Hard Asses of Horror

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I haven't post much this month, because it is the month of the horror film and Becky and I have been spending most of our movie watching time on horror films. So I'm going to bring some horror to the Action Effect, with my top Hard Asses of Horror. Enjoy.

Ripley

Ripley has been my favorite character in the world of film since I was nine years old (when saw Aliens for the first time). In the first Alien she loses an entire crew to a nihilistic star beast, which terrifies me to this day. The second film her maternal powers and clumsy use of a pulse rifle keep her alive, where a unit of seasoned marines couldn't hack it. She even has a futuristic forklift (power loader) battle with the huge alien queen. This lady is a force to reckoned with. Ripley is the essence of hero in my book. A normal space trucker thrown into the grinder against aliens, all the while she keeps the things that matter ahead of her to survive. Like getting Jonesy (the cat) out alive in Alien, it's the simple human things that drive her and keep her thinking instead of being rash. That's what a true life hero experiences. They aren't products of screenwriters. They are products of keeping it cool in impossible situations saving the things that matter in life.

Hard Ass Lines: "You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage," and obviously "Get away from her, you *bitch!*"

Ash

Ash in housewares is almost at divine status in my life. Sure in Evil Dead he's kind of a little bitch and whines a lot, but by Dead by Dawn he is ready to rockin roll with a chainsaw, a maniac laugh, and no fear of the Necronamican scum spawns. But the hard ass comes to full fruition in Army of Darkness. How many goddamn amazing one liners does he have in that movie? From being a scared little bitch to commanding a castle against a deadyte army, this guy really kicked some ass. Well there is the fact that no matter how much of a hard ass he becomes, he still is a coward and loud mouth braggart, but hell who wouldn't be? Cause it's good to be king.

Hard Ass Line: "Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun."

Peter in Dawn of the Dead

The ultimate HNIC (if don't know what that is look it up). Ken Foree pulls together what I think is the best performance in all the ___ of the Dead movies. Peter never shy's away from a fight, even against an army of raiders. The only thing he can do is make it harder on them to rob the mall. This man is also the king of zombie head shots, which seals him as an ultimate zombie killin hard ass. But what really brings him to the top of the series is when he stays behind to hold the zombies off and is about two seconds away from blowin his brains out.... Then has a change of heart and melee's his way through zombies to get on a helicopter just in time to escape.

Hard Ass Line: Something my granddad used to tell us. You know Macumba? Voodoo. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

Jack Crow in Vampires

James Wood's masterfully pulls off a Carpenteresque hard ass in the vein of Russel and Piper. This south westerner hunts vampires while they sleep for the papacy, because he had to kill his own father after he turned into a vampire. Bad blood. In one of the cooler moments in cinema he uses a charred vamp skull to strike a match on. Then there's the issue of padre's wood, where Crow constantly gives shit to a young priest about getting wood from seeing him kick ass.

Hard Ass Line: " Can I ask ya somethin, Padre? When I was kickin? your ass back there... you get a little wood?"

Sex Machine and Frost

From Dusk Till Dawn is filled with hard asses, but two men seal the deal; Tom Savini as Sex Machine and Fred Williamson as Frost. Sex Machine not only has vampire killing prowess, he has a cock canon revolver that only God knows how he fires. When the gore starts to flow Sex Machine gets his and becomes one of the few who make it... but not too long. Frost, the other pinnacle of hard ass muthas, is an old Vietnam vet who uses his sheer size to rip through vampire scum. This is fully manifested when he tears the heart out of the biggest vampire in the famed Titty Twister with his bare hands (or bear hands one could say), then Sex Machine kindly gets the assist with a number 2 pencil. That's hard ass synergy if I've ever seen it. Frost is such a hard ass that not only does he have a Nam story to tell, but also when he becomes a vampire, within moments he is commanding the entire flock of vampire bats.

Hard Ass Line by Frost: "I came to my senses. I realized I killed the entire V.C. Squad singlehanded. There was blood... and chunks of yellow flesh clinging to my bayonet. To this day, I don't remember..."

Hard Ass Line by Sex Machine: "Now, let's kill that fucking band."

Loomis

Dr. Loomis comes off as a little crazy sometimes, but what do you expect from the man who single handedly takes on the essence of evil? AND I am not talking about the egotistical Rob Zombie Loomis, who comes off as completely mad and self serving. We are talking about Pleasence, who by the end of the series (at least his time in it) is a scarred seasoned hard ass, who totes a snub-nose revolver ready to blow Myers away any chance he can get.

Hard Ass Line: "You've fooled them, haven't you Michael? But not me."