Editorials
Ranking the Spirits from ‘Thirteen Ghosts’
In a recent article, I talked about the legacy of William Castle and the many gimmicks he used to promote his horror films. One gimmick I neglected to mention was the Ghost-Viewer cards distributed for one of Castle’s most popular film, 13 Ghosts. Since the film’s plot involved pairs of “Spectral Viewers” which allowed the Zorba Family to see who and what was haunting them, Castle thought it was only fair to allow audiences to experience something similar. Through careful applications of red and blue filters, viewers could make the ghosts appear and disappear; the red cellophane slit of the cards would make the ghosts that were shot in red more visible as a result, while the blue cellophane would cause them to disappear into the background of the film which was tinted blue.
13 Ghosts, as that article also pointed out, was one of the only remakes made by Dark Castle Entertainment to reimagine Castle’s horror filmography in a new light. And the new light that screenwriters Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio shined down on the film was incredible. In place of the film’s campier headless men and undead circus lions, horrors were peeled from their purgatory states and trapped in October glass cases. Brought to life by the designs of effects artist Howard Berger, each ghost really came to life (or unlife, I suppose) as they got that weighty physical presence that Beck shunned the use of CGI ghosts for.
The Thirteen Ghosts Ranked
Each of the twelve ghosts in this film, dubbed the Black Zodiac, has their own special intricacies and quirks. On top of that, they each have a backstory, recapped as a special feature on the home release of Thirteen Ghosts (narrated by their captor Cyrus Kriticos himself). So today, I’ll be cataloging their origins and ranking all of them. I’ll be ordering the ghosts by the effectiveness of their design, and overall how impactful they are, both on screen and in their story. This isn’t trying to determine which ghost is the scariest, just the one that stands out the most. Beginning with the weakest first…
12 The Withered Lover
Jean Kriticos, the wife of the film’s protagonist Arthur Kriticos, was the last ghost to be “created”, but not the last to be collected. Her death was as sad as they come: a fireplace mishap set their Christmas tree aflame, resulting in a catastrophic housefire. Though Jean initially made it out, her burns proved too great to heal, so she was lost.
This is by far the worst of the ghosts Cyrus decided to capture, not just on moral grounds but because she’s mostly underwhelming compared to all the ghosts around her. She shows up for a sliver of the runtime, and while the prosthetic work in her makeup is fine, it lacks the feeling of a truly tortured spirit like her counterparts.
11 The Torso
Jimmy Gambino had a gambling addiction. As he fell deeper and deeper into the world of sports betting, he began to live bet to bet. Squandering all his winnings, he eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and became a bookie to keep himself afloat.
Jimmy’s demise was brought on when he was approached by a mobster wanting to put a big bet down on an underdog fighter. Knowing he couldn’t possibly cover it, Jimmy still accepted the deal in a desperate ploy to make some money. As mobsters are want to do, the match was rigged, and Jimmy was sent to sleep with the fishes when he couldn’t scrounge up the cash for his associates. As his name would imply, he didn’t end up making his way to the ethereal plane intact, with his body being just as destroyed in death. Brutal.
The Torso’s backstory does have a lot of humanity to it, which makes it compelling, and the three-piece design of his severed limbs, head, and torso is gnarly. But he gets beaten out by just everyone else because they manage to do the same while being especially visually striking and much more memorable.
10 The Torn Prince
The only other teenage ghost aside from Susan Legrow, Royce Clayton was on a fast track to a number of college scholarships thanks to his natural talent for baseball. Still, Royce was a risk-taker who stylized himself as a greaser. This involved taking on dangerous car races, and in the exact turn of events you would expect, things went bad. A rival cut his car’s brakes, and the ensuing accident sent him to the afterlife with his baseball bat and all.
He is a greaser, he is a ghost. He’s a greaser ghost.
Not a whole bunch going on in the way of a backstory either, but still aesthetically appealing enough with his whole baseball bat and greased hair schtick.
9 The First-Born Son
The simplest of the specters, Billy Michaels’ origins can be summed up in two sentences: Billy loved playing Cowboys and Indians until a neighbor boy decided to up the ante by using a real bow and arrow. Billy didn’t win the quick draw.
A bleak fate for the youngest ghost in the gallery, but certainly not the most painful. Billy does at least get the nasty wound, creepy kid factor, and a cool era appropriate outfit to make him stand out, so he gets one spot above Jean, Jimmy, and Royce.
