5 Horror Villains Who Aren't As Bad As They Seem

5 Existential Thrills

You could argue that a killer like Chucky does what he does for the fun of it, but when it comes to the full experience of death, no movie villain can trump Pinhead. Of course, you need to be clear which Pinhead you're talking about here, because in the sequels Pinhead is just a glorified Michael Myers who jammed Q-tips in his face in lieu of a Shatner mask and raided an S&M fet party for his wardrobe. But the first Pinhead, way back in Hellraiser Part 1, he was something special.

The name Hellraiser clearly confused a lot of viewers and studio executives, who decided the movie should be about slightly perverted, semi-sexual hate demons. In the first movie, that's not true at all. They're totally perverted, overtly sexual sensation explorers. It's a huge difference. But the key is that they're not demons. They're not from hell. You might think you're in hell if you go to Pinhead's house, but that's just because you don't get where he's coming from, which is a place where you can be tortured so severely that the lines between life and death and pain and pleasure lose all meaning. Which sounds super twisted, but hey, everyone needs a hobby.

Pinhead and his little friends the Cenobites never meant to just murder people outright or punish them like the silly sequels imply. They want to push the limits of what it means to sense things, to feel all sensations simultaneously, like pooping while watching the saddest movie ever on a roller coaster that ends with you getting a raise while your grandma dies in a field of hot, nekkid ladies. You don't even know what to feel when it's all over, but you definitely felt something. So if you need to be flayed alive and have meat hooks jammed up your ass to get there, well, Pinhead's willing to do that for you.

4 Reproduction And Freedom

John Carpenter's The Thing is awesome in so many ways that if it came to your house and ordered you to make a sandwich, by God you'd do it without question and then let it have the comfy seat on the couch. It's a nearly flawless horror film, due in no small part to the fact that the villain is incredible. What the hell is the Thing? It doesn't even get a name, just general terminology, because it's so hard to wrap your head around. Every piece of it is alive, every piece wants to live, but somehow they can work together as a whole as well, and its only goal is to get free. And if that means eating Wilford Brimley, then so be it.

In the original film, the aforementioned diabeetus spokesman is convinced the Thing could consume the entire world if it escapes, and it very well could, but you have to wonder if it wants that, since it does try to build a spacecraft to leave. And it showed up in a spacecraft as well, so it has intelligence. It's advanced, probably more intelligent than the humans it replicates, even though at no time does it attempt to establish a dialogue or explain what it wants. It doesn't care what the hell the humans think any more than it cares what the dogs think. They're a means to an end.

Imagine you crash on an alien world and you're incapacitated. The locals find you, you wake up, and what happens? You're going to want to get the hell out of there, because if there's one thing we can all be assured of it's that aliens (in this case humans) want to probe asses. Even the Thing knew that. And since its physiology is so fluid, it could literally turn into nothing but asses and be probed until time ends. Who would want that? Actually ... well, no, that would get tiring.

So the Thing hatches a plan to escape, and that plan includes subterfuge. Hide in plain sight. Turn into one of the bad guys. This is the oldest trick in the book. Even Indiana Jones killed the odd Nazi to put on the uniform. The Thing could have been his world's Indiana Jones, and Kurt Goddamn Russell kept fucking up his plan to bring back some really cool Earth swag to his peoples' museums. Thanks, asshole.

3 Preventing Greater Evil

Clive Barker, the man who gave us Pinhead, also dropped an under-appreciated film back in the day called Nightbreed, based on his story Cabal. And maybe it wasn't a faithful adaptation, but that doesn't make it any less of a cool movie, especially in terms of the monsters -- this movie went balls-to-the-wall with monster effects, possibly even literally in some scenes. But those aren't even the bad guys.

Canadian director and extremely unsettling-in-a-super-calm-way dude David Cronenberg stars in the movie as a psychologist treating a patient who has terrible serial killer dreams. And his dreams come true. And here's a 25-year-old spoiler for you -- the real killer is the doctor himself.

