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In MaXXXine, the latest addition to the X and Pearl universe, the titular protagonist, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), is followed into a dark alley by some goon with a razor blade. Tension ensues, the same tension we’ve seen in 1,000 horror movies before and will see 1,000 times more in the future. Should she try to climb the fence? Why isn’t she climbing the fence? What if she tried to run past him? Is there a way under the fence? She has to get away, right?! As the man approaches her, Maxine has her back turned and looks like she’s frantically trying to open a locked gate. But she isn’t. She turns around and squashes the problem, so to speak, with her white stilettos.

MaXXXine and Longlegs are hitting theaters and—don’t mind the jump scare—The Blair Witch Project is turning 25. To celebrate, The Ringer presents to you Shriek Week, our celebration of everything that makes the horror movie genre fun, fascinating, and downright terrifying.

I don’t have white stilettos, but I want to try to walk that walk with the horror genre. Oftentimes from the viewer’s perspective, the strategy for surviving horror movies seems easy. Get off the boat. Stop investigating the known cannibal. Don’t watch the tape. Leave the ghost-ridden house. Take a cab. But all of that’s boring. I’ve already written about surviving all the traps in the Saw franchise and 51 different postapocalyptic universes. Now I’m going on the offensive. I want to know which of horror’s iconic villains could I bump gloves with and kill in a “fair” fight. No jump-scare murders. No whodunit mysteries. A pure head-to-head bout. Where did that take me? Google Sheets.

I watched more than 200 horror movies, a lot at 2x speed and some rewatches even at 4x speed, in the past four weeks to identify a solid baseline of characters. (My editor, Justin Sayles, whose name will scare you once more in this 18,000-word monstrosity, left 40 of the 100 hooligans—and another 9,000 words—on the cutting-room floor. He was right to do so, but if your favorite off-the-wall horror movie isn’t on this list, the blood is on his hands, not mine!) We ultimately landed on 59 villains (now 60 with the addition of Longlegs). I charted how many people each of the villains killed and created a composite SCARE score on a scale of one to five for their abilities in five areas: strength/speed, cunning, agility, rare skills, and endurance. I also categorized them into “weight” classes and listed them by SCARE score inside each tier:

Phantomweights: Universal Classics—All of Universal Studios’ classic monsters
Featherweights: Freaks and Geeks—Your favorite scientists, torturers, cannibals, and other oddballs
Lightweights: Jobber Slashers and an American Furry—Discount slasher types and a hairy American lover boy in London
Welterweights: Jason Copycats and Slashers With Style—Big, lumbering oafs and Louis Vuitton slashers
Middleweights: Aliens, Spirits, Demons, a Barbarian, and AI—“There’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man.”
Heavyweights: Franchise Cornerstones—Villains so good that studios bled them dry

From there, as with any fight club, I’ve made some ground rules:

The ring is the ring. There are no jump scares in Fright Club. The arena is 400 square feet with ropes on every side like WWE.
Singular villains only. Trust me: I wanted to write about Dawn of the Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But any horror hordes, swarms, or groups are just not realistic foes for this exercise. This also took the Phantasm franchise off the list because the Tall Man sends others to do his bidding and over-indexes on using the sentinel death balls.
Humanoids only. Jaws was a tough movie to cut from the list, but Bruce can’t leave the water. That, plus I don’t want to waste your time with Austin vs. Godzilla or Austin vs. King Kong title fights.
No supernatural shit. I’m not wasting my time with all of that. Ghosts, spirits, ghost-spirit hybrids—essentially anything that can possess people, bend space and time, or over-leverage religion—aren’t allowed in the club. Of course, I’ve made some exceptions to fit some legends on the list, but I couldn’t open my door to everyone. It quickly becomes a boring exercise when all of the participants can die only from a Bible being stabbed or an old relic being burned. (Adios, Conjuring franchise, Sinister, The Omen, and The Babadook.)
A weapon for a weapon. Jason isn’t going to enter the fight without his machete, nor Freddy without his finger knives or Michael without a kitchen knife. It’s a pointless exercise if we’re going to strip iconic villains of what actually makes them iconic. The catch, though, is that if they get a weapon, I get that same weapon. That doesn’t help me, really, because I don’t have much of any weapon experience, but I figured it was only fair.
Fights will go on as long as they have to. I stole this from Brad Pitt, but it applies here, too. No one leaves the ring until someone is dead.

I’m no Mia Goth, but I (for whatever reason) like my chances. I know for a fact I would have rocked her loser cult leader dad, so much so that he didn’t even make the club. But without further ado, let’s sound the opening bell.

Phantomweights: Universal Classics

Erik/the Phantom, The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Kill count: 2
SCARE score: 1.7

Like Frankenstein’s monster, the phantom in Phantom of the Opera (1925) is just a dude people avoid because he’s ugly.

His real name is Erik, and all he really wants is to be loved. But the superficial opera singers can’t stand the sight of his yellow skin and hole for a nose, especially after he drops a chandelier on the audience and kidnaps one of the performers to profess his love to her deep underground. Erik isn’t much of a threat in any toe-to-toe fight, but he’s a crafty bastard with some interesting traps and a deep knowledge of the Paris Opera House.

Fight result: Austin wins by nose-hole uppercut in Round 8

Austin sets up a lethal uppercut after seven rounds of straight jabs to the hole in the middle of Erik’s ugly face.

Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Kill count: 2
SCARE score: 2.2

Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March) had it all, man. He was a beloved doctor who helped children walk again and skipped dinner reservations to attend to patients. He even saved a woman, Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins), from being attacked by a man in the street. He was also madly in love with his beautiful fiancée, Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart), even though her father didn’t allow them to marry right away. But there are two wolves in every man, even the best of them, and the ugly, violent beast that lived inside Jekyll ultimately killed him. (I’m not sure which wolf inside Jekyll thought it was OK just to send Ivy a measly $50 to compensate for Hyde’s nightly abuse and torment, but we’ll give our boy a mulligan, I guess.)

Jekyll believed he could separate the good from the bad in every man’s soul and attempted to free himself from those impulsive, animalistic behaviors by creating a potion. Instead, he turned himself into a freaky little womanizer with a rude demeanor and monkeylike agility. (The transformation scene is a sight to behold.) Mr. Hyde, Jekyll’s evil counterpart, jumps in and out of trees and runs from police with relative ease in multiple foot chases in the film. He also strangles Ivy and beats Muriel’s dad to death with a stick. Jekyll-Hyde eventually loses control of his transformations over time and is cornered in his own laboratory before he’s shot dead with a single bullet.

Hyde’s speed and evasiveness are impressive, for sure, but he isn’t an overly strong monster. He also doesn’t throw any punches in his biggest fight of the film; his go-to moves are front-facing two-hand chokes and two-hand hip tosses. A better fighter than me, maybe one who’s a bit taller and with longer arms, could square up nicely with Hyde, but they’d have to get their hands on his squirrely ass first.

Fight result: Mr. Hyde wins by stick beating in Round 3

Austin gets a few body blows in while Dr. Jekyll is navigating the transition to Mr. Hyde, but once Hyde takes the reins, the fight quickly becomes one-sided. Hyde pounces on Austin’s back and beats him with a stick until he’s a bloody mess.

Frankenstein’s Monster, Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Kill count: 16
SCARE score: 2.3

Frankenstein’s monster isn’t a monster at all. He was thrust into this world by a scientist with a God complex and forced to navigate life with an ugly face and a brain destined for “brutality, violence, and murder” because Henry Frankenstein’s assistant, Fritz, fumbled the healthy brain when he tried to steal it from the classroom. Yes, in the first few hours of the monster’s life he kills Fritz, but that is only after Fritz whips him and waves a fiery torch in his face while he’s chained up in a room. He kills Dr. Waldman next purely out of self-defense, and then he throws the girl in the water and watches her drown just because he thought she could float like a flower petal. The latter kill isn’t completely justifiable, but it’s not the monster’s fault she’s playing so close to the lake and can’t swim.

The monster goes on a bit of a rampage in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), upping his kill count from three to 16 with a handful of tosses off high buildings, another drowning, and a well-timed rock push on two dudes. But, again, it’s only because everyone wants his ugly ass dead. While a different scientist works on creating a mate for the monster, a blind man befriends him with some food, wine, cigars, and a violin. The boys were buzzing!

Two randoms peeking through the window kill the vibe by barging in and chasing him back to Henry Frankenstein’s laboratory, where he meets his stunning new wife. (How the hell is she so pretty? Frankenstein’s monster looks like a foot, yet she is arguably the prettiest person in both movies? Make it make sense.)

She can’t even stand the look of Frankenstein’s monster, which sends him into a death spiral. He shouts, “We belong dead,” before pulling a lever that blows up the watchtower while both of them and Dr. Pretorius, the bride’s creator, are still inside it. It’s a sad ending to a sad story that could have been avoided … or is it? The monster is brought back to life again in Son of Frankenstein and five other movies after that, but Universal legend Boris Karloff plays the monster in only the first three films. The famed “It’s alive” quote from the initial film really loses its luster when the monster keeps coming back over and over and over. I’m counting only the Karloff kills out of respect, and because Son of Frankenstein does give us Bela Lugosi as the infamous Ygor.

Fight result: Both form bromance in Round 2

The monster and Austin have too much in common when they look in the mirror to not hit it off. They start puffing cigars right away, break out the wine soon after that, and the drunken heart-to-hearts start flowing. Austin even gets the liquid courage to try the violin. Smoke good. Friend good.

The Mummy, The Mummy (1932), The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and The Mummy’s Curse (1944)

Kill count: 3 (Imhotep) and 17 (Kharis)
SCARE score: 2.4 (composite)

Karl Freund’s The Mummy (1932), with Frankenstein star Boris Karloff returning to the monster scene as Imhotep, is just so boring. Imhotep kills three people in the film using his menacing presence and power to control people’s minds; one guy is literally scared to death. Kharis, the other mummy in Universal’s classic monsters series, presses the gas pedal down a bit more in terms of pure carnage, killing 17 people over four films. His go-to move is a front-facing choke, but my personal favorite is his vicious backhand, which sends one of the guys trying to help him resurrect his girl out the window.

Imhotep is a tougher fight in the ring because he can just put you in a dream state or scare you shitless. Plus, the only way to kill Imhotep is to burn the scroll that brought him back to life. (Boring!) Kharis, however, is more of a brute. He’s a strong, resilient fighter who makes up for an obvious lack of speed with pure force. You’ll need to luck into some fire, a collapsing building, or a deep swamp to kill Kharis, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t rope-a-dope him for a few rounds.

Fight result: Kharis wins by single-handed choke in Round 3

Kharis catches Austin in the corner of the ring with a cheeky backhand and a single-hand choke to finish the job while Imhotep watches from outside the ropes (menacingly, of course).

The Invisible Man, The Invisible Man (1933)

Kill count: 124*

*It’s mentioned in the film that “100” people die on the train that the Invisible Man sends off the rails, and another “20” people from the search party are also reported dead. However, we see only four on-screen deaths.

SCARE score: 2.9

There are six Universal Invisible Man films and a 2020 remake with Elisabeth Moss, but none of them have the same Invisible Man. Only the first installment, from 1933, features Dr. Jack Griffin (Claude Rains) as the masked madman hiding his invisible skin as he goes from working toward a medical solution to return to form, to pulling childish pranks, to murdering a bunch of people in pursuit of world domination or a “reign of terror with a few murders here and there,” as Griffin calls it.

