#simone simon

Ben:

he's hot, he's competent, he's doomed by the narrative, he's the zombie movie protagonist all other zombie movie protagonists are judged against

Face card unmatched. Cool in a crisis. Stone cold bad ass. 10 out of 10 would follow him in any zombie apocalypse scenario.

Has any man looked so good while fighting off the hordes of the living Dead? I think not.

Ben is one of THE smartest horror movie protagonists of all time. In the movie that created the modern zombie genre, he is literally the only one who keeps his cool and survives. He takes control of the situation and gets things done!! AND he does it all while looking amazing. A handsome man being competent, resourceful, and keeping his humanity through it all? Sign me up! He's also the first black character to be the lead in a horror movie!

Ben is the tragic hero in one of the best zombie movies.

Ultimately doomed Final-Girl-hero, competent and looking hot while trying to save other people, being stuck in the basement with him would make this situation bearable

He’s the original hero of what many considered the cornerstone of modern zombie filmmaking. A Black man as the hero of a horror movie with a predominantly white cast in 1968? It wasn’t done. It’s often still not done. Something about the shock of a Black man in 1968 slapping around white people and killing off white zombies. It wasn’t intended to be social commentary, Romero famously cast him because he was the best actor for the part and didn’t change the script. Is he conventionally attractive? Yes. Does that put him at a disadvantage in a poll full of monsters on this the monster, uh, lover webbed site? Also, yes. He’s pretty much the only character who keeps his head through the whole film, which maybe has a broader social commentary on code-switching (but I am not an expert). I just know it’s a great film and he’s a great character put in the most situationy of situations.

Duane Jones isn't just handsome in this movie, but a complex, pragmatic, compassionate protagonist at a time when the genre was just starting to get its feet wet with moral complexities. His performance is so sympathetic and intense, it's a major reason why the film is still famous for its building tension today. You can't tear your eyes away!

[editor's note: below is a great video with Tananarive Due discussing the importance of Ben to cinema history. cw for shooting, clips from Birth of a Nation that include blackface and lynching, clips from I Walked with a Zombie that include racist stereotypes, and clips from assorted other horror movies that include blood and gore.]

Irina:

I watched Cat People for Halloween season last year, and was so enchanted by its strange warm sadness, deep chiaroscuro lighting, and sweet lonely Simone Simon with her softly glittering eyes! She plays Irena, a Serbian émigré to New York City who lives alone in a big old townhouse she got cheap because you can hear the lions in the zoo, hums to herself in the dark, and longs for closeness with others yet fears that if she sleeps with a man, an ancestral curse will overtake her and she'll turn into a panther and kill him. Why we do love coded queer readings! (Which have only become more prominent for this film in the years since.) Originally intended to just be a sexy scary little B-movie creature feature, French director Jacques Tourneur together with his cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who would later make the also darkly beautiful Out of the Past together, instead filmed Cat People like a Criterion Collection-worthy noir (as it has since become) and suffused it all with a spooky melancholic elegance, highlighted nowhere as much as the way they frame Irena's eyes glimmering in the dark. She haunts me! Affectionate!

Hot serbian woman is betrayed by everyone she ever loved or trusted and turns into a big cat to murder them all.

She’s beautiful! she’s mysterious! she’s a literal cat! she’s gay(?) she has so much charisma one cannot help but fall in love with her, but she will never love them back because of her big dark feline secret. and she always has this little half-smile on her face like she knows something you don’t which is SO hot. she lures you into a false sense of security and then pounces

She’s so sexy men can’t stay away from her but kiss her and she’ll rip your head off (and she’s right to do so). The original is a story of female desire, agency and the dangers of xenophobia.

Very sexy of her turning into a panther to claw the man who forcibly kissed her to death.