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[Special Feature] 10 Widely Seen And Wildly Underrated Horror Performances!

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While many of our favorite horror performances enjoy their richly deserved iconic status, there are plenty of great turns out their that don’t get nearly enough credit. And it can happen for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the movie tanked or wasn’t well regarded. But sometimes the films were hugely successful (or found cult popularity later) and their roles were simply outshined by the other stars, or elements, in the picture.

In this list I take a look at 10 performances that I feel haven’t gotten their due. I wanted the focus to be on films that you’ve likely seen (and love), so there’s a chance you may already feel the same way about many of these performances. In some cases these are roles that already get a fair amount of credit in the horror community – but are ignored in popular discussion of the performer’s overall career.

Disagree? Did I miss someone? Make sure your voice is heard in the comments!

Hit the jump to check out the list!

Travis Van Winkle – FRIDAY THE 13TH (2009)

Platinum Dunes’ Friday The 13th entry has a lot going for it. Sure the kills aren’t creative as they could be and I’m not sure what’s up with that tunnel system, but it gets almost everything else right. It’s brutal and has a high body count along with plenty of misbehaving teens and 20-somethings. And it also has one of the biggest d*cks of the franchise in Travis Van Winkle’s Trent. He’s insanely stand-offish, a huge prick to his girlfriend and generally hilarious. You can’t wait for him to die. Bonus? He’s get the best pillow talk in history. Fact. “You’ve got perfect nipple placement, baby!

Second bonus? I’m pretty sure he plays the same character in Transformers. Both are named Trent and both are total *ssholes. And both are produced by Michael Bay, so there could be a connection.

Reggie Lee – DRAG ME TO HELL

For Drag Me To Hell it was kind of a tossup between David Paymer’s smarmy bank manager Mr. Jacks (“Did I get any in my mouth?”) and Reggie Lee’s conniving Stu. I wound up going with Stu. He’s the perfect workplace adversary to Alison Lohman’s Christine, sniveling enough to warrant our desire to see his comeuppance and effectively manipulative enough to pose a genuine threat to the corporate ascendence she so badly wants. His character actually has to hit quite a few beats and reversals (like in the diner scene near the end) and Lee pulls it all off with aplomb.

Nancy Kyes – HALLOWEEN

It’s a shame that Nancy Kyes (aka Nancy Loomis) has disappeared from the film world. She was an intelligent, strong and funny screen presence whose combined attributes made her sexy. And her Annie Brackett might just be my favorite character in John Carpenter’s Halloween. Where Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode was stridently virginal and demure and P.J. Soles’ Lynda was stridently sexual and rebellious – Annie struck a good middle ground between those two extremes.

Even though she has less screen time than Curtis (and possibly less screen time than Soles) she feels like a much more fleshed-out character than either. Not boring (Laurie) and not annoying (Lynda), Annie was the one I was the saddest to see go.

Crispin Glover – FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER

The Final Chapter is perhaps the best entry in the pre-zombie Jason canon (though I oddly prefer Part 2) and it certainly has one of the franchise’s most memorable characters in Crispin Glover’s Jimmy Mortimer. The cast is full of stand-outs (relative statement to the franchise, I wouldn’t stack it against Ocean’s 11 or anything) But I’d put Glover at the tippy top. He’s vulnerable, he can dance, and we feel genuinely bad for his demise. Plus, he’s got an arc! He goes from being worried that he’s a “dead f*ck” at the beginning of the film to proving he’s not!

John Glover – GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is one of the weirder major sequels to ever be released. It’s so completely different from the original it boggles my mind and it makes me nostalgic for a time when pulling something like this off was even remotely possible. Today’s Hollywood is so protective of its franchises that the creative life is often snuffed out of them the moment a sequel is greenlit. One of the great touches of Joe Dante’s gonzo sequel is John Glover’s mega-mogul Daniel Clamp, the Donald Trump inspired owner of the glitchy tower in which the film is set. The bold choice here? He’s a nice guy. Misguided, unaware and out of touch, but genuinely nice. His enthusiasm is admirable, as is his intention of preventing any further Gremlin-related harm.

