Greatest Horror Movie Characters
Just when you thought it was safe to come back out from behind the sofa or your cinema chair a new horror movie, a possibly a new icon comes along.
This week sees the release of The Collector, which so easily could spawn into a franchise as so many horror movies before it. When the Chase family moves to an isolated house in the middle of nowhere in Detroit, Arkin is hired to fix the windows and the doors.
Later he meets his daughter and his wife that has a debt with dangerous sharks and needs money, but his week payment is not enough to pay her debts.
Arkin plots to heist the safe of Michael Chase during the night to raise the necessary money. However, when he arrives in the house, he finds that a sadistic criminal has imprisoned the family and planted traps everywhere. Arkin seeks a way out of the deadly house to save his life.
So to celebrate the release FemaleFirst takes a look at some of horror movie's icons.
Freddy Kruger
Kruger burst onto our screen in 1984 in A Nightmare on Elm Street as an undead child serial killer who attacks his victims in their own dreams.
Wes Craven got his inspiration for the character from a story in the LA Times about a twenty one year old man who died in his dreams.
Played by Robert Englund the character of Freddy Kruger has gone on to be one of the most iconic and recognised villains in this genre of film.
Norman Bates
Norman Bates was created by writer Robert Bloch as the villain of his novel Psycho. Based on real-life serial killer Ed Gein, Bates suffered severe emotional abuse as a child as the hands of his mother.
The two lived alone, after the death of his father, where she preached that women and sex were evil.
After his mother took a lover Bates killed them both through jealousy and preserved his mother's corpse.
Bates developed a dissociative identity disorder taking on his mother's personality as a way of repressing the fact that he had killed her.
Anthony Perkins took on the role of Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 horror movie Psycho.
Leatherface
With the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974 saw the birth of the now popular slasher movie and one of cinema's most iconic horror characters Leatherface.
The character was inspired in part by notorious serial killer Ed Gein, who also wore the skin of his victims and throughout the first movie Leatherface is never seen without his human flesh masks.
Unlike many other movie killer Leatherface is not so much sadistic or evil but is severely mentally disturbed and is under the control of his family.
Michael Myers
John Carpenter's hit movie Halloween introduced the horror genre to a new villain in the form of Michael Myers, who has gone on to be one of the most well known.
Michael Myers, played by Will Sandin, has spent many years locked away in a mental hospital under the care of child psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis after he killed his older sister, by stabbing her to death, at the age of six.
One night he escapes from the hospital and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield to continue his killing spree. Once in Haddonfield his obsession with Laurie Strode begins.
The most recent picture Halloween, a reworking of the original focuses more of Michael's psychology. The idea behind the film is altered from the original as Michael is not out to kill Laurie but reunite with her, the only member of his family he cared for.
Jigsaw
Jigsaw is the most recent horror film villain from the Saw series of films. He kidnaps people who he believes were wasting their lives and attempts to 'save' them by putting them through a series of inhumane tests.
Unlike many of his horror villain counterparts Jigsaw's intention is not to kill his victims but to force them to survive.
Jason Voorhees
And of course we can't look at horror movie icons without including Friday the 13th villain Jason teased for his deformities he drowns in Crystal Lake.
Living in the forest area of Crystal Lake he's famous for wielding a machete Jason now takes his revenge on the camp's guests.
The Collector is released 25th June.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw