The Lists Are In! 42 True Heroes of Horror Later....

I never like to have an idea without getting input from others.  And when I decided to share my True Heroes of Horror throughout the month of October, I knew I couldn't possibly honor everyone.  Thankfully, there are always Midnight Warriors out there to join the FMWL party.  A half dozen of my favorite folks on the interwebs offered up their own lists of their Top 10 Heroes of Horror...and the resulting mega list has me doing my patented fistpumpdance of joy.

First, let's recognize the awesome Midnight Warriors who added to this megalist....

• Morgan from the tubular The Kid in the Hall
• Marvin the Macabre from The Montana Mancave Massacre
• Christine M. from Paracinema Magazine
• Nicki from Hey! Look Behind You (See her full list here!)
• Christine H. from Fascination with Fear (See her full list here!)
• Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr

I gotta say, these fine folks brought their best to the table, and are a testament to horror fans everywhere.  The names listed vary across hundreds of years, cover both genders, and are varied from authors to actors to TV hosts to directors.  Heck, they even named some folks I'd never even heard of.  Really.  I feel like a proper tool.

Between the six of them and the one of me, we listed 42 names.  And I'm going to share them all with you now. Names will be listed in alphabetical order, and the name of each voter will be shared in parentheses.

The following True Heroes of Horror received one vote each....

Clockwise from Top: Atkins, Lewton, Wood, Peterson, Pitt, Perkins.

Tom Atkins (Morgan), Clive Barker (Marvin), Joe Bob Briggs (The Mike), Poppy Z. Brite (Nicki), Lon Chaney Sr. (The Mike), Roger Corman (Andreas) (Note from The Mike: Corman was officially the last cut from my list; my #11.  Kills me to have left him off!), David Cronenberg (Andreas), Fred Dekker (Morgan), Guillermo del Toro (Marvin), Johnny Depp (Christine H.), Robert Englund (Morgan), Adam Green (Nicki), Herschell Gordon Lewis (Nicki), Val Lewton (Andreas), Takashi Miike (Nicki), Morgus the Magnificent (Nicki), Kim Newman (Andreas), Anthony Perkins (Christine H.), Cassandra Peterson (Nicki), Ingrid Pitt (Marvin), Roman Polanski (Andreas), Anne Rice (Christine H.), Susan Hill (Christine H.), Mary Shelley (Christine M.), Bram Stoker (Christine M.), James Whale (Andreas), Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Christine M.), Mary Woronov (Andreas).

That's 28 of our 42 right there, which means 14 folks received more than one vote.  Also, the fact that Mary Woronov got on to this list MAKES MY DAY.  I <3 Mary Woronov.

The following True Heroes of Horror received two votes each....

From Left to Right: Lugosi, Craven, Hitchcock, Argento

Dario Argento (Morgan, Christine H.), Bruce Campbell (The Mike, Morgan), Wes Craven (Morgan, Christine M.), Jamie Lee Curtis (The Mike, Morgan), Alfred Hitchcock (Christine H., Nicki), Boris Karloff (The Mike, Marvin), Christopher Lee (The Mike, Marvin), Bela Lugosi (Christine M., Andreas).

There go 8 more, leaving us with only 6 folks who received votes from three or more of our 7 voters.  A lot of my favorites are in here, and I expected many to do better. The Hitchcock thing makes me think too, because I argued with myself for days about whether he should be on my list.  Love the guy more than any filmmaker ever, but in the end I didn't feel his impact was specifically "horror".  Semantics can trip me up.  Anyway, glad to see others voting for him!

The following True Heroes of Horror received three votes each....

H.P. Lovecraft (Marvin, Christine M., Andreas), Tom Savini (Morgan, Marvin, Nicki.)

An interesting combination if I've ever seen one.  And I didn't vote for either of these guys, which makes them the top folks on the list who didn't make my ten.  And now, we've got just Four of our 42 folks left to name!

The following True Hero of Horror received 4 votes....

Vincent Price (The Mike, Marvin, Christine M., Christine H.)

I don't know why, but sometimes I get the feeling horror fans don't like Vincent Price any more.  Clearly that was not the case among our small sample of voters, as he gets the fourth most mentions of anyone.  I'm quite OK with that.

The following True Heroes of Horror received five votes each....

Stephen King (The Mike, Morgan, Marvin, Christine M., Christine H.), George A. Romero (The Mike, Morgan, Christine M., Christine H., Nicki)

For a while, it looked like Stephen King was gonna run away with this thing.  The first four lists I received had him on them, as did mine.  Then he dropped off to land in this tie for second.  It's also worth noting that it's me and the ladies of the internet who love Romero. Why's that worth noting? Because if you read the word "ladies" like Isaac Hayes would say it, then it makes The Mike sound cool.

And then....there was a True Hero of Horror who received six of a possible seven votes....

John Carpenter (The Mike, Marvin, Christine M., Christine H., Nicki, Andreas).

Like I said at the beginning...these results make me FISTPUMPDANCE.  John Carpenter might not have been #1 on my list (he might have been too, I was too scaredy-pants to pick a #1) but I have no problem with him winning the vote here.  It brings me happy.