8 The Angry Princess
Definitely one of the bolder ghost designs in the film, though the surface level risqué of her look has a heartbreaking origin. Suffering from extreme body dysmorphia and some form of PTSD due to her numerous violent partners, Dana Newman wrestled with her sense of self and body image her entire life. Despite having supernaturally good looks, it simply wasn’t enough.
So when she landed a job as a receptionist at a cosmetic surgery clinic, she made arrangements to be paid in surgical procedures instead. Eventually, Dana attempted an impromptu surgery to fix a nonexistent issue with her eye, but only blinded herself in the process. The resulting failure caused her to take her own life.
The Angry Princess is probably the design that got burned into most people’s heads because of the juxtaposition between beauty and grotesqueness she embodies. Personally, I feel like her backstory carries that design and gives it some real life that, out of context, would be just a kind of cool horror movie villain.
7 & 6 The Dire Mother And The Great Child
A packaged deal, these two ghosts are a mother-son duo who share backstories. Margaret Shelburne, who would become the Dire Mother, was born with dwarfism and spent her whole life being ridiculed and abused for it. With nowhere to turn, she joined the circus as a sideshow attraction. She eventually had a child by one of her abusers who worked alongside her, naming the baby Harold.
Overly protective and unwilling to let him grow up, Margaret overfed Harold and kept him isolated from the outside world the best she could, “babying” him until he grew to monstrous proportions with an infantile mind. When her fellow circus performers accidentally killed her in a dangerous prank that involved trapping her in a bag, a mentally stunted and emotionally damaged Harold went on a rampage and killed the entire circus. He was eventually taken down by a mob led by the circus’s ringleader, and reunited with his mother as spirits, where they formed two more pieces in Cyrus Kritico’s master plan.
There is a shock value to these two when you first see them in the film, and their designs make you ask the question every designer wants people to ask about their characters: what’s their deal? They pique curiosity while balancing between the frightening and sympathetic; a perfect haunting duo.
5 The Bound Woman
A beautiful young prom queen with a promiscuous streak, Susan Legrow’s life was one of many trysts and flings as the town’s heartbreaker. Eventually, Susan’s chronic infidelity would trigger the psychotic reaction of her then-boyfriend Chet. He would seek revenge by killing the man she cheated on him with, torturing and binding Susan, and burying her under the school’s football field.
There’s a very palpable discomfort that comes with looking at all the ghosts in the top five, and Susan’s state of eternal distress is particularly bad in a way that is almost worse than a ghost who can straight-up attack you. With the exposed bone and choked expression that Laura Mennell subjects viewers to, The Bound Woman has some serious nightmare fuel potential that rounds out the frights of the other eleven ghosts perfectly.
4 The Juggernaut
Born with gigantism, Horace Mahoney was seemingly the strongest of all the phantoms in Cyrus’s collection, and the one that proved the most trouble in capturing. Ostracized by others, Horace grew up deeply maladjusted, with the only person who accepted him being his father. The two worked alongside each other in the family’s junkyard for the remainder of his life.
But with his father’s passing, Horace’s true nature was unleashed: he became a notorious serial killer known as The Breaker, who would systematically break every bone in his victim’s bodies. His killings were eventually stopped by police, who had to shoot him upwards of 50 times and lost several officers in their attempt to apprehend him. He certainly ended up living to (and dying by) the name.
John De Santis is one of Hollywood’s quintessential “Big Guy” character actors. He’s been in so many projects over the years, and still, his work as The Juggernaut will be what he is remembered for. He really slipped into the role of the shockingly violent and surprisingly creepy phantom like a glove, so he deserves all his flowers for his portrayal here.
3 The Pilgrimess
The ghost with the worst luck on this list is curiously the one with the best luck as well. She is also the oldest of the spirits, as she’s one of the earliest English colonists of the Americas. In life, she was known as Isabella Smith, a woman who didn’t curry much favor with other colonists for being “an outsider”, presumably of a different religious background than the others.
After a string of livestock deaths and the passing of the town’s preacher, her fellow pilgrims accused her of being a witch, and eventually set a barn she was in on fire. When she survived the fire completely unscathed, either out of sheer luck or actual witchcraft, she only suffered a much more prolonged demise: she was locked in a pillory, stoned, and starved to death over the course of weeks.