It’s not all Griffin’s fault, to be fair. One of the chemicals in the concoction he drummed up that made him invisible was one that drove people insane (and turned dogs white) called monocane. Still, he takes it way too far. Griffin goes on a crime spree, robbing banks and killing more than 100 people. He also keeps his promise to Dr. Arthur Kemp, his (very brief) partner in crime who has the hots for his wife, to kill him at 10 o’clock. Griffin surprises him in the backseat of his car, chokes Kemp with his own scarf, and sends him and his car off a cliff to a fiery death. Griffin’s mic drop moment of the film occurs just seconds before: “I always said you were a dirty little coward. You’re a dirty sneaking little rat, as well. Goodbye.”

In an attempt to catch Griffin, the town’s cops ask people to stay inside and lock their doors, offer a $2,000 reward for Griffin, constantly link arms, sit criss-cross applesauce in a circle, and even bust out nets to wrap around themselves for protection as they walk. But nothing works until it starts snowing and they catch Griffin taking a nap in a barn. The cops smoke him out and shoot him dead when they see his footprints in the snow. It’s an anticlimactic death for what could have been a stellar villain for multiple films. Instead, Universal just churned out a different Invisible Man over and over until the bit grew tired. Rains was also underleveraged as an invisible dude; the guy was hot!

Without a weapon, net, crowd of people with linked arms, or snow, it’s impossible to say I could even punch Griffin in a closed fight. You can’t punch what you can’t see!

Fight result: The Invisible Man wins by knockout in Round 1

Austin spins rapidly in the ring with his arms outstretched and hands balled into fists, but he gets dizzy and falls before the first bell even rings. The Invisible Man chokes him out with ease and throws a chair at his head for good measure.

The Wolf Man, The Wolf Man (1941)

Kill count: 1
SCARE score: 3.1

The Wolf Man is a scarier presence than he is an actual fighter. In his debut with Universal, he kills only one person, an unsuspecting gravedigger who could barely see him through all the fake fog. Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) kills a different werewolf before he becomes the Wolf Man, but killing a dog pre-transformation doesn’t count. In the Wolf Man’s closing fight with his own father, Sir John Talbot, he doesn’t even get a punch in before he’s wrestled to the ground and beaten to death with his own cane. The dog that initially bit Larry to turn him into a werewolf was a tougher out, to be honest, and a whole lot cuter, too.

Chaney returned to play the Wolf Man in future films as a member of the undead after he’s resurrected, but all the other titles were cash-grabby monster crossover events from Universal like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). I wonder whether part of the reason the Wolf Man never received another stand-alone film was because he just wasn’t lethal enough. That said …

Fight result: The Wolf Man wins by bites to the neck in Round 2

No silver cane in sight, Austin tries to bite the Wolf Man in the hope that it’ll have some reverse effects on him. It doesn’t. The Wolf Man chews through Austin’s neck in two bites and leaves him to rot in the forest of fake fog.

Gill-Man/the Creature, Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955), and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

Kill count: 10
SCARE score: 3.1

The quality of Universal’s Creature films, the last of the studio’s classic monster series, rapidly devolves after Black Lagoon, but the splintered plot and ridiculous costumes in Walks Among Us aren’t enough to drown out Gill Man’s legacy.

Long before he’s an awkward third wheel in Revenge or a confused air breather in Walks Among Us, Gill Man is simply a humanoid-amphibian-fish hybrid with super strength, regenerative healing abilities, and an iconic webbed claw. (The filmmakers cooked here.)

Gill Man uses the same claw when he initially palms the faces of his first two kills in the series. He shows off his strength just a tad in the initial film, but really turns it on when he effortlessly flips a car in Revenge and breaks through multiple walls, chains, gates, etc., in Walks Among Us. Not surprisingly, Gill Man is slow on land, but it’s a true shock that he isn’t an elite swimmer. Kay Lawrence (Julia Adams) dusts his ass in a race back to the boat in Black Lagoon after watching her show off a (completely unprompted) triple backflip underwater. Still, he makes up for his unremarkable swimming ability with his healing powers and overall endurance; he’s a relentless chap who survives multiple bullets, spears, burnings, and even TNT throughout the series. Gill Man is shot and “killed” at the end of the first two movies, but he rises again to get his suit fitted and pressed for Walks Among Us. (I still can’t believe they ended the first two movies with essentially the exact same shot.)

The creature’s weaknesses are simply women and rotenone, a pesticide the scientists flood the lagoon with in their pursuit of the monster for cash and clout. He also couldn’t survive outside the water for very long before his transformation in Walks Among Us, which raises a question: Why didn’t everybody just leave him alone? Sure, he killed a bunch of people, but Gill Man isn’t a monster. He’s hunted by a team of scientists in Black Lagoon, chained up and used as a site attraction in Revenge, and wrongfully blamed for a murder in Walks Among Us. He’s a hot-tempered, territorial creature who admittedly crossed the line with his first two kills, but let’s not make Gill Man out to be the bad guy.

Sticking to the exercise, I’ll fight Gill Man on the beach or in the shallow end of a pool, but ideally we come out of the spat understanding our differences and willing to have a few ales at a swim-up bar after we drop the gloves.

Fight result: Both form new friendship in Round 1

Gill Man and Austin hug at the center of the ring after an honest conversation and walk out together holding hands/webbed claws.

Dracula, Dracula (1931)

Kill count: 14
SCARE score: 3.7

There are stronger, more menacing versions of Dracula in other adaptations, but Bela Lugosi deserves his time in the sun for paving the way for cinematic vampires with his performance in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931). The lack of any special effects makes for some laugh-out-loud funny moments, especially in Dracula’s transitions from bat to man, and the ending is remarkably anticlimactic, but Lugosi and Dwight Frye, who plays Dracula’s batshit assistant Renfield, save the film with brilliant performances. The shot of Frye when they find him on the Demeter with 11 corpses will be burned in my brain forever.

Renfield (sadly) doesn’t survive the film, and neither does Dracula. Even though Dracula is technically immortal, has superhuman strength and speed, can shape-shift into wolves and bats, and manipulates people’s minds with hypnosis and telepathy, none of that matters. Professor Van Helsing shoos Dracula away with a cross at one point and later kills Dracula while he’s sleeping in his coffin (inexplicably off screen) with a wooden stake through the heart. Dracula’s milquetoast weaknesses are such a buzzkill. If this list were an exercise in survivability, I’d just strap up with a cross necklace, some cross tattoos, and a wolfsbane T-shirt at night, and then I’d skip into his castle the next morning with the Van Helsing playbook and kill him in his sleep. Fighting him straight up, my only shot is to immediately drop to my knees and beg for the Renfield treatment. Eating bugs and rats as a vampire slave is the best-case scenario for any fight night with Dracula.

Fight result: Dracula turns Austin into a vampire servant in Round 1

Dracula pities Austin for his attempt at a fair fight and opts for making him Renfield 2.0 over a swift neck bite and blood draining.

Featherweights: Freaks and Geeks

Lori/Dr. Gregory Butler, Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U (2017, 2019)

It’s Groundhog Day with killers wearing baby masks in it. How fun!

Kill count: 0*

*Lori technically kills no one in the final day of the first time loop, and though Gregory does kill his wife, Stephanie, on the final day of the second time loop, 2U returns to the previous universe, where Stephanie is still alive and Lori is the killer. … It’s weird and convoluted. I’m sorry.

SCARE score: 1.0

The first movie, Happy Death Day, is pretty cut-and-dried. Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) has to re-live the same day over and over until she kills the person in the baby mask trying to kill her on her birthday. (Why that also involves her having to find out who is killing her doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, but that’s what these infinite-time-loop movies can do to you.) She eventually figures it all out, takes down the killer, and grows as a person in the process. Blah. Blah. Blah.

2U takes it up a notch by introducing another time loop the following day, an actual time machine, and multiple universes. That movie ends with Tree spending her infinite days (and deaths), um, learning quantum physics to use the machine to return to her universe. Both are background movies at best, and—technically—neither Lori nor Gregory, the two masked murderers, kill zero people.

Fight result: Austin wins by two-handed choke in Round 400

Austin takes advantage of the time loop and has a little fun in the relatively risk-free world before eventually getting the best of the killer a few hundred days in.

Carrie, Carrie (1976, 2002, 2013) and The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

Carrie is a cult classic. The Sissy Spacek (Carrie) and Piper Laurie (Carrie’s mother) performances throw the Stephen King adaptation into another stratosphere. Every Sissy-Piper scene is magnetic, and director Brian De Palma takes some fun risks that pay off in a big way. It’s beautifully shot, expertly written, and even includes a hot, young John Travolta!

The sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, is a cheap ripoff of the original with a different recluse girl who has the same telekinetic powers (and a very random tattoo). It would have been stronger as a pure remake like the 2002 TV movie and the 2013 feature film with Chloë Grace Moretz starring as Carrie and Julianne Moore as her mother. The production of the former makes it a tough watch and the lack of any ingenuity in the latter only reaffirms the original’s standing in a tier by itself.

Kill count: 71*

*In The Rage: Carrie 2, one of the characters says 73 people died the night that Carrie lit prom on fire, forced Billy and Chris into a lethal car crash, and crucified her mom. However, I’m not crediting Carrie with the death of her date, Tom; he died from the, uh, bucket falling from the rafters. I’m also not counting her death, obviously.

SCARE score: 1.8

Carrie kills 60-plus people in minutes. I think it’s fair to say I’m fucked in any scenario, let alone a one-on-one bout.

Fight result: Carrie wins by crucifixion in Round 1

Carrie flies in random sharp objects from the crowd and crucifies Austin to the mat.

The Fly, The Fly (1986)

The original The Fly (1958) is essentially 73 minutes of building the audience up to see a scientist with a fly for a head. The only two “kills” in the movie are the man-fly himself after he asks his wife to crush him in a hydraulic press and the fly-man getting crushed by a rock after he’s caught in a spider’s web. In Return of the Fly, the scientist’s adult son goes mad trying to pick up where he dad left off, turning people into mutant guinea pigs and flies this go-round. The fly head reveal comes a bit earlier in Return (52 minutes in), and the lad turned into a fly does kill two people, but it still skews the thriller with a happy ending considering that he’s turned back into a normal man in the end. Then, in Curse of the Fly, the whole idea gets flipped on its head, as another relative of the first scientist battles rapid aging effects stemming from lingering fly genes. All said, the original trilogy is a fun(ish) science fiction story with some continuity questions, but none of the three films really scratches the horror itch like David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986), starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. (The sequel, without Cronenberg, Goldblum, or Davis, falls flat on its face; let’s just pretend it never happened.)

Kill count: 0
SCARE score: 1.9

The Fly doesn’t even kill anyone in the 1986 remake, but the horror isn’t in the kills; it’s in Goldblum’s ridiculous transformation from man to fly. Rather than coming out of his machine with a fly head, Goldblum starts with just a few odd hairs popping out his back, heightened stamina (and libido), and a newfound sugar obsession. As the film progresses into the third act, Goldblum starts to become unrecognizable. His skin bubbles up and turns a reddish pink color, and he starts climbing walls and regurgitating his saliva to eat food. The payoff, of course, is this monstrosity:

Would I have appreciated Cronenberg taking the Fly for a spin on a citywide massacre? Of course. Am I OK with it being just a 96-minute flex of practical effects and Goldblum acting his ass off? Duh.

