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Two Sheets to the Wind: Top Five Horror Heroes

We’ve covered our Top Five Slashers, Vampires and Zombies but what’s a  horror without those fallible  yet seemingly indestructible souls who despite always running upstairs rather than out the door manage to either get away with it or save the day.  Those protagonists who possess no superpowers or special skill other than sheer determination of spirit.

Obviously as we are discussing the reasons we list our chosen Heroes are amongst our Top 5 there are spoilers contained in this post. You can’t say we didn’t warn you.

Lottie’s Top Five Horror Heroes

Father Karras

5. Father Karras - The Exorcist (1973)

“Ego te absolvo in nomine Patris, et Filiii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

The Whiskey Priest who faces his own demons in order to free a possessed child and regain his faith, Karras like any true hero gives up his life* in order to cast Pazuzu out of Regan’s body.

*While at the end of the Exorcist we see Karras’ death  it is revealed in Exorcist III (Legion) after Pazuzu departed another evil spirit invaded the priest’s body and  Karras was found wandering and amnesiac and was placed in the care of a mental hospital. While incarcerated there, the spirit suppresses Karras’s personality and makes forays into the bodies of other patients in order to commit a series of ritual murders.

4. Clear Rivers - Final Destination (2000)

“Total bullshit. I mean, you can find death omens anywhere you want to.”

As the spooky damaged Clear Rivers, Ali Larter is just plain cool, an icy-frontier she carried through to the sequel. She’s Lara Croft meets Nancy Thompson and eventually faces her fate in order to save her cohorts.

3. Sidney Prescott -Scream (1996)

“You sick fucks, you’ve seen one too many movies!”

Fulfilling the horror cliché to perfection the shrieking virgin with a dark past who overcomes all odds and saves the day. Of course by the third movie your willing  the killer to get on with it and rid us of the whining Sophomore once and for all but that doesn’t detract from the classic horror movie damsel role that Sydney originally started out as. 

2. Doug Bukowski – The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

“97% of nation wide service, and we get stuck in the 3%.”

The nerd comes good. When we first meet Doug he’s the squeamish phone salesman trying desperately to impress his father in law. By the end of the movie he has thrashed, chopped, slashed and gorged his way to proper hero status.

1. Darry Jenner – Jeepers Creepers (2001)

“She did lose her head that night, Trish, and you wanna know what he did for her? He sewed it back on.”

The first time I recall seeing Justin Long in a film role, Jeepers Creepers was intensely focused on the brother & sister pair who were travelling across country on their way home from college. Darry and sister Trish played by Gina Philips carry the tense horror all the way to the fateful moment where Darry gives up his life and his eyes to save his sisters life.

Honourable mentions: Nancy Thompson (Nightmare on Elm Street), Reese (Urban Legend), The Freeling Family (Poltergeist), Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs – Not strictly a horror but she was just so great). Police Chief Martin Brody – (Jaws), Ellen Ripley (Alien), Selene (Underworld), Alice (Resident Evil), Laurie Strode (Halloween)

Darren’s Top Five Horror Heroes

Okay, I know we’ll get a heavy amount of criticism for not including Evil Dead’s Ash from this list, but fun as he is, I can’t connect with him. He’s too funny and impossible to identify with. Surely the best horror heroes are the ones where you can imagine yourself in their position, beating off the monster/killer/plastic doll.

5. Doug Bukowski – The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

“Give me back my baby.”

I have to agree with Lottie. Doug began the movie as this nerdy weed, but by the time the film had finished I was cheering for him. He became as vicious as the inbreds in the hills. Granted, his character is a rip off of Ash, but in my opinion it was done better, more believably. Doug was played by an unrecognisable Aaron Stanford, best known for playing Pyro in X-Men. Also, I had to have at least one male in my top five list.

4. Sidney Prescott – Scream (1996)

Sidney Prescott

“Why can’t I be a Meg Ryan movie? Or even a good porno. “

Probably the only great role Neve Campbell will ever have, is it any wonder that she’s returning for a 4th installment next year? Sidney Prescott , rather than go insane by the twists going on around her, she takes it all in her stride and whips out her pop culture references at every available opportunity. Did her father kill her adulteress mother? Did her mother’s lover do the deed? Did the town sherrif flip his lid and go on a murderous spree? Or was it her handsome, patient boyfriend? Sidney went through it all in Scream. And again in Scream 2. Oh, and again in Scream 3…

3. Nancy Thompson/Heather Langenkamp - A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) / New Nightmare (1994)

“This is still a script, right Wes?”

Two years before scoring a massive hit with Scream, Wes Craven dabbled in self-deprecating and self-referencing parody, while also resurrecting one of the greatest horror bad guys in ‘real world’ Hollywood. And who better to battle Freddy Krueger than the actress who played his first defeater. Heather Langenkamp plays herself in New Nightmare, a  clever post-modern horror which was undoubtedly the forerunner for Scream. Wes Craven and Robert Englund, among others, also play themselves.

But it was ten years earlier that Heather first encountered Freddy, while playing Nancy Thompson (girlfriend of Glen, played by a very young Johnny Depp). As they sleep in their beds, Nancy begins to lose her friends at the hands of a creepy, disfigured man with knives for fingers. She slowly learns the dark secret her parents and neighbours keep and realises that she and her friends are paying for their parents deeds. When she realises she can’t stay awake forever, she faces Freddy head on, proving the hero she truly is.

2. Laurie Strode - Halloween (1978) & sequels

“There’s nothing to be scared of.”

The scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis, in her feature film debut, created the horror heroin in Halloween. On Halloween night, Laurie is babysitting her neighbours kids when an escaped mental patient goes on a killing spree. Laurie defends herself by stabbing him with a knitting needle, a metal hanger, and his own knife, but nothing kills him. She survives the first film with the help of Dr. Loomis, but what makes her a hero is that she battles Michael Myers on five more occasions, making her an undisputed Horror Hero.

1. Ellen Ripley – Alien (1979)

“Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew, Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash and Captain Dallas, are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”

What do you mean Alien isn’t a horror? Of course it is. Granted, Aliens and the other sequels are sci-fi actioners, but the original Alien movie is a haunted house in space. Tense, chilling and claustrophobic, Alien is one of the finest horror movies I’ve seen. Ripley begins the film as just another crew member – she doesn’t stand out as being a monster killer or particularly strong-willed, but when she and the rest of the crew come face to face with the Alien creature, she is the one who must stand up against it in the grand finale. She even saves the cat……kinda.

Heralded as a seminal role for challenging gender stereotypes, particularly in the science fiction genre, it’s perhaps poignant then that the role was originally male. I wonder would it have been as effective?

So, these are our Top Five Horror Heroes. What have we missed? Where did we go wrong? Think you can do better? Go right ahead.