It seems like strange horror movie cameos are about as integral to the genre as jump scares
and creepy kids. From major stars playing unusual roles to non-Hollywood celebrities lending their
star power to screamfests, here's a fond look back at the weirdest horror movie cameos of all time.
If you've ever thought to yourself that Fabio, with his heavenly eyes and flowing hair, looks
like an angel, you're not alone. The filmmakers behind 1990's The Exorcist III apparently thought
so too. They cast the young heartthrob in his first U.S. role as an angel. Another bizarre
cameo in the film comes courtesy of NBA star Patrick Ewing, who appears as the Angel of Death.
Both characters show up onscreen during a surreal dream sequence that features an angel leading a
big band, a train station that seems to be heaven, and other random acts of chaos and madness. But
that's not all, The Exorcist III has plenty of other odd celebrity cameos, including
Samuel L. Jackson, Larry King and, perhaps most strangely, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Despite its unique cameos and terrifying premise, the film received a lukewarm
response from critics. It seems like when you're making a second sequel to arguably the
best horror movie ever made, you have to make it stranger if you can't make it any scarier.
These days, Bill Murray's public demeanor seems to be closer to his classic characters
in Ghostbusters and Caddyshack than the persona of most A-list actors. This is why it was such
a delight to see the legendary comedian appear in Zombieland,
playing a slightly exaggerated version of himself.
"Wait, who's Bill Murray?"
"Hey, I've never hit a kid before. I mean, that's like asking who Gandhi is."
While Zombieland is a horror comedy, Murray's cameo completely changes the tone of the movie
from slightly scary to nearly pure comedy as the four main characters wander into Murray's
seemingly abandoned mansion. The set design is pure Murray myth, featuring props from his
previous movies and ludicrous paintings of the man hanging throughout the house.
It's the perfect foreshadowing for when Murray, himself, eventually pops up. And he's
in surprisingly good spirits for someone who's survived the zombie apocalypse for so long. Murray
ends up having a blast with the protagonists right up until a prank goes wrong in an extremely
gruesome way. It's by far the comedic centerpiece of a very funny movie, and Zombieland wouldn't
be the same without the surprise of seeing the beloved actor delivering some truly classic lines.
"So, do you have any regrets?"
"Garfield, maybe."
Silence of the Lambs is one of the greatest horror movies ever made, and also one of the
few to ever earn an Academy Award. Many factors led to that critical acclaim: the
steady direction of Jonathan Demme, the nuanced performance of Jodie Foster, and, of course,
the scenery-chewing, flesh-eating character of Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins. It's
an incredibly engrossing movie, but if you're a mega-fan of crooning songwriter Chris Isaak,
you might get pulled out of the movie when he suddenly shows up on screen.
Isaak, the musician behind the hit song "Wicked Game," appears towards the end of the film,
as a SWAT commander during Lecter's breakout scene.
It's an incredibly tense and climactic moment in the film that unfortunately
might be lessened for you if you spend most of the scene going, "Wait, was that Chris Isaak?"
Of course, Isaak has appeared in other films since,
most notably in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but his cameo in Silence
of the Lambs is definitely one of his most surprising appearances.
While some viewers might find it jarring, plenty of movie fans had another reaction.
"That was good."
The Backstreet Boys warned us all along that they'd be back, but we still didn't believe
them. Or at least we didn't think that they'd be back in the closing minutes of This Is the End.
In this star-studded horror-comedy, most of the action takes place around James Franco's house
as real-life celebrities are menaced by supernatural events and insane survivors
of the rapture. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the rapture doesn't include a decent chunk of
the Hollywood elite, leaving Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride,
Craig Robinson, and Jay Baruchel to hole up and hide from demons.
Eventually, Baruchel and Rogen are able to ascend to heaven, where they can have everything they've
ever dreamed of just by wishing for it. Baruchel, in a truly relatable moment,
wishes for the Backstreet Boys to show up and perform one of their biggest hits.
They say that horror and comedy both rely on surprise, so it makes sense that a
horror comedy would end with one of the most surprising and danceable cameos of all time.
Sometimes it's not the actual presence of a celebrity in a horror movie that's surprising,
but rather how they use that celebrity. Instead of getting wrapped up in the ambiance of the film,
you end up scratching your head wondering what the purpose of such a bizarre cameo even was.
A perfect example is Tim Burton's 1999 adaptation of Sleepy Hollow, which cast
Christopher Walken as the Headless Horseman. Let's be specific here, however: Walken plays
the Headless Horseman before he loses his head. In other words, he plays a Horseman.
Wordplay aside, Walken's character doesn't utter a single line of dialogue during his
brief appearance in the film. Instead, he growls and hisses while fighting and trying
to escape capture. Considering the unique joy of Walken's voice, it's completely insane to cast
the acclaimed actor in a dialogue-free role where he only snarls and grunts.
You almost certainly know Tommy Wiseau for his cult hit film The Room,
in which he delivers a truly inimitable, bizarre performance.
"You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Wiseau has the kind of strange charisma where,
no matter what, you're genuinely distracted when he appears on screen, which was bad news
for 2016's Cold Moon. Despite Wiseau's cameo and a story by the writer of Beetlejuice, Cold Moon is
definitely not a comedy. In fact, it's deathly serious, which makes his cameo even stranger.
In the horror drama, Wiseau appears for just a few moments with a snake
and he performs as if he's never seen one before in his life.
