Editorials
‘Archenemy’ and the 9 Most Unlikely Heroes in the Genre!
Writer/Director Adam Egypt Mortimer‘s follow-up to last year’s favorite Daniel Isn’t Real gives a unique spin on the superhero genre. In Archenemy, homeless drunkard Max Fist (“True Blood’s” Joe Manganiello) claims to be a hero from another dimension who fell through time and space to Earth, losing his powers in the process. No one believes his stories except for a local teen named Hamster (Skylan Brooks). Together, they take to the streets to wipe out the local drug syndicate and its vicious crime boss known as The Manager (Glenn Howerton).
Hamster, an aspiring influencer, doesn’t set out to oppose the crime syndicate in his neighborhood, let alone with a seemingly unstable vagabond from the streets that spins tall tales of superpowered battles. Through his budding friendship with Max Fix, however, the pair become unlikely heroes.
In celebration of today’s release of Archenemy’s in select theaters and drive-ins, On Demand and digital, we look back at some of horror’s unlikeliest of heroes.
Unbreakable – David Dunn
David (Bruce Willis) is a former college football star turned unhappy security guard whose marriage is on the rocks. His already shaky life is upended when his train crashes and leaves him the sole survivor among 130 victims. Through the aid of a strange comic book store owner, David realizes that he has possessed super strength and near invincibility for his entire life. In accepting his gift and becoming a superpowered vigilante, David is transformed from a miserable everyman to a fulfilled hero.
WolfCop – Lou Garou
Sure, the film’s title alone pegs the titular character as the hero, but it’s easy to forget that upon the first introduction of Sergeant Lou Garou (Leo Fafard). Compared to his far more competent and intelligent colleague, Sergeant Tina (Amy Matysio), Lou is an apathetic alcoholic uninterested in doing anything outside of sleeping all day and getting hammered at the bar each night. Then he’s knocked out and stricken with a curse that transforms him into a werewolf. His animal instincts kick in, and his werewolf rage winds up, making him a better cop during his quest for answers. Lou’s a mess of a human but an unlikely hero in wolf form.
The Cabin in the Woods – Marty Mikalski
Marty and his friends didn’t learn until far too late that their weekend getaway to a remote cabin in the woods was part of a ritual orchestrated by an underground laboratory to appease ancient deities. Five unaware victims fulfilling traditional horror archetypes are to be sacrificed to stave off the apocalypse. Of the five, only the Virgin may live if the world is to keep turning. Marty (Fran Kranz) was unwittingly designated and manipulated into playing the part of the Fool, a comedic relief type destined for an early grave. Marty isn’t interested in dying, though, and uncovers the entire scheme while unleashing bloody hell upon the lab. Technically, Marty doesn’t save the world, but he’s still a hero in our book.
The Blob – Meg Penny and Brian Flagg
In Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont’s remake of the 1958 classic, the default expectation is that good guy jock Paul (Donovan Leitch) will fill Steve McQueen’s shoes as the hero. Not only does the film focus on his character in his pursuit of cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith), but it establishes him as morally pure, too. In a shocking move, Paul’s among the first victims of the eponymous blob, leaving Meg and social outcast Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon) to rally and save their town. No one expected this unlikely duo, full of attitude, to take on the government and put a stop to an amorphous entity with an insatiable appetite.
[REC] series – Angela Vidal
At the outset of this quadrilogy, no one would’ve guessed how much of a fighter Angela Vidal (Manuela Velasco) would become. The meek reporter spends most of the first film running away in abject terror, relying on those around her to see her to safety. She makes an unexpected return in the sequel, though her newfound fighting spirit reveals a ruse for the truth; the source of infection possesses her. Her improbable and transformative arc from victim to hero kicks into high gear in Rec 4: Apocalypse.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter – Tommy Jarvis
By the fourth entry in the mega-popular Friday the 13th franchise, the unstoppable killing machine known as Jason Voorhees has been well established. No one that crosses paths with the undead Camp Crystal Lake horror icon lives to tell the tale, but his favored victims are teen or adult party-goers and camp counselors. That Jason Voorhees proves a fearsome foe for grown-ups makes his biggest archnemesis all the more surprising; twelve-year-old Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman). Tommy outsmarts Jason by shaving his head and invoking the memory of Jason Voorhees’ childhood trauma. Once vulnerable, it’s Tommy who delivers the finishing blows with the machete. Sure, this battle left Tommy psychologically disturbed, but he carried his grudge well into adulthood and faced his fears through two additional sequels.
The Phantasm franchise – Reggie
Like Ash Williams, Reggie (Reggie Bannister) appeared in his franchise’s first film as a supporting player before becoming the de facto hero. The comedic relief and loyal friend to the central protagonists, brothers Mike and Jody Pearson, Reggie preferred to strum his guitar between shifts delivering ice cream with his truck. Reggie’s acute sense of loyalty catapulted him from fierce ally to the franchise’s driving force. Reggie grew tougher in his tireless fight with the Tall Man while never wavering from his pursuit of women with each entry.
The Evil Dead franchise – Ash Williams
In any other setting or series, Ash (Bruce Campbell) would be among the first to die. In The Evil Dead, the shy and cowardly romantic barely outmanages to outlast his friends, sister, and girlfriend before the unseen evil attacks him in the closing minutes. While Ash grows more assertive in his repeated encounters with the demons over every sequel and TV episode, so does his clumsy buffoonery and bravado grow larger. With every misstep, failure to perform a spell correctly, and his overall cocky attitude, Ash’s resilience in his never-ending attempts to save the world (and himself) mark him as one of the most atypical heroes in horror.
Discover Hamster and Max Fist’s improbable journey to herodom when Archenemy releases on December 11, 2020.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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