Week 4 - Roundtable Contributions

Thanks as always guys, much appreciated. Week 5 might be up a little later than usual as it is my brothers stag weekend coming up at Loch Lomond, so I might need some recovery time.....

Joshua Lew (Cinema Cafe Podcast)

This one’s easy. Hands down without a doubt the greatest horror/genre movie icon is...Pumpkinhead, or maybe it's the movie villains with my favorite tagline, Rats: Hide the Cheese. In all seriousness though my favorite horror icon has always been Michael Myers. Sure most of the Halloween films are pretty terrible, but the ones that are good are great. So yeah, my vote goes to the man who wears the inside out William Shatner mask.

Kim Lindbergs (Cinebeats)

I really love super kriminals like Diabolik, Sadistik and the female Satanik. They're very iconic and represent a lot of what I love about Euro trash cinema!

Michael McKenzie (Land of Whimsy)

For me it's going to have to be the quintessential black-gloved killer who terrorised many an Edwige Fenech and Nieves Navarro in the scores of giallo movies produced in Italy in the late 60s and early 70s. I know that strictly speaking that isn't a conventional "killer icon" in the Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers tradition, since there were as many individual giallo killers as there were gialli, but I think it says something about the image of the unidentified killer dressed completely in black, often with a matching fedora, that it reappeared in so many films and even had an influence outside the genre. Think of the killer in David Fincher's SE7EN, for example, in the scene where Brad Pitt chases him through the rain-drenched alleyways of New York. Who is is he if not the iconic giallo killer reborn for a new generation?

Holger Haase (Hammer and Beyond)

Clearly Dr Fu Manchu in all its incarnations. I love the original books (at least the ones I have read so far) and I follow the good Doctor along in all his appearances whether it is on film, on radion or in comics (Master of Kung Fu). You just can't keep a bad guy down. Where's my elixir of life when I need it?

KingMob (Dear Bastards)

Of the Modern Era of horror films, I would honestly have to go with Leatherface, in spite of all the cross-dressing nonsense in TCM: The Next Generation, and other variations that the character has gone through in the remakes. The Leatherface of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a chilling creation, a leather-aproned psycho who could be lurking in any creepy old house you stumble onto in a remote area, ready to lay you out with a hammer to the head and string you up for meat.

Douglas Waltz (Divine Exploitation)

Okay, if I understand your question, you want me to not choose from the Universal classics or the slasher icons from the 80's and 90's. If that is correct, are there any true horror icons that stand up to the reputations of any of these characters? I mean, there is Jigsaw. I imagine he would count. But, one character that has been in multiple films like all these iconic characters that stands out?
I'm going to have to go with the answer that horror hasn't recently cultivated any character that deserves the same sort of respect that the aforementioned icons receive.
My answer is that I do not have one.

Ian Price

Bruce Campbell as Ash in EDI, EDII and Army of Darkness.
Tim Thomerson as Jack Deth in Trancers.

Keith Brown (Giallo Fever)

Beyond Jigsaw from the Saw franchise – none of which I've seen, so can't comment on – I'm not too sure who's left to choose from.

Damien from the Omen films, Regan from Exorcist and Exorcist II, the Sawyers from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre films and Hannibal Lektor are all recurring and or iconic characters, but might also be too mainstream to count as alternative.

Many of the other figure that come to mind are either one-offs or representatives of a type, like the zombie, the werewolf, Barbara Steele's dualistic monster-victims, and the black-gloved faceless killer.

A couple of figures that do come to mind beyond this are Dr Freudstein in Fulci's The House by the Cemetery and The Red Queen in Edouardo Mulargia's The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, both of whom I think have an interesting look and back-story / mythology.

Another, in a more reality-horror / arthouse than genre direction is Philippe Nahon's Butcher in Gaspar Noe's Carne, Seul contre tour and Irreversible.