Top 10 Horror Movie Sheriffs

Maybe one of the only entries to also be a main threat in his story, Sheriff Hoyt is actually part of the deadly Hewitt family. In fact, he helps Leatherface and the others capture and brutally murder young adults and teenagers in order to eat! He poses as a law enforcement officer to lure unsuspecting passers-by onto the farm where he then tortures them or has his chainsaw-wielding brother cut them to pieces. A man of the law? Not quite. But hella memorable indeed!

As if aliens weren’t generally bad enough, these ones had to be the most terrifying species ever to come to Earth. When the eponymous monsters show up in a quiet little town, it’s up to Sheriff Dave Hanson to avoid their deadly circus traps and wipe the smiles off their all too colorful faces. Using only his wits to battle the extraterrestrial threat, Hanson is fortunately able to pull one over on these horrifying space creatures.

Law enforcement officers don’t come any more useless than this horror movie sheriff. You can’t really blame him though, since the supernatural killer of this franchise strikes in the dream realm. Sheriff Thompson sort of takes a back seat to Freddy Krueger’s crimes and watches helplessly as the past comes back to haunt him and terrifying events take place in his sleepy little town. But the fact that he’s the father of protagonist Nancy Thompson and has a history with the child killer makes him hard to extricate from the series.

Rob Zombie films aren’t for the faint of heart and this one ups the ante in terms of gratuitous sex and violence - which is great, if you like that kind of thing. In “The Devil’s Rejects,” Zombie plays with the tropes of the horror genre while taking it to the limit with Sheriff Wydell. The Texan starts off as a driven and focused officer out to catch the eponymous ne’er-do-wells, but as the film goes on, we see him go over the edge when he uses the group’s own tactics against them.

When your town is overrun by blood-sucking critters, you want someone like Sheriff Oleson on your side to give the baddies the boot. Vampires are always tricky things to handle, but when you live in a place that’s submerged in darkness for weeks on end, they can be a real nuisance. With all the moxy of a classic action hero, Eben Oleson takes matters into his own hands and hunts down and brutally kills the undead in his town. He uses all kinds of trickery to get the better of them, including sinking down to their level in order to win.

“Lake Placid” was in much the same vein as “Scream” when it came to parodying the horror genre. While the film isn’t all out slapstick, it still pokes fun at the convention. When a giant crocodile seems to be eating most of the citizens of a sleepy town, Sheriff Keough starts looking in to things. He is very much like “Jaws”’ sheriff Brody in that he takes the matter into his own hands, though he does get some help from Florida Fish and Game.

Sheriff Brackett is one of the earliest slasher film cops and as such sets a precedent for the entire genre. While not completely useless, Brackett is always pretty far behind the action and struggles to keep up with the murderous killer in his town. After Dr. Loomis warns the sheriff of Michael Myers’ arrival, it’s only after the murder of a bunch of teens that he really tries to keep up. And it’s pretty much the same deal for the character in the 2007 re-imagining of “Halloween”!

Texas Ranger McGraw is a shared character in the cinematic universes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. While he isn’t an active character in “Kill Bill” or “Deathproof,” he is given interesting scenes. Though McGraw doesn’t get too far in Rodriguez’s flicks as shown in “From Dusk till Dawn” where he gets his head blown off, or in “Planet Terror” where he must fight off hordes of zombies, he’s certainly hard to forget – and that must be why he keeps being brought back!

Maybe one of the very first templates of a horror movie law enforcement officer, Amity’s very own Police Chief Brody takes a far more active role in the mayhem going on in his town. Instead of being 2 or 3 steps behind the killer or monster, Brody, with the help of a couple of friendly faces, seeks out the menace; and in this case, it’s a giant white shark that he puts a few harpoons in before blowing it up in the climactic final scene.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:
- Sheriff
“Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” (2010)
- David Dutten
“The Crazies” (2010)
- Sheriff Wynan
“Red State” (2011)
- Sheriff Tom Herderson
“Altered” (2006)

In a time when cinema began to lampoon its tired genres, this Wes Craven feature poked fun at the slasher horror classics. In it, we can find all the tropes and clichés of the genre, not the least of which is Deputy Sheriff Dwight Riley. While he isn’t your typical manly man law enforcement officer, he still gets the job done in the end, fumbling his way through the film and its sequels with the rest of the characters, who are just trying to get out alive.

Do you agree with our list? Who’s your favorite Horror Movie Sheriff or Deputy? For more terrifying Top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.