Scary Movies With Your Fave SW Stars!

[lazypadawan]

With a few exceptions, just about all of the major players in the SW films have appeared in at least one horror movie over their illustrious careers.

Unfortunately, most horror movies are bad and most of these movies are thusly bad too. But it's always amusing to see your favorite SW star run from a hatchet-bearing psycho or a ghost or something. Here's the Hall of Horrors:



Nightwatch (1997): Ewan McGregor plays a hapless law student taking a night job as a watchman at a morgue. You just know that won't end well at all, particularly since somebody starts um, messing with the female corpses :O. A little more on the thriller end, it also has horror elements.

She's Back (1989): Carrie Fisher plays the ghost of a murdered woman who henpecks her husband into taking revenge for her death. I hear it is really, really awful. Somebody I knew once found it on VHS for 99 cents.

In The Mouth Of Madness (1994): Starring Sam Neill, this wacko film from John Carpenter features a cameo by a 12-13-year-old Hayden Christensen, his feature film debut. Look for a bicycle-riding paper boy a little more than halfway through the film. The young cutie's voice hadn't even changed yet but oddly enough, his long thin legs kinda look the same as they do now.

What Lies Beneath (2000): Harrison Ford's big Hollywood horror flick with Michelle Pfeiffer. Ford turns out to be the bad guy and the ghost Pfeiffer experiences is that of his murdered young mistress. Infamous for a t.v. ad/trailer that gave away The Big Plot Twist as well as the fact that Ford turned out to be a bad guy.

The Haunting (1999): Poor Liam Neeson is trapped in a crazy house haunted by overdone special effects loosely based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting Of Hill House. Jackson's book is great, by the way.

The Exorcist III (1990): I think I saw this a zillion years ago and it wasn't until I looked through Samuel L. Jackson's 59,000 films on imbd that I realized he had a small part in it! How 'bout that?

Mark Hamill: Mark deserves some kind of award or medal of honor or something for the sheer number of horror flicks and t.v. shows he's done over his career: Sleepwalkers, a remake of Village Of The Damned, and the infamous butt-exposing Body Bags for starters. The only SW alum who have done more horror than he has are Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell (1974): Peter Cushing and David Prowse (as the titled monster) team up pre-ANH in Hammer's last Frankenstein flick.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973): Two SW villains duke it out in yet another Hammer horror movie, with Cushing playing the good guy and Lee playing everyone's favorite bloodsucker.

Comments

[may-child.livejournal.com]

Too funny!

Indeed, Mark Hamill has been in quite a few horror movies (you left out "Black Magic Woman," although I could scarcely blame you for doing so), and as far as I know, all of them are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD. Unfortunately for him, he has a real affection for horror (and sci-fi, hence the numerous non-SW sci-fi flicks he's done, and like his horror flicks, they are all BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD), plus he apparently suffers from what I call Louis Gosset Jr. Syndrome: a bizarre gravitation to the direst of crap.

"What Lies Beneath" is also notable for being the movie Harrison Ford exchanged the lead in "Traffic" for. It's pretty dumb, but enjoyable, if only because it gave Ford the rare opportunity to play the bad guy, which he does by glowering a lot.

"The Haunting" was so bad, I couldn't even laugh at it. It was this flick that made Liam Neeson want to quit acting, not, as was widely reported, TPM.

I haven't inflicted "She's Back" on myself. Carrie did a terrible sci-fi flick, "The Time Guardian," a couple years before "She's Back" -- she admitted in an interview that she took the part in "The Time Guardian" because she got a free trip to Australia, where it was filmed, out of it. I have to wonder if she did "She's Back" because she got something out of it, but then, much of Carrie's non-SW filmography is pretty crappy.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Black Magic Woman is an erotic thriller, not truly a horror movie, which is why I didn't include it or The Guyver, which isn't truly horror either despite Hamill's disturbing metamorphosis into a giant bug ;).

There was a thread on TFN some years ago on "The Worst Movie With A SW Actor" that was hilarious and quite a few of Hamill's flicks from the late 1980s-early 1990s came up. I don't know if celosia is going to jump in here or not, but it seems to me he hit his stride by focusing more on animated t.v. stuff. He might have done a lot of crummy movies, but the guy does have an extensive resume based on his t.v. work alone within the past 15 years.