Fight result: The Fly wins by acid bile in Round 1

Austin is quickly pinned down by the Fly and then progressively spit on with its acid saliva. Austin, too, becomes unrecognizable as the Fly coats him in wet goop and eats him in front of the audience.

Annie Wilkes, Misery (1990)

I mean, it has to be said: This is a fucking ABSURD Kathy Bates performance. Misery is only as good as she is, and Bates puts on an absolute show. Bravo.

Kill count: 1
SCARE score: 2.0

Do not underestimate Annie Wilkes. What a relentless, psychotic beast of a woman. I know most remember her only for hobbling Paul Sheldon with the wooden block between his ankles and the sledgehammer, but she offers so much more in her gruesome fight with Paul at the end of the film.

Paul strikes Annie over the head with the heavy typewriter he’s been practicing lifting for the past few days, yet she doesn’t even stay down for more than two seconds.
Annie immediately puts out a fire on her sleeve and rushes at Paul with a two-handed choke, then throwing his head through a window. Paul responds by pressing both thumbs down on her eyeballs until they bleed and then open-palm punching her in the nose. Annie falls back but gets right up to shoot Paul in the shoulder. (Like I said, relentless.)
Paul then tackles Annie to the ground, bangs her head against the hardwood floor three times, and shoves burning paper in her mouth. … Annie is relatively unfazed and kicks Paul in the junk to get him off her.
Paul trips Annie as she’s running away and her head lands HARD—like the sound effects really popped hard—on the typewriter. Blood is pouring out of her head and face. Annie looks dead. But she isn’t.
Annie gets up AGAIN and bites Paul’s hand. She survives another hair pull and head slam on the ground before Paul connects with a dense pig statue swing to her forehead. Finally, she dies.

Annie is a tough, tough out in the ring. I know it. She has only one kill in the film, but Annie can tussle with the best of them.

Fight result: Annie wins by sledgehammer in Round 10

Annie knows she can kill Austin in the first two rounds, but she vies to keep him and force him to write until Round 10. Then, Annie takes that wooden block and places it over Austin’s forehead. The sledgehammer does the rest.

Jigsaw/John Kramer, Saw Franchise

Kill count: 60-80*

*There are copycat Jigsaw villains, one of the movies is in 3-D, another is a late-stage prequel, and an 11th(!) film is coming out in 2025. Give me a break. John Kramer killed or indirectly killed a shitload of people.

SCARE score: 2.1

Do you want to play a game, John? My guy is in his early 50s and battling a terminal illness in the first-ever film; I’m having my WAY with Kramer in the ring. He doesn’t have that dog in him (without the weird puppet, his psycho assistants, and all his ridiculous traps).

Fight result: Austin wins by head stomp in Round 3

Austin uses Rounds 1 and 2 just to have a conversation with Kramer. He’s a creative genius in a lot of ways, and it would be wasteful not to use the minutes as an opportunity to pick his brain. Austin then crushes his brain with a series of stomps in Round 3 to pick up one of his few confident wins on this list.

Esther/Leena, Orphan and Orphan: First Kill (2009, 2022)

Watch both of these movies before reading this blurb. The spoilers will ruin them for you.

Kill count: 11*

*Though they don’t occur in either film, Esther/Leena kills a family of four before the events of First Kill. She also doesn’t technically kill the mother in the prequel, but I count it anyway because Tricia (Julia Stiles) falls off the roof only because of Leena’s actions. I don’t count the cop kill, though. Leena stabs him 10 times in the back, but Tricia finishes the job with five gunshots.

SCARE score: 2.2

If you adopt a child and find an old, tattered Bible hidden in one of their drawers, you send them back that day. It’s that simple. That’s a detail you don’t just ride out and hope for the best. They’re probably going to kill you, as Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) tries to do with her family in Orphan and successfully does with two different families before that.

Leena suffers from a rare disease that stunts her growth and causes proportional dwarfism, making her look 9 years old when she’s actually in her early 30s. (That reveal in Orphan is still one of the most iconic twists in the horror genre.) She uses the disease in the worst way possible, joining families as an orphan named Esther and wreaking havoc as an undercover monster. In First Kill, Leena kills two people while escaping from a Russian mental institution, where she was placed after killing a family of four. Her new family follows suit, as Leena crossbows and subsequently stabs her new brother and lets her parents fall to their deaths off a roof.

In Orphan, Leena is more successful in hiding her secret from her third family but kills only two people, a nun and her third father. She is a lot scarier in the first film, though. She makes her brother piss his pants after telling him, “I’ll cut your hairless little prick off before you even figure out what it’s for.” She also throws her sister in front of a moving car as bait, nearly starts a game of Russian roulette, aggressively flirts with the dad (Peter Sarsgaard) before stabbing him to death, and breaks her own arm in a vise as part of a scheme against the mom (Vera Farmiga).

All said, Leena is at her best when she’s still seen as a sweet little girl. She’s obviously terrifying, but I like my chances with both our cards fully laid out on the table. In her only true fight scene in either movie, Leena is overly reliant on a knife for contact but never is strong enough to actually swing it all the way down for a deep stab. It’s impressive how many hits she takes in the process, but her neck ultimately snaps from a heavy leg kick.

Fight result: Austin wins by two-handed front choke in Round 4

“I’M NOT YOUR FUCKING DADDY.” Austin doesn’t leave the fight without some heavy damages, but he ultimately chokes Leena out in Round 4.

Dr. Alan Feinstone, The Dentist (1996) and The Dentist II (1998)

If you’re scared of the dentist now, don’t watch either of these horror stories. Sure, the first one features a young Mark Ruffalo, but they aren’t worth it if it means you’ll never get your teeth cleaned again.

Kill count: 7
SCARE score: 2.2

It goes without saying that Alan is a talented dentist. That changes, of course, when he learns his wife is both a smoker and cheating on him with the pool boy. His response is to cut out his wife’s tongue and pull out all of her teeth and knife her lover. Alan’s sanity only continues to decay from there, putting him in an inescapable hallucinogenic state that results in seven murders over two (very hard to watch) movies. The only way to resurrect Alan in a trilogy would be Alien vs. Predator style with Dawn O’Keefe from Teeth.

Fight result: Alan wins by root canal in Round 10

It’s only right for Austin to start this fight in the dentist’s chair, and there’s no getting out from there. Alan takes his time ripping out all of Austin’s teeth one by one over 10 rounds, with no laughing gas or anesthetics in sight. Austin bleeds out in the chair while Alan prepares for his next patient.

Frank Zito, Maniac (1980)

Joe Spinell puts on a heroic effort in this film, so heroic that I still can’t get over the fact that they remade the movie with Elijah freaking Wood in 2012. FRODO?! AS A MANIAC?! Come on, man.

The one thing I will say about the Wood remake is that it’s almost entirely shot from the first person. It’s a cool new angle on the same story, but I just can’t buy Wood as Zito. He doesn’t have the it factor Spinell brings to the original. Also, the closing scene of Spinnell drowning in the mannequins in the 1980 version is simply perfect. No notes. Wood, or any other actor in a remake, just can’t top it.

Kill count: 7
SCARE score: 2.3

In a basic sense, Zito is another serial killer with mommy issues dealing with them by killing women. It’s a tried-and-true origin story for a lot of the fucked-up dudes on this list. But the devil is in the details, my friends. Zito doesn’t just kill women; he kills them, dresses mannequins in their clothes, and crowns those mannequins with their scalps. (The first scalping scene is absolutely gnarly, even for the ’80s.) Zito also talks to them and the voices inside his head, brushes their hair, and sometimes humps the air in a weird way while fully clothed. He’s got everything you need and nothing you don’t in terms of a psychotic killer.

Fight result: Frank wins by scalping in Round 3

It’s an uneven fight that favors Frank from start to finish, but Frank doesn’t actually kill Austin until he takes a knife to his scalp in Round 3.

Dr. Phibes, The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)

I watched too many movies to not fit in some recommendations. Please, please, please watch both The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again. They’re campy as fuck and have hilarious dialogue.

Kill count: 13*

*I’m counting every trap and all the different kills he racks up using the different animals (obviously), but I won’t count Darius Biederbeck, who rapidly dies of old age without his special elixir at the end of Rises Again.

SCARE score: 2.3

Dr. Anton Phibes, played by Vincent Price in both Abominable and Rises Again, is my kind of guy. He’s an uglier Jigsaw with a deeper connection to music and religion. (There’s even a scene at the end of Abominable where a surgeon needs to remove a key from his son’s body to survive. Phibes ran so Jigsaw could ride his trike.) A true mad scientist, Phibes reconstructs his face from scratch and regains the ability to speak after surviving a car accident that killed his wife. Phibes, however, blames the doctors who worked on his wife after the crash for her death, and seeks vengeance on each of them by leveraging various animals and traps. He uses bats, rats, and locusts for three of his seven kills in the first film, but the other four are more fun.

Phibes freezes one of his victims and drains all the blood from another, both times using machines he built. He also catapults a golden unicorn statue through the chest of one of the doctors, but his best in Abominable is still the frog mask that slowly crushes a guy’s skull.

Rises Again somehow takes an even more wild turn, as the premise involves Phibes pursuing eternal life in Egypt after being resurrected by the moon or some shit. That doesn’t matter. The second film just gives us more animal deaths and funky traps, including one that slowly squishes a man completely flat and another that drowns a guy in sand in his car.

That said, Phibes still isn’t really a formidable force without his band, traps, animals, and assistant. And without a go-to weapon, Phibes has to go into the ring empty-handed. Goodbye, my sweet prince.

Fight result: Austin wins by skin peel/punch combo in Round 3

Austin rips the prosthetic skin off Phibes’s face and punches him silly until the clockwork band cuts the music.

Hannibal Lecter, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Hannibal (2001)

Kill count: 3
SCARE score: 2.8

We know Hannibal Lecter is a clever lad with a unique taste for human flesh, but there aren’t a lot of opportunities to evaluate his fighting skills. In his famous escape scene in Silence, he bites off a cop’s cheek and maces him quickly after slamming his head against the bars four times. After that, he beats a cop to death with a stick who is already cuffed to the bars. That said, any man willing to eat people the way he does and wear their faces is one not to be fucked with. In Hannibal, the good doctor shows us he can pull off a lunging cheek bite with his hands cuffed, and he’s quick to stop Clarice Starling when she tries to sneak behind him in the kitchen at Ray Liotta’s dinner party. But we all know Hannibal is at his best with a chloroform napkin, a scalpel, and a hot frying pan with butter.

Fight result: Hannibal wins by feasting in Round 7

As soon as Austin gets Hannibal in a sturdy headlock, Hannibal takes a bite out of his forearm. Disoriented, Austin falls back and Hannibal takes another bite—this time his cheek. It only gets worse from there. Hannibal knocks Austin unconscious in Round 5, wakes him up to share a brain, ear, and eyeball mixed salad, and then finally calls the fight done in Round 7 when he gets full.

