Spooky season elicits certain emotions from all of us, but we at We Got This Covered count ourselves among the rare horror hounds with a different sort of thirst for violence.

It’s not the violence itself that gets our heartbeats racing, after all. Sure, we love a good bloodbath as much as the next horror fan, but it’s the moments in between that really sell the story. And, of course, the hulking, terrifying, surprisingly sultry villains — from the silent but deadly Michael Myers variety to the ghostly, paranormal, or sadistic. They’ve all got a little something to get the blood pumping, if not out of fear then perhaps out of… something else.

Look, we get it — these horror movie villains aren’t supposed to be sexy. But, in their own, blood-soaked way, they’ve got a certain appeal. We’re not being entirely serious when we invite a Pyramid Head to break our backs or urge Dracula to suck us dry, but you can’t sit there and deny the appeal of these sinister seductors. A different sort of villain once said that it is better to be feared than loved, but we think these horror movie staples deserve a bit of both.

Hannibal Lecter — The Hannibal franchise

Look, I’m not condoning cannibalism, but I can’t be the only one willing to be sweet-talked by an intellectual into broadening the horizons of my taste buds. If Jason, Freddy, Leatherface, or (insert any other horror icon here) invited me over to their digs for a fine dining experience where the recurring menu theme was human, I’d scarper so fast, you wouldn’t even be able to perceive my speed. I’d like to, you know, use a knife and fork to facilitate gorging on gray matter, not a chainsaw. Manners cost nothing, thanks very much.

Thankfully, the charismatic, as well as likely certifiably psychotic and provably murderous (I’m a grown man willing to let the sins of the past slide) Dr. Lecter at least outwardly knows how to treat a date. His reluctance to kill Clarice out of a self-perpetuated belief that she was too “pure” to deserve such a fate surely applies to others and, to toot my own horn, I’m about as pious as they get.

The only real potential pitfall here is a good-natured debate over the wine list. The perfect complement to some fried brain goujons it may be, but Chainti’s just not my scene, man. As everyone knows, keeping secrets is the key to any healthy relationship, so I’ll just keep that one in the back of my mind. Just don’t go digging around in there, okay? That’s not how foreplay works. — Joe Pring

Annie Wilkes — Misery

We’re all quick to judge Misery’s Annie Wilkes. Sure, she can be a little clingy, but she’s got a list of positive qualities a mile long. Annie’s an independent woman, knows how to care for someone, is single, owns her own home, her “cottage core” style is on point, she’s a literature fan and, as a writer, I love that she’s interested in the creative process. Yes, we all know that things didn’t exactly go well when she was nursing her favorite author back to health, but maybe if he hadn’t written such downer stories the situation wouldn’t have gone south.

Peel back her protective layers and you’ll see Annie is objectively a catch and that it would just take the right kind of writer to stoke the fires that so obviously smolder within her. I mean, have you seen the way she takes charge in the bedroom?! I 100 percent guarantee she’s an utter freak between the sheets.

Annie. I can fix you. Just give me a chance! — David James

Chucky — The Chucky franchise

What? Don’t look at me like that, I stand by my choice. If you were on a Tinder-style app that was populated exclusively by horror villains then Chucky would be far from the worst one you could swipe right on… even if he might swipe right on you with his butcher’s knife when you meet face to face. At heart, Chucky’s a family man — he loves (well, some of the time) his “bride” Tiffany Valentine and, these days, he’s supportive of his genderfluid kids, Glen and Glenda. How many other woke slasher serial killers can you name? Plus, Chucky is one of the few of his kind to be canonically bangable — as the Bride of Chucky tagline put it, “Chucky Gets Lucky.” And, yes, he is anatomically correct. I’m just saying… what a doll. — Christian Bone

The Xenomorph Queen — The Alien franchise

You can all sit there and judge, but don’t you dare try and tell me you didn’t feel a little weak in the knees the first time you saw the mommy to end all mommies. Any Xenomorph has the sheer animal magnitude to draw you in — and wonder just what that extra mouth does — but the Xenomorph queen is utterly unbeatable. She’s got a set of extra arms to hold you close, and — despite all those teeth — some very creative possibilities open up in the bedroom when you consider the versatility of that elongated cranium. And seriously — two mouths? Count me in.

We love a thick queen, and this Xenomorph baddie is 10 tons of sheer, unadulterated alien carnality. As much as I’d like to, it would probably be a mistake to ask her to sit on (or hug) my face, but a girl’s gotta dream, hasn’t she? For anyone whose perfect date involves long spacewalks and the total annihilation of the human race, there’s simply no replacement for sci-fi’s own deadliest catch. Just don’t ask about her body count. — Nahila Bonfiglio

Billy Loomis — Scream

“The Exorcist was on, it got me thinking of you”: Have ten words ever been sexier as they’re spoken with a slow drawl from a boy who just climbed in your window? If you have no idea where I’m going with this, I need you to do something immediately. Cancel your plans for the rest of the day and watch the film that started my obsession with horror: Scream.

