Kevin Bacon’s The Bondsman hits Prime Video next week. While we wait to watch our favorite dancing rebel play a bondsman brought back from the dead to chase escaped demons into hell—that premise is killer, and the trailer is very promising—we’re looking back at our favorite degrees of Bacon in horror, sci-fi, and fantasy movies across his long career to date.
Friday the 13th (1980)
A lot of actors get their start in slasher movies, but only a select few can say they got gruesome on-screen deaths in one of the genre’s most influential and enduring titles. Bacon’s character isn’t a huge part of Friday the 13th’s story, but his arrow-pierced throat—just one of Tom Savini’s standout effects for the film—offers its own moment of horror-history glory. Wonder if we’ll see him cameo (as a different character, of course) in Peacock and A24’s Crystal Lake series?
Tremors (1990)
While many of Bacon’s much-loved, post-Friday the 13th ‘80s titles don’t fit on a genre list (unless Footloose counts as dystopian), he started the next decade off with what’s become one of the most beloved creature features of all time. Tremors riffs on the 1950’s “small town with a monster problem” formula with clever charm; it also takes the time to craft characters you care about, including Bacon’s secretly romantic reluctant hero, Valentine “Val” McKee.
Flatliners (1990)
The same year Bacon was outrunning giant worms in the desert, he was also outrunning ghouls from the beyond as a medical student tempting death in Flatliners. Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts co-star (Sutherland has the flashiest role; Roberts was a newly minted superstar thanks to the just-released Pretty Woman), but Bacon is the emotional heart of Joel Schumacher’s scientifically iffy supernatural thriller.
Stir of Echoes (1999)
Stir of Echoes was released almost exactly one month after The Sixth Sense, and it sort of lurked in that film’s shadow as a result. Writer-director David Koepp was then best-known for scripting Jurassic Park and its sequel, but here he draws from genre great Richard Matheson’s novel, also titled Stir of Echoes. Bacon stars as a working-class Chicago dad who becomes drawn into a ghostly mystery involving a missing girl in his neighborhood. It’s still entertaining and eerie and it must’ve been a good experience behind the scenes; recently, Koepp and Bacon re-teamed for another ghostly tale, 2020’s You Should Have Left.
Hollow Man (2000)
After a string of Hollywood hits and/or attention-getters—RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, and Starship Troopers—Paul Verhoeven made one last big-budget sci-fi tale before moving his career back to Europe where it had started. The Oscar-nominated special effects don’t look as slick 25 years later, but casting Bacon as a modern-day Invisible Man still works; as with most of his villainous roles, you love to hate him and can also tell he’s having a blast being bad.
X-Men: First Class (2011)
Speaking of villains, in Matthew Vaughn’s prequel Bacon plays sinister mutant Sebastian Shaw, a former Nazi who makes an ill-advised enemy of Magneto, leads the Hellfire Club, and plots to start World War III. Shaw is evil as hell, even beyond the usual comic-book parameters, but can you really stay mad at your old pal Kevin Bacon?
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2022)
Here’s the science behind why you can’t stay mad at him. Because he has the kind of perfectly calibrated self-awareness to say “yes” to a Disney+ superhero holiday special playing a goofy version of himself: Kevin Bacon, Earth guy Peter Quill’s childhood hero. His participation in the Guardians’ most festive side quest just brings even more delight to one of the silliest things Marvel has ever pulled off.
Leave the World Behind (2023)
If it’s the end of the world—wouldn’t you feel better if Kevin Bacon was around, even if he was playing a not entirely trustworthy doomsday prepper type?
The Toxic Avenger (2023)
Two long years after making its Fantastic Fest debut, The Toxic Avenger remake is finally hitting theaters this year—with Peter Dinklage as the vengeful mutated janitor, and Bacon playing (who else?) the cartoonish villain. Here he’s got an especially timely role as a health-care exec who denies some much-needed medical claims… odious to the core, and never better.
Maxxxine (2024)
There’s a little bit of Wild Things (1998) sleaze in Bacon’s role as a morally decrepit private eye in Ti West’s Maxxxine, and no small amount of Chinatown (1974) too. His scene going toe to toe with Mia Goth’s title character in and around Universal’s Psycho house is fantastic, and casting a veteran performer like Bacon in the small but memorable role brought even more show-biz cred to a movie that couldn’t be more obsessed with Hollywood.
The Bondsman arrives on Prime Video April 3.
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