As do all the Midnight Warriors out there!  I want to thank these fine folks for joining in the October fun, and I sincerely want to thank everyone who's watched the True Heroes of Horror train pass through FMWL this month! I've been truly humbled by all the comments and kind words about the posts, even if I haven't always been the best host and responded to them.  Y'all have helped remind me what I love about horror this month, and that's exactly why I keep writing this stuff.  Seriously, thank you all so much.

With that, the True Heroes of Horror experiment at FMWL has passed.  But for how long? I've had a blast putting my posts together, and it's quite possible I'll bring them back in the future for all the people I left off my list.  Ten is such a small number anyway, isn't it?  

Until next time, I'm The Mike, and you're all awesome.  Don't forget it, because Halloween is only 364 days away!

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (10/10) - Christopher Lee

I started October with a guy who played Frankenstein's monster, and I'm ending the month with another guy who played Frankenstein's Monster.  But that portrayal alone is only one measly part of why this man towers over horror in my mind.  To end my list of 10 Heroes of Horror - and to start the process of my kicking myself publicly about the people I couldn't add to the list - I had to go with....

Sir Christopher Lee

Who is Christopher Lee?
Born on May 27 of 1922, Christopher Lee has been acting ever since a young age when he played Rumpelstiltskin while attending school in Switzerland.  The son of a soldier and a beautiful Countess, Lee grew into a 6'5 frame by the time he joined the Finnish forces for World War II.  Though he never made it in to battle during the war, he was active in intelligence duties throughout the war and left the Royal Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant.  After the war he expressed interest in acting once again, and began appearing in films in 1947.

Since he became a horror star in the late 1950s, Lee has been involved in many other pursuits in his personal life.  He married a model, Brigit Kroencke, in 1961, and the couple have remained married for the last 50 years.  Off screen, Lee has made music, written books, and kept a library of over 12,000 books, many on the occult.  He was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person to appear in the most film roles, and was knighted by the British Government in 2009.

Lee is best known for....
His work with Hammer Films, particularly as Count Dracula.  Lee, along with his friend Peter Cushing (who would have made this list if I had 11-13 spots), was the face of Hammer for part of three decades.  Images of him as iconic characters - Dracula, The Monster, The Mummy, and more - have become iconic in their own right, and debates about whether he or Bela Lugosi (who also just barely missed the list) best represent Dracula still rage on.

Other Horror Hits....
I've mentioned Lee's famous monster turns, but his career has offered plenty of horror hits.  I've long talked about my favorite Lee performance in Hammer's occult chiller The Devil Rides Out, which allows him to be the hero instead of the monster for once.  And his most famous horror film is probably 1973's The Wicker Man, which has received a boost in popularity since Neil LaBute's pathetic remake.  Lee's horror credits, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s were varied, including a couple of films with great director Freddie Francis - The Creeping Flesh still charms me - and other favorites of mine like The City of the Dead and Horror Express.

Lee tried to get away from horror in the late '70s - joking on an episode of Saturday Night Live that he didn't "think that very good ones are being produced anymore"  - and notably turned down the lead in John Carpenter's Halloween, but he did return for several more horror films in his late career.  The most notable of these is certainly Sleepy Hollow, where he played a small role, and the most infamous is probably Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf.  Of course, Lee is most known to modern audiences for non-horror roles, after he appeared in the Lord of the Rings films and the last two Star Wars prequels. 

So, why's Christopher Lee here?
It's really hard for me to come up with something to say about just how awesome Christopher Lee is right now.  The biggest problem, I think, is that I've written about Christopher Lee about a thousand times on this blog already. 

I suppose the fact that I keep bringing the dude back up is one sign that he's among my favorite people in horror, but I don't think I can say it enough.  Though he was famous in his time for playing monsters and villains, every time I see Christopher Lee I feel like he's my third Grandpa or something.  His presence is soothing to me, which is a bit ridiculous when I stop to think about it.

As I mentioned above, the sheer number of films that Lee has appeared in pretty much guarantees that his work has covered the whole spectrum of cinema.  And I find it absolutely fascinating that a well-read, scholarly gentleman who is active in politics and loves music is generally remembered for being a monster.  He didn't even want to be in half the Dracula films he was in, but he did it anyway.  And he did it so well that people are still yammering about it.  How cool is that?

Like Vincent Price did around the same time, Lee had a legitimate beef with the direction horror was headed in the '60s and early'70s.  Though Hammer's sequels were still generally cranked out by talented directors - Francis' work on Dracula Has Risen From The Grave has some of my favorite Hammer scenes - the scripts behind these films were generally simple and offered little excitement for an actor like Lee.  One rumor about the first sequel - Dracula: Prince of Darkness - states that Lee chose to have no lines in the film because he found the scripted dialogue unacceptable.  It should be noted that this film was my first experience with Lee as Dracula - and I would have never guessed of Lee's displeasure until I read this story later.  Lee always brought his best, even when the films around him didn't.

It's this commitment to his trade - which he must have felt was a benefit to those working around him, that makes me admire Lee even more than I do when I see his commanding presence on screen.  While his image is worth plenty of praise, taking the time to look at the complex man who represented horror so well is what makes him a true hero in my eyes.  I'm honored to be able to pay tribute to him, and I'm sure this won't be the last time I stumble through an attempt to tell you all how great I think Christopher Lee is.  He is what I love about horror.

