I completely love reapers. While my favorite version of the Grim Reaper actually appears in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (Cartoon Network), fall gets me in the mood to start watching all the creepy movies again.
Image courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes
Yes, Keanu is “The One,” but he is always Ted “Theodore” Logan to me. Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was really bad, but the scenes of them playing games against the Grim Reaper and winning are perfect.
There’s also a wonderful scene in Hellboy 2: The Golden Army where we actually see the Angel of Death. It’s nothing like what people typically expect, so at times it’s not connected to the Reaper; however, it’s such a wonderful scene, and the whole series is brilliant.
My favorite twisted angel has to be Tilda Swinton’s Gabriel from Constantine, who’s trying to destroy everything and everyone. Gabriel is delightfully androgynous, creepily insane, and fully believes that what he’s doing is right, which makes it all the more twisted. There’s a new version of Constantine coming to television this fall, and it hasn’t been listed if Gabriel is going to make an appearance or not- it’s a completely different version than the movie.
Of course, if you really want to be creeped out, have a marathon of all the Final Destination movies. Definitely enough reapers and death for everyone, and New Line has announced that they’re going ahead with Final Destinations 6 & 7.
If you want to have fun and add a trivia twist to a movie, show Last Action Hero. Give viewers bonus points if they can name the actor who plays Death (Sir Ian McKellen), and normal points to the other name actors in the cast aside from Arnold. Not a death film, but seeing Sir McKellen before he was big in Hollywood is sure to make an impression.
Finally, no reaper list can be complete without talking about The Exorcist. Originally released in 1973 to a petrified audience, it claims to be based on the last true exorcism in America, performed on a little boy in 1949. Re-released in 2000 (approximately the 25th anniversary) with a digitally remastered soundtrack and 11 minutes of additional footage, it can seem “slow” to teen audiences used to fast action and faster gore, but once you get them into it, it can creep them out more than any Paranormal Activity movie can, and for longer.