Longlegs, Longlegs (2024)

Kill count: 0*
*Longlegs (Nicolas Cage) is a decades-long serial killer who never kills anyone. He uses dolls and a hardworking mother to do all his dirty work.
SCARE score: 2.9

Longlegs is a poor man’s Hannibal Lecter—if Lecter swapped his human flesh tastings with much healthier hobbies like building plastic dolls and worshipping Satan. Although he’s a frightening presence—thanks in large part to a very high-effort Nicolas Cage performance—Longlegs is a better craftsman and delegator than he is a hands-on killer. Sure, he builds satanic dolls that convince husbands to kill their wives and children, but Longlegs is never the one swinging the ax. Hell, he isn’t even the one lugging the dolls around from house to house; Lee Harker’s (Maika Monroe) mom, Ruth Harker (Alicia Witt), is the one doing all of the legwork. Longlegs is a persuasive, gritty son of a gun, but he wouldn’t even last through a line of questioning in the ring.

Fight result: Despite some setbacks, Austin wins in an intense interview in Round 10

Austin uses the time he has with Longlegs to better understand his doll-building process. What exactly is in the gray balls? What’s Satan’s management style? Has his working relationship with Mrs. Harker strengthened over the years? What’s the next—Longlegs says “Hail Satan” and bashes his face in before Austin can get another follow-up in.

Count Orlok/Nosferatu, Nosferatu (1922)

Kill count: 7
SCARE score: 3.1

As much as I love Bela Lugosi and his handsome ass, Dracula should have never been attractive. Look at Count Orlok (Nosferatu) and tell me he isn’t perfectly horrifying. (The use of color in 1920s silent films was also stunning.)

I love this ugly rat bastard. He’s the “we have Dracula at home” version of a vampire, sure, but he gets the job done. He’s immortal, strong as hell, and his stamina is bananas. Look at him single-arm carry this coffin and surf a rowboat with ease. Athlete!

Count Orlok’s weaknesses are cliché, but his death still isn’t as dull as Lugosi’s in Dracula (1931). Orlok gets just a taste of the sun and instantly turns into a puff of smoke.

I wish there was a chance we could be pals like Dracula and Renfield, even if it was for a short period of time. But I just don’t see that in the cards. Orlok keeps a tight circle of rats, and you just have to respect that. (We’ve seen only a sliver of Bill Skarsgard in the upcoming Nosferatu remake; if they make him hot, I’ll carry coffins in the street.)

Fight result: Count Orlok wins by neck slurp in Round 1

Count Orlok makes light work of Austin’s neck and drinks every ounce of blood in his body before the first bell even rings.

Jennifer, Jennifer’s Body (2009)

Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, J. K. Simmons with hair and a claw for a hand, Chris Pratt for a hot second, black vomit, supernatural whirlpools, a Hannah Montana reference—this movie has it all.

Kill count: 4
SCARE score: 3.4

Jennifer is a smoking-hot demon-cannibal hybrid born from a failed sacrifice to Satan. Fitted with regenerative healing powers and starving for human flesh, Jennifer lures unsuspecting dudes into her clutches and eats them up. There are worse ways to die on this list; I volunteer as tribute!

Fight result: Jennifer wins by feasting in Round 3

Jennifer gives Austin the luxury of eating him slowly over three rounds.

Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Owl; Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (2024)

Did I break the “multiple killers” rule to include these dumbass movies on the list? Yes. Did I do it purely as an excuse to watch them? Also yes. Are these movies as horrible as they look? No, they’re worse. And more are coming!

Though Disney still owns the rights to Winnie the Pooh, the original book from A.A. Milne entered the public domain in 2022, opening the door for Pooh and an entire Twisted Childhood Universe. Bambi: The Reckoning is one of the films currently in development…

Kill count: 50
SCARE score: 3.5

Winnie the Pooh—like the actual Winnie the Pooh, not a person in a costume—stalks a woman lost in the Hundred Acre Wood, smashes her face repeatedly against a wood chipper, and then throws her in it. This is after Piglet strangles a woman to death with a metal chain. Christopher Robin is kept as a prisoner on a hook in Pooh’s and Piglet’s garage and whipped repeatedly. Piglet holds a woman down with a sledgehammer while Pooh drives over her head with a car. The duo kills another 10 people, Piglet survives multiple sledgehammer shots to the face, and Pooh survives a four-on-one beatdown and getting crushed between two cars. That’s it. That’s the movie. Two well-known children’s characters murdering people.

The sequel, bumped from a $100,000 budget to a $500,000 budget, adds Tigger and Owl to the mix and a lot more unnecessary dialogue. Piglet dies from a shotgun blast to the head just 20 minutes into the movie. Owl has acid vomit, lightning-quick flying abilities, and says shit like, “There is no God. Just life and death.” (The second movie also gives Pooh and company an origin story, but let’s not pretend anyone’s watching for that garbage.) Tigger is introduced late, but he catches up to the death count quickly with a spree of kills at a rave. Pooh, the top dog in terms of killing in both movies, gets a flaming chainsaw at one point before he and Tigger die. Before the credits roll, Owl collects the bodies and starts working to bring ’em all back to life. I now pray every night that he doesn’t.

Fight result: Pooh, Piglet, etc. win by decapitation in Round 1

Though the Hundred Acre gang isn’t invincible like the first film suggests, Austin doesn’t stand a chance against these half-human, half-animal children’s book nightmare beasts. Pooh and Piglet play catch with Austin’s head in Rounds 2-12.

Lightweights: Jobber Slashers and an American Furry

Cristiano Berti and Peter Neal, Tenebrae (1982)

A true giallo film to its core, Tenebrae is loaded with mystery, cigarettes, attractive women, and a lot of blood spatter. (Dario Argento’s bag, if you will.) But before we get into any of the kills, it has to be said that the soundtrack is a spectacle. I put it to use in a big way while working through this project.

Kill count: 4 (Berti) and 7 (Neal)
SCARE score: 1.2

American writer Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) is in Rome promoting his book Tenebrae, a murder-mystery novel in which the killer’s motivation is to eliminate “human perversion” and “corruption” from the world. His definition of that is inconsistent at best, but it’s still enough to convince Italian book critic Cristiano Berti (John Steiner) to pick up a razor blade and start making plays himself in honor of the novel. Neal, of course, gets a little too wrapped up in the investigation, going as far as to hack Berti to death with an ax and then use his effort to kill people he believes are corrupting his world. It’s a fun, well-shot slasher with a clever hat tip to Argento’s first thriller, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, when Neal is ultimately killed somewhat accidentally by a falling sculpture.

Fight result: Austin wins by sculpture trap in Round 4

Neal kills Berti in a rage after a fun back-and-forth in Rounds 1-3, allowing Austin enough time to reach over the ropes to grab the pointy sculpture thing and impale Neal through the throat. Cheating, maybe, but Neal needs to control his temper and be more mindful of that sculpture in the first place. Act like you’ve been there before!

Mark Lewis, Peeping Tom (1960)

Kill count: 2
SCARE score: 1.2

Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is a freaky little dude navigating his childhood trauma by luring women in front of his camera and stabbing them through the neck with a hidden blade in the tripod to capture their fear, death, etc., through the lens. He’s a creepy voyeur you’d definitely cross the street to avoid, but he’s not an enforcer by any means. He’s a slow mover, clumsy, and a bit too timid to handle a fair fight.

Fight result: Austin wins by camera throat poke in Round 1

While Mark is too busy trying to film me trembling in terror, I take a picture of my own with a quick lunge and stab through the neck. Say cheese!

Bill Roberts, Intruder (1989)

It’s hard to focus on just Billy Boy when the filmmaking with Intruder is just so damn funny. It’s gimmicky in the best way. All of the campy shot angles, ridiculous transitions, and stupid dialogue make for quite the zig to the American slasher zag.

One of the initial kills, a prototypical knifing in the dark, immediately transitions to a split watermelon. Bill is knocked to the ground at one point, but before you can see him hit the ground, the movie cuts to a sack of potatoes hitting the ground. There’s some lovely foreshadowing with an old-school check spindle. Add in a well-leveraged meat hook, a trash-compactor killing, and a satirical cut to a “knives are sharp” sign after one guy gets his head split, and you have yourself peak cinema. Not bad for Scott Spiegel’s feature debut.

That said, the name of the movie is horrible! Intruder? For a movie about a grocery store killer?? Come on, man. Super Market Slasher, Slashier, Dead Meat Department, The Biggest Grocery Game …

Kill count: 8
SCARE score: 1.5

Though it’s never specifically said in the film, there’s evidence that Bill has superhuman speed and strength. In one of the closing chase scenes, Bill goes from lagging behind our final girl, Jennifer, to killing a delivery man outside the store in seconds. He also goes from holding a knife to holding a severed head and a ready-made sandwich in seconds in a separate scene.

Bill also hurdles from cashier line to cashier line at one point, licks someone else’s spit off his face, and catches a knife at the sharp end and squeezes it. He’s a true psychopath, one you have no choice but to love and adore. Bill nearly beats someone to death with a severed head before he’s cleaved to bits inside a phone booth at the very end of the film. A damn shame if you ask me!

Fight result: Bill wins by meat slicer in Round 6

Austin implores Bill to spend the first five rounds thinking of a creative kill (and subsequent transition). Bill obliges, spending his free time making a sandwich and gearing up the meat slicer for Austin’s cold-cut demise.

John Carver/Eric Newlon, Thanksgiving (2023)

Kill count: 9*

*John Carver (a.k.a. Sheriff Eric Newlon) shoots three dudes with a dart gun, but I don’t think those guys die … I’m not counting them.

SCARE score: 1.7

The first few scenes really set the tone for this movie. A massacre unfolds on Black Friday at RightMart, where multiple people are trampled and killed. One woman, Sheriff Eric Newlon’s pregnant lover, takes a heavy blow to the head from a rogue shopping cart and has her scalp ripped off, killing her and the baby. Another guy dies after a significant throat slice with a waffle iron in his hand. Capitalism at its finest, really.

Newlon seeks vengeance on everyone connected to the massacre and goes on a killing spree the following Thanksgiving after learning RightMart is going to have another Black Friday sale. (Again, capitalism.) It’s hard to say what his best kill is: He stabs a bouncing cheerleader through a trampoline; he takes two corn-cob holders and plunges them in the ears of another victim; he cuts a girl in half with a dumpster lid. It’s all deadly. That said, the most iconic shot of the film is the woman’s body he cooked in the oven and prepared like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Carver is ultimately killed after this film’s Final Girl, Jessica (Nell Verlaque), slowly loads a musket and shouts “no leftovers” before shooting a balloon attached to a tank of gas … God, this movie is bad.

Fight result: Carver/Newlon wins by ax to the head in Round 2

Carver is just a better ax man than Austin. The experience pays off in Round 2, when Carver splits Austin’s head open and serves him up with mashed potatoes and a bread roll.

Henry and Otis, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

What a brilliant movie. Made on just a $110,000 budget, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer accomplishes so much with so little. The performance from Michael Rooker is truly a sight to behold, and the ending is exactly what it should be.

Kill count: 14
SCARE score: 1.8

Henry is smarter and more aesthetically menacing than he is a pure physical threat. He preys on weaker, unsuspecting people for most of his murders, and he only stabs Otis to death after Becky saves Henry from a beatdown when she stabs Otis in the eye. Henry is only a capable serial killer because the movie is set in the ’80s, when all you needed to continue to get away with murder was use a different weapon for each kill. That’s not to say Henry is a pushover, but let’s not pretend he’s some world-beating fighter after his lackluster clash with Otis.

