Editorials
Stuffed with Fear: How Taxidermy Haunts the Horror Genre
I have unintentionally surrounded myself with stuffed animals for most of my life. Not those ones, though. The ones seen in the antique shops I visit, and the museums I work at, sometimes covered by protective glass or left to gather dust. Some of them are beautiful, some hilariously horrifying.
My Grandfather’s Craft: Beauty in the Macabre
Bill Waldron, my grandfather, was a skilled taxidermist. I remember Christmases visiting my grandparents in Minnesota, sleeping in their dark, musty spare room in the basement. Adjacent was my grandpa’s workroom: a windowless, incredibly bright cave potent with chemical fumes from myriad acids, glues, and paints. He was self-taught, and his work was beautiful.
After hunting or fishing trips, he often gave my dad taxidermy pieces of the animals they caught together: bear, deer, walleye, and even caribou. This caribou hung in our family living room, a cobwebbed fixture high above the fireplace. It fell one year and would have killed our dog had he been sleeping in his usual spot.
A dead animal is a really weird thing to put on your wall. Americans have been doing this for centuries. Taxidermy was all the rage in the Victorian era: it was a sign of wealth, masculinity, and virility. A trophy won, stuffed, and displayed for guests to see in your entryway, man cave, or den. Teddy Roosevelt’s Sagamore Hill residence on Long Island is a perfect example of how we use the American wilderness as art and furniture. Bucks, bears; swordfish, Great White sharks; pheasants, wolves; and yes, even beavers have something to offer aesthetically.
The Role of Taxidermy in Horror Movies
While the taxidermy animal may have been a specimen of craftsmanship and a symbol of American masculinity, in a post-Psycho (1960) America, the image of the taxidermist became ominous. They were recluses with a weird hobby, one that, more often than not, insinuated murderous impulses. After all, several real serial killers slaughtered small animals in their youth and took up taxidermy as a hobby (or cover-up). Ed Gein and Jefferey Dahmer, the former being the inspiration for Norman Bates, are notable examples.
The products of the taxidermist’s work adorn haunted, cracked walls; hide secrets; torment the living; and serve as portentous reminders of life’s absurdity. These mounted, macabre monstrosities can be incredibly campy, too. In some cases, perhaps the chemical fumes got to the artist’s head. The horror genre has embraced taxidermy and the allure of the skillful yet dangerous taxidermist.
The following list of characters is neither a ranking nor an analysis of their use of taxidermy on human victims. Wings and/or four-plus legs are prerequisites, folks!
Jame & Bubba
While chainsaw-wielding Leatherface (TCM, 1974) and the deranged Buffalo Bill do not explicitly perform animal taxidermy in their respective films, it’s hard to imagine them not experimenting with animals before, well…
Gumb, due to his perceived gender dysphoria, is drawn to the beautiful world of bugs. His favorite, the Death’s Head hawkmoth, became a creature synonymous with the horror genre. The Asiatic moth, raised from eggs, nourished by honey and nightshade, was “loved” by Gumb. “The significance of the moth is change,” states Dr. Hannibal Lecter, “Our Billy wants to change too.”
Taxidermy exposes the delicate beauty of moths and butterflies, focusing on the vibrant wings. Gumb’s walls were covered with odds and ends, a mixture of fascist imagery and delicate butterfly paintings. I wouldn’t be surprised if a framed butterfly or moth taxidermy display was framed somewhere in that house of tortures.
Similarly, Bubba Sawyer, known as Leatherface, enjoys toying with physical change in his respective house of horror. But, his apparent taxidermy, littering the walls of the Sawyer home, has nothing to do with his desire to transform.
Bubba’s taxidermy is focused on what’s around him in the Texas heat: longhorns, deer, armadillos. While the monarch butterfly is native to Texas, I think that would have been too delicate a taxidermy for a Sawyer to attempt.
Joe, “I’m getting into taxidermy.” “Of course you are. Classic!”
Joe is a lesser-known horror slasher. He is new to the craft, but boy is he busy! You’re Killing Me (2015) is a coming-out-as-a-murderer story, with Joe fresh out of a psychiatric institution and ready to start dating… among other things. The small animals he targets are mainly chickens and canaries, though it looks like he also dabbled with reptiles.
We learn that Joe comes from a stifling home life with a domineering mother, like Norman Bates, who had him committed to the hospital to curb his impulses. Speaking of Norman…
Norman, “My hobby is stuffing things.”
For not knowing much about birds, Norman seems to specialize in them. All kinds of birds! He is the quintessential taxidermist of horror, surrounding himself with his craft. “I hate the look of beasts when they’re stuffed,” Norman reasons, why he chooses birds for taxidermy. Scholar Subarna Mondal argues that Psycho “brought taxidermy in mainstream narrative cinema at a time when taxidermy was beginning to be reviled.
Concern for animal rights, wildlife preservation laws and a clear shift in cultural response to taxidermy had already begun to see the art as the grotesque mind’s propensity to create grotesque bodies.” (Mondal, 2017). Norman’s birds are symbols of his caged madness rather than mere stuffed animals.
Norman’s birds of prey are impressive, and beautiful in their likeness, despite Norman’s assertion he knows “nothing” about them. His work is merely a “hobby… to pass the time, not fill it.” I argue horror’s most passionate taxidermist comes in the form of an Oreo-loving, vampire-killing, pot-smoking grandpa who may or may not be a member of the undead.
Grandpa, “Talk about a Texas Chainsaw Massacre!”
Grandpa Emerson of The Lost Boys (1987) is an endearing figure. We first meet him playing dead to scare his family, which is the perfect segue into his home décor. His man cave’s aesthetic is Teddy Roosevelt meets the American Southwest… on a budget. It’s “a real “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” as put by his grandson, Michael. Grandpa’s taxidermy is neither threatening, as with Leatherface’s body of work, nor precise, like Norman’s. This is evidenced by the odd critters he decides to preserve and gift his family (and dates!).
Maybe all the stuffed animals in Grandpa’s house are decoys for Santa Clara’s vampires, to throw them off the living humans inside. After all, he saves his whole family from the vamps. When I think of horror taxidermists, Grandpa always comes before Norman Bates. I prefer my taxidermists to be heroes.
My grandpa won competitions and awards with his taxidermy. In a feature for Minnesota’s Detroit Lakes Tribune, he was cited as a mentor for a local man getting into the craft, particularly woodcarving and painting fish. “He (Waldron) said, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but you could use some help with your painting.’” (Bowe, 2010).
Being a lineman for most of his adult life, the profession took a toll on his body. He became addicted to opioids in his 70s, resulting in a downslide physically and mentally. He passed away in 2024.
I still have the sunny he preserved for me; one we caught together on the lake. Funny, he always reminded me of Quint from Jaws, with his torn hat, mustache, and rough hands. Quint just didn’t have the artistry in him, I suppose: “Back home, I have a taxidermy man! He’s gonna have a heart attack when he sees what I brought him!”
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
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?
