10 Awesome Horror Movie Villains (With Surprisingly Low Kill Counts)
6. Jack Torrance (The Shining)
HEREEEE'S JOHNNY! Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining is legendary, no doubt one of the most famous horror icons in cinema. That's why it may come as a surprise to some that Torrance is actually only responsible for a single death. Torrance begins to slowly lose his sanity after agreeing to caretake at a remote hotel over the winter with only his wife and son for company (along with some less-than-friendly ghosts).
Torrance, turned axe-wielding maniac, murders the head chef Dick Hallorann in the lobby of the Overlook Hotel when he arrives to investigate the situation. Despite all the iconic imagery of Jack Torrance smashing his way through the door of the hotel room to terrorise his wife or him chasing his son through the snowy hedge maze, he is actually low down on the scale of murders.
Perhaps this is why some people may quite easily misremember Jack Torrance as the villain in a slasher film, akin to something like Scream or Friday the 13th. However, a lot of The Shining's horror of course comes from a more disturbing place of isolation and madness rather than bloody murder.
KILL COUNT: 1