And he can sing awesomely too!

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (9/10) - John Carpenter

This one didn't require thought at all.  When I tried to think of the people in horror who mean the most to me, this name came out immediately.  I wouldn't love horror like I do if there were no...

John Carpenter

Who is John Carpenter?

Raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, John Carpenter grew up loving the films of Howard Hawks and John Ford and started making his own Super 8 horror movies as a young teen.  He started his secondary education at Western Kentucky University - and I'm obliged to mention that their school mascot is pretty much a Blob - but transferred to the prestigious USC film program, where he won an Oscar as part of the crew behind the short film The Resurrection of Broncho Billy in 1970.

Carpenter's personal life and his life in movies would intersect many times, with his significant others including Debra Hill (who co-wrote and produced his first hit with him), Adrienne Barbeau (who he was married to from 1979-1984 and had a son with) and his current wife Sandy King (who produced several of his later films before and since their marriage in 1990).  Today he's still active in horror - albeit far less frequently - and this weekend he's even contributing to well known comedy website Funny or Die.

Carpenter is best known for....
If we have to narrow it down, Carpenter's legacy most likely ties in to his two most revered horror films - Halloween and The Thing.  The former film was a revolutionary box office success that changed the face of horror in the late '70s, giving a face and a shape to the slasher genre that would inspire a subgenre to develop over the following decades.  It also, unlike most of the slashers that followed it, provided an example of just how tense, crisp, and dark a horror film could be.  I've talked about it plenty of times before, the short version of the story ends with me saying that Halloween is my favorite horror film.

Though today's horror audiences condemn remakes more often than they shower, Carpenter's most loved film might be his remake of The Thing From Another World.  I'd say The Thing is one of those movies that is so good that it makes me want to shun how good it is sometimes. Like, I feel like I'm rooting for the Yankees when I like it, but it's just so dang good.  And people didn't like it when it came out!  that's one of many things that makes me very mad when I think about John Carpenter, but we're gonna talk more about that later.

Other Horror Hits....
It's safe to say that Carpenter has spent his entire career - unless you count his TV biopic Elvis - making genre films, with sci-fi (Escape from New York, They Live) and action (Assault on Precinct 13, Big Trouble in Little China) hits among his most loved films.  But he's never strayed too far from the horror genre in the three decades since Halloween.  His follow up to that film was the classic ghost story The Fog, and he made a couple more pure horror films - the Stephen King adaptation Christine and the religion-meets-science tale Prince of Darkness in the 1980s.  His later works have been almost completely horror, with my favorite of his late films being In the Mouth of Madness and Vampires (which I still say is underrated).

So, why's John Carpenter here?
My respect for John Carpenter is probably best summed up by how mad I get when I think about the ups and downs of his career.  I'm not sure who I'm mad at - the studios, the viewers, Carpenter himself - but I'm just mad.  I think I'm mad that we're not all worshipping Carpenter the same way Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorcese get worshipped.  I think I'm mad that studios don't say "Hey, we want to make a good genre flick, why don't we let John Carpenter do something?"  I'm certain that I'm mad that the last thirteen years feature only 6 films by Carpenter, who had the best run any genre filmmaker has ever had between 1976 and 1988.

When Carpenter was in his prime and had control over his movies - writing, directing, and even composing the music - I strongly believe that he was as good as any filmmaker has been since Alfred Hitchcock.  But the first red flag regarding Carpenter's ability to gain a hold over Hollywood was his films' box office performance.  We know that Halloween was a big hit - 47 million dollars at the box office in 1978 is a hefty sum, especially when you consider that it cost about 320,000 - but Carpenter's next highest grossing film - Starman, an Oscar-nominated family sci-fi film he made for Columbia Pictures - falls about 20 million dollars behind that one.  According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the total earnings of Carpenter's films (288 million) is less money than each of the top 47 grossing single movies of all-time made at the box office (Number 47, one of the Harry Potter films, made 290 million).  I realize that these totals aren't adjusted for inflation of ticket prices and that kind of stuff, but that's still kind of a problem when you consider that films that were considered gigantic bombs like Last Action Hero and Cobra made more money than Carpenter's most successful film.

Of course, you can't blame the studios for not giving the keys to the kingdom to a guy whose films didn't make enough money, which brings us to the viewers.  The fact of the matter is that  most people who go to the movies - dare I call them "the average moviegoer" - want things wrapped up in a nice neat package with a happy ending.  John Carpenter has never really subscribed to that theory.  If you look at Carpenter's films, I say that not one of them wraps everything up well.  Almost all of his endings are ambiguous, ranging from blatant hints of danger (Halloween, Christine, BtiLC) to antiheroes winning but messing up society (The Escape flicks, They Live) to wide open and possibly damning finales (The Thing, Prince of Darkness).  The masses don't always want that kind of ending, but Carpenter sure seems like he did.

