Contributions to Horror: Mark Hamill

When Star Wars became a worldwide phenomenon in 1977, and Mark Hamill along with it, as the franchise’s golden boy hero, Luke Skywalker, very few people probably thought his career would go in the direction it did.

While Hamill’s most popular achievement will always be the Star Wars franchise, the multi-talented actor went on to helm a masterful career in voice acting, adding a prose and personality to characters who are immediately recognized the moment that viewers hear them, and instantly becoming iconic, including Hamill’s takes on The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series and Skeletor in Masters of the Universe: Revelation.

However, peppered throughout Hamill’s acting career, there has been a constant in his live-action works: horror. Since the ‘90s, Hamill has popped up in various horror films and TV shows, from some of the most iconic directors in the genre. With Hamill’s upcoming role as The Major in Francis Lawrence’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk, I think it’s past due time we celebrate Mark Hamill’s contributions to horror.

Hamill’s foray into horror began in 1990 with Bob Bralver’s Midnight Ride. While it’s not a fantastic film, Hamill’s portrayal of the psychotic spree killer, Justin Mckay, is one of the movie’s bright spots. His murderous character is actually pretty interesting; traumatized from horrific childhood events, and snapping Polaroid pictures of his victims right before he kills them.

Midnight Ride wasn’t well known, but it did set the stage for a nice run of horror throughout the ‘90s. The next role was a shocking one, as Hamill played CIA Agent Max Reed in the tokusatsu superhero film, The Guyver. While not horror in the traditional sense, The Guyver covered all the genre’s bases in a way that films like Darkman and Blade did. Plus, it was great to see Hamill’s character experimented on and transformed into a gnarly, practical cockroach hybrid monster.

From there, it only got bigger in the horror genre for Hamill. In 1992, he had his first role in a Stephen King adaptation, and while he was uncredited as the Sheriff in Sleepwalkers, his King collaborations wouldn’t end there.

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In 1993, Hamill led his own segment (and the best segment, in my opinion) in horror master John Carpenter’s made-for-HBO film Body Bags, where he played Brent Matthews, a minor league baseball player who loses his eye in an accident, and when it’s transplanted with the eye of a former serial killer, Matthews begins to take on the killer’s murderous urges.

Carpenter and Hamill would collaborate again just two years later, as Hamill was cast in Carpenter’s 1995 remake of Village of the Damned, playing the town’s reverend.

Outside of starring in an episode of The Outer Limits, Hamill focused away from horror and mostly on voice acting in animated TV and movies throughout the 2000s, and while he did have a role in Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic, his full return to the horror genre wouldn’t truly come until 2019.

That year, Hamill would blend his love for voice acting and horror to the max, as he took on the voicework of Chucky in Lars Klevberg’s remake of Child’s Play. Obviously, it’s no small task to live up to Brad Dourif’s most iconic role, and while the movie itself wasn’t bad, Hamill’s turn as Chucky was well received.

Related: Mike Flanagan to Write ‘Clayface’ Movie for DC Studios

Hamill’s return to horror would spark more TV work in the genre, with a small, memorable role in “The Things in Oakwood’s Past” segment of Shudder’s CREEPSHOW and as the absolutely hilarious Jim the Vampire in What We Do in the Shadows ( “Cravensworth!!!!!!”).

His next role, and one of his best in the genre, came in 2023 when he collaborated with modern horror guru Mike Flanagan in Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Hamill played the sinister Arthur Pym, otherwise known as “The Pym Reaper”. Pym was the Usher family’s long-time attorney, fixer of all things illegal, and held a general disdain for any nonsense from the Usher children.

Flanagan and Hamill will collaborate again in The Life of Chuck, another Stephen King adaptation, but not in the horror genre.

And that brings us to today, as Hamill will appear in the upcoming adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most messed-up novels, The Long Walk, as the story’s primary villain.

It’s hard to believe that anything Hamill could do in the horror genre could upend the pop culture goliath that is Star Wars, but his works throughout the genre are genuinely underrated and loved by the horror community to the point where any time his name pops up on a project, we all get excited.

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