10 Horror Movie Villains With Surprisingly Boring Day Jobs
When these dreadful rogues aren't scalping your loved ones, they've got a job to do.
The phrase ‘horror movie villain’ brings a certain image to mind: dark, brooding, powerful, supernatural.
This is the kind of person – or creature – who lives in a castle or is conjured from a book; they spend their time devising all-consuming master plans of evil, and hold dominion over a thousand regions with ghastly superweapons. They are the stuff of myth, legend and nightmares.
They do not sit next to us in midday lectures or pull shifts at the Tesco Metro.
Or so we might like to think…
Truth be told, horror villains are as varied as the victims they pursue, and some eschew the big-ticket horror trappings in favour of a cosy, quiet or merely mundane life. When not stalking and slaying, some of our favourites are forced to count the coppers, sweep the aisles and summon the will for morning meetings.
Whether it is their day jobs that drive them to terror or their murderous spirits that force them to find gainful employment, each of these ne'er-do-wells has their work cut out for them. But at least there's a pension plan.
10. Alexandra Collins – Landlady – Last Night In Soho
Charting the story of Cornish fashion student Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) who moves to the big city in pursuit of becoming a big-name designer, Edgar Wright's 2021 joint, Last Night In Soho, offers a layered confection of Londons old and new, starring a cast of past, present and future British acting greats.
But there are perhaps none greater than the legendary Dame Diana Rigg, who died in late 2020, and whom the film is dedicated to.
By day, Rigg is Ms Alexandra Collins a little old lady renting out her spare room to students, drifters and anyone who will treat the place right and pay the rent. But, by night – or, at least by the timey-wimey nights of the 1960s – she is Sandie, a femme fatale and reluctant prostitute of the London club scene, leading the men she was pimped out to back to her bedroom for their very last nocturnal experience.
As day jobs go, private landlady is among the tamest, paying the utilities, reprimanding your occupants for noise and keeping the hallways clean and tidy. But, as Ms Collins' past and present lives merge, she finds herself forced to silence her only tenant, inadvertently burning down her home in the process.