There are good role player who fly high in horror pic , like Bruce Campbell and Jamie Lee Curtis . Then there are great actors who are n’t at all associated with the musical style — but who have at least one great ( and/or ghoulishly entertaining ) repugnance - movie appearing on their resumes . Here are our favorites .
1) Albert Finney, Wolfen
Wolfen has an overall excellent shape ( it also stars Gregory Hines , Diane Venora , Tom Noonan , and Edward James Olmos ) , but Finney does the most heavy lifting as a troubled NYPD fuzz tax with solve a very strange series of murders . Do n’t be fooled by the title ; this is n’t a loup-garou story , but rather an unusual chronicle about gentrification , in which a mathematical group of aboriginal American wolf - spirit shape - shifters use their power to protect their turf from a hotshot developer and other trespasser . That sounds dicey , especially for a movie made in 1981 , but the Wolfen are portrayed surprisingly empathetically — plus , Finney drop anchor the scare and suspense with plenty of gravitas .
2) George C. Scott, The Changeling
I was remind of this 1980 movie while compilinglast week ’s leaning of the scariest haunted houses in movies and tv set , and it inspired the subject of this current list . The business firm in The Changeling is indeed textbook spookylicious — a straight-laced rambler , complete with a tiny shade and a wicked mystery . But the formidable Scott ( who come through , but turn down , a Best Actor Oscar for 1970 ’s Patton , calling the ceremony “ a meaningless , ego - serving meat parade ” and say he counterbalance the estimation of worker being in contest with each other ) is the reasonableness The Changeling remain so memorable . He plays a man who loses his family in a terrible tragedy , and in his bid to get a saucy starting line , unwittingly gets embroiled in another family tragedy that is n’t even his own . thing could have gotten awfully histrionic , but Scott treats the cloth with the seriousness you ’d wait , and that makes The Changeling ’s scares even scarey .
3) Chuck Connors, Tourist Trap
The fabled Western actor , who made oodles of films and also star on the 1950s TV show The Rifleman , made a fistful of horror flicks in the 1970s and ‘ fourscore . But ( plastic ) head - and - shoulders above the rest is this cult - beloved taradiddle of a distressed man whose roadside - attraction mannequin museum is , of grade , a front for slaying . suffering unto the nubile youths whose car give way down at the worst possible moment , and shortly become fresh fish for his latest showing . This 1979 motion-picture show was made at the acme of slasher passion , and it is a phantasmagoric , genuinely hair-raising delight , thanks to all those mannequins and their creepy flapping jaws — and Jimmy Conors , whose against - case , awesomely creepy-crawly performance deserves major prop .
4) Ida Lupino, The Food of the Gods
Lupino is best - remembered as one of Hollywood ’s most pioneering distaff theater director , ferment within a mainstream studio system that was utterly not supportive of women behind the camera . ( Still is n’t , to be honest . ) She ’s wide recognized as the first adult female to conduct a photographic film noir , 1953 ’s The Hitch - Hiker , and she knead extensively in TV , becoming ( among many other credits ) the only adult female to engineer any original Twilight Zone episode . But she was also a damn good histrion . The Food of the Gods — a 1976 H.G. Wells - inspire story , lovingly shellacked in shlock by director Bert I. Gordon — may not be the skilful showcase for her talent , but she contribute an air of dignity to this motion picture , even while battling a plague of giant so-and-so . There are n’t a lot of substantial scare here , but this pre - CG relic is a spate of fun — and the elephantine - critter impression ( dear God , the Gallus gallus ) are somehow both cheesy and unsettling .
5) Hal Holbrook, The Fog
This various and much - laud actor is famed for roles in prestigious film like All the President ’s Men , Into the Wild , and Lincoln , as well as his legendary Mark Twain level show . But Holbrook has also made some excellent maraud into genre — it was tough to pick a favorite between Creepshow and The Fog , to be honest , but his turn as Father Malone in John Carpenter ’s 1980 fib of ghost - besieged Antonio Bay is the more pivotal of the two . It mostly come down to the film ’s last routine , when Father Malone salvage the entire townsfolk by returning a cursed gold crisscross to its rightful owner , an undead seafaring lazar with an axe to cranch . He also gives up his own biography ( and his drumhead ) in the over - the - top , one - last - panic last encounter .
