Popular Horror Icons of Today (and Yesterday as Well)

Horror is one of the most popular American genres in the world today. You can look in any random video store that you can find and chances are that most of their movies are of the horror or supernatural genres (and most of them are probably b-movies that you have never heard of before. Nevertheless, they are still horror movies). Some of these movies stand out when compared to the rest. This is because they are part of a popular horror franchise that forms around a popular horror icon. Horror icons are usually the bad guys in their movies. Each individual film may not gross very much money but they gain a cult following and the entire franchise that forms off of that following makes a lot more money than the movie alone ever could have. These are some popular horror icons that I have listed for you.

Freddy Krueger

Freddy is the main villain of the incredibly popular Nightmare on Elm Street horror franchise. He is well known for his trademark glove, which supports four razor "fingers", and the dirty brown hat and Christmas sweater that he is never seen without.

Jason Voorhees

Although his mother was the killer in the original movie, Jason quickly became the dominate villain in the Friday the Thirteenth horror franchise. Friday the Thirteenth is responsible for an increase in popularity in slasher films. Although it did not start the slasher craze, it did perfect it, becoming a shining example of how slasher films should be conducted.

Michael Myers

Michael is the villain in the Halloween horror franchise, which is the grandfather of the entire genre. Halloween is given credit as being one of the first and most well known of it's genre, the slasher film. It was the first successful slasher film of it's time, laying the foundation for other horror franchises, such as Friday the Thirteenth.

Leatherface

Leatherface is the name given to the primary antagonist of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, which depicts him as a cannibalistic, chainsaw wielding maniac who likes to wear people's faces as masks (hence the name; Leatherface).

Jigsaw

Jigsaw is a fairly recent villain. He is the serial killer who stars in the Saw franchise of horror films. Unlike it's predecessors, Saw cannot be called a slasher film. The main villain is not like the rest of his competitors, he does not kill people himself. It is difficult to explain but I'm sure if you watched the series, you would understand.

These are just a few in the hugely popular horror icon frenzy. There are many other creative serial killers out there. However, I believe that these are the most successful of them all. Have more suggestions? Feel free to comment and e-mail me.

No sources except my memory were used in this article.