10 Horror Movies That Brutally Punish Hobbies

Whatever your hobby, chances are it'll come back to bite you on the backside.

Breeder Movie 2020
LevelK

Throughout the decades of horror movies, this creepy corner of cinema has had a habit of having people taken down by their own particular habits and hobbies.

In horror, if you've got a particular interest in something, there's a solid chance that said interest will come back to bite you on your backside in a major, major way - particularly if we're talking horror pictures of the 1970s and '80s.

At times, it's felt like the only reason that Character A was shown to be a fan of Hobby D was solely for the purpose of that hobby being involved in the character's eventual death. But hey, that's not always been a bad thing, for it has at least led to some memorable kills over the years, even if those kills can be just a smidge cheesy and predictable.

Horror has shown that if you're a gamer, you're done for; if you're a film fan, you're done for; if you're a camping enthusiast, you are absolutely, unequivocally not making it out of your tent in one piece. And these are just a few choice hobbies that forever end in disaster.

Here, then, are ten such examples of horror movie characters being brutally punished by their own particular hobbies and obsessions.

10. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare - Playing Video Games

Breeder Movie 2020
New Line Cinema

When horror hounds talk about how Freddy Krueger became a parody of himself, the prime example forever offered up is 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.

By the time of Freddy's Dead, the shark had been jumped, the bloom was well and truly off the rose, and Robert Englund's Krueger was more about winking at the audience than serving up anything genuinely sinister.

One thing that you can always rely on for the Elm Street franchise, though, is that every movie tends to deliver at least one or two unique kills. And for Freddy's Dead, they don't get much more memorable than the demise of Breckin Meyer's Spencer Lewis.

A stoner with a penchant for video games, Spencer's ultimate fate was bizarrely sealed in a video game after he got stoned. Sat on a sofa and high, Meyer's character hallucinates and gets sucked into a TV, where he finds himself in video game where Freddy controls the villain, Spencer's disapproving father.

We get Spencer growing in size, ala Mario, before being confronted by a giant sprite of Krueger, with the real Freddy using a Nintendo Power Glove to kill the video game Spencer. In the real world, Spencer is moved around like a puppet then thrown down a staircase to his death.

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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.