Though the box office figures were meager, many of Carpenter's films turned a profit on their initial release.  The four that were generally mentioned as busts - The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, They Live, and Prince of Darkness - can easily be earmarked as his films that stray the farthest from the comfort zone of mainstream audiences.  The Thing is certainly the most puzzling example in the group, considering the fact that it's pretty much universally loved by everyone who likes horror movies. I seriously can't wrap my head around the fact that people didn't like it when it came out.  It blows my mind.

I've spent like four paragraphs complaining, and I think that has to be a sign of how much I connect with Carpenter's work.  In my eyes, he's just what the genre fan needs - a practical filmmaker who won't sugarcoat things and will make the film he wants to make.  And it kills me when I think of how he made a bunch of films I love and got so beaten up by the studios and the audiences and the critics that he suddenly was gone from movie screens for five years and resurfaced with a half-cocked Chevy Chase vehicle that the studio tinkered with.  I know that some of the blame falls on Carpenter - his insistence on control cost him the chance to direct films like Santa Claus: The Movie, Fatal Attraction, Exorcist III, and even Top Gun - but I....well, I guess I'm too much of a homer to buy in to that.

And that's where I realize just how much John Carpenter has meant to me as a filmmaker.  He doesn't pull punches, he didn't just rent himself out for a paycheck (some would argue that this has changed, I won't go there), and he brought an unflinching and dark vision to his films.  He represents what I want from genre cinema and, particularly, horror cinema.  And even though I wish he ran Hollywood, I wouldn't trade the films he's done for the films made by of any of his contemporaries.  John Carpenter's world isn't a world I want to live in, but I could watch his world unfold any day.  And when I consider his best horror films and everything else he's done,  it's impossible for me to not list him here.

When it comes down to it, I'll go to battle alongside John Carpenter any day.  That's the mark of a true hero.

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (8/10) - Vincent Price

As my own True Heroes of Horror list rolls to a close, the choices become much more obvious to me.  With three spots left, it's time to bring out some of horror's most revered names, starting with...

Vincent Price

Who is Vincent Price?

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1911, the Vincent Price you know was actually the third in a line of very successful Vincent Prices.  His grandfather, also Vincent Price, invented a revolutionary baking powder and his father, Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., was the president of the National Candy Company.  In a way, that kind of makes the junior Price the Willy Wonka of the horror movie world.

Price left St. Louis for an education at Yale University in the 1930s, which is also when he first began acting on stage.  He got into film in 1938, but only sporadically appeared in horror films before his career as a horror star took off in the 1950s.  Price would stay active in schlocky genre roles - despite his education and his polite manner (check out this statement he made on racial and religious prejudice in 1950) - through most of the 1970s, and stayed as active as he could in television and film until his death from lung cancer in 1993.

Price is best known for....

Being the biggest star in horror for nearly a quarter-century.  From 1953's House of Wax to the Dr. Phibes films of the 1970s, Price made his mark on horror repeatedly.  Whether he was collaborating with a showman like William Castle or a low-budget maestro like Roger Corman, Price always commanded respect in the Gothic horror scene.

Other Horror Hits....

Price first got into the horror scene when he appeared with Boris Karloff in 1939's Tower of London, which was followed up by him getting the title role in the 1940 Universal Monster sequel The Invisible Man Returns.   After plenty of dramatic roles and several forays into film noir in the 1940s, it was House of Wax that established the horror genre as a money maker for the 1950s.  Price's star shot to the roof quickly, with The Fly and its sequel, House on Haunted Hill, and The Tingler all becoming hits by the end of the decade.

 In the '60s, Price spent a lot of time making Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Corman, including The Pit and the Pendulum, Masque of the Red Death, and The Fall of the House of Usher.  Also in that span Price made a couple other favorites, the I Am Legend adaptation The Last Man on Earth and the inquisitive Witchfinder General.  The '70s brought a few more favorites via the American International Pictures banner, with modern/Gothic horror combos The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Theatre of Blood.  That's just a small sample of Price's horror output, but it's a good one.

So, why's Vincent Price here?

Price is kind of a funny horror icon to me.  On many days I wouldn't list any of his films in my Top 10 horror faves, and I think I might even struggle to fit him into the Top 25 sometimes.  But when it came time to make this list of people who represent great horror, he was one of the first two or three names I came up with.  What's up with that?

To me, Vincent Price is one of the few actors in the world who has the gift to raise the quality of any material he touches.  I am Legend is a fine example of this.  I love the book, and I gotta think it's one of the more "unfilmable" books I've ever read.  Megastars of the 1970s and 2000s (Charlton Heston and Will Smith, respectively) both got a shot at the story in different adaptations, and both had only limited success with the material and the one-man-show nature of the story.  But Price's turn in The Last Man on Earth - an extremely low budget European production of the story - seems almost effortless at times.  Few actors of his generation were as gifted in monologue as Price was, and his ability to step up and take over makes it the most interesting adaptation of Matheson's book.  Heck, I like the other movies well enough - but I don't think the competition is even close.