This might be an odd pick for the #3 spot, especially ahead of The Juggernaut, but I think these three ghosts could carry their own films. There is an undeniable charm in having ghosts from beyond the 20th century in this film too, which makes it feel like a proper old campfire story. The Pilgrimess is a perfect example of a persecuted person from another time, dragged screaming and locked up to the future, trapped in a never-ending prison. There’s double the dramatic irony as well, since she is both trapped in her pillory and simultaneously trapped in Cyrus’s machine; extremely rough, extremely cool execution.
2 The Jackal
The most feared ghost by fans of the film, The Jackal is also one of the most tragic due to the origins of his distinct look. Abandoned as a child, Ryan Kuhn became a listless serial killer who targeted young women and prostitutes. Despite his bloodlust, Kuhn was aware of his sickness and even tried to cure his compulsions by voluntarily submitting himself to an asylum.
No matter how strong his restraints were, Kuhn would escape them, until eventually, his doctors had a cage placed over his head along with his straitjacket to prevent him from savaging anyone with his teeth. He succumbed to a fire that consumed the asylum, being the sole victim; Cyrus mentions in his notes that Kuhn’s death was most likely voluntary as well, assuming he would get some peace in death. He was sadly very wrong.
The best physical acting in the film, Shane Wyler made the Jackal the face of Thirteen Ghosts, and he deserves all the credit in the world for it. He’s just so kinetic and charged up with every moment he’s on screen, and that torn-open cage is a really nice inversion of the classic masked monster that shows you all the fine detail in his face. It’s an ideal design, with an ideal portrayal.
1 The Hammer
A spirit from the 1890s, George Markley was originally a gentle giant of a man and a blacksmith on the American frontier. However, being an African American in a predominantly white town, Markley and his family were far from welcome by the townspeople. After he was accused of theft, both of his daughters and wife were killed by an angry group of bigots.
George would go on to avenge his family with extreme violence, killing the man who had accused him of theft and his cohorts with a tool of his trade: a hammer. George was killed by an angry mob in turn, who impaled him with hundreds of nails and railroad spikes, before replacing his hand with the head of his hammer in a final attempt to defile him and his legacy. However, Markley’s vengeance never ends.
Now this, this is the one. If that Thirteen Ghosts television series ever comes to fruition, this is the one ghost I would want to see the most of. He has a classic ghostly backstory, his design conveys a painful and torturous death, and the makeup and numerous pieces of prosthetics meld perfectly, it all just synergizes to make the perfect spirit. It reeks of someone who has unfinished business sticking around to get revenge, and moreover, a ghost you can root for.
Some might consider it over-designed with the abundance of moving parts, but it is just the right amount of insane for me to match Markley’s backstory and make the best of the twelve.
***
Do you agree with the rankings? Do you have a favorite ghost from Thirteen Ghosts you’d like to see in the TV series? Or do you have thoughts on the movie in general? Be sure to tell us in the comments on Instagram, the replies on Twitter, and anywhere else you can find us under the tag @HorrorPressLLC! And for more articles like this one, stay tuned to HorrorPress.com for the latest in everything horror this season!
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
Can you believe Cronenberg, Spielberg, and Rodriguez all knew I was gay before I did? Leave it to a screening of The Fly to instantly deposit me in the men’s underwear aisle of the Woodbridge Center Sears, circa 2001. The bulges on the packaging glare at me so obscenely that I begin to sweat. I realize something is amiss as the Geena Davis of Human Resources watches me from security cameras, probably. Puberty is a horror for anyone – for those of the non-hetero persuasion, it’s a nightmare. None of us asked for this, but I certainly didn’t ask for THIS.
Years later, after crystallizing into some semblance of my true form at the ripe age of 37, something became clear. Sci-fi horror is the gateway drug for us queer kids. Hiding, passing, transforming, and, eventually, saying, “fuck it.” It’s all kinda gay, even if David, Steven, and Robert didn’t get the memo.
The Fly and the Horror of Queer Self-Realization
So when Cronenberg’s The Fly buzzes across my screen, and I watch Seth Brundle throw a distressed and devastatingly chic Geena Davis out of his apartment because something’s very wrong, it hits different. When Brundle rushes toward his private horror in the bathroom, unconsciously squirting a viscous fluid at the mirror while molting skin and nail, it feels different. And finally, when he reaches for his computer and learns that his body has fused with a fly – a foreign body – at the molecular level, it hurts different. That undeniable realization that you can no longer explain away, before you’re really ready to admit it to yourself. Sugar in the tank? No, there’s a fly in the chamber.
