A horror franchise is only as successful as its antagonist is memorable. Sometimes it takes a while for them to become icons, though. For instance, Jason didn’t get his mask until Friday the 13th Part III and Freddy Krueger didn’t become what amounts to a celebrity until A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. And, while character design is undeniably a critical element in making a horror antagonist and franchise take off, the audience also has to believe that the villain is a true vicious presence. In other words, the audience has to be convinced the killer can actually kill. But there are levels to that. Some horror movie icons are more formidable than others, primarily due to brawn. What follows are a selection of legendary horror villains who all have their strengths, but some of them have precious few weaknesses.
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We considered any horror movie killer but are primarily focusing on the truly iconic ones. Specifically, antagonists who have made a name for themselves across the course of several movies (even if they’ve been reincarnated or, in one case, seem to have vengeful swimming siblings). However, we avoided any sort of generic group of antagonists, e.g. zombies or vampires or werewolves. It had to be a specific villain.
10) Jigsaw
It seems the Saw franchise is heading towards a full reboot. Initially, there was supposed to be a Saw XI, but those behind the IP are heading in a different direction. That could very well mean that Tobin Bell is out—though at the end of the day, perhaps that’s for the best, as Saw X was a great way to close things up with his character, John Kramer.
Speaking of Kramer, while he is an icon in the horror world, he’s also an elderly man who is dying of cancer. Even with a mind that can craft brutal, elaborate traps, he’s still not someone who can run at you with a whirring chainsaw, leap over a pile of logs, and catch up with you.
9) Ghostface
None of the Ghostface killers throughout the Scream saga are more than flesh and blood individuals. The closest one has come to being more than that was in Scream 3, and that was just because of a bulletproof vest.
The primary advantage Ghostface has over even the killer ranked next is agility. Every single Ghostface has been quick. However, they’re also often quite clumsy, e.g. the garage scene in the original Scream. Were the door not locked, Tatum would have escaped Ghostface (more specifically Billy Loomis, in that case).
8) Leatherface
Even before Halloween, there was Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. And, while Michael Myers comes across as a flesh-and-blood human being, he’s more. Leatherface isn’t.
But what makes Leatherface rank higher than Jigsaw or Ghostface? It’s simple, Leatherface is bulky. If he’s running at you, you will be hitting the floorboards. Not to mention, while he isn’t particularly bright, Leatherface does have the advantage of having a few equally cannibalistic family members by his side. There’s strength in family, especially when every member is terrifying.
7) Bruce the Shark
Were this list relegated to antagonists who walk around with bladed objects the shark from Jaws, or “Bruce,” as the mechanical beast was called on set, would certainly not apply. He more…swims around with about a hundred or more of those sharp objects in his mouth.
Sure, there were four different sharks, one for each movie, but basically all of those sharks were the same (though the fourth did apparently possess telepathic abilities and could roar). Each of them is over 20 feet long, swims quickly, and can grab you before you even see it. That’s strength, and it can stay strong unless it chomps down on a combustible barrel, an electrical cable, a man with a hand grenade, or just kind of puts itself in a position where a boat’s bow can pierce its hide.
6) Chucky
While his movies aren’t always scary, Chucky’s design is. Even before his face becomes animated with expression, he’s an ugly little thing.
And in that second to last word comes the explanation why Chucky ranks towards the middle instead of the top. He’s small. You can kick him across the room. But just because you do, even if you’re kicking him into a large whirring fan, he’ll just keep limping or crawling towards you. As seen in the third act of Child’s Play 2, he’s incredibly difficult to put down for good, but it can be done. Not to mention, he also knows voodoo, so he can put his rotten soul in a kind, young, duped vessel’s body. Though he’s never actually succeeded in doing that in the movies. He has, however, succeeded in putting that rotten soul in multiple Chucky dolls, so he can triple or quadruple his initial threat.
5) Victor Crowley
Victor Crowley is similar to Jason Voorhees for several reasons. For one, he’s incredibly territorial. If you step on his property, he’ll kill you. Two, he was played in all four films by Kane Hodder, who played Jason in the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth Friday the 13th films.
