Kirk Hammett is best known as the guitarist with Metallica. He joined the thrash icons in 1983, replacing future Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine on the eve of recording their debut album, Kill ’Em All, and has appeared on each of the band’s albums since.
But Hammett is also a noted horror connoisseur. Not only does he have an extensive collection of horror memorabilia, including a huge collection of vintage movie posters, but he’s published a book, Too Much Horror Business, and founded his own horror convention, Kirk Von Hammett's Fear FestEvil, launched in 2014.
Unsurprisingly, Hammett knows his way around the world of horror movies, though his taste leans towards the less blood-splattered.
“I don’t really enjoy movies that have graphic violence for the sake of it,” he told Metal Hammer in 2012. “A lot of my favourite horror movies have to have a supernatural element or a fantasy element or a demonic, satanic element and I like movies that rely on those elements to carry the plot. Violence for violence’s sake, like the Saw movies and Hostel movies or even Friday The 13th, to me it’s kind of sleazy and cheap. It takes more thought and more imagination to make the type of horror movie that I like.”
Gory or not, Hammett’s knowledge of horror runs deep, as he proved when Metal Hammer asked him to name his five favourite cult horror movie villains.
First up were Dr. Vitus Werdegast and Hjalmar Poelzig, from the classic 1934 chiller The Black Cat, played respectively by horror legends Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
“It’s an unusual movie in that Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff play two villains who meet up at a house and they don’t like each other and they end up squaring off,” said Kirk. “The climax of this movie is them having this duel. Those are two of my favourite villains of all time, man.”
For his second choice, Hammett stuck with the 1930s, this time picking Fu Manchu, the criminal mastermind created by British author Sax Rohmer in the early 20th century. The character has been portrayed countless times over the years, though it was Boris Karloff’s incarnation from 1932’s The Mask Of Fu Manchu that struck a chord with Hammett.
“Boris Karloff is great in it,” enthused Hammett. “Dr Fu Manchu is trying to bring down the entire Western Civilisation and at one point he brings out his death ray and starts randomly firing it at a bunch of people, and it’s just totally insane.
Hammett then moved onto the 1980s, with Herbert West, the mad scientist-gone-bad from 1985 cult classic Re-Animator, an adaption of a classic HP Lovecraft story. In it, West discovers the secret of re-animating corpses, leading him to go on a murderous killing spree.
“He’s such a great mad doctor,” Kirk told Hammer. “[Actor] Jeffrey Combs did such an awesome job being a mad villain. There’s something scary about the idea of a crazy doctor, right? Herbert West is one of the craziest doctors you’ll ever see.”
Hammett’s penultimate choice was one of the all-time great horror movie characters, again from the 80s: the monstrously creepy Pinhead, from 1987 classic Hellraiser.
“That was super-original,”said Kirk. “He’s a demon from a different dimension with all these pins stuck in his head. That’s just super-imaginative, you know? I love the whole deal with the box too, having it be the key to this other realm. I think [author and Hellraiser director] Clive Barker is a true genius.”
For his final choice of horror movie villain, Kirk returned to the 1930s, nominating another mad scientist, namely Doctor Moreau from 1932’s Island Of Lost Souls, played with creepy charisma by noted British thesp Charles Laughton.
“Charles Laughton plays another favourite villain,” said Kirk. “He had a really decadent approach to portraying Doctor Moreau and I always thought that was really, really great.”
Horror fans may quibble that there are no classic characters from the 70s, 90s or beyond, but given Hammett’s knowledge of the genre is hard to beat, we’ll bow down to his picks.
