Charlize Theron: Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995)
Charlize Theron has starred in some movies that are considered to be the greatest of all time. Her Furiosa in Fury Road is masterclass, but her role as serial killer Aileen Wournos in Monster earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress. Still even with all that industry clout she had to start somewhere and would you believe it was in a cornfield for a franchise cash grab originally based on a Stephen King short story?
Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest synopsis: “Two brothers connected to the murderous children’s cult of Gatlin, Nebraska are taken to Chicago by an adoptive couple.”
Tom Hanks: He Knows You’re Alone (1980)
Tom Hanks has had a long career. He first came into public view with his cross-dressing sitcom Bosom Buddies in 1980 about the same time this nuptial slasher dropped in theaters. It wouldn’t be until 14 years later that he got the Academy’s attention playing a lawyer afflicted with AIDS in Philidelphia and a year after that he reached iconic status portraying the neurodivergent savant Forrest Gump. He won Best Actor for both of those roles.
He Knows You’re Alone synopsis: “A young bride-to-be is being stalked upon by a serial killer in Staten Island. She gets help from a former lover, but will they manage to escape?”
George Clooney: Return to Horror High (1987)
Another actor who starred in sitcoms is George Clooney, first in The Facts of Life, then in Roseanne. He transitioned to TV drama in 1994 for the long-running hospital procedural ER. This career path would last for a while before he received his first Best Actor Academy Award for Argo in 2012.
Between his transition from sitcoms to drama, Clooney took part in the slasher Return to Horror High, a sort of meta-comedy before those became popular thanks to Wes Craven’s Scream.
Return to Horror Hight synopsis: “In the early 1980s, a series of gruesome murders occurred at Crippen High School. A few years later, a film crew uses the now-abandoned Crippen High as the set for a film. But an uninvited guest makes an appearance on the set.”
Matthew McConaughey: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)
Matthew McConaughey had already made a name for himself in the 1993 THC-infused comedy Dazed and Confused. Although that movie would become a cult hit, the same was only semi-true for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (originally titled The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) a year later. But one thing is for sure audiences got to see his manic and unhinged personality two-fold as Vilmer the murderous tow truck driver in that film.
Since then McConaughey has gone to do big-budget rom-coms and TV series. His most well-known show is probably as detective “Rust” in the first season of HBO’s True Detective which premiered in 2014. That same year he took home the Academy Award for Best Actor in the movie Dallas Buyers Club.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation synopsis: “A group of teenagers get into a car crash in the Texas woods on prom night, and then wander into an old farmhouse that is home to Leatherface (Robert Jacks) and his insane family of cannibalistic psychopaths.”
Leonardo DiCaprio: Critters 3 (1992)
Child actor DiCaprio seemed to escape that moniker unscathed as he went from doing small roles on the small screen in the ’90s to bigger parts at the Cineplex starting with Critters 3. Two years later he received high praise for his role as Arnie in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape in which he co-starred with another heartthrob of that era Johnny Depp. DiCaprio, 19 at the time, was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his part in that movie.
His big win as Best Actor would come in 2016 for The Revenant in which he plays frontiersman Hugh Glass who after a brutal bear attack must survive on his own through the unpredictable wilderness. But we can never forget Critters 3 where it all started for DiCaprio on the big screen.
Synopsis for Critters 3: “The tiny fur ball aliens that will eat anything or anyone set their sights on a Los Angeles apartment tower.