8 Great Horror Villains Trapped In Terrible Movies

5. Howard Howe - Tusk

Poor Michael Parks; fantastic actor, so frequently trapped in bad Kevin Smith movies. Where he managed to hold the also terrible Red State together with his towering performance, he has no such luck with the director's body horror nightmare Tusk. Here Parks plays crinkly but sinister pensioner Howard Howe, a man still mourning the walrus friend he made while lost at sea years ago. When idiot podcaster Wallace (an awful Justin Long) comes knocking, Howard has the opportunity to relive the past and reconnect with his lost friend. And so he sets about turning Justin Long into a walrus. This ridiculous concept could work if everyone was reading from the same songsheet, but everyone - including Smith - seems to be pulling in vastly different directions. That leaves Parks giving a blisteringly terrifying performance while the likes of Long and Johnny Depp go for broad comedy strokes. There's no doubt that Parks is in on the joke (it's not a subtle joke) but his snarling, quietly terrifying old lunatic sits at complete odds with the silly rubber Walrus suit and Johnny Depp in his fake nose. As Parks and Depp stand on the former's porch jawing brainless nonsense at each other, both pretending to be mentally ill (although Depp's character might actually be) for ten whole minutes, there's the sense that Parks really is wasted here.