Victor was born with a deformity due to a curse imposed on his parents, which was then passed to him. When a few mean trick-or-treaters burned down the Crowley home years later, Victor’s father accidentally slammed a hatchet into his son’s head trying to get into the home to rescue him. The upside to his curse is that it revives him when he dies, so technically Victor is immortal. Even still, blades and bullets slow him down far more than they slow down Jason or Michael. But what seems to have eliminated him in full is his father’s ashes, which melted him when they came into contact with them. Jason came back from being melted away by sewer water (or whatever it was Jason Takes Manhattan was going for with that scene), Crowley has not. Jason wins.
4) Art the Clown
Art the demonic clown from the Terrifier movies is apparently not prone to any specific weaknesses. However, he has some drawbacks when it comes to strength. He’s not as bulky as Michael or Jason, which is one, but even more so he apparently needs to hibernate. It’s not clear how frequently that has to occur or for how long. It’s also not clear if he can resurrect himself without any assistance by The Little Pale Girl (or perhaps some other demonic entity, as well).
Even still, he’s quite durable before something happens that completely takes him out. For instance, Victoria stabbed him in the eye and he borderline laughed it off. There’s an argument to be made that only specific individuals with a specific weapon (meaning at least Sienna Shaw and her magical sword) can truly beat him. So the answer to how tough he is comes down to who he’s facing.
3) Michael Myers
Halloween Ends really jostled our ability to put Michael Myers at the top of this particular list. Up until then, though, he had a valid claim on the number one spot.
Before then, we had watched Jason Voorhees die a few times. Even if he came back, he still died. Freddy, too, had died, and in his case, he didn’t really come back (New Nightmare took place outside the main timeline, as it were, and it’s speculated that the events of Freddy vs. Jason take place prior to Freddy’s Dead). But we had never seen Michael die. And now we have, at the hands of an old acquaintance, who pinned him to a kitchen table with a few knives and slit his throat. It always took a lot more to put Jason or Freddy down for the count. Even still, Michael ranks high, because for a dozen movies he really did seem fully unstoppable, with not so much as a weakness like Jason’s (occasionally mentioned) fear of drowning or Freddy’s full mortality in the real world.
2) Jason Voorhees
If any horror movie antagonist has found seemingly infinite ways to kill characters off, it’s Jason Voorhees. And he himself has “died” quite a few times, too. First, he drowned in Crystal Lake prior to the events of the first film. Then, Paramount wanted to be done with the franchise after Friday the 13th Part III, so they had Chris Higgins slam an axe in his head. Then they really wanted to be done with the IP after Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, so Tommy Jarvis slammed a machete into the side of his head.
But money is money, so he came back for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. He then died for a fourth time in Jason Takes Manhattan via the sewer water mentioned in the Victor Crowley entry. But then New Line got the property, so there came Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. He died not once but twice in that, first via SWAT and then via demons from Hell. But Jason X still exists, so apparently not even Hell would hold Mr. Voorhees. Were it not for a particular dream demon, Jason would be the most formidable horror antagonist.
1) Freddy Krueger
The A Nightmare on Elm Street movies proved to be such substantial financial successes (at least for a few entries) because they broke away from the silent, stalking antagonist model of success that the subgenre had relied on for a while. But even when he was cracking jokes, Freddy Krueger proved he was the horror icon you would least like to meet.
The key advantage Freddy has over the Jasons, Michaels, or Victors of the cinematic world is that he doesn’t operate in our plane of existence. He gets you when you’re most vulnerable. Did he die in Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare? Sure, but first Lisa Zane’s Maggie Burroughs had to drag him out of dream world. And she was only really able to do that because her name was actually Katherine Krueger, so Freddy was a bit distracted spouting a bunch of exposition to his daughter. There’s an argument to be made Freddy shouldn’t be number one because Nancy was able to pull him out of the dream world in the original film and then just turn her back on him, but there was another scare scene right after that, and the franchise never again made it clear if the turning of one’s back on Freddy actually drains him of his power (though it’s still a wonderful finale for that first film).
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