Other Price films of the '50s and '60s were wise to frame their own stories around Price's talents.  To the horror fan, House on Haunted Hill was an invitation into Price's home for an evening, and Vincent got to play the perfect host in almost the whole film.  Masque of the Red Death and The Pit and the Pendulum are only a couple of examples of films that focused entirely on Price while urging the audience to hate his character.  Amazingly, the audience complied - and still left the film happy that they got to see Price in action.  Witchfinder General turned him loose in a more straight-faced role as real-life witchhunter Matthew Hopkins, but even that film is as much about the Vincent Price experience than it is about the historical events that it's following.

According to many anecdotes, Price never really bought in to the horror genre like most horror fans do.  When I recently read Jason Zinoman's great take on horror of the 1970s, Shock Value, I was struck with a bit of sadness during a section that talks about Price losing a televised battle of wits to a scholar/censor who was set on condemning the horror genre to the world.  Price knew where his money came from and knew there was a loving audience for his work, but you kind of get the feeling that he knew what he was doing wasn't high art.

And yet, his performances never suffered.  Even in the '70s, when his brand of horror had clearly been surpassed - case in point being William Castle's ousting from Rosemary's Baby, a film that was supposed to star Price, in favor of Roman Polanski  - Price found movies that kept him relevant to modern audiences.  The Abominable Dr. Phibes (which might be my favorite Price film) is a perfect example, as it gives Price the same kind of macabre role we'd expect from him while moving the setting to modern day London.  It's a film that bases murders on the Biblical plagues, but at the same time it's a film that bought in to modern British humor and allowed Price to teeter on the brink between the new and old brands of horror cinema.  And Price - who spent most of the film emoting only with his eyes - turned the role into a horror icon with ease.  The same formula, with a few twists, worked a couple of years later for Theatre of Blood, which replaced the Bible with the works of Shakespeare and kept letting Price do his thing.

Despite a generational gap, many of today's horror fans have grown up recognizing Price as the face and voice of horror cinema.  A large bit of credit must be played to his voice cameo at the end of Michael Jackson's iconic Thriller video, but Price was more than willing to keep showing up on TV and other mediums until his death.  Despite any troubles he had with taking the genre he is known for seriously, Price's willingness to hold on to the image horror fans of the '50s-'70s once knew helped keep the horror films that preceded Rosemary's Baby and its sort alive.  Even if those films aren't my favorite horror films, they often provide the best Midnight snack, and I'm extremely grateful that Vincent Price was willing to dedicate more than 40 years of his life to horror fans around the world.

Even if it was occasionally a pain in the neck.

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (7/10) - Stephen King

In the mainstream pop culture scene of the past thirty years, there probably isn't a bigger horror star than this guy.  With 49 novels, numerous short stories and over 130 film or TV productions based on his work, He's pretty much an institution at this point in his career.  I almost thought it was too easy to put him on this list, like I would just be stating the obvious to people who already recognize his effects on the genre.  Usually, the easiest answer is the right one. Which brings us to...

Stephen King

Who is Stephen King?

A favorite son of the state of Maine, whose real and fictional villages host most of his twisted tales, Stephen King was born in Portland and was educated in the state all the way through his graduation from The University of Maine in 1970.  At that point, King had already sold his first short story and had written for the campus newspaper, but it was his inability to quickly earn a teaching job that led him to keep selling stories to magazines.  He began working on his first novel in the early part of the '70s, which was published in 1973 and adapted for the screen three years later.

Around the same time is when King developed a drinking problem that affected him for much of the next two decades, which - along with his teenage love of H.P. Lovecraft and EC Comics - also contributed to the dark vision that inhabits his works.  Despite personal issues - including an auto accident that severely injured him in the late '90s - King has kept writing for over 40 years, and continues to stay in the spotlight with new works and a column for Entertainment Weekly on pop culture.  He remains married to his first wife, Tabitha, and has three children who have all become writers themselves.

King is most known for....

In horror circles, Kings early novels define his impact on the genre quite well.  After debuting with Carrie, King created 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, and The Dead Zone by the end of the 1970s.  Each of these have been adapted for film or TV as well - all but The Stand have more than one adaptation as I write this, and that one's remake is allegedly coming - and each show a common theme that's become a known fact these days: it's really hard to adapt a Stephen King story to the screen and maintain all the detail of his intricate prose.

Other Horror Hits....

I might run out of hosting space on Blogger if I try to list everything King's done that has mattered to horror fans around the world. (I did recently try to sum up my favorite films based on the dude's stuff, however.)  Aside from the small sample of novels I listed above, King has produced plenty of horror classics.  Names like Pet Sematary, Cujo, Christine and Children of the Corn will be very familiar to fans of horror on the silver screen during the 1980s - which is probably when King's horror popularity peaked, though it hasn't really dropped off much in the ensuing decades.  King also got involved with writing and directing for the screen during that decade, though the results are varied from the epic Creepshow to the comically mishandled Maximum Overdrive.

In print, King has remained one of the best selling authors of ever throughout his career, and most of his horror tales dramatically tower over the film versions that are more popular to many.  I'm going to talk about my favorite King story and how it affected me shortly, but I would certainly be leaving this article incomplete if I didn't mention one of his most beloved creations, the Dark Tower series of novels that is now seven (going on 8 in 2012) books long.  I, out of what must only be ignorance or stupidity, have not yet read these works, but a large consensus of folks around the world will reference King's tales of Roland the Gunslinger as an epic tale that rivals The Lord of the Rings for pure fantasy bliss.

