As the year’s biggest horror film prepares to chill digital audiences, we countdown the most terrifying smiles in cinema. From deranged hotel caretakers and crazy clowns to undead girlfriends and psychotic mother’s boys, here are six of the best…
Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s terrifying book about a haunted hotel horror provoked screams and consternation in equal measure when released in 1980. But whatever your proclivity for the sterile austere chills of the director’s disturbing descent into the horror genre, it was Jack Nicholson’s deranged gurning performance as Jack Torrance that people remember The Shining for. When the possessed axe-wielding hotel caretaker, driven mad by the solitude and spirits that haunt the well-carpeted corridors of the Overlook Hotel, smashed through the flimsy door protecting his screaming wife, played by Shelley Duvall, peers through a crack in the now smashed door and smiles. “Here’s Johnny!”
Caitlin Stasey in Smile (2022)
Caitlin Stasey, the former Neighbours star who headlined the Aussie adolescent actioner Tomorrow, When the War Began has found her features the most recognised in modern horror. And it’s all thanks to her smile. She first played the troubled Laura in writer/director Parker Finn’s short film Laura Hasn’t Slept. Now, the young student visits the office of psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick) several days after she witnesses her professor commit suicide with a grotesque grin on his face. Terrified that she is being followed, she graphically slashes her own throat in front of the medical practitioner. A huge, unnerving grin on her face as she draws a sharp edge of a piece of broken vase across her skin. As featured on the film poster and an ad campaign that saw maniacally smirking actors planted into the crowds of major events, Smile changed the face of the modern horror film.
Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960)
The finale of Alfred Hitchcock’s much-lauded monochrome thriller reveals that mother’s boy Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, has been… SPOILER ALERT… dressing up as his matriarch and slashing his way through the Bates Motel clientele. While Janet Leigh murderously cut short shower has justly been hailed as one of cinema’s most terrifying moments—largely due to composer Bernard Herrmann’s piercing violin stabs—the film’s conclusion, as an incarcerated Bates glances up at the camera, breaks the fourth wall, and knowingly smiles at the audience, is one of the most unsettling.
Pennywise in It (2017)
Let’s face it, there is nothing creepier than an evil clown. Something that Stephen King knew all too well when writing his epic coming-of-age tome It. The story follows the lives of seven youngsters growing up in Derry, Maine. All that stands between a happy childhood and adult life is an ancient, trans-dimensional shapeshifting entity that preys upon children, roughly every 27 years. Pennywise the Clown is the personification of that evil. He has leaped out of the pages onto the screen twice. Memorably played by Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) star Tim Curry in the television mini-series, and in the recent two-part horror film, albeit augmented by CGI to make his gaping grinning maw even more disgusting, by Barbarian star Bill Skarsgård.
Regan in The Exorcist (1973)
Based on William Peter Blatty’s 1971 best-seller of the same name and directed by William Friedkin, The Exorcist maybe have been released almost five decades ago but it still retains the power to shock. As played by Linda Blair, Regan, the young girl who is possessed by the evil demon Pazuzu, is put through a lot. From violently elevating beds and spinning heads to vomiting pea green soup and doing unspeakable things with a crucifix, the graphic imagery shocked seventies audiences but garnered the film two Oscars, at the time unheralded for the horror genre. The most disturbing moment, however, is arguably the sight of Regan, her face ravaged and scarred by her unwelcome guest, smiling through rotted teeth at the desperate attempts by Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) to drive the demon out of her body.
Linda in The Evil Dead (1981)
Sam Raimi’s original video nasty has spawned sequels galore, a bloody funny television show, video games, and an ultra-violent remake and next year will see the long-awaited release of Evil Dead Rise. The low-rent original, however, is still the best. A gory gag fest that puts its star Bruce Campbell, playing last man standing Ash, through the proverbial ringer. Especially when he has to bury his girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker) who has been possessed after a pen is drilled into her ankle. He stabs her with a ceremonial dagger but is unwilling to dismember her, so Ash buries Linda outside. When she rises from the dead, she maniacally giggles and smiles wildly, incessantly chanting, “We’re going to get you!”
By David Michael Brown
SMILE: BUY OR RENT ON DIGITAL NOW. COMING TO BLU-RAY & DVD DEC 14.