Hee hee, I remember The Time Guardian! Boy, was that terrible! A lot of Carrie's worst movies coincided with the worst of her personal problems, with the exception of When Harry Met Sally, and I guess that was only because Rob Reiner was a friend of hers.

My brother can do a great imitation of Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath: "Claire! Claire!"

[may-child.livejournal.com]

OK, thanks for clarifying why you didn't include "Black Magic Woman." I watched it when a friend of mine, who worked in a video store at the time, brought it home. We had a good time laughing our asses off at it.

Mark Hamill has made a nice career for himself providing voices for animated shows and animated movies. In some circles, he's as well-known for voicing The Joker in "Batman: The Animated Series" as for playing Luke Skywalker.

Carrie's non-SW resumé improved when she decided to take bit parts that only required her to do a couple of days' work at a time. Her turn in "Scream 3" is pretty much the only reason I watched it, and many people said she was the best thing in it.

LOL at your brother's imitation of HF. One review of "What Lies Beneath" dubbed him "The Thing Without A Pulse."

[celosia.livejournal.com]

Even a die-hard Mark Hamill fan(addict) has her limits.

I couldn't stand watching The Guyver. In fact, I have never seen the ending and I own the dvd. As for Black Magic Woman, I also have to cringe at that one. His character creeps me out. I also have issues with the clothing for that movie. Mark (or rather, men in general) should never wear pleated pants. Yuck!

You did forget to mention,Midnight Ride. It's more of a suspense/thriller rather than horror. I really enjoyed Mark as the "psychotic killer" Justin. The character is so disturbed. He likes to suck on eyeballs. Bleh.
Mark's acting is believable and you can tell he is having fun with the character. Justin's laugh is very similar to the Joker laugh. Very creepy.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of Midnight Ride. When did it come out?

ITA re pleated pants.

[celosia.livejournal.com]

Midnight Ride was released in 1990. I am pretty sure it went straight to video. I bought it on Ebay in VHS form. Robert Mitchum guest stars as his doctor.

My icon is from the movie.

Here's a Halloween treat! I made a slideshow from some of the movie's screencaps.
Enjoy!
http://s12.photobucket.com/albums/a237/Celosia2/Midnight%20Ride%20pics/?albumview=slideshow

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Not if there are any pleated pants!

[ladyaeryn.livejournal.com]

Yikes. I think Liam was the main reason I saw The Haunting, and I wound up feeling so embarrassed for him before all was said and done. To this day I'm glad I only spent a buck to catch it at the cheap theater - I've never walked out of a movie, but I was very close with The Haunting.

What Lies Beneath wasn't as horrific, but on the other hand, I'm not exactly rushing out to see it again. Ford as a bad guy just... didn't work for me.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, I saw The Haunting on cable, so it was at no extra cost!

[angryscientist.livejournal.com]

What Lies Beneath, In The Mouth Of Madness and Village Of The Damned are the only ones I've seen from the list but I recently saw a Frankenstein special and discovered Peter Cushing's many pre-SW horror flicks. So they're also on my to-watch list :)

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

Those were B-movies for their time, but anything from Hammer is very entertaining.

[vanimy.livejournal.com]

LOL nice research!

I found 'What lies beneath' not that bad (and I was probably the only one out there who didn't know Ford was the bad guy!) but I have to admit Ford as the baddie didn't work for me either...

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I've actually SEEN most of those movies! Have pity upon me ;).

[jawajames.livejournal.com]

... the Haunting...

it's a like a live action scooby doo... without the dog.

Liam Neeson is Fred
Catherine Zeta Jones is Daphne
the other girl is Velma
and the shaggy young guy is Shaggy.


i saw the Haunting in a theater in Denver by myself on a road trip...

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

LOL, that's great! "I would have gotten away with it too if wasn't for you meddling...grownups!"

[elthegeneral.livejournal.com]

I liked the haunting.... ): But I was small when I watched it. Or maybe it was Katherine Zeta as a spicy lez. Not sure. Will watch it again.

And ROFL at Liam ...."I brought my trusty cellular-telephone." OH THE 90s. I think of that all the time. XD

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

LOL, "my trusty cellular telephone." It's like the fan-made "The Lost 1994 Pilot of '24'" featuring a grunged-out Jack Bauer, dot matrix printers, and AOL dial-up internet service ("sorry Jack, I gotta go...we're paying for this by the hour").