Skeletons in the Closet

Paul Rudd in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

That's right, this puckish thesp had one of his first leading roles in the sixth Halloween film, which brought his goofball comic sensibility to an otherwise rote diminished-returns slasher sequel. There's a scene near the end when Paul Rudd's character, Tommy Doyle (he's supposed to be the little boy that Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode babysat in the first movie, but all grown up), turns and sees Michael coming at him down the hallway and lets out a panicked, hysterical laugh that's both unexpected and entirely appropriate for the situation. Rudd's as adorable as ever, of course, and the bloody flick isn't half bad and at least doesn't give way to winky post-Scream aloofness.

Meshach Taylor in Damien: Omen II (1978), The Howling (1981), and The Beast Within (1982)

One of the first gay characters I remember seeing as a child was Meshach Taylor's Hollywood in Mannequin (1987), and I of course loved him as the lone male employee of the demanding Sugarbaker ladies on Designing Women. So what a delight to learn years later that his first film appearance was as an ill-fated lab tech in the gloriously gory Omen sequel, where he is sliced clean in half by an elevator cable in one of the film's deliriously over-the-top death scenes!

Taylor also had small roles in the tepid were-cicada movie The Beast Within and the excellent Joe Dante werewolf chiller The Howling, and no doubt the experience filming with lots of hair and claws came in handy for his later stint on Designing Women.

Sean Faris in The Brotherhood 2: Young Warlocks (2001)

Teen heartthrob Faris (the short-lived series Reunion, Sleepover [2004]) got his start in one of gay director Dave DeCoteau's "young himbos in underwear" horror flicks, The Brotherhood 2. The movie's atrocious, but if you want to see Faris in his skivvies in all sorts of homoerotic situations with other guys, definitely check it out. The late-night campus pool scene really has to be seen to be believed: you'd think it was edited-for-television Czech gay porn.