So, long story short, the hero goes to this insane Canadian cemetery where an entire city of monsters exists underground, and the doctor follows to try to kill them all, also while explaining his evil plan along the way -- Dr. Decker has been killing Breeders. The kind of people who become Nightbreed are the ones he's knocking off. What a bitch, right? The Nightbreed are presented as noble, almost like an oppressed native tribe, just trying to live their lives while the world of man stomps a mud hole in their dirty hides. What shitty jerks we all must be.

The only problem with the idea of the Nightbreed as the victims is that, in the very first meeting with them, our hero gets bit by a Rastafarian monster with terrible skin who declares he's "meat" when challenged on the matter. Humans are meat. They eat people. So fuck those guys. In the grand scheme of things, it might be cool to have a bunch of really awesome-looking monsters around, but not if they're going to eat you. This is the point in the story when you start sending Dr. Decker letters of support in his mad-serial-killer quest. They paint him as the villain at every stop, but at the end of the movie, Cronenberg hasn't tried to eat a single person, so he's still ahead of the game.

2 Sporting Fun

Across three real movies and two terrible versus movies best forgotten, Predators have been hunting mankind for shits and giggles as we all try to get to the choppa before a tiny, wrist-mounted nuke destroys the neighborhood. And so far it's worked out A-OK for mankind. If Danny Glover and Adrien Brody can fight off a Predator, then your mom probably can too. But should you? Well, probably. But don't feel bad if you die.

"It's all part of the circle of lAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

As brutal as Predators seem to be with their giant laser cannons and hot knives and big spears and that boomerang-pie-plate thing, the guys are just here for fun. Earth is their rich guy's African resort. And we're their rhinos. Except they're a little more noble than human hunters, because clearly humans aren't endangered and, unlike every animal humans hunt, we can fight back. We do. We Danny Glover the shit out of them every time they come to Earth. So these aliens are really earning their kills.

Basically, we feel victimized by the Predators simply because, like animals out on the plains, we're not aware we're part of a really shitty game that has no second-place prize. So when you find out you're playing, it's a real kick in the ass, because there doesn't seem to be a way to forfeit or play the touch version that's family-friendly. You either have to endure having your spine pulled out of your asshole then buff-shined on a rooftop in L.A., or you need to put your life on hold for as long as it takes to slaughter a neon-blooded kill beast that has a tooth-filled vagina-face and learns to swear after minimal observation.

The weirdly ironic thing about hunters on Earth is how often people on social media espouse how great it would be to see the hunter get the same treatment as their prey. This is exactly what happens when the Predator shows up. They hunt according to what are arguably the ethical guidelines of all humanity -- they let their prey fight back. They're far more fair and noble than human hunters in that way, and if anything we should be offering them a congratulatory "good game" before they rip off the neighbor's head.

1 Survival

Bram Stoker is responsible for at once making vampires awesome and terrible all in the same character. Dracula is completely badass but also is the grandfather of all candy-ass loser-pires that have long since befouled pop culture with their bloody ennui and shiftless hipster assholery. Before Dracula, vampires were basically ghouls -- rotting, monstrous fiends who ate your face because you deserved it. Dracula was refined and gentlemanly, if somewhat prone to rage, and that was wicked cool. He was the James Bond of the undead. And he killed you because he had to. Sometimes because he wanted to, but often because he had to.

Dracula, and most any vampire, needs to eat. They eat blood. And if a vampire is no longer human, then when it kills, it's simply taking out livestock to sustain itself. It's the same as when I go to White Castle and kill those Ultimate Jalapeno Cheese Fries like you don't even know.

The only reason vampires are considered monsters is that we're their preferred food source. You could say the same about zombies, except those shiftless brain-munchers don't really need to eat anything; the little shits are already dead and rotting, so it's less a necessity and more of a crappy habit. Vampires, though, are just doing what we all do. And just as PETA hates you for eating cows, so would you probably hate a vampire for feasting on you. It's not so much a moral thing as a perspective thing. Like when you see a lion eating a gazelle, you kind of cringe a little and maybe root for the gazelle to get away, but deep down you're OK with the lion eating it, because what the hell else is he going to do, order pizza?

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