So why's Stephen King here?

I think - no, I hope - that my recounting of the man's career thus far has left little doubt that he has been one of the most iconic folks in horror throughout his career.  But the question remains: Why does he matter to me? I'm not here to just repeat popular opinion, after all.  If Stephen King's gonna be one of my top ten heroes in horror, I need to make darn sure that I really feel as strongly as most do about King's work.

Growing up in the '80s, I'm not sure I can pinpoint my first interaction with something related to Stephen King.  Around the time, he was just someone you knew about by living in the '80s, like Ronald Reagan or Sylvester Stallone or Madonna.  If I had to guess, I'd think that the first thing I officially experienced that had King's name on it was Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining, which was one of the first horror movies my parents made readily available to my sister and I.  Of course, King has nearly disowned this film, and when I later read his book, I could tell why.  Though Kubrick's film remains one of my very favorite horror films, I will often argue with myself that King's book is in fact a better, deeper, and more meaningful horror story.

I'm pretty certain I can pinpoint my first King reading experience, which I think was his 1994 novel Insomnia.  It isn't necessarily regarded as one of King's best works, and it's definitely been surpassed by most of the things I've read by him since, but it certainly painted a new vision of what horror movies could be in my teenage mind.  After being transplanted from the small town home of my first 10 years into the family farm in the nearby countryside, reading King's books - which were generally set in small Maine towns that were similar in size to my home town - was a mental escape back into the small town setting that I missed at the time.  It wasn't easy to relate to the novel's AARP lead characters, but the dark side of their life and the small town they lived in certainly awakened my active imagination about how evil could lurk everywhere, even in a quiet small town.  It would be later that I would really start to understand how King's world works and how many connections to his other works were hidden inside that 800 page book.  (The book was set in one of King's favorite fictional towns, Derry, which previously hosted King's revered novel It and later Dreamcatcher.)

That small town evil was expanded upon in one of the next King novels I read, and one that might still be my favorite King story in print.  Needful Things was that book, and at the time I thought it was the most awe-inspiring horror tale I'd ever read.  Set in King's other infamous fictional town, Castle Rock, the tale of the devilish Leland Gaunt setting up a shop that offers something specific to everyone, as long as they play a prank on another person in town.  The long tale focuses on how evil humanity can be when prodded in the right way, and really struck a chord with me.  I could picture the events playing out in my old neighborhood, even using real houses in town as the setting for the scenes in my mind, and it really blew my mind.  And when I later read The Dead Zone and Cujo - which I also loved - and found out they tied in to the landscape of Castle Rock is when I was kind of in love with King's crazy mind.

As if reading those four novels as a teen wasn't enough to blow my mind, a couple of collections of King's shorter works helped shape my universe as a horror fan too.  Different Seasons was most memorable for its less horror-tinged stories - particularly the ones that became The Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, and Stand By Me - and Skeleton Crew introduced me to another horror tale that infected my mind for good: The Mist.  Remember the first time you read something and immediately started filming the movie in your brain with your favorite actors?  For me that was The Mist.  (Yes, I did mentally cast Kurt Russell. No, I was not disappointed by the eventual movie, though I did hate the ending.)

I lost track of reading King somewhere along the way - probably in the middle of the segmented release of The Green Mile in six boring parts - but my occasional revisits to his work have reminded me often that this is certainly someone who knew how to create horror.  He's been dismissed at times for writing popular fiction and churning out a few duds along the way, but I don't see any way I could leave King off a list of horror heroes based on his mainstream status.  King represents horror to an entire generation, and even some of his less famous works could inspire a young horror fan, just like Insomnia inspired me.

With his interlocking universe full of connections between several of his iconic stories, Stephen King's works did a lot to make me think about the horror genre and how deep a horror story could be, taking me out of the "monsters and slashers" mindset that I had previously known of in horror.  I worry that I sometimes get caught up in the film side of his work - which varies in quality - but a reminder of what his best books and stories could do is proof that Stephen King truly is among the best horror has to offer anyone who loves the macabre.

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (6/10) - Bruce Campbell

Gotta admit it...there were a few times when I almost convinced myself to vote this guy off the list.  That's less a statement against him and more of a statement about how many people there are who could be listed as true heroes of horror.  But, when push came to shove, I realized that every list needs a King. Who am I to deny y'all that?

Bruce Campbell

Who is Bruce Campbell?

Born and raised in the land of Michigan, Bruce Campbell started making Super 8 movies with friends as a teenager and never looked back.  His first feature - made alongside old friends Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert - would slowly but surely make its mark in the horror viewer's mind.  A couple of sequels and a few other horror roles - but mostly those sequels, would skyrocket Campbell to the top of the nerd love food chain in the early '90s.

Campbell has spent much of the last twenty-five years at work thanks to this horror trilogy. His travels have included frequent collaboration with Raimi and the Coen brothers, a couple of cult favorite television shows (I still think The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. is one of the greatest things ever on TV, but that's a different story), and recent mainstream success in the USA series Burn Notice.  Campbell has also written a couple of books, done some voice acting, and even starred in Old Spice commercials.  Oh, and he's made a few more horror movies too.

