10 Horror Movie Heroes & Villains That Didn't Know Each Other Existed

2023 heralded a welcome return to horror for director Eli Roth, who adapted his Grindhouse trailer Thanksgiving into a feature film. But the film that originally made Roth's name was Hostel, the no-holds-barred torture-a-thon that brought every backpacker's worst nightmare to the silver screen and helped put splatter on the map.

In this 2005 picture, young travellers stay for a few nights in a hostel that turns into a lifetime in hell when they're kidnapped by the self-styled Elite Hunting Club and sold to the highest bidder. Once captured, the victims - including the movie's hero, Paxton Rodriguez (Jay Hernandez) - are subjected to the worst tortures imaginable, all for the enjoyment of a select few with the money to make their grotesque dreams come true.

The big bad of the Hostel series, Sasha Rassimov (Milan Kňažko), works from the shadows and runs the club at a distance. As such, he never knows the captives, and the captives are never aware of him. This means that, although Paxton is the hero of the first Hostel movie - engineering a daring escape and taking out a few bad guys in the process - he not only doesn't come face to face with his subjugator but never even knows he exists.

Of course, this all changes in the sequel, but that's another matter altogether...