Fight result: Austin wins by ground and pound in Round 8

Austin survives Henry’s initial kicks and punches in the early rounds, but the tide turns when Austin is able to work his ground game on Henry. Austin pummels him to death in Round 8 and begins planning a just funeral for Becky soon after.

Axel Palmer, My Bloody Valentine (1981)

A lot of me wanted to skip the 2009 remake, but I couldn’t willingly avert my eyes after finding out it was in 3D. It’s horrible, but also incredible. The story is botched and the acting is abysmal, but the 3D version really presses the gas pedal down on gory, ridiculous kills.

Kill count: 10
SCARE score: 1.8

The original sets the tone early, showing a woman stroking a miner’s gas mask in a very suggestive way while the opening credits are still rolling. She’s impaled on a spike soon after and the poke goes right through the heart tattoo on her chest. No notes!

Axel Palmer, the miner/killer keeping the town’s urban legend going with a suite of new murders in fictional Valentine Bluffs, is more savvy and creative than he is a pure brute. He’s another jump-scare merchant, but he separates himself by never really repeating the same kill twice. He only has two true pickax kills, but the first goes through a man’s throat and out his eye socket and the second is a simple pickax to the abdomen. The others involve boiling hot dog water, a laundromat dryer, a shower head, a massive drill, and a nail gun. We love a change-of-pace type.

We do get some shots of Axel actually fighting the final guy in his love triangle in a much-anticipated pickax-shovel showdown, but the choreography is wildly slow and boring. Axel is ultimately bested after the mine collapses on him in the final fight scene, but he gets away by cutting off his own arm. He’ll get some bonus points for that at least.

Axel is reborn in 3D, and while most of the remake is just a worse, CGI-ridden copy of the original, there’s enough dumb shit that flies at the screen to have a good laugh. A fully nude woman throws—not shoots—a gun in 3D, one dude’s jaw soars through the screen, and there’s a poorly made follow shot of a bullet through a guy’s body. There’s a reason 3D movies died in the early 2010s, but the Bloody Valentine version definitely plays the hits.

Fight result: Austin wins by pickax in Round 3

Axel has the edge in pickax experience, but Austin is three times quicker with his swings. One of them catches Axel’s eye sockets in Round 3 and the follow-through sends his jaw into the audience’s lap.

Billy Chapman, Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

The first Silent Night, Deadly Night film is surprisingly solid; the four sequels and the 2012 remake, Silent Night, are not-surprisingly horrible.

Kill count: 8 (Billy)
SCARE score: 1.9

At just 5 years old, Billy watches a man dressed as Santa Claus brutally murder his parents. Then, after 13 years at a Catholic orphanage, Billy is asked to wear a Santa Claus outfit as an employee at a toy store. A mental break ensues, and Billy goes on a reckless murder spree. His first kill is arguably his most impressive, as he hangs a guy with Christmas lights by simply holding him above his head with one arm. There’s a shirtless Billy scene that shows he’s a strapping young lad, but I didn’t realize he had that kind of strength. The Christmas-themed kills mostly stop there, as Billy pivots to a bow and arrow, ax, box cutter, and even deer antlers to cross names off his Naughty list. Part of what makes Silent Night, Deadly Night an interesting watch is that it doesn’t lay it on thick with the Christmas jokes, which is why I can still laugh when Billy gives a girl a bloody box cutter as a gift. Billy is ultimately shot twice in the back by a cop at the same orphanage he was raised in and dies in front of his 14-year-old brother Ricky, which sparks two terribly under-produced sequels with Ricky as the focal killer.

Fight result: Billy wins by two-handed choke in Round 5

Billy doesn’t need any weapons to bury Austin under the tree.

Billy, Black Christmas (1974, 2006, 2019)

Did I watch the original and both remakes? Yes, of course. Should you? Absolutely not. The original is solid enough (and all I’m counting for Billy’s official kill count).

Kill count: 6
SCARE score: 2.1

The calls are coming from inside the house. Who’s on the other end? Some killer named Billy who lives in the attic of a sorority house. (The 2006 remake of Black Christmas gives Billy a lot more backstory and makes him neon yellow, but I can’t get into that right now.) In the original, we only see Billy’s eye twice: Once in the shot above and another peeking between a cracked door.

The faceless killer takes down six people in the original, including one iconic kill with a glass unicorn. It’s a fun slasher with some terrifying phone calls, but it also over-shoots the cops trying to source the call. It’s still a tight screenplay with a perfect ending, though.

FINE. I’LL DISCUSS THE REMAKES. Let’s start with the 2006 version, where a Simpson is born.

Yup, that’s Billy. The flashback dumps tell us that Billy was born with a severe case of jaundice, constantly abused and eventually raped by his mother, and imprisoned in an attic. It gets worse, too. His mother eventually has a child, Billy’s sister-daughter Agnes, and Billy eats his kid’s eyeball before murdering his mother, slicing her skin post-mortem with Christmas-themed cookie cutters, and eating her flesh (with milk). I’ve never seen a remake turn it up to 11 like this, and that goes for more than just the flashbacks.

Billy’s baked cookie fiasco is the 2006 remake at its best. The rest of his kills aren’t in the same tier, and Agnes, who has been living in the attic of the sorority house all along, doesn’t match his tenacity even though she does eat someone’s eyeball. And the 2019 remake fails to even come close to the quality of the original or the sheer ridiculousness of the second one. Billy isn’t even in it!

Fight result: Billy wins by eye gouge in Round 3

Billy needs the first two rounds to get used to the spotlight, but he eventually pins Austin to the ground, presses his thumbs through his eye sockets, and wraps him in saran wrap for a photo finish.

Dean Foley, Pieces (1982)

God, this film is so unserious. It’s a horned-up director’s wet dream of a slasher with unnecessary nudity, poorly dubbed dialogue, and completely random racism. One of the main female characters is attacked by an Asian man who is supposedly a kung fu professor. It’s his first and only scene in the entire movie and his lines are: “I am out jogging. Next thing I know I’m on ground. Something I eat. Bad chop suey.” There’s also one of the worst on-screen tennis matches in the movie history, and a bloody nut squeeze is one of the film’s final shots, but I can stop shitting on the flick now.

Kill count: 6
SCARE score: 2.1

I understand not wanting your kid to play with naked women puzzles early on, but the response can’t be to hit that kid twice and tell him he’s going to grow up to be like his piece-of-shit father. Best case, that kid carries that trauma with him only for the next few years. Worst case, he hacks you to death with an ax and uses a saw to cut you into little pieces.

That kid eventually becomes Dean Foley, who—for whatever reason—digs up that trauma 40 (!) years later to target near-naked women to rebuild his mom out of their body parts. He nearly gets away with it, too, until the detectives researching the case in the 11th hour find some files that tell them Foley’s mom was cut to pieces and that he changed his name awhile back. (This movie, man.)

In an effort to say one positive thing about this film, I will: The kill scenes are solid, if not simply fine. I also enjoyed this line: “The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed.”

Because Foley uses a chainsaw for four of his six kills, I’ll give it to us both in the ring. I like my chances fully clothed with the bright lights on.

Fight result: Austin wins by chainsaw throat slice in Round 2

Foley quickly realizes that chainsawing people is a lot harder when the other person also has a chainsaw. Though it’s a grudge match in Round 1 as Austin tries to figure out how to turn his chainsaw on, Austin ultimately gets a clean swipe to Foley’s neck and cuts him into pieces.

Franz, Torso (1973)

Kill count: 9
SCARE score: 2.2

This is a giallo film with a lot of cigs and naked shots of women’s torsos. If you’re not into that, blame the Italians.

Franz’s primary move is to choke his victims out with a red and black scarf and then mutilate their dead bodies by poking their eyes out or cutting them up with a bone saw (complete with visceral sound effects). He also crushes a dude’s skull with a car and drowns a girl, but he’s known in the streets for the scarf and disfigurations.

I didn’t see any reason Franz shouldn’t be bucketed with all of the other slashers preying on unsuspecting women with underwhelming fighting skills and athleticism, until he went kick-for-kick with a local doctor in the final fight scene. Franz lands three impressive high kicks and multiple overhand punches before the doctor counters with a flying double leg kick and sends Franz to the ground. Franz then pops out of the debris with a hook of some sort, slices the doctor, and kicks him in the junk. The two eventually wrestle to the edge of a cliff, where Franz follows suit with his brother and falls to his death. It’s not the result Franz wanted, but it was a valiant effort nonetheless.

Fight result: Franz wins by cliff toss in Round 6

Franz connects on two high kicks and a swift kick to the crotch, knocking Austin out cold. Franz ties the red and black scarf around Austin’s neck and throws him out of the ring, which is coincidentally adjacent to the same cliff where Franz’s brother fell and died. Austin’s fall, however, looks a lot less like a doll flying stiffly through the air.

Patrick Bateman, American Psycho (2000)

This might be a top-five film for me. I’m obsessed with Christian Bale’s performance, and a different part of the writing hits my heartstrings every time I rewatch it. (“Choose a robe, not the Bijan.”) And let’s not discuss the sequel, please, or I’ll have to start “Hip to Be Square” and swing the ax myself.

Kill count: 20, maybe 40*

*Patrick isn’t much of a reliable source, but he does tell his lawyer that he killed “20, maybe 40” people. We only see 17 kills (and a brutal dog murder) during the actual events of the movie, but who’s to say any of those kills are real after the whole Paul Allen fiasco at the end.

SCARE score: 2.7

Patrick believes in taking care of himself. He eats a balanced diet and starts his day with an ice pack (if his face is puffy), 1,000 ab crunches, and some stretches. In the shower, he uses a deep pore cleanser, a water-activated gel cleanser, and a honey almond body scrub. He’s a machine, truly, with underrated precision. Look at the result of this chainsaw drop up multiple flights of stairs; a perfect bull’s-eye.

He’s a bit prideful, sure, but his perfectionist mindset pays dividends in the killing game—even if all of it is in his head.

Fight result: Patrick wins by ax head splitting in Round 2

Patrick and Austin chat Huey Lewis & The News while Patrick puts on his plastic coat in the first round, but the music cuts in Round 2 when Austin shows him his business card. Subtle off-white coloring with raised lettering, tasteful thickness, and a watermark. Patrick splits Austin’s head with an ax with two easy swings after that, forcing him to cancel their reservation for two at Dorsia. A shame, really.

Ghostface, the Scream franchise

Scream 3 strays a bit too far from the hits, but I generally adore the franchise overall. Nothing will ever top the original, but the first sequel is solid, Scream 4 ups the gore at least, and the latest two, Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023), take some new swings that don’t completely suck. This is also a pretty biased take, having saved rewatches for these meta-horror masterpieces for the very end of this project.

Kill count: 45*

*Obviously, this is just every Ghostface kill across the 13 different people that are revealed as the villain in the six movies.

SCARE score: 2.8

Rule no. 1: Always run first. The chase scenes in the initial Scream films are the franchise at its best, and I’m not going to die in this exercise without an iconic chase scene.

Rule no. 2: Throw random shit at Ghostface. A bicycle is the preferred option if it’s around, but anything will do. Every Ghostface up until Scream VI is a clumsy one who is always slowed down in the chases by characters throwing different objects at the killer.

Rule no. 3: Train with Sidney Prescott. It’s probably unfair to say Sidney is underrated at anything, considering that she’s one of the most decorated final girls in horror, but I can’t help but feel it gets overlooked just how much fucking damage she takes over the movies. She takes an absolute BEATING in Scream 3, survives two legit stab wounds in Scream 4, and falls from the second story and takes another stab in the fifth Scream film. She has championship grit and actually earned it, unlike Jenna Ortega’s love interest in Scream VI, who is stabbed 11 times and survives for whatever reason.

