20 Awesome Horror Villains Introduced In TERRIBLE Movies
These terrific horror villains didn't get the best coming-out parties.
Horror movies tend to live and die on the strength of their villains, because genre fans will forgive a lot of bad writing if there are some cool kills to savour and the bad guy is fun to watch.
Coming up with a neat villain is evidently easier than writing a good script and directing a solid movie, though, considering the number of recognisable horror villains who have gotten their start in a frankly terrible film.
And that's absolutely the case with these 20 horror villains, who had humble origins in movies that were largely panned by critics and even dismissed by a large portion of audiences.
In many instances the villains managed to persevere, their own popularity allowing a franchise to bloom regardless of that initial dud entry, while other promising antagonists ended up crashing out after just a single flop film.
Whatever the circumstances, these horror villains were cool enough to clearly deserve a much better film right out of the gate.
They can't all launch with a generational banger like Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but not-awful is definitely a good place to start...
20. Lubdan - Leprechaun
1993's horror-comedy Leprechaun is pretty damn ropey by any conventional metric - memorable only for starring Jennifer Aniston in an early role and also Warwick Davis' genuinely superb performance as Lubdan the vengeful leprechaun.
Despite the campy nature of the material, Davis gives a genuinely well-rounded and fully committed turn, bringing playful menace to the character while aided by some undeniably brilliant makeup and costume work.
Without such a great performer and killer character design, Leprechaun would've surely been a one-and-done affair, yet it led to a six-movie franchise in which Lubdan went to both outer space and the hood, with Davis portraying him for the entire original run of movies.
For as deeply stupid as the first film and really the entire franchise is, the villain work is actually honest-to-God brilliant throughout, Lubdan proving to be one of the most supremely watchable and even downright iconic horror villains of the 1990s.