Horror movies are full of creepy people and terrifying villains, but horror is not the only genre that can have scary characters. Just because a movie is an action movie or even a comedy, it can have characters that give off a spooky vibe and send chills down the spine of viewers.
Even movies targeted at children can have frightening characters that make even the bravest kids turn away from the screen. Needless to say, terrifying characters are not in short supply and can appear in almost any situation, waiting to scare viewers. Some of the scariest characters can come from non-horror movies.
10 A Chocolate Factory With A Nightmare Boat Ride
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory doesn't scream scary at all. Especially when nearly everything inside the factory is edible and some kind of candy – from gummy plants to a chocolate river. The man who engineered all of these wonderful treats couldn't possibly be scary, right?
Wrong; one scene in the movie took Gene Wilder's Wonka from a friendly eccentric candy maker to a terrifying madman. Known as "the tunnel scene," Wonka's boat ride terrified his passengers with creepy imagery, and Wonka sang a song about impending doom while those on the boat yelled to stop.
9 Bilbo's Dark Side Revealed
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring brought a fantasy classic to the big screen. The franchise contains terrifying enemies such as the orcs, Balrogs, and giant spiders. However, these are not the creatures that haunt the nightmares of viewers.
It is Bilbo Baggins, the loving uncle of the protagonist Frodo, who is the person to cause people to be afraid of the movie. It is only for a brief moment, but Bilbo gives in to the corrupting nature of the Ring and attempts to take it back from Frodo. When he does so, his face becomes distorted into something genuinely spooky.
8 Large Marge Brought Terror To Pee-Wee
The adventure comedy Pee-wee's Big Adventure introduced views to one of the scariest women they had ever met in a non-horror film. On his adventure, Pee-wee decided to hitchhike and was picked up by a rough, older female trucker.
This trucker was named Large Marge, and she went on to tell Pee-wee that it was the anniversary of the worst accident she had ever seen. She said the body "looked like this" and transformed into a gruesome claymation figure. Not only was this visage terrifying, but Pee-wee later learned that Large Marge was a ghost.
7 No Country For Old Men Showed Completely Disaffected Evil
The 2007 film No Country for Old Men is certainly not for the light of heart with its themes of drugs, violence, and murder. However, one character stands out among all the violence as someone truly terrifying, Anton Chigurh.
Sure Chigurh is a hitman, so he is intended to be an imposing figure capable of unspeakable acts. However, his complete lack of emotion makes Chigurh so scary. Letting a coin flip decide whether someone lives or dies is extremely cold, not to mention something about even his hairstyle is unsettling.
6 Men In Black Put A Bug In A Skin Suit
One of the most disgusting and creepy aliens from the first Men in Black movie was Edgar the Bug. Not only was Edgar an interstellar terrorist, but he was a giant insect. Edgar's appearance was an amalgamation of several different insects, but he primarily resembled a cockroach.
However, Edgar's insect form was not his scariest look. It was when he put on his human disguise that The Bug haunted nightmares. The disguise was made from a deceased human's skin and slowly rotted throughout the movie, making Edgar look more and more creepy.
5 Coraline Is A Button-Eyed Horror Show
Neil Gaiman is a master of dark themes, and his expertise came through in his novel turned film, Coraline. The title character goes to an alternate universe and comes in contact with a being known as the Beldam. At first, the Beldam looks like Coraline's mother, with some significant differences.
The Other Mother looks better dressed than Coraline's real mother, but the big difference is that she has buttons for her eyes. Not only this, but when the Other Mother was angered, she turned into a distorted version of Coraline's mother, and her true form turned out to be a humanoid spider hybrid.
4 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Warned Of Free Candy
The 1968 musical-fantasy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was full of fantastical elements and characters. The title is based on a broken-down Grand Prix car that becomes able to fly in a story told by the father of the two main characters.
Every fantasy story needs a villain, and the villains in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hate children. They thus employ one of the creepiest men in their kingdom to rid the streets of children, The Child Catcher. This creep used every trick in the book to lure children out to cart them off to prison.
3 Toy Story's Dummies Brought A Jolt Of Fear To The Franchise
Walking and talking toys are not out of the ordinary in the Toy Story franchise. In fact, it's completely normal and isn't strange at all. However, it is a bit scarier when the toy doing the walking is a ventriloquist dummy, and it's even more terrifying when it's a group of dummies.
The Bensons were a group of ventriloquist dummies that were the henchmen of the fourth movie's antagonist Gabby Gabby. The visage of a ventriloquist dummy is enough to scare most, but the most disturbing things about these dummies were that they were mute, and their arms were often limp.
2 Matilda's Miss Trunchbull Is The World's Worst Headmistress
A character that undoubtedly terrified anyone who has watched the 1996 film Matilda, Miss Trunchbull is the type of person no one wants to come across. Trunchbull was a nasty woman that ruled her school with an iron fist.
Trunchbull disliked children so much that she even suggested that she had never been a child herself. The slightest mistake was met with extreme consequences of Trunchbull's wrath, even if it was doing something she didn't like, such as wearing pigtails. Trunchbull still terrifies adults who watched Matilda as children.
1 Who Framed Roger Rabbit Took A Turn For Darker Territory
It's expected that a movie that mixes cartoons with real life would have plenty of wacky characters. This is true of Who Framed Roger Rabbit; however, not every character is how they seem. This is quickly revealed when a baby cartoon is shown to have a gruff man's voice and smoke cigars.
This is especially true of the movie's antagonist Judge Doom. Shown as a serious and dark-intentioned individual out to destroy all Toons, it is then revealed he is a cartoon himself. However, Judge Doom was not a funny, wacky cartoon but was extremely disturbing with his sinister cartoon eyes.