By Craig Dixon
Brad Dourif
Dourif made his film debut in Milos Forman’s classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975. As the stuttering Billy Bibbit, Dourif was superb, earning an Academy Award nomination. Whilst the film didn’t make him a star, it certainly handed him a career as a character actor extraordinaire. In 1988, he appeared briefly in the opening of Child’s Play, portraying a serial killer who transfers his soul into a children’s doll. Yes, that was the premise. The doll, Chucky (also voiced by Dourif) goes on to terrorise a young boy who has the misfortune of receiving him as a gift. On paper, Child’s Play should be terrible, but clever effects, nice direction from Fright Night’s Tom Holland and, most importantly, Dourif’s gleefully vicious, tongue in cheek voice work, transformed Child’s Play into a hit. Despite an incredibly active career, Dourif has found time to return to voice Chucky for numerous fun sequels.
Essential Chucky: Child’s Play 2
Tony Todd
Candyman may not have become a long running horror franchise like others on this list (there are three films in the series, and a recent revisionist reboot), but the original (adapted from a Clive Barker short story) is arguably one of the best horrors to come out of the ‘90s. Buoyed by a haunting Philip Glass score, Candyman is memorable for Tony Todd’s iconic performance as the title character, the murdered son of a slave who has gone on to become legend; look into a mirror and mention his name five times and he’ll return to murder his summoner! With his deeper than deep voice and intimidating stature, Todd instantly joined the horror hall of fame and continues to work steadily in and out of the genre.
Essential Candyman: The Original
Doug Bradley
To date there have been 10 Hellraiser films, which is about six too many. The first two are genre classics, the third is okay and the less said about the rest, the better. Doug Bradley appeared as Cenobite numero uno Pinhead in eight of these. Whilst his role in the original was small, he made a lasting impression which led to him becoming the face of the series. A childhood friend of his writer/director Clive Barker, Hellraiser marked Bradley’s film debut and it’s fair to say that he owes his career (which includes many genre films) to his old schoolyard mate.
Essential Pinhead: Hellbound – Hellraiser II
Robert Englund
In the halcyon days of ‘70s and ‘80s horror, Englund is probably the closest we got to the likes of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, horror superstars from the Universal golden age. A classically trained performer who was forging a nice career for himself as a character actor, Englund’s trajectory changed course the moment audiences flocked to see his demonic child killer Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Whereas popular ‘slasher’ villains at the time like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were silent stalkers, Freddy was a loquacious wise-arse, even in the earlier Elm Street instalments. As the series went on and Freddy became a pop culture icon, the frequency of his zingers began to rival Rodney Dangerfield and the quality of the films dipped. Still, Englund always gave it his all and played Krueger eight times. At the age of 70, he continues to work in countless B horror movies.
Essential Freddy: Tough one… Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, by a whisker.
Kane Hodder
Many a stuntman/actor has portrayed the world’s angriest mummy’s boy Jason Voorhees, but Kane Hodder is the only one to do it more than once and champion the character to such a degree that he became a firm fan favourite. A veteran of four straight Friday the 13th films starting with Part 7, Hodder strived to provide Jason with more personality than those who’d come before, and whilst his entries aren’t the strongest in the series, his efforts and love of the character do not go unnoticed. Controversially overlooked for Freddy vs. Jason, Hodder landed on his feet appearing in a number of horror films as a stuntman and/or an actor, most memorably playing the Jason-like Victor Crowley in Adam Green’s popular Hatchet series.
Essential Jason: As far as the Hodder Jasons go, Part VII is the pick.