I think that’s it, right? I don’t think I’m forgetting anything …

Fight result: Ghostface Wins by knife stabs in Round 2

After a Hollywood blockbuster of a chase scene, Austin is able to punch a knife through Ghostface’s mask and even copy the iconic knife wipe in the closing seconds of Round 1, but just as he turns his back, Ghostface pops back up for one last scare and stabs Austin 11 times in the back before finishing with a throat slice and his own knife wipe. Of course, the killer is revealed to be Ringer editor Justin Sayles, inspired to kill me after I filed 27,000 words of copy. Everybody is a suspect.

David Kessler, An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Come for the transformation scene; stay for the stupid jokes, ridiculous love interest, and the “Moondance” by Van Morrison needle drop in a shower-bed sex scene. (Leave before someone suggests the god-awful sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris.)

Kill count: 18*

*Includes four maulings off-screen in the theater and another six dead from the crash David starts.

SCARE score: 3.2

David kisses a nurse, unprompted, and follows up by telling her that he’s been talking to his dead friend Jack and will become a werewolf in two days. Her response? She invites him to stay at her house in London. If that’s not swagger, I don’t know what is. From there, the story goes as David says it’ll go. He transforms into a werewolf two days later and kills 18 people before being shot dead in the street by the police.

Fight result: David wins by wolf chomp in Round 1

David bites Austin before either can get a quippy one-liner off about how Queen Elizabeth is a man or Winston Churchill is a piece of shit.

Welterweights: Jason Copycats and Slashers With Style

Norman Bates, Psycho (1960)

I won’t acknowledge the sequel, same as everyone else.

Kill count: 3*

*Counting his mom! It only feels right after getting such a gorgeous glimpse of her rotting corpse in the final act.

SCARE score: 1.7

The psychiatrist who dumps the entire story onto the floor like a load of garbage stinks up the ending quite a bit, but, man, Psycho is such an electric film. Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates puts on a master class, the writing is superb, the twist is legendary, and the shower kill is just so goddamn iconic. Psycho is the only movie I watched twice back-to-back at normal speed in this haunting process; it’s truly that good.

Norman, though a timeless horror villain, isn’t much of a head-on threat. Marion’s boy toy, Sam, tackles Norman to the ground and wrestles the knife away with ease in the closing scenes of the movie. Norman is a cunning bastard, but he’s close to the top of the list in terms of bad guys I’d choose to go knife-to-knife with inside the ring. He also riles easily and is a terribly average liar. That doesn’t necessarily mean I could take him, obviously, but bigger, stronger men will punch right through his devilish grin.

Fight result: Norman wins by knifing in Round 4

Austin connects on two stabs to Norman’s abdomen during his routine pre-murder-knife-raising pause, but Norman eventually gets the best of Austin. Norman (clearly) has more experience with the knife, and though we all go a little mad sometimes, Norman has the definitive edge in this private trap.

Jack Torrance, The Shining (1980)

All movies and no sleep makes Austin a blog boy. All movies and no sleep makes Austin a blog boy. All movies and no sleep makes Austin a blog boy. All movies and no sleep makes Austin a blog boy. All movies and no sleep makes Austin a blog boy.

Ah, sorry. Working through some writer’s block.

Kill count: 1
SCARE score: 2.1

Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the hotel chef who shares the titular “shining” powers with Danny, flies from Miami to Denver when he first senses trouble at the Overlook. That’s a four-hour direct flight plus whatever time he spends commuting to the airport from his vacation home and the time spent in both airports on either end. Let’s call it six hours total to start. We hear in the initial interview scene that it takes Jack (Jack Nicholson) three and a half hours to get to the hotel from Denver, including the 25-mile stretch of road that gets 20 feet of snow in the winter. And let’s remind ourselves that Dick has to borrow a snowcat to make the trip because they’re in the midst of a hellish snowstorm. I’m adding another 90 minutes on top of Jack’s travel time because of the weather and whatever time it takes Dick to get from the airport to the guy who’s lending him the snowcat. That’s another five hours. So, in total, Dick leaves his luxurious vacation home and travels at least 11 hours from Miami to the Overlook expecting some kind of danger. What’s his plan when he steps into the hotel at the 2:06:45 mark in the film? Well, Dick yells two phrases nine times total over two minutes exactly across the echoing walls before Jack kills him with one swift swing of the ax: “Hello?” (five times) and “Anybody here?” (four times). YOU KNOW THEY’RE THERE, DICK! THAT’S WHY YOU TRAVELED 11 HOURS TO GET THERE!

I simply need a better game plan than that, Dick. I’m sorry. You communicate with Danny freely using the shining to ask him if he wants ice cream in the beginning scenes before ever leaving the hotel, and then you clearly hear his SOS call all the way in Miami with the same powers. Rather than strolling through the hotel halls hollering like a fool, why don’t you put the shining to use and make a fucking play? Dick is the only person Jack kills in the movie, arguably the best horror movie of all time, and it could have been avoided (I think) with just a little more planning. What did he spend all his time on the plane doing? Crosswords?! Ugh.

Fight result: Jack wins by ax slice in Round 2

Jack corrects Austin in Round 2 after a stalemate of ax-on-ax action in the first round. Surprisingly, neither one yells “Hello?” or “Anybody here?” before the fight is over.

Young and Old Pearl Douglas, X (2022) and Pearl (2022)

Kill count: 8*

*Pearl’s ride-or-die husband, Howard, kills two people in the first film, but we’ll leave him off the list before he has a heart attack.

SCARE score: 2.2

While old Pearl needs the element of surprise, her husband, a pitchfork, and a big kitchen knife to do her bidding before she breaks a hip, young Pearl has a lot more pep in her step. Sure, Mitsy is in heels when young Pearl is chasing her down with an ax, but it still takes some speed to hunt her down. Young Pearl also pushes a pitchfork through Superman’s—a.k.a. David Corenswet’s—chest! She makes up for her lack of one-on-one fighting prowess with her tenacious attitude and grit.

Jokes aside, I love Pearl too much not to give her some appreciation on this list. X and Pearl are two of my favorite watches of the 100-plus new movies I blitzed through for the project.

Fight result: Young Pearl wins by two-handed choke in Round 4; Austin wins by hip attack against old Pearl in Round 2

Young Pearl, because she uses a pillow, fire, ax, and pitchfork combo to kill her first four victims, has to go for a true fistfight with Austin. She still comes out on top, but old Pearl doesn’t have the same luck. Old Pearl blows out her hip in Round 1 and takes a bludgeoning from Austin in Round 2. Au revoir, poor Pearly.

Angela Baker (Born Peter Baker), Sleepaway Camp (1983), Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989), and Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)

The first film of the Sleepaway Camp franchise still has one of the more memorable “twists” in horror, but the series really devolves after that. The sequels swap out the whodunit style for a series of no-frills murder highlight reels, with Angela putting up one of the highest kill counts of any murderer on this list.

(Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor is purposefully left off because it’s essentially just bits of the first three movies poorly stitched together. Angela kills two people in the little footage that is new, though, so we’ll add those kills to her count.)

Kill count: 53
SCARE score: 2.4

Though she’s one of the most vicious, ruthless killers on this list, Angela—also known as the Angel of Death—still feels like an easy out if you can find a way to actually square up. In Unhappy Campers, Molly knocks Angela unconscious for a few minutes after whacking her just three times with a stick. Angela still kills 18 people in the film and eventually gets away, but almost all of her kills come as a shock to the victims. They just never expect it!

In Teenage Wasteland, the third installment of the series, Angela assumes a new identity and returns to the same campgrounds as Maria. She picks up where she left off, killing essentially everyone she runs into and roasting s’mores over some of their dead bodies. Marcia, one of the two campers who survive the third flick, stabs Angela in the gut five times—once with an ax and four times with a knife—but she still survives the attack and kills another two people in the ambulance. Then, in Return to Sleepaway Camp, Angela adds another nine senseless kills, including one where she drowns a guy in a deep fryer and another where she makes a stoner swallow gasoline and blows him up (according to some ridiculous logic). Just like in the first film, we never get a chance to see Angela actually fight anyone; all of her kills are still surprise slayings. (You really start to become desensitized to the slaughter when so few victims actually fight back or even have the opportunity to run away.)

Fight result: Austin wins by curling iron in Round 5

Austin, in a shocking turn of events, sees Angela coming. She gets caught trying to sneak a curling iron into the ring, breaking the Fright Club rules. Austin steals it away from her and pushes it through her eye sockets.

Cropsy, The Burning (1981)

Tired: Another early ’80s Friday the 13th rip-off.
Wired: Another early ’80s Friday the 13th rip-off with a young Jason Alexander with hair!

Kill count: 9
SCARE score: 2.5

Cropsy is just a worse version of Madman Marz. While I like the shears as his weapon of choice, Cropsy doesn’t have the same strength-speed combination nor the same invincibility as Marz in Madman (1983), a film that came out four months before The Burning. Cropsy kills nine people, all with shears, before taking shears to the back of the neck, an ax to the face, and a torching in an abandoned mineshaft. Some of his kills are cool, I guess, but the creativity is lacking across the board.

Fight result: Cropsy wins by shears to the throat in Round 1

Without a flamethrower to really scare Cropsy, Austin struggles to get the best of the big fella. Cropsy is the more experienced shears-man and has much better reach than Austin. A quick lunge to the throat from Cropsy ends this fight in Round 1.

Ben Willis (and Undead Ben Willis), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), and I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (2006)

Kill count: 25
SCARE score: 2.8

Benny boy is bested by Ray on his boat in the first of the three I Know What You Did Last Summer movies, and Ben’s effort in the final fight scenes doesn’t get much better as the series progresses. (Though, I will say his speed peaks in the first film; I’ll never know how he removes all traces of Max’s body and all of those crabs in Julie’s trunk in just a few minutes.) In I Still Know, Ben accidentally kills his own son with his iconic hook before taking eight bullets to the chest; all of Ben’s kills before that are very classic jump scare plays. Finally, in I’ll Always Know, another cast of characters is haunted by an undead version of Ben (ugh) after they keep a murder secret of their own. (Horror movies, shockingly, never know when to just kill a concept; they always take it a step or two too far.) Ben, in classic undead fashion, is harder to kill. He takes two shotgun blasts to the chest and barely breaks stride. He proceeds to get run over, stabbed multiple times, and thrown into a snowblower, but still he survives it all for the pre-credits twist telling the audience he’s still alive. (God, they beat this IP to death … just to kill it again! A fourth film is coming out in July 2025.)

Fight result: Ben wins by hook to the jaw in Round 4

Ben catches Austin with a hook through the jaw in Round 4. Austin dies happily knowing he’ll never have to meet Undead Ben.

Madman Marz, Madman (1983)

Kill count: 9
SCARE score: 3.4

Madman is another early-’80s slasher with “We have Jason Voorhees at home” vibes. The killer, Madman Marz, is a big, ugly fella who started his murderous path by chopping up his sleeping wife and two children with an ax. He was hanged for it by a group of villagers, but Marz somehow got loose and can now be “summoned” if anyone shouts his name loud enough. One of the idiot kids, Richie, immediately screams his name after hearing the story around a campfire. The rest goes as expected: Marz decapitates two people, throat slashes another with just his hand, hangs one of them from a tree, breaks one dude’s back off-screen, and kills a few more. The two decapitations stand out among the slaughter because of just how bad the practical effects look with the headless bodies.