6) Henry Fonda, The Swarm
Remember when Orcinus orca bee were the heavy terror the American people could possibly imagine ? Simpler times , captured in this 1978 Irwin Allen disaster film which has made so many “ worst films ” leaning that you roll in the hay it ’s actually awe-inspiring . Of all the sprawlingly overpopulated 1970s disaster motion picture , The Swarm has perhaps the most head - blowing plaster cast ( pluck your favorite : Michael Caine , Katharine Ross , Richard Widmark , Richard Chamberlain , Olivia de Havilland , Ben Johnson , Lee Grant , Jose Ferrer , Patty Duke , Slim Pickens , Fred MacMurray ) , including one of Hollywood ’s most prestigious actors and patriarchs : Henry Fonda . A shouty Caine gets the most sieve meter , but Fonda toy a grand bee expert so desperate to develop an anti - maliciousness that he uses himself as a test theme . It does n’t work out out so well for the poor guy , but Fonda had a Hades of a career behind him at this point , as well as an Oscar ( for his final film , 1981 ’s On Golden Pond ) in his future . And there ’s no abnegate only a universe - class talent could class up a doltishly enjoyable moving picture like The Swarm .
7) Meryl Streep, Death Becomes Her
Like many of the films on this list , Robert Zemeckis ’ repulsion comedy has a stellar cast ( Goldie Hawn , Bruce Willis , Isabella Rossellini ) , all of whom come out to be feature the time of their liveliness . Streep can famously do anything — serious dramatic play , wacky comedy , action picture , biopics , musicals , any foreign accent ever spoken — but she does n’t have much horror on her curriculum vitae . ( Remember her Wes Craven moving picture ? Yeah , it was an inspirational taradiddle about a music instructor . ) But the gruesome delight Death Becomes Her , in which a pair of youth - obsessed rival actresses discover the secret of immortality , is one big exclusion . The visual shock of this 1992 film is help along by Oscar - winning extra effect that bring body contortion to a whole new grade — especially the sight of the usually graceful Streep stumbling by from a filthy fall with her head completely twisted backwards .
8) Tony Curtis, The Manitou
Curtis will be remembered for all - time classic like Some Like it Hot , The Sweet Smell of Success , and The Defiant Ones . But many genre fans have a easy point for his character in cultus queerness The Manitou — he plays a psychic , but his part is really “ fellow looking on in escalating levels of freaked - out horror , ” as his girl ( represent by Susan Strasberg ) sprouts a hideous , pulsating tumor on her neck . ( Spoiler : it ’s really a foetus that ’s the reincarnation of evil Native American mystic Misquamacus , returning to life with retribution on his mind . As you do . ) The Manitou is overwrought , uncanny , hideous , culturally iffy , and yet oddly howling — and the fact that a show game legend play such a prominent character in its lunacy only pass water it that much more recommendable .
9) Gregory Peck, The Omen
In which a wealthy , Rome - base American diplomatist agree to switch his deadened babe with a commodious orphan without a ) telling his wife or b ) see the possibility that the mysterious minor will grow up to be the Antichrist . ( Atticus Finch would never . ) lot is magnetic as a man whose perfect life shatters before his eye as he realizes too belatedly he ’s unwittingly become part of a horrific conspiracy — and the film is packed full of iconic minute that are just as chilling as they were back in 1976 .
10) Lillian Gish, Night of the Hunter
She began her silver screen calling as a silent - film superstar , but Gish ’s heroic career stretched into the 1980s . mayhap her most notable speak use , however , come in the only plastic film directed by another acting legend , Charles Laughton . It ’s a fantastically grim thriller about a creepy sermonizer who ’s really a psychopathological cause of death ( Robert Mitchum , rocking the “ love ” and “ detest ” knuckle joint tattoo ) who woo the widow ( Shelley Winters ) of a recently - executed bank robber , intent on getting his mitts on the stolen money her husband left behind . Once she ’s been disposed of , her two tyke seek shelter with Gish ’s Rachel Cooper , an older woman as kind to children as she is stiff with a shotgun . “ lean , ” the sparse duet that Mitchum and Gish sing in the bit leading up to their inevitable showdown , rest one of movie theatre ’s eeriest moments .
Horror
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