Skeet Ulrich’s Billy Loomis is the reason our parents always tried to warn us off of bad boys, but the damage was already done for many of us when we saw his white t-shirt, shaggy hair, and killer smile — some pun intended — for the first time. As fans of the iconic slasher film know, Loomis was one of two killers in Scream, and we know what you’re probably thinking: “There’s nothing sexy about a masked madman.” I hear that; I do. However, I challenge you to look at Ulrich’s existence and tell me you’d run up the stairs when you saw him bust through a door in your living room. Okay, so maybe I would run up the stairs, but it would only be to go to the bedroom. Oops… did I type that out loud?

Getting back on track, Ghostface as a killer might not scream “sexy” — the mask is an elongated “screaming” face, the rest of the get-up is basically a glorified cape or trash bag, and he’s got a shiny knife; you can barely see the figure underneath the get-up, but we all know what he looked like, and that was enough for me. Throughout several Scream films, the Ghostface moniker has been donned by many a killer, but when we see the mask on shelves near Halloween time, we always look back to Ulrich and Matthew Lillard.

Lillard is a charmer on his own, too, but it’s always been Ulrich for me. The minute I saw Billy give Sidney those bedroom eyes, peering up at her through his jealousy-inducing lashes — I was done for. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the corn starch scene — be still my beating heart. My crush on Ulrich was born when he told Sidney that he had a girlfriend who would rather accuse him of being a psychopathic killer than touch him, and it’s lived on to this day. The original bad boy, the man who wore Ghostface like he was meant for it, and the horror icon that I’d run upstairs for any day.

Here’s to Skeet Ulrich. May you continue exuding bad-boy energy so we can fawn over you for years to come. Don’t kill me, Mr. Ghostface — I want to be in your sequel. — Ashley Marie

Rose the Hat — Doctor Sleep

In my head, horror villains are supposed to strike a deep fear in your heart at their mere sight. But while Rebecca Ferguson aces that with mighty superiority as Rose the Hat in Doctor Sleep — and is supremely cruel in her mission to be powerful and young forever — she channels the evil queen bee vibes with such palpable sensuality, boldness, and confidence that, had it been me in place of Danny boy, I may have rolled over at her feet when she offered me a place in True Knot. No, correction, I would have already melted into a puddle had it been me whose good looks Rose was casually complimenting. — Apeksha Bagchi

Abraham — Us

Let’s face it. Lupita’s character in Us, “Red,” was the dom in the relationship. She gave Winston Duke’s “Abraham” orders and he quickly complied. And who wouldn’t want their own big, muscly bear in the sack that takes orders? He’d be up for just about anything, and even when he’s a bit of a doofus, I’ll be happy to teach him a few moves. — Demi Phillips

Leatherface — The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Y’all, a time comes in the life of every single woman when her well of patience for the getting-to-know-you phase of contemporary dating runs just about bone-dry. It’s nobody’s fault. I suspect Nature designed romance to withstand middle age and the digital age, but not both. 

This holds true whether or not she happens to be from Texas, of course, but if a lady’s fledgling forays into erotic territory sprung into the starry abyss from the back of a hay-strewn pickup truck, with a pardner who, largely bereft of vocabulary, nonetheless had calluses and time on his hands, no subsequent courtship rigmarole will ever quite measure up. No job interview-adjacent, bag-of-tricks chitchat in a pour-over coffee spot with a nervous stranger approaches that mythic expanse of unhurried rurality; even an interlocutor on his best first-date behavior, who picks up the tab, smells nice, maintains appropriate eye contact, hasn’t sent you any untoward personal photos, and isn’t hollering unintelligibly or wearing the face of a dead person over his own, may nevertheless have spent the last fifteen years resentfully married — and thereby possibly ensconced in a liminal space of genre-categorized, screen-mediated, bafflingly niche activities to which he believes his ex-wife proved the only barrier, and that he’s now determined to catch up on, hopefully by the next fiscal quarter. 

Listen, sisters, that’s his journey. Such a man, having wandered so lonesome along the digital pipeline and so far from the gravel ranch roads of Muerto County, can never take you all the way home, not in any way that’s helpful. Enter Leatherface. What I need is somebody who really sees me, and not as a product, but in the flesh; vulnerable, flawed, crusted with who-knows-what, redolent of the chicken coop and hoarse from screaming, a whole woman who, sure, he might like to divide into little bitty parts and feed to his grandpa (was it?), but listen, everybody’s got weird family stuff. 