"Don't stretch him too much. You're tearing him apart, for god's sake!"
There's almost nothing more surprising than seeing Wiseau in an
otherwise straightforward dramatic horror movie, especially when his presence bends the movie like
gravity. Having him appear in the first 10 minutes of the film just means that
the audience is going to spend the next 80 minutes wondering if he's ever coming back.
"Ha, ha. You must be kidding, aren't you?"
Technically, this is less of a cameo and more of a small role, but Jack Black's performance as an
overly familiar weed dealer named Titus in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
is weird enough to merit inclusion. At the time of the film's release, Black hadn't yet reached
the heights of fame he'd scale after his work in School of Rock and Kung Fu Panda, but he was
still recognizable for his role in the Tenacious D television show and other small movie parts.
The sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer takes the surviving characters to
the Bahamas for a vacation where they once again have to fend off the evil
advances of the maniac from the first movie. Black's Titus is one of the killer's first
victims as he's stabbed with a hook and then impaled with garden shears. To his credit,
Black totally commits to the part, giving Titus a lot of presence on screen. Although, at times,
it feels as if Black is behaving like he would on any given day.
The original Scream more or less reinvented the horror genre,
pushing mainstream horror out of the cookie cutter rut that it had been stuck in for so
long and giving audiences characters that had at least seen a horror movie before
even if that knowledge didn't keep them from falling prey to a killer.
As with most successful horror films, Scream created its own franchise, which led to the
well-received Scream 2, but then started to peter out with Scream 3. Still the second sequel does
offer one delightful surprise cameo: Carrie Fisher playing an annoyed studio secretary
named Bianca who bears an uncanny resemblance to Carrie Fisher and was almost cast in Star Wars.
"I was up for Princess Leia. I was this close.
So, who gets it? The one who sleeps with George Lucas."
Fisher's cameo is a welcome surprise in an otherwise pretty lackluster film.
And there's plenty to enjoy in Fisher playing a character that's mistaken for
Fisher in a movie franchise that jumps between movie fiction and movie reality.
From start to finish, The Cabin in the Woods seems to be obsessed with cataloguing and referencing
the formula of horror movies. Nearly every scene in the film either directly references or
obliquely nods to popular horror conventions or even specific horror flicks. That extends
all the way to the climax, in which Dana and Marty find out that they're all part of a grand ongoing
sacrifice which requires certain archetypes to be ritualistically killed for the pleasure
of elder gods. Marty needs to die since he's the "fool," while the "virgin" can survive without
ruining the ceremony. It's a pretty clear nod to the Final Girl convention, a term coined
by writer Carol Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
Naturally, the director of the institute in charge of sacrificing people for elder gods
is a "Final Girl" in her own right, someone who survived a killer.
Except, you might have expected the part to be played by Jamie Lee Curtis, one of cinema's most
notable scream queens from classic slasher films like Halloween. The character is instead played by
Sigourney Weaver. It's a really surprising cameo, mostly because Weaver's role in the
Alien franchise doesn't exactly line up with Cabin in the Woods' central statement about
formulaic horror conventions. Curtis' place in the popular horror consciousness would have been
a much more obvious choice, while Weaver's cameo almost undercuts the central point of the film.
Sometimes, breaking the fourth wall in a movie works like a charm and adds an
extra dimension to the narrative, but when said wall is unexpectedly smashed to pieces by a
professional wrestler who has nothing to do with the rest of the film, it can be a little jarring.
The 1984 horror-comedy Gremlins gets pretty weird in some places and the 1990 sequel,
Gremlins 2: The New Batch, takes the craziness to another level.
Joe Dante's satire of Hollywood sequels is full of Easter eggs and cameos, but
the most memorable and bizarre comes by way of former WWE superstar, Hulk Hogan.
When the little terrors commandeer a movie theater that is somehow showing Gremlins 2,
the manager of the theater seeks help from Hogan, who happens to be in the
audience. After getting worked up about the film being interrupted by gremlins,
the Hulkster addresses the annoying green creatures before he pile-drives the fourth wall...
"If I were you, I'd run the rest of Gremlins 2, right now. Sorry, folks, it won't happen again."
There are so many weird celebrity cameos in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! that you'd be forgiven
for not spotting them all upon your first viewing. Shahs of Sunset cast member Reza Farahan plays a
Capitol Park policeman. Former Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz appears as a mechanic.
George R.R. Martin can be spotted as a moviegoer. Even Penn and Teller have a short scene in a diner
with David Hasselhoff. The list goes on and on, but the one celeb cameo that seemed to have
everyone talking after SyFy dropped the B-movie sequel in 2015 involved TV's Jerry Springer.
In Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, the East Coast has been rechristened the "Feast Coast" by the press.
This is because there's a massive sharknado headed in that direction. Knowing that his wife, April,
and their family are spending the day at Universal Orlando, veteran sharknado hunter Fin Shepard
heads for Florida. Along the way, he's joined by Nova, an expert sharknado tracker. Upon arrival,
the pair walk straight into a nightmare the famous theme park is plunged into chaos when
the sharknado finally hits. In the middle of the mayhem, Springer's character really wants
his picture taken next to a replica of the shark from Jaws. Unfortunately for him, it's not a prop.
"Please, please, take my picture. Real fast!"
"There's no time for this. You have to get out of here."
"Nova, come on!"
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