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Edition 2009 |
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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 38 |
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THE HORROR ACTORS GONE?
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All the really bankable horror stars are gone now
of TheColumnists.com
As Oct. 31 approaches and the cable channels are swollen with horror movies to get us all in the proper mood for Halloween, I begin to realize that 62-year-old Robert Englund may be the only half-way bankable "horror" actor who's still plying his trade in the movies.
Englund's primary claim to fame is the scarfaced ghost Freddy Krueger he played from 1984 through 2003 in "Nightmare on Elm Street" and its various sequels and TV episodes, finally appearing in the "monster rally" movie "Freddy vs. Jason," in which Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees from the "Friday the 13th" movies supposedly finished each other off for good.
Englund has continued to make horror movies since that box office hit, but they seem to be of diminishing stature and popularity. A lightweight actor who was little known before the first "Freddy" movie, Englund embraced the horror genre after several post-Freddy TV roles failed to establish him as a hot commodity doing anything else.
The only other remaining members of the once-mighty galaxy of horror movie stars are 87-year-old Christopher Lee, who has drifted into character parts and supporting roles, most notably in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy that ended several years ago, and 71-year-old Barbara Steele, who was once the only bankable female horror star, but hasn't topped the cast of any kind of movie for decades.
Clearly the days are gone when a producer could just mention names like Karloff, Lugosi or Chaney and get a movie financed in the horror genre. In the golden days of horror actors, even supporting players like Lionel Atwill, George Zucco and Dwight Frye meant something to fans, which meant those actors could find their names above the title of some horror picture being made by a "poverty row" movie studio.
From the late 1950s through the 1970s, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were the Karloff and Lugosi of the modern era. Starting with Hammer Films in England, they branched out to work as a team for many different studios, always as adversaries in one kind of horror film or another.
But even before death finally took most of the original horror stars--Cushing in 1994, Vincent Price in 1993, John Carradine in 1988, Lon Chaney Jr. in 1973, Boris Karloff in 1969, Bela Lugosi in 1956--the genre had been changing and even those great stars were winding up in low budget stinkers where their names still had some value.
Karloff's last films were horrible films made in Mexico. Afflicted with severely disabling arthritis, he was mostly seen in a wheelchair. Lugosi's last pictures were made for the ultimate schlockmeister Ed Wood and showed him as an emaciated old drug addict who could barely get around on his own. Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine also worked for peanuts in smaller and smaller horror movies toward the end.
That might also have been the fate of Vincent Price if he hadn't landed the solid job of being the host for PBS' "Mystery!" television series, which kept him associated with classy productions until close to his final days. Even then, Price managed to wind up in a genuine classic in his final great film, playing the scientist who gives life to Johnny Depp, a lab-created creature in Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" (1990).
 Above, Barbara Steele in "Black Sunday" (1960), one of her many European horror films. |
 Above: Natasha Henstridge, the beautiful and shapely star who had a chance to become a horror star with "Species." |
Another actor who escaped a long downturn
in his career was Anthony Perkins, who died early at age 60 in
1992, and was still getting starring roles in sequels to the
1960 movie that pushed him headfirst into the horror genre--Alfred
Hitchcock's "Psycho."
Perkins played psycho killer Norman Bates in all three sequels
and directed the second one himself. He also appeared in several
other quasi-horror films, playing slightly or greatly demented
characters like Norman.
But, in general, I'm now convinced the era of great horror stars is over--and not just because they're all either dead or too old to scare anybody.
Instead, I think the reason we don't have great horror stars anymore is that the movie companies would prefer to avoid star-sized salaries whenever possible. For instance, two of the biggest horror series of the past 25 years have been the "Halloween" and the "Friday the 13th" series. Both series feature murderous "ghosts" who seem to be indestructible--Michael Myers in the "Halloween" films and Jason Voorhees in the"Friday" films. Though some actors have played those parts more than once, you can hardly tell them from anybody else since their facial features aren't visible. The actors get billing in the credits, but they've never been turned into star names. Rather, the monsters themselves are the stars.
And the reason is simple: If one actor decided he didn't want to put on the makeup unless they paid him more money, the filmmakers would just dump him and put the makeup on somebody else for the same minimum wage. It's the monster that counts, not the actor playing it.
The same thought applies to the "Alien" and the "Predator" series of monster films. Those grotesque outer space creatures don't do any acting. Nobody cares if there's somebody inside the suit or the whole creature is digital animation.
At first, I thought Natasha Henstridge might have a chance at becoming the first new female horror star after the success of "Species" in 1995. She was a beautiful, heroically built young woman who sort of morphed into a monster now and then. In other words, you had to have an actress playing the role at least part of the time. But the sequel "Species II" (1998) was so awful that any chance of that happening went away and she made only a cameo appearance in the direct-to-video "Species 3" and wasn't in "Species: The Awakening" (2007), also direct to video. Henstridge apparently has missed the chance to catch the same horror gravy train Robert Englund caught.
And I don't think anybody is going to be catching such a train in the future. In the days when a studio like Universal made a steady stream of horror pictures, it made sense to build certain actors into stars of the genre just the way studios built actors into western heroes or movie detectives. Television is the only place that happens now, so maybe the next great horror actor will emerge from some series like "The Vampire Diaries" or "Supernatural."
In some cases, the studios have made the film directors the stars. The two new "Halloween" remakes were directed by the appropriately named Rob Zombie. He does the press interviews and his name is over the title. John Carpenter, the original "Halloween" creator, also was sold as the "star" name on his horror pictures.
Meanwhile, I guess we can treasure the
old horror stars as their films are hauled out of the vaults
every Halloween to remind us what it was like in the golden age.
I'm thinking there probably won't be their likes seen again in
the movies.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Oct. 26, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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