With Halloween just around the corner we run down the contenders in the ultimate dream match – a four-way-dance between a quartet of horror icons…
Name: Ashley J. “Ash” Williams
Hometown: Dearborn, Michigan
Appearances: 3
Weapon of choice: Chainsaw, boomstick
The hero of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, S-MART employee Ash (Bruce Campbell) has to contend with unimaginable terror, accidentally unleashing demonic forces when stumbling across the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in a secluded cabin in the woods. After beheading his possessed girlfriend Linda and squaring off against his own hand (which he amputates and replaces with a prosthetic chainsaw), Ash is thrown back in time at the conclusion of Evil Dead II and finds himself forced to defend Medieval England from a legion of deadites in Army of Darkness.
Name: Freddy Krueger
Hometown: Springwood
Appearances: 9
Weapon of choice: Razor-blade glove
Dream demon Freddy Krueger terrorises the teenage population of Springwood in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street as he looks to gain revenge against the parents who delivered their own brand of justice on the twisted child killer. Slashing his way through seven more movies in the guise of Robert Englund, the bastard son of a thousand maniacs recently returned to the screen courtesy of Jackie Earle Haley in Platinum Dunes’ ‘re-imagining’ of the horror classic.
Name: Jason Voorhees
Hometown: Crystal Lake
Appearances: 11
Weapon of choice: Machete
After witnessing the decapitation of his mother in Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees went on a one-man killing spree, butchering the inhabitants of Camp Crystal Lake until coming a cropper against Corey Feldman in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. Only this fourth movie wasn’t the final chapter at all and a resurrected Jason returned as an unstoppable monster for a further seven films, including a battle with his Springwood rival in Freddy vs. Jason and a 2009 remake from Platinum Dunes.
Name: Michael Myers
Hometown: Haddonfield
Appearances: 9
Weapon of choice: Machete
A killer without reason, conscience, understanding, and even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong, Michael Myers became the original slasher icon when he returned to his hometown to stalk teenage scream-queen Jamie Lee Curtis in John Carpenter’s Halloween. Myers continued his rampage for six sequels (with most reconning the events of previous films) before Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot, which was followed by its own critically derided follow-up in 2009.
So, who wins in a fight? Cast your vote now in our Halloween poll to help determine the winner of this epic confrontation…
Originally published October 23, 2010. Updated April 10, 2018.
