If you don’t know by now, Jordan Morgan – the Green Bay Packers first-round pick from this past draft – has a thing for horror movies. That may be selling it a bit short so I rephrase it in a more accurate way: Jordan Morgan has an entire leg sleeve of horror movie characters.
The Packers’ social media team had Packers players trying to guess the characters.
This being Halloween – and me being a bit of a spooky person myself – I thought I’d take a stab at ranking his tattoos by the movie/series. (See what I did there? Stab? Having Heather Graham from the Stab series – the in-movie series of the Scream franchise – would be a true deep cut, but maybe he’s saving that for the next sleeve.)
By my count, he has 12 characters. So let’s run it down.
Michael Myers – Halloween
The original John Carpenter film is one of my all-time favorite movies and one I go back to multiple times each year. Perfect spooky atmosphere, great cast and an all-timer of a soundtrack. Sure, the tropes set up in it have been done to death at this point, but that’s just what happens when you make a horror classic. It’s often cited as the first slasher, even if plenty of movies before showed plenty of the things this film leaned on.
The series after the first one is dicey at best, but it’s madcap in a way that I truly enjoy. In the original run, we get an unconnected anthology movie revolving around pieces of Stonehenge embedded into children’s Halloween masks. When Myers makes his return, he’s controlled by a Druidic cult.
This series gives us Paul Rudd. We get Busta Rhymes drop-kicking Michael Myers. Eventually, we get an unhinged Rob Zombie trying something interesting (and sometimes succeeding), then David Gordon Green wiping away everything except the first movie and trying to make a sequel trilogy (the first movie is good, and the next two devolve at a rapid pace).
Not a perfect series, but it’s insane in a way that I like and the original is a true classic.
5 stars
Leatherface – Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Another series where the original is an absolute classic, and the rest of the series gets a bit batty. But that first movie is ridiculously good. The name of the movie – along with the image of Leatherface – gets this grouped in with the slasher series. And, while the series ends up going that route eventually, the original is a grimy, sweaty, unnerving descent into madness and horror, featuring an all-time Final Girl in Sally Hardesty.
The second movie in the series is a fun – if wildly different – take on the series, with Dennis Hopper going Leatherface/Sawyer Family huntin’. We get a movie with a young Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey (that I think both of those actors have tried to wipe from their resume at some point). We get Alexandra Daddario saying such iconic lines like, “Do your thing, cuz” while throwing a chainsaw. The remake with Jessica Biel is surprisingly good, as is The Beginning.
To call this series “uneven” is being charitable, but the first movie is amazing and there’s enough other good stuff to mark it high on the list.
5 stars
Jason Voorhees – Friday the 13th
Jason doesn’t show up until the second movie and doesn’t get his mask until the third, but he has become one of the most recognizable slashers in pop culture. As with any slasher series that hangs on as long as this one did, there are ups and downs (with Jason X being an absolute up, regardless of what you might hear from others). It’s a series that can get a bit samey after a while, even when they try to move the setting away from Camp Crystal Lake (including a movie where they try to go to New York, but spend 75% of the movie on a boat).
A good – if forgettable at times – slasher series with some nice highs. Parts 2, 4 and 6 are probably my favorites, but you can kind of throw any of these on and you’ll get roughly the same thing. There’s a comfort in that.
5 stars
Freddy Krueger – A Nightmare on Elm Street
First movie is a classic. The last movie – Wes Craven’s New Nightmare – is probably my favorite of the series and one of my all-time favorite movies: it revolves around a great concept around the nature of why we create stories, and, in the process, makes Freddy once again a terrifying figure. After a run where Freddy goes from relatively silent man who hunts you in your dreams to a comic character filled with zingers, it was a refreshing way to end the series.
There’s more variety here than with Friday the 13th as you run through the series. It doesn’t always work but there are some fun, creative moments throughout.
5 stars
Hannibal Lecter – Silence of the Lambs
The only movie on this list that won an Oscar for Best Picture, so you can feel real fancy while watching it. This first movie still holds up, with Anthony Hopkins becoming the terrifying and captivating titular character. Tremendous cast.
The next movie isn’t great, but Red Dragon rules and the Hannibal TV show – with the always amazing Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal – is three seasons of art.
