Who is the hottest vintage horror hottie? **FINALS**
Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Akihiko Hirata)
Ben (Duane Jones)
Voting ended onDec 15, 2025
Propaganda
Dr. Daisuke Serizawa (Godzilla)—The original Godzilla (ゴジラ, 1954) is a horror film right? Because if it somehow isn’t enough that we have the postwar horror of nuclear apocalypse symbolized by the monster himself, consider the tragedy of Dr. Serizawa. He’s the brilliant, tortured, visually impaired young scientist haunted by the possibility of his astonishing new technology falling into the wrong hands and destroying the world - you know, the trope that should be a hoary cliche by now but instead just gets more depressingly relevant by the day. Also, and perhaps more importantly for this particular poll, he’s HOT and he BROODS.
Ben (Night of the Living Dead)—You know every guy in a zombie apocalypse movie who's just trying to keep it together while having the worst time of his life? Well Duane Jones was the first guy ever to do it and it nailed it right out of the gate. Just thrown headlong into having to be the voice of reason and authority for a half dozen random strangers who are NOT helping the situation (zombie apocalypse) at hand. And he looks good doing it too.
This is the FINAL poll of the vintage horror hotties tourney. All previous polls can be found under #horror hotties. Please reblog with further support for your favorite hot vintage horror hottie. This poll will last one week.
Questions about the bracket? Send me an ask here.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
Dr. Daisuke:
The eye patch. The angst. The mad genius. The way he RISKS IT ALL FOR THE WORLD AND THE WOMAN HE LOVES. I’m not ok.
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Hes just handsome to me. And theres an appeal to a man who is so in it for the mad scientist love of the game that he just. makes an oxygen destroyer. He didn’t even want to use it for anything, he had no intended problem to use this invention for until a nuclear dinosaur just happened to crawl out of the water. Truly just driven by the instinct to Create.
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.
Ben is the tragic hero in one of the best zombie movies.
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.]
Here’s the thing, y’all: for the INTEGRITY OF HOTVINTAGEPOLLS Peter Lorre has to win Scrungliest Little Guy. This electorate has made really good choices so far. If you told someone the Hottest Old Movie Man was Toshiro Mifune, they’d say, “Ah. Makes sense.” If you told them Eartha Kitt was the Hottest Old Movie Woman, they’d say, “Oh yeah, I can definitely see that.” If you told them any of the other semifinalists was the Scrungliest Little Guy, they’d say, “Okay, they are definitely scrungly. But did someone forget to nominate Peter Lorre?”
I think some people feel like Peter Lorre is too obvious of a choice. But that’s why he is the rightful winner. When you hear “Scrungly Little Guy” Peter Lorre is the first name that pops in your head (other than maybe Dwight Frye RIP). If you look up “scrungly” in the dictionary, there’s just a picture of Peter Lorre, looking pathetic and vaguely damp. He bestrides both sides of scrungly — lovable scrungly and repellant scrungly — like a Colossus.
I beg you, let’s restore sanity to these polls and vote for this big-eyed boy.
