Some of the best Scream Kings to honor this Halloween
By Rachel Roth
7. Robert Englund
Known for playing Freddy Krueger, the amusing dream demon that is as evil as he is ridiculous that Englund totally engulfed himself in. He played Freddy a total of ten times. Ten! Made up from a cameo appearance on The Simpsons where he voiced Freddy, seven Nightmare on Elm Street movies, a crossover movie with Jason Voorhees called Freddy vs. Jason, and a horror series called Freddy’s Nightmares that ran from 1988 to 1990.
Jackie Earle Haley replaced him in the 2010 remake, and though I thought Haley did a pretty good job making the role more sinister, it wasn’t the same without Englund.
The success of A Nightmare on Elm Street made Englund the first horror actor movie star since Christopher Lee and a must-have for wacky horror movies. But he doesn’t seem to mind, in fact he seems to love it. He knows where his fans come from and he loves the character Wes Craven created. He signs memorabilia as “Freddy” and continues pitching future potential Nightmare movies. If we forgot that he played Freddy for a minute, we’d see that he’s more than a guy capable of laughing manically while he slices teenagers. His range of acting in the Nightmare movies alone shows how charming he could be on screen if given the chance.
Phantom of the Opera (1989), The Mangler (1995), Urban Legends (1998), Python (2000), Wishmaster (1997), 2001 Maniacs (2005), Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon (2006), Inkubus (2011), Fear Clinic (2014), and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007) are some other Englund horror movies. He even had a cameo on Supernatural, episode 6×11 “Appointment in Samara.”
6. Boris Karloff
Back when monster films ruled Hollywood, Boris Karloff was the king of the silver screen. Most known for playing The Monster in multiple Frankenstein movies and for voicing the Grinch and narrating the TV special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. For his contribution to both film and television, he was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Born William Henry Pratt, a quiet, reserved Englishman who created his stage name in order to prevent any embarrassment that his family might have felt about him becoming an actor. In the first years of his career, he struggled to make a living and would work odd jobs on the side to make ends meet. His first role was an extra in a crowd in a lost film made by Frank Borzage for which he was paid a whomping $5. Karloff had already made eighty movies before getting cast in Frankenstein in a performance that would be listed in Empire magazine as “the sixth-greatest horror movie character of all time”, and that pretty much ended his money troubles. As The Monster, he came off both sympathetic and terrifying, something audiences weren’t used to seeing in monster characters, and it made him a global sensation.
He played the Monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939) and then in an ironic twist later appeared as Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein 1970 (1958) and the stop-motion animated musical, Mad Monster Party (1967). Besides for the main duo in Mary Shelley’s novel, Karloff also embodied other wide-known horror icons such as Imhotep a.k.a. The Mummy in The Mummy (1932) and as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde in Abbott and Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953). He starred alongside fellow scream king, Bela Lugosi, in multiple movies including The Body Snatcher (1945) and The Black Cat (1934).