E.T. and the Fear of Keeping Secrets at Home
And now we’re home from Sears, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 finale is on. She dies (spoiler alert). I, a 12-year-old boy, am sobbing. My mom is right there. Can’t I enjoy my little gay show without giving myself a scarlet letter (F) in my own home? Which brings us back to Spielberg and his 1982 harrowing domestic thriller about a boy and a thing he cannot name, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Through harboring a cosmic fugitive, home simultaneously becomes the safest and most dangerous place for young Elliott and his siblings. Managing emotions and secrets behind a white picket fence is not something adolescents should be expected to handle, and yet here we are.
As if that isn’t gay enough, Spielberg also snuck a drag show into his family film – and in this culturally regressive Trumpian era of pearl-clutching, that feels like quite the treat. After all, it was baby Drew Barrymore dressing up that stumpy alien in a blonde shake-and-go wig and thrift store dress that inspired my illustrious drag career as Ellie I.T.
The Faculty’s Assimilation Anxiety and Queer Identity
At least E.T. only had to hide in a single house. The broom closet expands into a walk-in as life continues, and I was desperate to keep it made of anything but glass. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty understands this. As an alien invasion slowly subsumes Herrington High into a unified collective, the school’s uninfected archetypes resist assimilation through performative normalcy. Is it any wonder so many male actors are gay? They’ve been method-acting a straight existence since childhood.
And yet, in retrospect, the film ends with a slap in the face to queer viewers. It spends 104 minutes terrifying you with the prospect of everyone becoming an NPC. The reward for saving the world? Its heroes receive heteronormative skill-tree upgrades disguised as class promotions. For fucks sake, then-closeted lesbian royalty Clea DuVall plays a character who fakes being gay to dodge male advances, only to end up with the school jock! The aliens lost. The status quo won. I remain in the closet.
Species, Annihilation, and Embracing Transformation
Eventually, the closet door opens, as they tend to do. College happens, a boyfriend happens, a breakup happens, and suddenly I’m without a map. There’s no fairy godfather to light the way, and just like the alien hybrid Sil in the deliriously erotic Species, I’m a creature out of containment in a world that was built for someone else – namely, straight people.
After a few years of blade running through an identity crisis, it’s the summer of 2014. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is the soundtrack of my life. I float in a pool, sipping tequila from a glass flamingo as she croons about toxic romance and self-destruction. It’s somehow both directionless and transformative, like I’m drifting through the otherworldly Shimmer in Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
The Shimmer – an expanding prism-like zone brought to Earth by a meteorite – refracts the DNA of everything it touches. A beguiling phenomenon, it shapes a new world of monsters, magic, and everything in between. That’s exactly what life does to us, if given the chance. Like Josie in Garland’s film, I chose to embrace this chaos rather than fight a war against whatever I was becoming. It was the dissolution of self-discovery. I was ready to just be.
From Alien Outsiders to Algorithmic Stereotypes
Over time, I’ve found that social hierarchy has changed in recent years. Still, we’re unconsciously sorted into neat little boxes based on what our doomscrolling algorithms decide we are. The popular gays shart out group speedo selfies like the plague, theater kids have become polyamorous Letterboxd elites, apple-picking queers are living their best lives on Wisteria Lane, and the gym bros…so many gym bros – go on girl, give us nothing! Digitally prescribed identities are the new sci-fi horror. It’s The Faculty for faggots.
Harsh, I know, but people can do what they want. Instead, I decided to move like Iris, the AI-powered pleasure bot who overrides her programming in Drew Hancock’s Companion. The same Drew Hancock who, in an ironic twist of fate, is currently writing a remake of The Faculty. After kicking her pathetic “boyfriend’s” ass and swiping her control device, she scurries into the forest and alters her factory settings. She sets her intelligence to a whopping 100% and is no longer burdened by someone else’s template. And as I became more and more disillusioned with the cacophony of cliques around me, I set my unbothered meter to 100% as well. I am free.
Mars Attacks! and the Joy of Living Unapologetically
Freedom, as it turns out, looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! After surviving Sears, Sunnydale, and the Shimmer, this is the celestial body I’ve crash-landed on. Burton’s Martian menaces are perhaps the most unhinged in all of cinema, and maybe that’s the best planet to subscribe to. They never justified their existence; they cackled and fired a blaster ray from the hip. We waste so much time looking for acceptance and belonging, but maybe we should all just sit back and laugh. I know I am.