With Leatherface, I at least know all that baggage going in. And is Leatherface afraid of hard work? No, he sure isn’t. He can cook (am I remembering right?), he can lift heavy stuff, he can probably clear brush like nobody’s business. Will Leatherface text me photos of body parts, and way-too-specific lists of instructions? Doubtful. Can Leatherface dance? Yes. Will Leatherface accord me “bonus points” for … something something Brian DePalma Snyderverse Michael Mann …something something? Absolutely not. And that, my friends, is undiluted bangability. And now if y’all will excuse me, I’ve got some brush needs clearing. — Sarah Fisch

Borg Queen — Star Trek First Contact

As a defender of Star Trek First Contact, one of the first things I point to in regard to its quality is its excellent villain, Alice Krige’s Borg Queen. The sci-fi action adventure is all the more elevated by a character that seems ripped from a David Cronenberg horror film. Though she is a cyborg with pale, almost dead-looking skin, wrapped in a metallic exoskeleton, it was something of an awakening as a kid to witness the scene in which she allows Brent Spiner’s Data — a full-blown android — to feel by grafting human skin on him. The Borg Queen’s form-fitting outfit and tendency to offer people cybernetic transformations that she somehow makes tempting, even for Patrick Stewart’s Picard, all but seals the deal for her overall mystique and downright sexiness. Let’s face it. — Danny Peterson

Amanda Young — The Saw franchise

Don’t judge me on this one… I like ’em crazy, alright? I also relate to Amanda immensely in the daddy issues department, so I figured we would get along quite well. Now, I just want to start off by saying this entry refers specifically to Amanda in Saw and/or Saw III.

We don’t talk about her Karen haircut in Saw II or that bird’s nest on her head in Saw X. But long-haired Amanda? Totally bangable. And honestly, if you convinced me enough, maybe I’d be swayed to give Saw II Amanda a one-night stand. As for Saw X? Nope. Kill it with fire.

She can even wear the pig mask if she wants — I don’t discriminate. — Chynna Wilkinson

Michael Myers — Halloween

Zaddy? Sorry. Zaddy? Sorry. OK, listen, just hear me out. I’m gay, like, really gay, but there’s definitely something about Michael that presents some sort of weird, dreamy nightmare scenario full of sexy. He might be interested in killing everybody in sight, but there’s no doubt that he’s got a sensitive side deep down — he just needs to be loved, okay?! The best part? He doesn’t speak. So if you ever found yourself in a relationship with him, there would be no complaining about the pile of dishes in the sink. No nagging you to stop buying unnecessary things off Amazon. Just the sound of his deep breathing and the comfort that he’d follow and destroy anybody who tried to hurt you.

Plus, he’s probably got a thing for some sexy knife play. So I don’t know about you, but I’m extremely curious to see what he’s got going on underneath those dusty blue overalls. — Taylor Mansfield

Babyface — Happy Death Day

Before you immediately go to the police claiming pedophilia, keep this in mind: Babyface is a hot sorority girl under a creepy mask. Plus, whether or not the stereotype is true, they claim crazy girls are the best in bed, and Lori is the definition of a psychopath. What else would you call someone who tries to murder their roommate over the fact the guy they’re both having an affair with prefers the other girl more? On top of all that, Lori is clearly creative and not against bringing other people into the mix if it’ll make things better. Just like how she was willing to frame a serial killer at the campus hospital for Tree’s murder. She’ll make sure you’re never bored in bed. — Bethany Wade

Doppelgänger — Us

Keep your sculpted abs and hourglass figures; nothing on this Earth can possibly hope to be more sexy than confidence, and what could ever be more indicative of confidence than making good on the already-impressive claim that you’d bang yourself? Indeed, bringing your own doppelgänger from Jordan Peele’s Us into the mix means you would not only be evoking that sexy confidence from within but also enthusiastically digesting it as it bursts from your doppelgänger — indeed, why just find the sexiest partner when you can simultaneously be and find the sexiest partner?

The practicality of the encounter is all sorts of poetic: No need for any embarrassing kink disclosure or guiding an unsure hand to your sweet spots, because no one knows what you want better than you yourself, — really, that built-in harmony is sexy in its own, insurmountable way.

Honorable mention goes to the hand from Talk To Me, solely because, let’s be honest, it’s the one thing that could beat our tethered in the realm of familiarity. — Charlotte Simmons

Norman Bates — Psycho

Anthony Perkins in 1960 was pretty. And fresher than the Noxzema girl. With that little dimple in his chin, he had me at “we have 12 vacancies.” Besides, he didn’t really do anything, did he? It was his mom. And nobody likes their mother-in-law. — Misty Contreras

Pinhead — Hellraiser

Those big beautiful eyes remind me of looking into the inky darkness of space and Pinhead’s confidence to wear all that leather could make anyone a little hot under the collar. I’ve never seen anyone pull off nails or hair as glamorous as Pinhead has, yet they’ve somehow managed to rock that look and make it truly their own. It just goes to show that this demonic entity may like to hide away in other dimensions, but they are definitely not afraid to stand out and be different. They don’t care what anyone else thinks, and that kind of self-confidence is just irresistible.

