Before we dive into this month's Top 10, I want to share a couple pieces of fan art created one of my betas for the Albion books. I'm very excited to share them with you because who doesn't love seeing characters they've written inspire others to create something?
You can check out more of Meltintalle's art on her Tumblr.
Okay, back to the subject at hand.
I know that "scary" is a subjective word, so let me clarify: these are characters that have, at one time or another, frightened me. Most of them were just frightening when I was a child (in some cases, specific incidents when I was a child), but all of them still have something unsettling about them even now.
I'm thinking in particular of the version from Disney's animated adaptation of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (which was first released as part of the package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, but which I knew as its own movie thanks to VHS). The sequence at the end where Ichabod flees a demonic-seeming rider with a sword and a flaming jack-o'-lantern head was one of the scariest things I'd seen when I was young; still, that didn't stop me from watching it several times a year.
Gmork
The Nothing's agent in The Neverending Story is a werewolf named Gmork. Although given a bit more significance in the book, the film's version had the added creepiness factors of glowing green eyes and animatronics that looked almost like claymation. This guy, along with the wolves from Beauty and the Beast and the werewolf from Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, gave me a healthy aversion for all things lupine for many years.
Asmodeus is an adder who slithers through Mossflower in the first Redwall book, repeating his name and calling his victims to him with a hypnotic voice. I have to blame the animated TV show that adapted Redwall for this one (see below). Though the animation leaves something to be desired nowadays, the voice acting is still creepy as heck. When I read the book, I could only hear that voice (David Hemblen, who voiced Magneto in the '90s X-Men show).
By the time I actually saw a film version of Dracula (much less read the book), the whole "I vant to zuck your blooood!" joke had taken away any significance for the idea of a vampire. At least, you would think it would have. But the story of a man who can so completely deceive society about his true nature still kept me glued to the screen and the page.
I talked about this guy a little while back when I shared a watercolor I painted of him. He's cruel, cunning, and vindictive as the devil. He has no qualms about killing people and sacrificing whole kingdoms in his quest for knowledge and power. Avoid him if you can (which, if you're in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, is unlikely).
Mr. Dark is the leader of the evil carnival in Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and he is chilling in his malice and his pursuit of Will and Jim. The scene that stands out most when I think of Mr. Dark is when he is questioning Will's father on the street, while the boys hide in the storm drain beneath their feet. As Dark grows more impatient with Mr. Halloway's question-dodging, Dark digs his fingernails into his palms--which are tattooed with Will's and Jim's faces. It's a harrowing scene that will not leave the mind, and Jonathan Pryce brought it fully to life in the 1980s film adaptation (which Bradbury himself wrote the screenplay for).
McLeach
"I didn't make it all the way through third grade for nothing."
One of the lesser-known Disney villains, McLeach is one of the few to actually show up in my nightmares. Though I never put it into words as a child, I think he was scarier than the likes of Maleficent or Scar or Ursula for the simple fact that he was fully human, and his only goal was to make more money by killing endangered animals. He didn't want power or fame or the kingdom. And he was willing to kill a child to keep his operation secret from the authorities. His cheerful singing of "Home on the Range" as he carts Cody back to his lair and "You Get a Line, I'll Get a Pole" as he taunts the crocodiles with a bound Cody are still unsettling.
The spirit of destruction and pollution from FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Hexxus is on the list for the simple fact that at the start of his introductory song (thanks for the singalong nightmares, Tim Curry) Hexxus appears as a skeleton climbing out of the sludge. Some people talk about Curry's Pennywise from IT scarring them for life, but really Hexxus is as creepy a villain you could ask for in animation.
Gollum isn't typically considered a scary character. Pitiable, perhaps creepy, but not that scary.
Tell that to the preteen version of me who decided watching the animated version of The Hobbit in a dark bedroom. Gollum is now the scariest thing on the planet. Goodbye. Thanks for playing. (This impression did not improve when The Fellowship of the Ring came out, because they kept Gollum in the dark except for his eyes. Thanks, Peter Jackson.)
Two things to clarify: This is my favorite short story ever and I know the old man is the victim. However, there is an animated version of the story from 1953, narrated by James Mason, that is quite eerie. The literature textbook that first introduced me to this story featured screenshots from that film, including the one above, and that image would not get out of my head for years afterward.
If you're interested in seeing the short film in totality, here it is:
So who are some of the scariest characters you've encountered?
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