10 Horror Movie Characters Who Made Our Skin Crawl

2. Richie Gecko - From Dusk Till Dawn

From Dusk Till Dawn Quentin Tarantino Richie Gecko
Miramax Films

For full disclosure, Quentin Tarantino's Rickie Gecko is the character who inspired this entire article.

Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn is such a brilliant mish-mash of a movie, flitting between being a road movie, an action movie, and a horror movie - all while being a ridiculously cool movie.

While George Clooney's Seth Gecko merges from an all-out criminal to an antihero of sorts while this 1996 picture plays out, Seth's brother Richie doesn't quite follow the same trajectory. Instead, Richie is a self-serving, manipulative, lying scumbag from the first moment we see him, right up until he becomes a vampire and is then killed off.

Of course, that's not even mentioning the grim fact that Richie is a convicted sex offender, and his early movie rape and murder of a female bank clerk is then followed by him constantly leering over Juliette Lewis' Kate Fuller.

The interactions between Richie and Kate are clearly troubling, but the most chilling moments of From Dusk till Dawn are the exchanges between Tarantino's character and the doomed bank clerk who is left in his charge while Seth goes hunting for supplies.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.