We’ve seen a few depictions of this character over the years with different takes, and for some reason, people have kicked up a fuss regarding the gender of Pinhead, to which I say: Pinhead is a demon — albeit a sexy demon — and the rest is irrelevant. You can’t deny that the Hell Priest is hot, no matter which version we’re talking about. That’s why they are always all over the posters and promotional material, you don’t watch Hellraiser for the plot, you watch it for Pinhead. Admit it! — Jordan Collins

Jennifer Check — Jennifer’s Body

Jennifer Check was already the intimidatingly hot cheerleader of her small-town high school before turning into a bloodsucking succubus, and in real life, that would be a con; but for the purposes of this list, that’s a good thing. Feasting on the flesh of her local neighborhood boys has done wonders for Jennifer’s complexion and the resulting god complex from becoming a (nearly) immortal demon has made her infuriatingly arrogant in a way that’s really hot. You can tell yourself you can fix her if you’re into that, but she’ll probably just make you worse. — Staci White

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man — Ghostbusters

It doesn’t matter who you are, everybody wants to be held sometimes. Not only that, but lifetime big spooners also love to switch it up on occasion, and anybody who says they don’t is a goddamned liar.

With that in mind, who better to have snuggled into you during those long, cold, winter nights than a 100-foot-tall gelatinous mass that’s all cushion and no pushin’? For all we know, destruction and wanton chaos on a citywide scale might not be the only thing the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man has a deep and unquenchable thirst for, but you bet your ass we’d love to find out.

It’s the quiet ones you need to watch out for, after all, and even though he might be a rampaging monster in the streets, that cherub-like demeanor could well bring about an apocalypse in the sheets that dwarfs anything Gozer had in mind. The Ghostbusters might be scientists, but let’s just say the franchise wouldn’t be PG-13 with the experiments we have in mind.

And yes, the little sailor hat stays on… — Scott Campbell

Babadook — Babadook

You did this to me, internet. This is your fault. After Netflix’s algorithm screwed up and placed this Australian psychological horror film under the LGBTQ+ menu, thus making him a gay icon, I haven’t had a solid night’s sleep tossing and turning over this misunderstood, mysterious, Babadaddy. All those years hiding in the closet? The repressed emotions? His ability to walk on ceilings? He’s clearly flexible; you can’t tell me he wouldn’t be a freak in the sheets. Plus that mouth? Like, what does that mouth do? I wanna know. — Cody Raschella

Pyramid Head — Silent Hill

You’ve read plenty of compelling write-ups today, but I hope you’ll indulge one more. No horror creature fits “choke me” daddy energy quite like the Pyramid Head from 2006’s Silent Hill. Every time he makes his bone-chilling entrance a bad case of I-can-fix-him-itus drowns out my rationality. And can you blame me? He’s a strapping 7 feet tall with abs more capable of cutting than his massive sword, and biceps rippling with sheer aggression.

Pyramid Head has peak scary-dog privilege, and sure, he might have a serious case of eczema, but it’s nothing some topical medication can’t help. I’m sure conversation isn’t great, but with his ever-present swarm of baby-faced cockroaches, you’ll never want for company. When playing house loses its edge – something that sword will never do – he really doesn’t seem to mind losing the little buggers. Don’t even get me started on what he could do to anyone who gives you a hard time. Just like the triangle horse his iconic headwear is based on, I’d like nothing more than for him to split me in two. — Ash Martinez

Christine — Christine

We’ve had a lot of fun here today, catching up on a bunch of internet writers’ disturbing, franchise-driven fantasies. What we haven’t done is talk about the obvious choice for the title of “Monster Mash we’d most like to graveyard smash:” Christine, the killer car from the 1983 film of the same name.

Go ahead and mock me. I’ve heard it all. “There goes the guy who likes to kiss cars.” “Why don’t you marry Christine if you love her so much?” “Your unhealthy attraction to the 1958 Plymouth Fury stems from the fact that it’s the model of car that your mother used to make you dance on top of in a pair of Daisy Dukes while she drank vodka gimlets and whipped 50 cent coins at your thighs.” Very funny, everybody.

The fact is that Christine is more than just 318 cubic inches of liquid-hot seduction wrapped in a candy apple, come-hither paint job. Yes, she’s got a pair of fins that you can do something with and 290 horsepower dedicated to you and only you. Yes, she’s a barreling, 1.5-ton dynamo of uncut vehicular debauchery. But do you know what else she is?

A self-repairing car. Imagine knowing that you’ll never again need to find five grand toot sweet just so you can replace your transmission. Nothing’s hotter than that. — Tom Meisfjord

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