Editorials
Not Just for Halloween: The 10 Greatest Horror Movie Masks!
Generally speaking you’re not allowed to wear scary masks on most days of the year, but all bets are off on Halloween. That’s when we’re not only given permission but actively encouraged to disguise ourselves with frightening visages. And, frequently, we take inspiration from the many, many horror movies to feature freaky facemasks.
As we consider our last minute holiday options this year – even though, in 2020, our celebratory options are pretty danged limited – now seems like the perfect time to reflect on The Greatest Horror Movie Masks. These are the distinctive face-coverings that scared the crap out of us, inspired future filmmakers, or just plain looked really, really, really cool.
The Invisible Man
Most horror movie masks exist to preserve the villain’s anonymity. In the case of James Whale’s iconic classic The Invisible Man, it’s the only way you can tell he’s there. Claude Rains plays a mad scientist who made himself completely invisible, and so he wraps his head in gauze, a fake nose and goggles to interact with the normal world. It all goes horribly wrong of course, and pretty soon he abandons the costume altogether and goes on a rampage. But until then he’s one of the best dressed horror villains ever.
Eyes Without a Face
Georges Franju’s classic arthouse horror thriller Eyes Without a Face tells the story of a mad plastic surgeon who schemes to remove the perfect human face to replace his daughter’s disfigured visage. Until he finds the right victim, she’s forced to wear a white, blank, form-fitting mask to represent the blank canvas her father wants to paint on.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Look, anyone can wear a mask. But wearing a mask made out of human flash that you’ve personally tanned yourself takes a little extra effort. In Tobe Hooper’s classic original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre audiences met Leatherface for the first time, and he sure as hell lived up to his name.
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
The early proto-slasher The Town That Dreaded Sundown helped set the template for a lot of future horror movies, and the simple and disturbing sack over the head look for the mysterious killer had a long-lasting impact. When Jason Voorhees made his debut as an adult serial killer in Friday the 13th Part 2 he had a look directly inspired by Charles B. Pierce’s influential thriller.
Halloween
John Carpenter’s original Halloween put the final pieces of the slasher movie puzzle together and introduced audiences to, arguably, the best horror movie mask of all time. A (not very accurate) William Shatner mask that was ripped off the shelves and modified until it was ghostly white, blank and spectral, Michael Myers’ iconic look became practically synonymous with cinematic evil. Even though hardly any of the sequels and remakes managed to get the mask to look right again.
Friday the 13th Part III
It took three films to introduce Jason Voorhees’ signature hockey mask, and his acquisition of said mask is completely random and without poetry. It means nothing, it says nothing about his character, and yet it somehow completely works, and solidifies Friday the 13th as an “anything goes” slasher franchise where the rules and iconography can and will change at any time. Except, perhaps, for the Friday the 13th Part III hockey mask, which seems to be here to stay.
The Silence of the Lambs
Another iconic mask that has nothing to do with anonymity: Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter has to wear his signature face plate to prevent him from eating your flesh. And he’s already strapped to a gurney so it must be extremely likely that he’s going to try. Distinctive, uncomfortable and, strangely, befitting the elegance of Anthony Hopkins’ iconic, Oscar-winning performance.
Scream
Ghostface, the slasher from Scream, owes his iconic look in large part to Michael Myers. It’s another white, off the rack costume adopted by an instant horror classic, but this perpetually wide-eyed, slack-jawed mask gives Wes Craven’s franchise a distinctive flavor, while simultaneously justifying the famous name change from Scary Movie to Scream, by incorporating an homage to the famous painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.
You’re Next
By the 2010s a whole lot of horror movies had attempted to feature new and iconic masks, with decidedly mixed results. But Adam Wingard’s critically acclaimed You’re Next seems to have pulled it off. The mysterious squad of home-invaders in You’re Next have donned a variety of animal masks to, ironically, walk into a human home and go hunting. Elemental, threatening, and immediately iconic.
The Purge
The idea in The Purge is that, on one night a year, all crime is legal and anybody can do any violent deed they want. But just because it’s legal one day doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be ashamed of yourself the next, so a lot of the homicidal maniacs in James DeMonaco’s franchise wear off the rack or homemade masks to preserve their identity and participate in the annual holiday ritual. It’s kinda like wearing Santa hats for Christmas, except you’re trying to look as creepy as possible during a murder spree. The Purge and its sequels lack a signature mask but the overall aesthetic has become immediately recognizable and unmistakably connected to the franchise.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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