Marz is a bit of a cliché, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due: He is agile for his size, has stamina for days, and is freakishly strong. He doesn’t even really need the ax to wreak havoc. Oh, and his song that plays over the end credits is a subtle banger. Marz has more going for him than just the typical Jason copycat tropes, I guess.

Fight result: Madman Marz wins by ax hacks in Round 1

Marz hacks Austin to pieces early in Round 1. No contest, really.

Johnny, In a Violent Nature (2024)

This film gets (well-earned) hate for being a scary Fitbit commercial with all of the steps Johnny takes in it, but it regained my love and then some for the yoga scene kill. It’s one of the most gruesome, creative kills I’ve seen in this marathon.

Kill count: 8*

*Johnny kills only eight people in the film, but legend says he’s got a much higher body count stemming from his role in two separate massacres over the decades.

SCARE score: 3.8

The aforementioned yoga scene kill—the one where he punches a hook through a woman’s stomach, hooks it to the top of her head, and then pulls her head through her stomach—is Johnny at his best. I’m also partial to the log splitter kill and, of course, Johnny’s final kill, where he swings a small ax through a man’s face 90 times before the scene cuts away. (Yes, I counted.) Some say he’s still swinging today.

Johnny kills five other people in the film, during which he shows that he can breathe underwater—or maybe he doesn’t breathe at all—and he takes two gunshots over the course of the movie, but neither of them keep him down for long. (Why neither shooter ever aims for the head or double taps his ass I’ll never understand.) Johnny won’t get much credit for speed since he never breaks his walking pace, but let’s not dog a guy for getting his steps in.

Fight result: Johnny wins by fisherman hook in Round 1

Johnny stabs a hook through Austin’s face and drags him for his daily 10,000 steps for the rest of his tormented life.

Middleweights: Aliens, Spirits, Demons, a Barbarian, and AI

Samara, The Ring (2002) and The Ring Two (2005)

Kill count: 7

SCARE score: 2.9

Samara’s well climbing in The Ring Two is obviously impressive considering that she breaks her bones with each move she makes up the wall, but she is still bested by Rachel with relative ease in their race to the top. But because the Scary Movie 3 fight scene technically isn’t canon, it’s hard to imagine a scenario outside the well race where any face-to-face scrap with Samara doesn’t end in either possession or a heart attack seven days later.

Fight result: Samara wins by possession in Round 1

Austin takes Samara’s possession in stride. There are worse ways to go out, and anything is better than having to sweat out a seven-day death sentence stressing about all of the things you never accomplished in life.

Regan, The Exorcist (1973)

Kill count: 2
SCARE score: 3.6

Of course Regan is an exception to the rule against including too-hard-to-kill possessed persons, spirits, demons, etc. You can’t make a horror list like this without her! (But you can without any of the Exorcist sequels.)

Psychological states can induce abnormal strength … and sharp tongues, telekinesis, deep voices, green puke, overaggressive neck twists, and a bunch of other weird shit. It’s still wild how many pitches William Friedkin threw in this movie. (Add genital mutilation, reverse bear crawls, levitation, violently shaking beds, and a way-too-early piss scene to the mix.) What gets underrated in all of the physical trauma is just how deep she hits some of the people emotionally. I still audibly laugh at the scene where she says, “Your mother sucks cocks in hell, Karras.”

If Regan’s tied up, I think I have a shot with the right priest and a metal baseball bat. Untie her, and I don’t have a shot in hell.

Fight result: Regan wins by 360-degree head spin in Round 2

Regan toys with Austin in Round 1 with a lot of projectile vomiting and petty insults, but she gets bored of him by Round 2 and spins his head 360 degrees.

Pennywise, It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019)

Both It and It Chapter Two are great examples of CGI done right. Computers elevated both of these films in a beautiful, horrific way.

Kill count: 6*

*We see only six kills in the two movies, but legend tells us that Pennywise has been killing kids in Derry for hundreds of years. His true kill count is probably somewhere in the thousands.

SCARE score: 3.6

Pennywise is obviously scary, but the pomp and frills are lost on me when it’s revealed that he can be killed by some lightweight bullying and imagination. Don’t get me wrong: They’re great movies, and Pennywise is a terrifying horror villain at his peak. But the whole “He’s only what you believe him to be” bit at the end of Chapter Two is lame. Like, so lame.

Fight result: Austin wins by bullying in Round 1

Austin steals Bill Hader’s line and calls Pennywise “a dumb fucking clown” on his way to turning him into a clown puddle.

Pinhead, Hellraiser (1987), Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), and Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)

Clive Barker, Hellraiser’s creator, stopped working on the films after the first four movies. While there’s an argument that they stray too far away from the original story line after just the first two, Pinhead doesn’t really center as the main villain until Hell on Earth. It’s only fair to give Barker his due and cover Pinhead’s reign of pleasure through Bloodline. Still, the original will always be Hellraiser at its peak; the initial practical effects for Frank’s reincarnation are stunning.

Kill count: 291*

*This only includes Pinhead’s kills from the Barker films.

SCARE score: 3.8

I’ll be straight with you: I have no idea what the fuck happens in these movies. What I do know is that Pinhead is a servant from hell who inflicts pain (to his pleasure) and rattles off incredible dialogue essentially every time he’s on-screen:

“Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks?!”
“Every drop of blood you spill puts more flesh on my bones.”
Responding to J.P. Monroe, who says “Jesus Christ!” after seeing him: “Not quite.”
“There is no good, Monroe. There is no evil. There is only flesh.”
“No tears, please. It’s a waste of good suffering.”

Another stray quote we get from Pinhead in Bloodline tells us that he “cannot die” and is “forever” even though he dies at the end of the movie. He, of course, comes back in Inferno and continues to do so in films after that, so I’m fine taking his word for it. There’s no reason to push to get on Pinhead’s bad side.

Fight result: Pinhead wins by cheek hooks in Round 12

Pinhead gets his hooks into Austin’s cheeks straightaway and slowly rips the skin off his body over 12 rounds for maximum pleasure.

Candyman, Candyman (1992), Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995), Candyman: Day of the Dead (1999), and Reboot Candyman (2021)

Surviving the Candyman franchise is as simple as surviving Samara and the Ring films. Don’t watch the goddamn video, and don’t say “Candyman” five times in the mirror. But actually killing Candyman is an impossible task, whereas stopping Samara requires just a quick trip inside the TV, a speedy free solo of the well, and then a push to shut its lid. That’s not saying I could actually get it done versus Samara, as you already know from the entry above, but you get the picture.

Kill count: 20 (original trilogy) and 13 (reboot)
SCARE score: 3.8

The original Candyman trilogy really cools off with the second film and plunges to depths of the Arctic with the third. The titular villain is “killed” in all three movies, first by being lit on fire, second by breaking a magic mirror, and third by lighting a painting on fire. The 2021 reboot, however, breathes new life into the franchise in a way that at least honors the Candyman, never killing him at all and maintaining his omniscience through the end credits. Of course, that doesn’t help me at all in this exercise, but I’ll take an impossible villain in a good movie over a killable one in a cash-grabbing trilogy.

Fight result: Candyman wins by hook to the gut in Round 1

Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. Candyman. … Candyman. And Austin dies instantly with a hook through the back and out the gut. Bees exit his body and swarm the audience.

The Mother, Barbarian (2022)

Barbarian is one of the main reasons I wanted to do this specific exercise and not something like “Could I survive these 100 horror/slasher films?” Surviving Barbarian is a piece of cake. If you book an Airbnb while traveling for a job interview, even in Detroit while there’s a “convention” in town, and someone who looks like Bill fucking Skarsgard—the same guy who plays Pennywise in the It franchise—is already staying at your Airbnb, you leave. It’s that simple. Buy the most expensive hotel room you can find or, hell, sleep in your car on the nicest street. Get arrested and go to jail! Literally anything else.

If you’re an idiot and you do decide to stay, however, your next opportunity to leave is when you find a secret door in the basement of the Airbnb that opens with an old rope and looks like this:

If you’re an even bigger idiot—not the biggest stretch considering you already stayed in the Airbnb—and you decide to enter the secret door, you leave after you see whatever the fuck this is:

As I said, a “Could you survive this horror flick?” series would be pretty boring. There are infinite situations like this where the obvious answer is to simply leave. The fun starts when you start game-planning for a title fight against this queen:

Kill count: 3
SCARE score: 4

The Mother beats a dude to death with his own arm and splits Justin Long’s head open with her bare hands in six seconds. She survives a pretty far fall off a water tower, too. Her lust for motherhood is her only weakness; she’s perfect otherwise.

Fight result: The Mother welcomes her new son with grace in Round 1

Austin doesn’t need the training video to latch on to his only way to survive this fight. Austin jumps into the Mother’s arms and starts nursing in Round 1; she carries him all the way back to her basement home to the tune of “Riki Tiki Tavi” by Donovan.

M3GAN, M3GAN (2023)

Kill count: 4
SCARE score: 4.0

There’s not a shot in hell any human could actually take M3GAN one-on-one. She dies in the movie only because a different robot, Bruce, beats the hell out of her initially. The 8-year-old Cady finishes the job with a screwdriver to her brain, but Bruce did all of the legwork to get there.

I know making the movie PG-13 probably boosted its box office numbers, but I would have loved to see M3GAN in a true R-rated slasher. She’s 10 times what Chucky is in terms of pure killing power, and her bonkers bear crawl/run would be fun to watch as she rampages in the streets on a murder spree.

Fight result: M3GAN wins by robot death punches in Round 1

M3GAN rips Austin’s ears off and punches him repeatedly in the face until he’s dead. She performs her viral dance for the crowd afterward.

Predator, Predator (1987)

Arnold Schwarzenegger uses mud camouflage, builds his own bow and arrow, and swings from trees in a fight with an alien who goes invisible, shoots blue lasers, and has neon green blood. It’s guys-being-dudes cinema for dudes being guys.

Predator is also a one-liner gold mine. Schwarzenegger’s “Get to the choppa” deservedly gets a lot of acclaim, but let’s never forget these bangers:

“I ain’t got time to bleed.”
“You’re one ugly motherfucker.”
“There’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man.”
“If it bleeds, we can kill it.”
“This stuff will make you a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus, just like me.”
“Knock, knock.”
“Showtime, kid.”

Kill count: 9
SCARE score: 4.1

Nope. There’s no shot. Predator is a man-killing machine loaded with enough alien tech to kill all of mankind if it weren’t for the Governator.

Fight result: Predator wins by beam rifle in Round 1

Before Austin can cover himself in mud or think of some quippy joke to go out on, Predator shoots a blue laser through his skill. “Hasta la vista, baby.” Gah, too late. And wrong movie. Ugh.

Xenomorph, Alien (1979)

Yes, I made an exception for Alien. I know there is no singular killer in the franchise, but there’s only one (fully grown) Xenomorph in the first film. That, plus it’s one of the best horror movies of all time and a personal favorite of mine, so I’m not leaving it off the list.

Kill count: 5
SCARE score: 4.5

It’s probably only right to quote Ash, our favorite milky-blooded android, in this spot: “You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility. … I admire its purity. A survivor, … unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.”