Bruce is most known for....

Being groovy. Even though his character in the first Evil Dead film was far from it, Ashly J. Williams - or, just Ash - has a place at the top of most horror fans' lists of cool dudes.  Campbell played the character across all three Evil Dead films - The Evil Dead, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, and Army of Darkness, if you're counting along at home - and his progression from ambitious young actor to posterized cult God can be graphed in a linear fashion through the films.  By the end of Army - and I'm talking about the superior "Eff Yeah, Ash Rules" ending that the studio tacked on, not the drab and dopey ending Raimi wanted - Campbell's appeal to the horror fan had become everlasting.  And, based on those three movies alone, that appeal was completely earned.

Other horror hits....

After the Evil Dead flicks, finding Bruce Campbell movies became a favorite pastime of many horror lovers.  Though his career has taken many paths into many genres, he's always had a place in the horror genre, for better or worse.  Early in his career he popped into films like Maniac Cop - which I loved last night - and Intruder, but with time he started making fun cameos in things like Waxwork II (a personal favorite).  Campbell has strayed from the horror genre at times, but has made many returns in the last decade, even directing himself in a couple of campy films, The Man With The Screaming Brain and My Name is Bruce.

To be honest, my favorite performance from Campbell doesn't come from any of these movies or any of the Evil Dead flicks.  It comes from Don Coscarelli's brilliant Bubba Ho-Tep, in which Campbell rocked the screen as a retirement home Elvis who battles a soul sucking mummy.  I kid you not when I say that this ridiculous sounding movie pretty much rocked my socks off dramatically; Campbell's ability to bring the King to the screen in such a sad state is insanely moving.  It's one of my favorite movies of the new millennium, easily.

(Oh, I also have to mention Terminal Invasion here.  Sure, it's a bad movie that premiered on what is now SyFy, but it borrows from one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes and Campbell rocks and I just love it. So yeah, Terminal Invasion. And I'm saying that now, even though I just watched an interview where Bruce made fun of people who like Terminal Invasion.)

So, why's Bruce Campbell here?

Part of me thinks that question is too easy to answer, part of me thinks that question deserves more thought.  I mean, he IS Bruce Campbell, after all.  That fact alone makes him one of the most important, raddest, and best people to ever step foot in horror.  At least that's what a lot of horror fans think, and Campbell knows it.  The deification of the Evil Dead star has often left Campbell reacting to fans in a darkly humorous manner that doesn't seem too far off from the spoof version of himself that appeared in My Name is Bruce.

In recent years, I've really come to respect that side of Campbell.  No human who's worth a hoot wants to spend all day having people blow sunshine up their rear and treat them only with reverence.  If you've ever checked out footage of Bruce interacting with fans at screenings or conventions, you'll generally find an air of disregard for the drooling and screaming that goes on around him.  The guy knows he's just a guy who's been in movies - some good, some bad - and he doesn't buy in to that diva mindset that many other celebrities are cursed by.

Some have read Campbell's attitude as a dislike for these fanatical fans, but I've always found the guy to be a fresh kind of humble.  Since joining Twitter a few months back, Campbell has used the microblogging tool to interact with plenty of fans who have plenty of questions for him, and provided a good insight into just who Bruce Campbell is by sharing his thoughts and humor with most of us.  I got my own little interaction with Campbell back when I questioned him about the new Evil Dead project - and inadvertently started an internet feeding frenzy - which I must admit is one of the highlights of my year.  But it's not a highlight because I'm in awe of Campbell, it's a highlight because I really respect what Campbell has done in horror.

And truthfully, what became of Ash in the Evil Dead films was worth the accolades.  Campbell's willingness to throw himself - and his body, which must have been battered thoroughly throughout the three films - into the splattery situations of these films is nothing but wonderful, and his snarky charisma really carried the latter films at times.  The resulting iconic quotes and hilarious sight gags of Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness were just what horror fans needed at the time, breathing life into the slasher filled wasteland that was the '80s and early '90s.

When we think of Campbell as Ash, it's easy to want to throw ourselves at his feet and scream "We're not worthy!"  Heck, I stumbled into calling him a King in the opening of this post.  But Bruce Campbell should be recognized as a hero of horror for more than just his character in an iconic trilogy.  The fact that Bruce Campbell continues to throw himself into the horror scene and interact with his fans, even when some of them lack sanity, is what's cemented his status as a true hero of horror to me.  He's having fun with us, just as we're having fun with him.  I dig that.

The Mike's True Heroes of Horror (5/10) - Jamie Lee Curtis

This choice bugs the hell out of me.  That annoyance has nothing to do with the choice, which I'm 100% certain represents one of my favorite people in horror, but it comes because - sadly - this is the only woman who made their way onto my list.  As someone who stands in support of women in horror - as well as women in all other sane pursuits - I am not happy about this.  But, my goal was to put the best ten on the field, and I think I did that.  So, I'm annoyed with myself, but it has nothing to do with our choice....

Jamie Lee Curtis

Who is Jamie Lee Curtis?

