Blade & 9 Other Iconic Black Horror Movie Characters

Blade & 9 Other Iconic Black Horror Movie Characters

While most horror films have featured predominantly white characters and stories, the genre does include quite a few iconic Black characters.

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Every aspect of American life is currently undergoing a massive racial reckoning, Hollywood included. While filmmakers like Jordan Peele have worked hard to uplift more contemporary Black voices in horror, the genre suffers from an extreme lack of diversity. Horror movies are and continue to be very white. Fortunately, more and more directors, actors, and producers are publicly committed to fixing this problem.

While most of the horror films that have received attention and wide distribution have featured predominantly white characters and stories, the genre does include quite a few iconic Black characters. Some are villains, others are heroes, and still more exist between the two extremes.

10 Candyman (Tony Todd)

Tony Todd plays the storied title character in 1992’s Candyman, a role he reprised in two sequels. Candyman is the vengeful ghost of a Black man tortured and killed in the 19th Century for having a romantic relationship with a white woman.

In the original film, Candyman stalks Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood, using his hooked hand to terrorize those who summon him and to ensure his story continues to be told. Todd will bring the character to the big screen yet again in Nia DaCosta’s forthcoming revival.

9 Blacula (William Marshall)

William Marshall brings this beloved Black vampire to life in 1972’s Blacula and 1973’s Scream Blacula Scream. Much more than silly reimaginings of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, these blaxploitation films are rife with social and political commentary.

Marshall’s Blacula is cursed by Dracula himself after asking for the Count’s help suppressing the slave trade. After being sealed in a coffin for 200 years, Blacula finds himself in 1972 Los Angeles, anxious to find love, belonging, and food.

8 Adelaide Wilson/Red (Lupita Nyong’o)

Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out, 2019’s Us, explores what happens when a bunch of clones created by the government decides to rise up and take out their human counterparts. Lupita Nyong’o stars as both the human Adelaide Wilson and her Tethered doppelganger Red.

Red’s jumpsuit and gold scissors are as symbolic as any slasher movie villain’s signature weapon. Nyong’o takes Peele’s ambitious concept into accessible territory with her stunning duel performance in the film.

7 Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers)

Even though Stephen King hated it, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of King’s novel The Shining is considered one of the best horror movies of all time. Scatman Crothers plays Dick Halloran in the film, the cook at the haunted Overlook Hotels who possess the same psychic ability as Danny Torrance.

Halloran acts as a guide to Danny in the first part of the film, warning the young boy of the dangerous spirits lurking in the hotel. Halloran later returns to the Overlook, where he meets an unfortunate fate while attempting to rescue Danny and his mother Wendy from the evil spirits trying to kill them.

6 Mr. Simms (Clarence Williams III)

Rusty Cundieff’s 1995 horror anthology film Tales From the Hood stars one memorable narrator: an eccentric funeral director known as Mr. Simms, who is played by Clarence Williams III. Vastly underrated, Tales From the Hood blends terror and comedy to share four interwoven stories about institutional racism, police brutality, gang violence, and domestic abuse.

Mr. Simms turns out to be much more than a storyteller as the film progresses. By the end of Tales From the Hood, the narrator reveals himself to be none other than Satan incarnate.

5 Ben (Duane Jones)

George Romero didn’t seek out a Black actor to play Ben, the protagonist of his 1967 zombie masterpiece Night of the Living Dead. Romero cast Duane Jones as Ben because the young actor had the best audition.

Jones portrays Ben as a calm and resourceful hero. Ben does his best to fend off the undead apocalypse closing in around him and other characters in the film, only to be mistaken for a ghoul by authorities as the ordeal comes to an end.

4 Poindexter “Fool” Williams (Brandon Adams)

Precocious and hilarious, Fool is the main character in Wes Craven’s 1991 urban horror-comedy The People Under the Stairs. Set in Los Angeles, the film tells the story of a young boy who rises up against his corrupt and creepy white landlords.

Fool, played by Brandon Adams, breaks into the home of his landlords, The Robesons, as an act of vengeance after everyone in his tenement apartment building is evicted. What Fool finds in the Robesons’s home is the stuff of nightmares.

3 Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya)

Daniel Kaluuya’s character Chris Washington agrees to visit his white girlfriend’s family in upstate New York, where Washington quickly finds himself the victim of a plot to traffic Black bodies between wealthy, white auctioneers. Jordan Peele’s 2017 Get Out blew horror fans away, even though Peele considers the film a social thriller.

Chris Washington is one of the most memorable horror characters in recent history, and Kaluuya’s intense portrayal of a man fighting for his life wowed critics. Washington’s journey in the film proves that racialized violence remains a facet of American life.

2 Sugar Hill (Marki Bey)

Another classic blaxploitation horror film, 1974’s Sugar Hill is a zombie-filled thriller featuring a sultry and powerful female lead. Marki Bey plays the title character, Diana “Sugar” Hill, who strikes a deal with Baron Samedi, the voodoo lord of the dead, in order to avenge the death of her boyfriend.

Sugar Hill, using a zombie legion to do her bidding, climbs up to the chain until she finds herself face to face with the crime boss who ordered her boyfriend’s murder. The film is full of great, low-budget action sequences and memorable one-liners.

1 Blade (Wesley Snipes)

Part bloodsucker and part human, Blade is a vampire hunting Marvel Comics character who made his big-screen debut long before the superhero movie reigned supreme. Wesley Snipes plays the title character in the Blade trilogy, whose films were released in 1998, 2002, and 2004.

With his supreme fighting skills and sleek fashion sense, Blade makes for one charismatic protagonist. Mahershala Ali will breathe new life to the character in a forthcoming revival.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/blade-other-iconic-black-horror-movie-characters/

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