Ty Burrell – DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004)

Before “Modern Family”, Ty Burrell made a splash as Steve In Zak Snyder’s James Gunn scripted Dawn Of The Dead remake. It’s a much quicker moving film than the original, one that drops a good deal of the subtext, but it’s full of nice (if not perfunctory) character moments. It’s one of the better remakes out there because it does what remakes should do, take the central premise of the original and explore different territory. Burrell’s Steve is the comic relief of the piece, but he’s also one of the two primary audience access points (Sarah Polley’s Ana being the other). In a movie full of Ving Rhames’ typical bluster and bravado, it’s saying something that I remember Burrell’s snarky quips as vividly as I do. This is what they mean when they say, “stealing the show.”

Kurtwood Smith – ROBOCOP

Kurtwood Smith’s Clarence Boddicker is such an amazingly chilling (and entertaining) villain I don’t even know where to start. He’s completely aware of how evil and cruel he is. He also shows a surprising modicum of social/political savvy for someone who’s ostensibly just a thug. The way he toys with Peter Weller’s Alex Murphy before he and his gang commence his protracted murder (which, obviously they don’t technically complete) still makes me squirm. It’s such a strong performance that “That 70’s Show” was arguably able to exploit its menace for years to come.

Bobby Rhodes – DEMONS

First of all, if you haven’t seen Lamberto Bava’s Demons you need to fix that sh*t real quick. I know a lot of people write off foreign horror as “boring” or “arty”, but Bava’s film is a crass, fun, fast-paced and gory ride. It feels almost as American as a Golan Globus production. Bobby Rhodes’ Tony is a man whose proverbial pimp hand is strong as steel. While his misogynistic attitude might initially be offensive, it’s clear that the film is completely in on the joke and doesn’t endorse his sentiments. Demons has great fun toying with and exploiting this particular male archetype and I can’t imagine anyone but Rhodes pulling it off. Bonus? I saw him do a Q&A for this film at the New Beverly and he was as sweet as can be. The complete opposite of his character.

Jodie Whittaker – ATTACK THE BLOCK

While the rightful stars of Attack The Block are John Boyega’s Moses and his gang of charismatic wayward thugs, I don’t think Jodie Whittaker’s performance as Sam gets nearly enough attention. She doesn’t have quite the hero’s journey of Moses, but she imbues her character with a grounded pragmatism (and frustration) that’s easy to relate to. She’s able to fend off “gorilla wolf motherf*ckers” and Pest’s advances with equal amounts of grace and intelligence.

Amanda Wyss – A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Oh boy. Look, I love A Nightmare On Elm Street, okay? But let’s face facts, Heather Langenkamp’s performance as Nancy isn’t really all that great. I often find myself wishing that Tina didn’t get killed off so early. If she had been the main protagonist and had been forced to find the same internal strength that Nancy does, the film would have been all the better because of it. I can actually see Wyss pulling off the last act of the film with the convincing and steely reserve that Langenkamp lacks. NOES is a home-run either way, but killing Nancy and keeping Tina would have knocked it out of the park.

Editorials

‘The Company of Wolves’ at 40: One of the Most Underrated Werewolf Movies Ever Made

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There’s a compelling idea in anthropology that many ancient werewolf legends are derived from our species’ need to rationalize the more animalistic side of humanity – which is why lycanthropy has historically been used to explain everything from medieval serial killers to cannibalism. While I personally think there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to tales of wolfmen and women, this is still a great example of why so many of our most enduring fairy tales involve big bad wolves.

And in the world of film, I think there’s only one feature that really nails the folkloric origins of werewolf stories, namely Neil Jordan’s 1984 fairy-tale horror classic, The Company of Wolves. Even four decades later, there’s no other genre flick that comes close to capturing the dreamlike ambience behind this strange anthology, and that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on one of the most underrated werewolf flicks ever made.

The Company of Wolves was originally a short story contained in the 1979 anthology The Bloody Chamber, a collection of deconstructed fairy-tales intended for mature readers penned by English author Angela Carter. With the book quickly becoming a hit as readers became fascinated with its subversion of classic folk stories and (then) controversial feminist undertones, it was soon transformed into a duology of BBC radio-dramas which adapted both The Company of Wolves and Carter’s reimagining of Puss-in-Boots.

