, and there was another movie out there that was better? Holy crap! In some ways,
Psycho was one of the first movies I enjoyed on a more than "kiddie amusement" level - I did research on it beforehand, checking out a book on Hitchcock's films and understanding approximately 17% of it before that initial viewing. The character of Norman, played by Anthony Perkins, is simply a masterpiece; in the Robert Bloch novel, he is old, fat and dislikable. Hitchcock's decision to make the character young, handsome and likable was a stroke of genius, making the ending switch that the film pulls on us all the more impactful. Oh, and the dialogue given to him by screenwriter Joseph Stefano is so pitch-perfect that I can recite almost every word to this day.
4.
I've mentioned this several times before, but the first movie that I have a conscious memory of watching is
Gremlins. I can't even remember the first time I saw it; from my earliest memories, I was well aware that I was taking in a movie that had been seen several times already, and Stripe - the evil counterpart to the cute-as-a-button Gizmo - was the epitome of badassery to my VERY young self.
Gremlins is a movie that just lends itself to kids, in a way; the cuteness of the furry Mogwai, the Christmas setting, Corey Feldman wandering around, it all sucks you in. Then, once Stripe and his cronies rear their very ugly heads, it all turns into a frenzy of violence that, in some way or another, I think all kids identify with. We'd all like to play havoc with our neighbors, cause all kinds of mayhem without getting caught, and launch a batty old lady up her automatic stairs at a horrifying speed. It's like an unwritten law, or something. As the leader of the bunch, Stripe was the most easily distinguishable of the villains, boasting a signature look and an even more signature bad attitude - quite impressive since his lines are primarily limited to "Gizmo" and "Milk Duds."
3.
Halloween night, 1995 - that was the first time I saw the film about babysitters, an escaped lunatic, and the night that Michael Myers came home. Up until this point, only one other film character had frightened and fascinated me as much as the guy in the Shatner mask, and in some ways, the 12-year-old version of me found Michael to be a much deeper character than the other guy. We're introduced to him as a kid in the first movie, an ordinary child in a solid middle-class family who goes batshit crazy for no reason whatsoever. We get to know his psychiatrist, wonderfully played by Donald Pleasence, who tells us time and again in the early goings that Michael Myers is an inhuman beast who should not - and cannot - be set free. The "stalking and watching" portions of the first two
Halloween films were what really stood out to me as a kid, and I couldn't get enough of them for the better part of a year. Sometime in my early college years, I became borderline obsessed with the series after catching one of the later entries in the series for the first time on AMC, tracking down limited edition tins for the fourth and fifth films while taking in the rest via rental, even briefly considering getting a tattoo of the all-white mask a few years after that. The Michael Myers as seen in the original slate of films is a character that makes you conjure things up - until disappointing sixth film (not to mention Rob Zombie's godawful remakes), we're given ideas and clues as to what makes this guy tick, but few outright answers. And that's the way I prefer it.
2.
I'll spare everyone the excruciating details; they were already spelled out in last year's masturbatory full-length blog article outlining my long, bloody history with Mr. Voorhees and the
Friday the 13th film franchise. I don't know what else there is to say about this series that hasn't already been said; all these years later, and still no slasher movie can hold a candle to the decade-long reign that this series boasted during the '80s. Through eight films, a failed reboot attempt midway through and a transformation in the latter films to an undead zombie terminator, Jason has captivated me from the first time I saw him as a scared-out-of-my-wits nine-year-old watching
Part VII: The New Blood in the basement with my brother, even if I did laugh at the scene where he whacked a sleeping bag - pretty girl inside - against a tree. The entire series is the very definition of "campfire scary story," with heavy moral undertones for its would-be victim characters, a remote location, and an uncontrollable psychopath killer. Less is more. Beauty in simplicity. And that's why the most famous man to ever don a goalie mask has been a constant in my life for 20 years
1.
No doubt a surprise to many of you; compared to many of the other names on this list, ol' croakin' Kayako is a relative newcomer in the Lick Ness Monster lifescope. I wasn't blown away by it initially, having seen the first American
Grudge film in 2005 and not being terribly impressed initially. Then, two years later, I caught the 2003 Japanese film
Ju-On: The Grudge (actually the third Japanese film, interestingly enough) late one night after getting off my crappy fast food job. In a word, unbelievable. I couldn't tear myself away from the TV during the wee morning hours that winter night in 2007 - mainly due to the trademark vocalization, contortionary mannerisms and, in an extremely strange way, sexiness of the ghost crawling around in her death throes and killing the holy hell out of any souls dumb and/or unfortunate enough to enter her home. Takako Fuji takes a mostly mute character and does for it what Kane Hodder did with Jason Voorhees, making the character completely hers for an extended period of time encompassing six films. Each movie, while varying slightly in quality, somehow managed to find ways for Kayako to top the previous when it came to money scenes. More than anything, though, it's just the mood that I got from watching these films that have played such a big role in my adulthood journey; they're like a calm, quiet storm, gathering slowly and eventually exploding in a furious crescendo, all with Kayako as the dark cloud hanging over our heads. For one final bit of proof as to just how much Kayako has affected me, head on over to the "Grudge" section at fanfiction.net and look for two stories authored by thomasrigby. Yup. I've written goddamn FAN FICTION due to my fandom for this character. You can't get more nerdy/sad than that.
There you have it. Ten horror movie villains that were introduced to me at different phases in my life, but ten who, in their own unique way, have left an undelible imprint in the psyche of my primitive Zeuglodonian brain and continue to periodically crop up in my thoughts and dreams. Happy Halloween, and if you want some free advice, you could definitely do worse than to pop in a DVD featuring any one of the ten luminaries listed above come October 31st!!