Born into Hollywood royalty - she's the daughter of Tony Curtis and Psycho's own Janet Leigh - Jamie Lee Curtis grew up around the movies in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles before heading off to a preparatory school in Connecticut during her teenage years.  She returned home in 1976 to attend The University of the Pacific, but left school after a year to do what most young Californian girls want to do - become an actress.

Jamie Lee made her film debut in 1978 - we'll talk about that film a bunch today - and has stayed busy on screen ever since, despite personal struggles.  Her early horror career is what brings her to this list, but she developed a reputation for her comic skills, and has received numerous awards/nominations for fun stuff like Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda, and True Lies.  She's now semi-retired, is in recovery regarding alcohol problems that plagued much of her career, and stays active online as a blogger for The Huffington Post. She's also written and published several children's books.

Jamie Lee is most known for....

Being the Alpha "scream queen".  Though many actresses are given that title - these days young actresses who are willing to wear low cut tops get a coupon in the mail, I think - it was Curtis' character in Halloween that created the template for horror movies that would follow.  She followed up that role by riding that train of success through several other films, and also appeared in three more Halloween sequels as Laurie.

Other Horror Hits....

 The template I mentioned didn't come from just Halloween, as Curtis would dive into the horror scene a few more times in the first years of the 1980s.  She continued to be the survivor girl in slasher films Prom Night and Terror Train, and picked up a couple of meatier horror roles in John Carpenter's The Fog and Richard Franklin's Roadgames. She also reprised her role as Laurie in 1981's Halloween II, proving her strength against Michael Myers once more.

Curtis would return to the genre with moderate success later in her career.  She headlined the psychosexual thriller Mother's Boys in the early '90s (which was a real dud, BTW), and made a move back to Halloween land for the final two films in the series (I refuse to acknowledge you, Robert Zed-word) - 1998's Halloween H20 and 2002's Halloween: Resurrection.

So, why's Jamie Lee Curtis here?

I've tipped my hand a few times already, so you may already know the answer to that question.  But it's so much more complicated than you think.  I've said that Jamie Lee was the queen of scream queens, but seeing why that's the case takes some work. 

When you really watch Halloween and start looking at the parts of the film - something I've done dozens of times with my favorite horror film - you start to see that there's really nothing special about Laurie Strode.   She is a plain-Jane, run-of-the-mill, average teenage good girl.  It was nothing new or shocking, it was simply what the movie needed.  So why's Jamie Lee so important, if all she did was act like a normal girl?

With a big knife.

If you look back at horror movies that came before Halloween, there weren't a bunch of characters like this.  For starters, horror movies made before the 1970s were primarily period pieces or monster tales, the type of stories that were anchored around a strong male lead and a female in distress.  There were outliers - like Curtis' mother in Psycho - but it's really a falsehood to claim Janet Leigh was a "scream queen" in Psycho.  Her character was a criminal, a fornicator, and (most importantly) a victim - three things that don't really apply to Laurie Strode. (Although, Laurie technically was a criminal when she smoked that wacky weed with Annie - but I guess we'll give her a pass on that one.)

Other movies that preceded it had final girls - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Black Christmas spring to mind - but they didn't present themselves like Jamie Lee did.  Large portions of Carpenter's film are specifically designed to make us realize why Laurie Strode is fated to be opposite the boogeyman that's represented by Michael Myers.  Her virtues aren't just there to make us feels she's innocent, they exist to counteract the humanized evil that is represented elsewhere in the film. 

Most of what I'm talking about is on the writers, but it was still up to Curtis to represent what the film had in mind when it came down to humanity vs. evil.  And, despite the fact that Curtis was actually more like the other female characters in the film, she stepped in and became that pure "girl scout" character without a flaw.

And then she proved it, again and again, despite some awful haircuts and wardrobes.  Though Prom Night and Terror Train are certainly lesser films than Halloween, it was Curtis' ability to make us feel for the lead character that carried them to an audience.  Perhaps her performances in these films and Halloween II were re-runs of her work in Halloween, but I like to look at them like a science experiment.  Halloween was the first test, these roles were her way of turning theory into common practice.  (You'll notice I didn't mention Fog and Roadgames here.  I don't think her roles in these two films fit the final girl template that she pioneered, so I left them out - even if they are awesome.)

Whether it's completely her doing or not, Jamie Lee Curtis represents a shift in horror, the time when it went from what it once was to what it is today.  She fell into the perfect situation in Halloween - where she originally auditioned for PJ Soles' role - and she spent the next five years becoming the face of American horror for a new generation of horror fans.  It's a storybook case of being in the right place at the right time, and it worked out perfectly for both Jamie Lee Curtis and the horror viewer.

 I think it sounds like I'm trashing on Jamie Lee a little, which is not my intent.  I've never seen her in a movie where she wasn't one of the best things about it.  But her other talents - like her comic turn in the flawless A Fish Called Wanda - are so diverse that some of her horror roles seem like small potatoes in comparison.  That might be a testament to how talented Curtis is in general, but I don't mean to take anything away from away from what she did in the strong horror performances that kickstarted her career.  They made her one of the true icons of horror, and that's not a bad thing to be.