Editorials
The Top 16 Oscar-Worthy Horror Performances
It’s a sad, sad fact, but we all know it. The Academy has no love for genre films. When it comes to the Oscars, you’re far more likely to win an acting award for playing a blind dude with no feet, or a lesbian Holocaust survivor, then you are for even the finest dramatic performance in a horror movie. Sure, there have been a few notable exceptions over the years–Fredrich March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs–but for the most part, the greatest actors in the history of fright flicks have gone largely unrewarded by Oscar. And so, we take a look this time at 16 of the greatest dramatic performances ever seen in horror. The ones who deserved an Oscar (or at least a nomination), but didn’t get one…
Dont forget to also check out:
A ‘Thirst’ For Redemption: 12 Movies They Won’t Show You At Bible Camp!
The Top 20 Horror Science-Fiction Films of All Time
The Top 13 Slashers in Horror Movie History
The Top 13 Kills in Horror Movie History!
The Top 10 Obscure Horror Gems For Halloween
The Top 10 Made-for-TV Horror Movies of All-Time
The Top 10 Horror Comic Adaptation
The Top 10 Worst Horror Director Collapses!
The Top 10 ‘True-Story’ Horror Movies of All-time!
The Top 10 Hottest Vampire Babes of All-Time
The Top 10 Most Unusual Zombie Occupations
The 10 Lamest Days of Horror the World Has Ever Known
The 10 Stupidest Motives In Slasher Movie History!
The Top 10 Most Batsh*t Crazy Horror Movie Doctors
The Top 10 Worst Things That Could’ve Been in Brundle’s Machine… Besides a Fly
The Top 10 Best Horror Remakes of All-Time
Top 10 “Doh” Moments in Horror History
15 Reasons FOR Remaking A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
The Top 10 Reasons Why Bela Lugosi Still Rules
Top 10 Non-Zombies in a Zombie Film
A classic B-movie leading man, McCarthy was a cut above the usual fare when he starred in the original Invasion. No one who’s seen this movie will likely ever forget the sense of genuine urgency and panic he brought to the role. His final scenes in particular are unforgettable.
In what world does Mork nab an Oscar for Good Will Hunting, and gets not so much as a peep for this completely daring, out-of-character performance? Yeah, we all know he was great in Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, etc., but come on! He took a chance playing this psychopathic part, and man did it pay off.
As an extremely hatable religious zealot, this fine actress should’ve been a shoe-in for a Supporting nod. And we wager she would’ve been given a nom for this part, had it not been in a Stephen King movie… The Academy needs to get over this bias–a great actor is a great actor, period.
Another mainstream actress who has gotten much recognition for her straight dramatic parts, but just because this flick had to do with ghosts, it gets shuffled under the rug. Kidman is really great here as a protective mother who doesn’t realize that she and her children are already dead…
This is the kind of role an actor drools for, and Goldblum certainly did a lot of drooling–acid, to be precise. In Cronenberg’s classic horror remake, he plays a man who is literally falling apart–and does so with the utmost pathos and believability.
Sure to be the most controversial choice on the list. There are many who feel that Oldman was an overbearing ham in the role of the Count. Nevertheless, despite the detractors, Oldman in the opinion of many others gave a stunning, nuanced performance that brought new life to one of the genre’s oldest parts.
Although this was only one of the segments in the Twilight Zone movie, it’s also the one that everyone still talks about to this day. Lithgow, a fine actor in both dramatic and comedic roles, is perfect here as the harried, desperate passenger who suffers a nightmare at 20,000 feet. The kind of role Supporting Actor was created for.
A man who achieved great recognition outside the genre, Peck was one of the finest actors of the 1950s-1970s. No wonder he brought so much power and credibility to the role of Damien Thorn’s adoptive father. This belongs right up there with the likes of Gentleman’s Agreement, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby Dick and Cape Fear as one of Peck’s finest performances.
Yes, he was that good. If you haven’t checked this movie out yet, you need to–pronto. I’ll be waiting come February to see if the Academy does the right thing and nominates Rockwell for his eye-opening work in this deeply enjoyable piece of horror/science fiction.
Quite possibly the finest lead female performance in the history of horror films. Sigourney came out of nowhere and rocketed to superstardom thanks to her genre-challenging action/horror turn as Ripley, the desperate survivor of the Nostromo who must do battle with an unstoppable killing machine.
One of the greatest character actors of his era, Frye literally stole the show as Renfield in Universal’s Dracula. His early scenes with Bela Lugosi are the best parts of the movie. He is mesmerizing whenever he’s on screen, and takes to his part with a gusto that is rarely matched.
“Farewell and adieu to ye fair Spanish ladies…” Jaws got a Best Picture nomination, but none of the actors were similarly recognized. And although Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss are excellent as well, let’s be honest–this is Shaw’s movie. With Quint, Shaw gives us one of film’s most charismatic icons.
Without saying a single word, Karloff pulls off one of the most emotional charged and intense performances you’ll ever see. This should be required viewing for acting students everywhere. And what a difference from the stone-like, lumbering behemoth the Monster would become in later installments!
A director dreams of getting out of child actors what Tomas Alfredson got out of these two for his coming-of-age instant vampire classic. These two are absolute magic on-screen, delivering nuanced performances most actors four times their age can’t pull off.
Alfred Hitchcock had a reputation for inspiring great work from his actors. He certainly did that with Perkins, whose ultra-nervous, calculating, yet sympathetic Norman Bates is one of film’s more unforgettable characters. Perkins is a revelation here, yet inexplicably, only Janet Leigh was nominated in the acting categories.
And finally, the most Oscar-worthy horror performance of all….
Nominated 12 times for his acting, and winning three times, Jack is one of the most celebrated thespians of the past 40 years. And yet, what is perhaps his most identifiable and indelible performance of all went completely ignored. Robert DeNiro nabbed the award this year for Raging Bull, and I can’t argue with that one–but not even a nomination for Nicholson? Unforgivable.
For more news and opinions on the world of horror, including an exclusive interview with ROTLD’s Jewel Shepard, a review of the original House on Haunted Hill, and the Top 10 Horror Movie Posters of All Time, check out Brian’s daily blog, The Vault of Horror, at thevaultofhorror.net.
And for a unique look at the feminine side of fear, including a sound ridiculing of Twilight fans, and “How to Survive a Zombie Attack” from daycare kids’ point of view, check Brittney-Jade’s blog, Day of the Woman, at dayofwoman.com.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
‘Sting’ Review – Throwback Creature Feature Entertains With an Impressive Practical Monster
“We Built Every Creature” – ‘Alien: Romulus’ Goes Heavy on the Old School Practical Effects!
‘Terrifier 3’: Filming Has Wrapped on Damien Leone’s Christmas Slasher Sequel!
You must be logged in to post a comment.