5 stars
Regan/Pazuzu – The Exorcist
I got to this one relatively late in life and I feel like the original didn’t pack the same punch as it should have (I saw one of the iconic scenes in The Burbs before I saw The Exorcist itself).
That being said, the original has incredible atmosphere and effects, with a star-making turn from a young Linda Blair. Great cast.
The series devolves pretty terribly after the original (even if The Exorcist III is pretty solid). Horror master Mike Flanagan is picking up the mantle for the next movie, so I’ve got some pretty high hopes for the next installment.
4.5 stars
Pennywise – IT
Morgan’s tattoo features the new, Bill Skarsgard Pennywise from the 2017 series, which I really enjoyed. The 1990 miniseries (with Tim Curry as Pennywise) is iconic, but to say it’s a bit dated is being kind. I know the new series has its detractors (nostalgia is a funny thing), but I really enjoyed this new run, even if the second movie kind of drags a bit at times. Absolutely unreal cast in It Chapter Two, though. Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, James McAvoy are the headliners, but everyone absolutely brings it in this series.
4.5 stars
Billy the Puppet/Jigsaw – Saw
There are 10 Saw movies. TEN! With an eleventh on the way next year. And a lot of them still involve Jigsaw, even though he dies very early in the series. I’ve never seen a series retcon as many moments as this series does. At some point, we get some Scooby-Doo comical reveals, with 5 minute scenes showing how, actually, this person was the mastermind behind the whole thing and this is exactly how they did it. It’s insane and more than a little comical.
We’re getting spin-offs, too. Jigsaw is getting his own movies, which have to be prequels but the actor is 20 years older now than he was when the series started. We also have a movie with Chris Rock for some reason. In the flashbacks within that movie, we know Rock is younger because he is wearing a backwards hat.
Creative kills (because they have to be), but at some point this series just becomes “who wants to watch people get killed in terrible ways.” Which, ya know, hand raised by yours truly, but they’re not really interesting past the first couple movies. The first two movies are legitimately good, though. I go to bat for those pretty hard.
GK Chesterton did it better with Manalive.
3.5 stars
Chucky – Child’s Play
Wild series. WILD series. The first movie doesn’t do a ton for me because why would you not just stomp on him the first time he starts moving? He’s literally a doll. His little footsteps running around the house sound like Kramer’s Mr. Marbles.
Still, the series gets more creative and interesting as it goes on. It’s still kicking (with a couple new movies and a TV series) and is more creative than ever. The series eventually brought in Fiona Dourif (daughter of Brad Dourif, who played the serial killer inhabiting the body of the Good Guy doll who gets stabby stabby), and she’s amazing.
Get past the first 3 movies and this series gets really interesting, but you have to kind of buy into what they’re doing now. It’s fun and creative in a way these slasher series rarely get as they age.
3.5 stars
Kayako – The Grudge
Morgan says this is the scariest movie he’s ever seen. It made him scared of hair, which tracks with the movie. The original (both the Japanese original Ju-On and the American remake) are pretty scary, with the remake helping pave the way for the J-Horror wave in the early 00s. The series as a whole devolves in a hurry, but the original is a solid – if somewhat dated – film.
3 stars
Valak – The Nun/The Conjuring
The first Conjuring movie (which doesn’t feature The Nun) is great, full stop. The Nun herself shows up in the second movie, and, while that movie as a whole is entirely too long, the scenes with The Nun are great and creepy.
The Nun movies? Not great. Great atmosphere and setting. I love that they cast Taissa Farmiga (the younger sister of Vera Farmiga, who plays one of the main characters in the Conjuring series) in the lead role, because she’s great. But the movies themselves don’t do much for me. I have thrown them on the background a lot because they look great, but the movies themselves are kind of a slog.
Watch Taissa Farmiga in The Final Girls, instead. A creative horror-comedy take on the slasher genre with a ton of heart.
2.5 stars
The Creeper – Jeepers Creepers
I don’t want to rank this one because writer/director Victor Salva is a creep of the highest order. The first movie is good (I believe that Justin Long is incapable of being in a bad movie), but please do not pay to watch it. If you want to watch it, find it used on Blu Ray or something.
After the first movie, this series falls off in a hurry. The second movie is bad. The third movie is borderline unwatchable. It’s like they shot the movie with a potato.
Album listened to: John Carpenter – Halloween [Soundtrack]
