10 Horror Movie Characters Who Made Our Skin Crawl

By its very nature, the horror genre is one often littered with despicable people carrying out heinous acts, often in the most brutal of ways imaginable.

While brutality is one way to drum up dread and make an audience uncomfortable, there are so many other ways to have horror hounds wincing in their seats. And at times, there's no better way to get under someone's skin than by serving up a character who is, well, a bit of a creep.

This list isn't about the classic larger-than-life villains of horror, but more the focus is on those horror characters who were so eww-inducing that that they had you crossing your fingers that something truly dreadful was going to happen to them.

Here, it's about the slimeballs, the sleazes, the arrogant a**hats, the all-out obnoxious jerks and the like. Y'know, those characters who were able to irritate you and/or disturb you without having to slice 'n' dice their way through a pile of disposable teens to do so - and in some cases, these characters were even positioned as protagonists in their respective pictures.

With that in mind, then, here are ten horror characters who managed to continuously make our skin crawl during their time on the silver screen.

With his second Hostel offering, Eli Roth gave audiences several characters who were painfully unlikeable.

Of course, there's the Elite Hunting Club itself, whose particular business of torture is chillingly sinister. Then there's Stuart (Rogert Bart), the seemingly meek and mild fella who finds himself winning an auction to commit bloody murder and then goes full-on nuts.

The most disturbing, annoying piece of the Hostel II puzzle, though, has to be Richard Burgi's Todd Hughes.

Essentially a minted jock who never particularly grew up, Todd is nothing if not pumped at the prospect of getting to terrorise and torment some helpless victims. In this case, this prick is the 'winner' when it comes to an auction to kill two young American girls - those girls being Beth and Bijou Phillips' Whitney.

After all of his bravado and general 'bro' behaviour, the kicker in Hostel: Part II is that Todd completely bottles the task at hand when he finally finds himself faced with the tied-up Whitney. After accidentally scalping his victim, Todd panics, starts to cry and tries to leave the Elite Hunting Group facility.

Fortunately for audiences, Todd's would-be escape is foiled and he's tore to pieces by a pack of savage dogs.