These radio-dramas soon attracted the attention of then up-and-coming Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who decided to meet with Carter to discuss expanding on her stories and bringing them to life on the big screen. The duo soon realized that a single short story wasn’t enough material for a feature-length film, so they decided to adapt all of Carter’s werewolf tales into a single anthology.

With a completed script and a $2.3 million budget, Jordan decided to tackle the project like a hybrid between a theatrical period drama and a schlocky monster movie. Effects-heavy creature features were a hot commodity back in the ’80s, with films like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London proving that there was an audience for horrific lycanthrope transformations, so the director soon recruited a team that could turn this odd collection of feminist folk stories into something commercially viable.

Not exactly a great pick for family movie night.

Shooting would eventually take place almost entirely within the England-based Shepperton Studios, with notable production designer Anton Furst (who would later be known for his work on Tim Burton’s Batman films) helping to bring Jordan’s vision of a darkly romantic fairy-tale world to life. Appropriately enough, production would also involve a real pack of trained wolves (as well as a collection of dyed dogs), though extensive puppetry and animatronics were also used to flesh out the more gruesome parts of the flick.

After a grueling nine-week shoot where budgetary constraints led to corners being cut on props and costumes, The Company of Wolves was finally released in September of 1984 – just in time for spooky season. In the finished film, we follow the strange dreams of a sulky teenage girl named Rosaleen (first-time actress Sarah Patterson) as the film unravels an Arabian-Nights-inspired tapestry of both familiar and not-so-familiar stories about big bad wolves.

From sexually charged cautionary tales to parables about female empowerment, this surreal collection of deranged bedtime stories is much more than the creature feature that the marketing initially suggested. Like a more horror-oriented version of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves exudes that same kind of hormonal teenage energy that transports us back to a time when the world was both scary and exciting in equal measure.

That’s not to say that this is an entirely pleasant experience, however, and I’m not just talking about the film’s horror elements. A big portion of the flick’s overtly sexual moments involve the then 13-year-old Patterson coming to grips with her blossoming womanhood and the dangers of predatory men (usually marked with a humorous unibrow), something that naturally makes for some intentionally uncomfortable viewing – especially in the year of our lord 2024.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my place to dissect (or even judge) the effectiveness of the film’s commentaries on being a young woman, but even as a man I can still appreciate the thought and care that went into crafting this Jungian cocktail of serious themes in a genre-movie package that almost certainly went on to inspire future werewolf movies like Ginger Snaps.

Not the worst wedding I’ve been to.

That being said, what really keeps me coming back to the film is the absurd amount of memorable imagery. From a wedding party being taken over by canines to lonely treks through snowy groves, this is exactly the gloomy world I imagined as a child when reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales – and the dreamy atmosphere is only enhanced by the movie’s overall theatricality.

This also extends to the effects, as it’s easy to forgive decapitated dummy heads and ripped rubber skin when everything is happening in a magical hyper-reality, with a great example of this is being the scene where Grandma’s head unexpectedly explodes like a porcelain doll when it’s knocked off by a wolfman. That’s not to say that the effects are bad, as several of these transformations are downright grisly and likely influenced future lycanthrope effects like those in Underworld and even Trick ‘r Treat (even if the wolf-dogs here often look more cute than scary).

Of course, these aren’t the only things that The Company of Wolves has going for it, as the main trio of Patterson, Micha Bergese and the late, great Angela Lansbury exceptionally bring these exaggerated caricatures to life and the orchestral score is an absolute delight. I also really get a kick out of that bizarre ending implying that the dangers of adult life have literally come crashing into Rosaleen’s bedroom.

The Company of Wolves may not be a perfect film, suffering from some wonky pacing and the classic anthology problem where some stories are clearly much more enjoyable than others, but I’d argue that the flick’s iconic visuals and powerful thematic throughline more than make up for any minor flaws. And while we’ve seen bigger and better werewolf films since then, when it comes to adult-oriented fairy-tales, this is one psycho-sexual journey that is still worth revisiting 40 years down the line.

The Company of Wolves

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