10 Minor Horror Movie Characters Everybody Remembers
7. The Pale Man - Pan's Labyrinth
Considering how he's arguably the single most memorable aspect of Guillermo del Toro's fantasy masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth, and was as a result featured prominently in all of the film's trailers, it's pretty shocking how little screen time the Pale Man (Doug Jones) actually has.
The Pale Man is encountered by protagonist Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) mid-movie when she has to retrieve a dagger from his lair.
Yet despite appearing on screen for just five minutes and neither moving nor making noise for much of that time, he still makes an incredibly deep impression.
It helps that the child-eating monster is built up to both Ofelia and the audience prior to this sequence, but between the character's grotesque design - a loose-skinned, thin humanoid that wears its eyeballs in its hands - Doug Jones' skin-crawling physical performance and the jaw-droppingly creepy lair, he's a villain nobody will ever forget.
Despite the scene's relative brevity, this is effectively the center-piece of the entire movie, culminating in a very pissed-off Pale Man brutally devouring two of Ofelia's fairy companions before she's able to make her hasty escape.
When most people think of this movie, they'll surely picture the Pale Man holding his hand-eyes up to his face, because in a mere five minutes he becomes Pan's Labyrinth's defining character.