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.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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