Halloween is around the corner, and there's a certain chillness in the air as the days get darker, meaning it's the perfect time to binge-watch your favorite spooky movies and television shows. But why choose any random horror movies when you can enjoy the horror icons that represent the Halloween spirit? In fact, let's shine a light on all the Halloween-themed villains out there. Some are affable, some are scary, but they all might as well be the holiday's mascot.
10 Michael Myers (Halloween)
When your movie franchise is even named after Halloween, you might as well be the holiday's mascot. Michael Myers killed his older sister on Halloween in 1963 as a young boy and that was just the start. He escapes from an asylum on the holiday years later. Also known as the "Shape," the holiday also gives him the perfect excuse to wear a mask.
He's gone on to be the villain in a series of films in the Halloween franchise and Rob Zombie's 2018 reboot.
According to Horror Freak News, a series of novels released around the time of the first film gave an interesting explanation for his crimes: he's possessed by a boy who murdered the girl he loved and was cursed to roam the Earth, repeating his crime for all eternity. Not only would this make Michael a victim in all this, stopping him isn't really going to stop anything.
9 Conal Cochran (Halloween III: Season of the Witch)
Season of the Witch might be the red-haired stepchild of the Halloween franchise, what with it being an attempt to make an anthology of spooky Halloween movies, but at least it gave us another villain. Had it been more successful, we could have had a whole slew of Halloween-themed villains from just one franchise!
Conal Cochran poses as the CEO of Silver Shamrock Novelty Company in his day job, basically a kindly toymaker. Beneath his friendly demeanor, he plans to return Halloween to its origins as a harvest festival...just not the kind of harvest you're thinking of. Inspired by Celtic mythology, he plans to sell cursed Halloween masks that will kill all the children of the United States as a holiday sacrifice.
8 Samhain (Supernatural)
Speaking of Halloween's origins, Supernatural gave us Samhain, the literal personification of the origin of the holiday, in the episode, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester." To be more precise, he's a demon, possibly one of the oldest in the show's universe, who was worshipped as a god on Earth.
A pair of witch-siblings try to bring him back to Earth, and the Winchester brothers accidentally give him a hand by shooting the brother of the two. Samhain possesses his corpse and wreaks havoc, summoning ghosts and zombies. Proving he's not the best guy to have around, he even kills the second witch anyway. Talk about ungrateful!
7 The Sanderson Sisters (Hocus Pocus)
The Sanderson Sisters are three wicked witches who star in Disney's Hocus Pocus. Before you think they're too silly to be a threat, they open up the movie killing a little girl to regain their youth. They also curse her brother to be an immortal cat so he'd have to forever live with the guilt of being unable to save her. It kind of makes you wonder if they can't just curse themselves with immortality. Eventually, they do get hanged for their crimes in true Salem fashion, but they can come back...if someone lights a candle for them during a full moon...on All Hallows' Eve.
And that's just the start of the movie, they do come back and they plot to steal the youth from all the children of Salem one 90's Halloween. The children who accidentally brought them back try to stop them and they give them quite a fight. You know they're bad news when the zombie they rise from the grave ends up siding with the kids...it helps that they probably put him in the grave to begin with.
6 The "Surprise Party" Girls (Trick 'r Treat)
The Trick 'r Treat anthology movie gives us a whole cluster of scary stories for the holiday. In one segment, we are introduced to a group of girls each dressed like storybook heroines, notably Laurie, an ingenue dressed like Little Red Riding Hood, who is concerned with her upcoming "first time."
The girls are planning to bring dates to a Halloween bonfire. Of course, any good story of Little Red Riding Hood needs a wolf somewhere lurking in the background...and Laurie and her friends aren't as innocent as they seem. Get the possibility?
5 La Llorona (Grimm)
La Llorona, also known as "the Weeping Woman," is a ghost from Latin American mythology with different origins, according to History Today, usually being the ghost of a woman searching for her lost children.
In the Grimm universe, she appears in an area near Halloween and sacrifices three children, only for her to appear again every year to find more children.
During her appearance on the show, Nick manages to defeat her long enough to rescue the three children she's most recently stolen, meaning she's not unstoppable, but she's probably coming back next year.
4 The Haunted Mask (Goosebumps)
The R.L. Stine series that did the impossible...got kids to pick up a book in the 90's...started with a Halloween special, based on the eleventh book.
Sweet little ingenue Carly Beth Caldwell wants to be scary on Halloween to get back at some bullies, so she steals a scary mask for her costume. Unfortunately, it becomes a little too accustomed to her face...
There's one hope: the living mask can be defeated by a "symbol of love." That's not the end, however, unlike the original book, he later comes back for revenge on Carly Beth.
3 The Headless Horseman (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
The Headless Horseman is a horrifying specter from Washington Irving's short story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."
As in the original story and its various adaptations, the cowardly hero, Ichabod Crane, is told about the ghost by his rival, Brom Bones, during a harvest party. only for him to meet the monster face-to-face as he rides home. The horseman might have just been Brom in disguise, but one thing is for sure...Crane is never seen in Sleepy Hollow again.
With all the adaptations of the story over the years, the Headless Horseman has sort of retroactively become a Halloween icon. The Philipsburg Manor House in the real-life Sleepy Hollow even hosts a Halloween-themed weekend in honor of the story, according to The Westchester View.
2 Ethan Rayne (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
In the Buffyverse, some monsters like to use Halloween as a day off. Planning an attack is too obvious and everyone saying your costume needs work gets old faster than you think. Ethan Rayne is an exception to this rule.
This warlock may have been a recurring villain in hindsight, but his first appearance involved owning a pop-up costume shop and turning his victims into their attire. He probably does it just to make a "be careful what you wish for" joke and make money doing it. Seriously, you can't trust those pop-up shops.
1 Kang and Kodos (The Simpsons)
It's just not Halloween without The Simpsons airing one of their annual Halloween specials. The octopus-like aliens, Kang and Kodos, made their debut in the first "Treehouse of Horror" and have appeared nearly every year since.
Ironically enough, in their first appearance, they are actually friendly. In "Hungry Are The Damned," they invite the Simpsons to their planet where they will live in paradise and feast like kings. Lisa becomes suspicious and tries to save her family, but it turns out she's wrong and the aliens throw the family out after hurting their feelings.
Since then, however, they've been less kindly, although anyone would snap after seeing Serak the Preparer cry like that.
What are some other Halloween-themed villains and characters you like?