4 Villains from Classic Hollywood Films that Belong in a Horror Movie

Before there was Glenn Close as Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, there was Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent in Leave Her to Heaven. Both of those female characters know what man they want, and they’ll stop at nothing to get him.

The main difference here is that Ellen does indeed manage to marry Richard, the object of her obsessive attraction (played by the befuddled Cornel Wilde).

But just because they take that walk down the aisle doesn’t mean it’s a happily ever after. Instead, Ellen refuses to allow anyone—including members of both their families—to come between them.

What follows is one of the most disturbing (and glamourous) descents into madness ever captured on the silver screen. Gene Tierney was such an incredible actress, and it’s a shame she isn’t still as celebrated as she deserves.

So give Tierney her due, and watch Leave Her to Heaven as soon as you can. It’s absolutely worth your time.  

Now full disclosure: Black Narcissus is without a doubt a very dated film. There are elements of it that most certainly are out of touch and even outright offensive.

That being said, it’s got some of the most haunting imagery of the classic Hollywood era. Set at a spooky convent in the Himalayan Mountains, a group of nuns soon realize they’re in over their heads when the land itself begins to possess them.

With her sanity already teetering on the brink, Sister Ruth (played by a fantastically unhinged Kathleen Byron) is affected the worst, consequently setting her sights on rival Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) in their doomed pursuit of Mr. Dean, a rakish British liaison played by David Farrar.

What should come across as another melodramatic love triangle spirals into a final sequence that would be entirely at home in any era of horror cinema.

Truly, the cinematography is like nothing else of its time, so consider putting Black Narcissus on your to-watch list as soon as you can. 

Yes, I’m well aware that James Stewart’s retired detective character John “Scottie” Ferguson is supposed to be our hero in Vertigo.

But when you give it even a moment’s thought, he’s also a bit of a monster. And a total obsessive. And even a stalker.

After his lover Madeleine dies before he can save her from jumping off a California bell tower, he wanders the San Francisco landscape, pining away for her. That’s when he meets Judy, a woman who looks uncannily similar to his lost Madeleine.

Scottie proceeds to hound and harass Judy until she goes out with him, and as if that’s not enough, he slowly but surely makes her over in the image of his dead lover. He never worries about who Judy is or what she wants; she simply becomes a grotesque doll to him.

Now spoiler alert: it turns out Judy has some unscrupulous tricks of her own hidden up her sleeve. But here’s the thing: Scottie doesn’t know the truth about Judy at first.

Instead, he’s like every terrifyingly fixated man in a horror movie who’s determined to possess a female character, body and soul. With just a slightly different point of view, he would undoubtedly be the antagonist of the film.

And to be honest, even watching Vertigo without that different perspective, he’s still one unsettling dude.  

As a big fan of Douglas Sirk movies, one of the things that consistently draws me to his work is the all-pervading sense of existential dread that drips off every Technicolor-soaked frame.

Sirk understood the terrors of everyday life better than almost any other filmmaker of his era, and in no movie is that terror on better display than All that Heaven Allows.

Widow Cary Scott, played by Jane Wyman, finds herself falling in love with free spirit Ron (Rock Hudson). The only catch? Here’s merely her gardener, and thus of a lower social stratum than her and her uptight friends.

This shouldn’t be a big deal to anyone, but Cary soon faces severe harassment from all sides of her community, culminating in a party scene that feels like it deserves a Bernard Herrmann score.

In terms of cinematic inspirations, you can draw a straight line from All that Heaven Allows directly to The Stepford Wives or the recent Don’t Worry Darling.

After all, when it comes right down to it, there’s nothing scarier than the people who are supposed to be your friends.