49. Jeffrey Combs
Some folks might scoff at the inclusion of Jeffrey Combs on this list, in the stead of many other great horror-flick actors, but to them I say: scoff away, because I'm right! Jeffrey Combs is a wonderful character actor with an obscene gift for playing crazy, kooky, cringe-worthy creeps in a way that is always visceral and unforgettable. Of course, he's most well-known for his role in the cult classic Re-Animator, but even in Peter Jackson's 1996 comedy horror The Frighteners, Combs was able to scar me for lifemostly with the scars on his torso(oh, god, where are his nipples?!?!?!)...*shudder*
48. Robert Englund
Speaking of scars Naturally, Robert Englund has his place on this list of the 50 Greatest Masters of Fear. He is known world-wide for his portrayal of Freddy Kruger in the seven hundred and eighty-three Nightmare on Elm Street Movies (or is it seven hundred and eighty-four?), a burn victim with a heart of mold and long knives for fingers. That alone would be enough to earn him a place, but the man was an actor who recognized a pigeon-hole when he saw one and instead of balking at it and disappearing from the spotlight forever, he embraced the institute of type-casting and appeared in various other horror films over the course of his career. To see Englund in creepy roles other than the famous pedophile-turned-dream-demon, check out The Mangler, Phantom of the Opera (1989), Wishmaster, Strangeland, and the wonderfully terrible Zombie Strippers (wherein he plays a loveable club owner who allows his employee-turned-zombie to dance on stage rather than lose a couple of bucks. Ahhhhhh).
47. Richard Laymon
Not everyone enjoys Laymon's oeuvre, but it's impossible to deny that his novels have made a huge impact on Horror with a capital H, and in the splatterpunk sub-genre in particular. He's perhaps most famous for the uber-creepy The Woods Are Dark, which had 50 pages removed from the original manuscript by editors before publication (yeah, it was THAT horrific), but which has since been painstakingly restored and reissued. Laymon died far too young at 54 from a massive heart attack, but his legacy lives on with a terrifyingly bloody bibliography that includes such shockers as The Cellar, Flesh, and Funland.
46. Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil Video Games)
Probably not the first controversial entry on the list, but certainly one to draw a lot of criticism, is Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil video game anthology. Resident Evil is a terrifying series that transcends the usual shoot-em-up model and delves into scenarios, stories, and characters far more terrifying than any that had come before. Inspired by an earlier game from Capcom (Sweet Home), Shinji Mikami set out to make the best survival game any console had ever seen. You can't call it the first--that honor usually lands on Alone in the Dark, which indeed inspired the gameplay of Resident Evil--but it was certainly the best at the time and it spawned a long series of games that have continued (for the most part) to get more challenging, more horrific, and more addictive.