10 Most Terrifying Horror Movie Villains You've Never Heard Of
7. Dr. Phillip Decker/Ol' Button Face - Nightbreed (1990)
Everybody has a secret face I dont know why, but theres something really satisfying about finding out that one of your favourite performers or artists is also ultra-talented in another field: finding out that Clint Eastwood plays fantastic piano, for example, or that Pierce Brosnan was a renowned fire-eater (seriously, look it up). To that, we can add surreal, weird-ass auteur David Cronenberg and his revelation of an acting performance in Clive Barkers Nightbreed, as psychiatrist Dr. Decker. If youve not seen Barkers movie, or read his book Cabal upon which its based, the Nightbreed is a catch-all term for a thousand different races of monster, mostly culled by human persecution over time back to a few here and there, whove all found their way to the underground city of Midian. In this film, the monsters are well, not quite the good guys, but as close as were going to get. Dr. Phillp Decker, on the other hand, is a different kind of monster, a serial killer: and not one of the cool, exotic, sexy kind thats all over movies and television these days. No, Decker, wearing a tight, sack-like mask with a zip at the mouth and buttons covering the eyes, ripping whole families to pieces, obsessed with filth and decay thats a monster of a different stripe. Certainly more of one than the films protagonist Boone, one of Deckers patients with mental health issues, who Decker persuades has actually committed his own murders in order to have a warm body to throw to the cops. Yeah, hes a proper b*stard as well as a slavering killer. Cronenberg has acted before and since, but never in a role as meaty as this one, and this is almost certainly a career best for the cult director. And that mask is actually terrifying Decker calls his alternate, murderous persona Ol Button Face in Cabal, casting him almost as a separate identity within his messed-up psyche. Hey, hes the head-doctor. Hed know.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
