I had just turned 9 and wrestling, video games, Florida State Football and horror was at the top of my list. So when Leatherface, Michael, Jason and Freddy, got together for a classic photo shoot for People Magazine, you couldn't ask for anything better. Published on November 7, 1988, the 5 greatest horror icons posed for some classic shots for a Halloween special...well a week or so late, but better late than never for these guys.
They’re the reason that Hollywood accountants sleep well at night and American teens don’t. Averaging 20 victims per outing, these Hollywood horror hounds have laid a trail of death over a quarter-mile long (assuming a 5-foot skull-to-toe-tag span per corpse).
The box office take from their combined 17 monstrous flicks has topped a bloody $500 million. So, for Halloween, it seemed ghoulishly appropriate that Jason, Freddy, Michael and Leather-face, the peerless princes of the pathological, gather to compare notes.
Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, 33), the hockey-masked murderer of the Friday the 13th movies, which have grossed $172.5 million to date, groans about his teenage telekinetic adversary in Friday Part VII. “I chase her out onto the porch, and she causes the entire front of the house and the roof to collapse. About 700 pounds fell right on my head,” he moans. “Kind of rang my bell.”
George P. Wilbur, 46, the new endoskeleton beneath the other masked maniac, Michael Myers of the Halloween series ($168 million), is not to be outdone. Myers has just emerged from a 10-year coma to launch more mayhem in the new Halloween 4, and Wilbur is trying to number his latest cache of victims. “Oh, it’s countless,” he says despairingly. “A minimum of 15. I’ve got a massive body count on this one.”
Resting on the 45-inch blade of his insatiable chainsaw, Leatherface (Bob Elmore, 35) reminisces about filming the first sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre($100 million) in 1986. “It was 170°,” he moans. “But I destroyed a Mercedes, killed lots of people and cut a guy’s head off. So that was real nice.”
Freddy Krueger (the recently wed Robert Englund), 39, is the only actor here to have played his fiendish character in every sequel of A Nightmare on Elm Street I through 4, which have grossed $148 million. Now star of the new TV series Freddy’s Nightmares, he looks undead on his feet per usual. The char-grilled “bastard son of a hundred maniacs” is lazily skewering apple slices on his razor fingers. Sneering in perfect Freddy fashion and baring his rotting fangs, he raises his wineglass and hisses a toast: “This blood’s for you, sucker.” Uh, thanks, Freddy, and Happy Halloween, guys.
What a year, great horror...there is nothing like it.
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