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), even with a flamethrower and the airlock at her disposal, only narrowly survived the Xenomorph in Alien. No one else—outside of Jonesy, of course—survived the massacre on the Nostromo. Any bare-knuckled outing with the monster will only end one way.

Fight result: Xenomorph wins by second-mouth chomp in Round 1

The Xenomorph fires its second mouth through Austin’s skull before the opening bell stops ringing. Jonesy pounces onto Austin’s dead body shortly after and licks what remains of his face.

The Thing, The Thing (1982)

Yes, I made an exception for one of the most iconic horror movies of all time and a piping-hot Kurt Russell. The alien parasite in The Thing isn’t technically a singular villain, but I don’t care. It’s my list, damn it! Also, because it’s my list, we’re not acknowledging the stupid, CGI-stuffed prequel that came out in 2011.

Kill count: 10*

*I counted 10 deaths from the parasite in the film, but it’s hard to say how many actually were assimilated and/or killed by it. I guess that adds to its very intentional ambiguity?!

SCARE score: 4.6

R.J. MacReady is the only badass even remotely capable of taking down the Thing, and even he fails to survive the cold in the end. There’s no killing it, only assimilating or freezing to death. (And I’m OK with that.)

Fight result: The thing wins by assimilation in Round 1

Without a flamethrower, Austin doesn’t stand a chance. He leaves the ring swearing he’s human, but no one in the crowd buys it. They set him on fire before even testing his blood.

Heavyweights: Franchise Cornerstones

Leatherface, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

The first two Texas Chainsaw films are iconic masterpieces with character development and production design decisions every movie that has followed has failed to come close to over the years. The third film adds nothing to the series at all. The fourth, dubbed The Next Generation, is a flick I can at least laugh at given Matthew McConaughey’s role in it and the absurd Illuminati plotline. (McConaughey actually says, “all right, all right, all right” in the movie. It’s hilarious.) The first two remakes are bad movies with some good kill scenes; the last three remakes, including the unwatchable 3D version, are worse movies with some good kill scenes. The mixed timeline across all nine movies makes it easy to cut the last seven off the list, though, because I refuse to consider Leatherface immortal or live in any of the Slaughter or Hewitt family universes.

Kill count: 6
SCARE score: 2.4

Leatherface’s chainsaw kills (and ensuing dances) are rightfully iconic, but don’t underestimate his talents with a sledgehammer. His first on-screen kill is the result of one swing with a sledgehammer. Maybe he’d survive his chainsaw-on-chainsaw bout with Lefty in Part 2 if he was dual-wielding a sledge’.

Fight result: Leatherface wins by chainsaw to the gut in Round 4

Each handed a chainsaw at the start of the fight, Austin and Leatherface have a pretty even clash over the first three rounds. Austin plays mostly on the defensive against Leatherface’s big overhand slashes, but Austin’s never able to actually get on the offensive before Leatherface sweeps low with the chainsaw and cuts both of Austin’s Achilles. Leatherface finishes Austin with a chainsaw to the gut and up through the chest. Leatherface opts against taking Austin’s face at the end, though, deeming it a bit too ugly for his brand.

Chucky, the Child’s Play Franchise (and Definitely Not the 2019 Remake)

Ade due damballa, and voilà, a legend is born. Chucky is a timeless horror villain who rivals Jason Voorhees’s aesthetic and Freddy Krueger’s stupid one-liners. Personally, I’m obsessed with his vulgarity. His first words after he drops the Good Guy schtick are iconic: “YOU STUPID BITCH, YOU FILTHY SLUT! I’LL TEACH YOU TO FUCK WITH ME!”

Also, I like Aubrey Plaza as much as the next guy, but she’s not enough for me to throw any respect on the Child’s Play remake from 2019. Franchise creator Don Mancini at his worst (Seed of Chucky) is better than that AI atrocity.

Kill count: 67
SCARE score: 2.4

Anyone who doesn’t think they could kill Chucky needs to look in the mirror (or simply watch the movies). He’s an annoying little shit with a potty mouth and some creative kills, but above all else, he’s a lightweight plastic doll. Sure, he’ll do some damage with a kitchen knife if he catches you off-guard, but any normal-sized adult can outrun him, pick him up, or punt him across the room. In the original Child’s Play, Andy’s mom, Karen, throws him across the room left-handed after he bites her arm. There’s evidence that he’s stronger than he looks considering he chokes a guy out with a yo-yo and kills another person with only a few whacks of a yardstick, but that’s still not enough for me to doubt myself in the ring. Hidey-ho, motherfucker.

Fight result: Austin wins by toy destruction in Round 2

Austin rips Chucky to pieces with ease, matching every swear word and stupid quip the entire way, too.

Freddy Krueger, the A Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise

Freddy Krueger’s creative kill sequences and punch lines in the first four films are good enough to overlook some of the dumb plot holes and pointless tangents, but the same can’t be said for the rest of the franchise. The jokes grow tired, and the CGI that replaces all of the cool practical effects in the originals drives all of the modern remakes into the ground.

Kill count: 62
SCARE score: 3.8

Freddy is in the same class as Pennywise: They’re both scary as hell, and their kills are all pretty fucking awesome. But how they’re canonically killed is just lame. In the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie, Nancy simply turns her back to Freddy, and he dies. In Freddy’s Revenge, he’s killed when the kids tell him they’re not afraid of him, and the kids in Dream Warriors discover their own unique powers and eventually douse Freddy in holy water (??) to take him down. Then, in Dream Master, Freddy dies instantly after, uh, looking at himself in the mirror. The movies go from horrifying to ridiculous with each Freddy “death” in the series.

Fight result: Austin wins by strong words in Round 4

Austin unveils his dream power in Round 4: His skin becomes one big mirror like the Silver Surfer, and he spits holy water. Freddy never stood a chance.

The Leprechaun, the Leprechaun Franchise

People forget that Leprechaun (1993) is Jennifer Aniston’s first major film role. People also forget there are eight (!!) Leprechaun movies in the franchise, including Leprechaun in the Hood (2000), Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (2003), and a reboot from WWE Studios in which the titular villain is reimagined as being silent with gold-colored vision. The latter won’t be discussed because it’s somehow the worst film of an eight-part franchise that is downright horrible (in the best way).

Kill count: 62 (Lubdan and Basil Leprechauns) and 7 (Origins Leprechaun)
SCARE score: 4.2

There’s no point in trying to explain these movies to you, and there’s also no point in even trying to come up with a game plan to kill Lubdan or his brother, Basil. (They’re essentially the same character. Trust me, it doesn’t matter.) Lubdan literally explodes at the end of each of the first four movies. He always comes back, like an uglier, somehow more ridiculous Chucky.

The highlights in the Leprechaun franchise, if you’re willing to turn your brain off to actually appreciate them, are the low-budget effects and accelerating stupidity as the series progresses. Lubdan can teleport, his blood is acid sometimes and yellow orbs other times, he can grant wishes, and he uses a lepsaber in Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997). His weaknesses are four-leaf clovers (sometimes even hollowed-out bullets with four-leaf clovers in them), wrought iron, and an ancient medallion (sometimes). He is reborn out of a man’s crotch because that same guy pisses on the Leprechaun’s leg at one point. He kills one of his first victims by bouncing through a man’s abdomen, chest, and face with a pogo stick. He kills another by inflating her lips, boobs, and butt until she explodes. He stabs another guy with a bong. I could go on and on. (Ice-T pulls a baseball bat out of his afro in Leprechaun in the Hood, and that movie closes with Lubdan rapping with his “zombie fly girls” before the credits roll. OK, I’m done.)

Fight result: Leprechaun wins by head flattening in Round 1

Lubdan flattens Austin’s head like a pancake after taking a deep bong rip with Ice-T.

Michael Myers, the Halloween Franchise

Kill count: 168
SCARE score: 4.1

I started my Halloween rewatch by charting all of the different types of damage Michael took over the course of the series. For example, he takes a wire hanger to the eye, falls to the ground from the second story of a house, and is shot six times by Dr. Sam Loomis in the first film. He takes another five shots to the body and two to the dome in Halloween II. Then, in Return of Michael Myers, he is shot more than 100 times. I stopped charting after that; there was no point. Michael is essentially unkillable in the first 11 movies he’s in, including the two Rob Zombie remakes and the first two movies in the newest reboot. The payoff? This ridiculous shot with Jamie Lee Curtis and the entire Haddonfield community in Halloween Ends.

Making unkillable villains has consequences, especially if you juice them for every dollar possible over 40-plus years.

Fight result: Michael wins by knife hanging in Round 1

Michael stabs Austin through the chest with his kitchen knife and pins him to the wall (obviously).

Art the Clown, Terrifier (2018) and Terrifier 2 (2022)

The Terrifier franchise plays all of the hits: gruesome (like seriously gruesome) kills, a sprinkle of jump scares (but not an overdependence on them), mind-boggling torture sequences, a small taste of cannibalism and genital mutilation, clever comedic timing, and, of course, a terrifying, immortal villain.

Kill count: 16
SCARE score: 4.1

Every time you think any of these films is letting off the gas pedal, you’re wrong. The initial film includes an upside down hacksaw bisection, a still-alive chest skinning and head scalping, and a brutal head stomping. Then, after Art has shot a hole through his own head, he rises from the dead and starts the games over again.

Allie’s death in Terrifier 2 is one of the most over-the-top kills in slasher history. Here’s a link to the kill on YouTube. Just watch it. Describing it would do you a disservice. Just watch it, please.

The severity of Art’s kills honestly makes it hard to pay attention to any of the scenes in which he isn’t on-screen. You spend the entire series just waiting for Art to one-up his previous kill. The dream sequences and supernatural elements introduced in 2 don’t feel super necessary, but if that’s what it took to get a third film approved, fine. I have no idea how Dameon Leone will top 2 in terms of kill creativity in Terrifier 3, but I have no doubt that he’ll find a way.

Fight result: Art wins by forfeit in Round 1

Having seen Art’s dirty work, Austin kills himself after the opening bell.

Jason Voorhees, the Friday the 13th Franchise

Kill count: More than 20,100*

*In Jason X, Jason blows up a ship with 19,727 people on it. … Factor that into his kill count with all of his other kills from the traditional slashers, and we’re talking about one of the most lethal villains of all time.

SCARE score: 4.2

Jason can’t die. It’s one of the most well-known things about him after the hockey mask and machete. It’s also why the series went from being a fun American slasher to a sci-fi disaster. It leans into the bit better than the Halloween franchise, but at what cost?!

OK, Space Jason was actually pretty sick. But nobody needed the randoms on a murder spree inspired by Jason in A New Beginning or the dying of a toxic waste flood in Jason Takes Manhattan. Let good things die, damn it.

Fight result: Jason wins by machete head slice in Round 1

Before Austin can even swing his machete, Jason hacks off both of Austin’s arms and then cuts his head off at the jaw.

AUSTIN, WHAT’S YOUR FINAL RECORD?!?!

Final record: 14-42-3 (26 percent)

A final boy is born.

If you’re a true sicko and made it to the bottom of this bloodbath, email me at agayle@spotify.com to get a copy of my unfiltered thoughts on the other 40 chaps I chopped up who missed the cut.

An earlier version of this piece misstated how large a WWE ring is; it also mistakenly stated that Henry Cavill appeared in Pearl.