Why, hello. Welcome to the first installment of Horror 101, where we will turn an academic eye on the vast, bitchin' and often unintentionally hilarious world of horror movie conventions.

Ever since there have been stories about monsters, there have needed to be champions to vanquish them. So for our first class we might as well begin with our much-beleaguered horror protagonist – The Solo Hero.

When we boil it all down there are three basic classes of Solo Hero:

The Proactive Hero, the Reluctant Hero, and the Once Was Hero.

The Proactive Hero
There are two sub-classes of Proactive Hero: the Ass Kicking Hero and the Detective Hero. These characters can cover a whole spectrum of personality types, but they all share the same base Proactive Hero trait: they seek the villain out.

The Ass Kicking Hero must not be confused with Heroes who kick a lot of ass. Ash kicks a lot of undead ass in Army of Darkness (1992), but he falls into the Reluctant Hero sub-category of the Uncooperative Hero (see below). An Ass Kicking Hero feels it's his job to kick that ass from the start. He doesn’t need to be backed into a corner. Sometimes the AKH is protecting a family member, sometimes it's pure "somebody's got to do it" badassery.

It is because of this willingness to battle the baddies that the AKH generally has to appear in films that have more than one monster (legion of zombies, alien invaders, whathaveyou). You can't exactly decide to fight and kill Jason or Freddy in Act I. The movie will end. The AKH generally has the suspension of disbelief testing ability to wield any weapon he/she comes across regardless if they've ever seen one before. Think George Clooney in From Dusk Til Dawn (1996), Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 (1992) or Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil series.

The Detective Hero doesn't actually have to be a detective. Doesn't need to be in law enforcement at all for that matter. He can be a reporter or just some schlub. The difference between the AKH and the DH is that the DH doesn't have immediate access to the villain.  So while the AKH is battling zombies from Act I onwards, our DH is attempting to solve a mystery or merely locate the damn monster for a majority of the film. He wants to kick ass oh-so-badly, but first he's gotta find it.

Let's say our movie is called, I don’t know, Baboon Holocaust. Sure. Our AKH would be the sheriff in a small mountain town - ironically named something like Quiet Valley - which is suddenly invaded by a horde of rogue baboons escaped from an experimental government lab that was breeding them to send to Iraq.

Our AKH’s daughter is trapped at the ice rink, so he's got to fight evil monkeys all across town, slowed down by various plot elements. Now, if Baboon Holocaust were about a Detective Hero it would play out with less action for our, let’s say, female reporter. She would either know or suspect that killer monkeys are invading the town, but she has no proof and no one will believe her. She might have encountered a baboon at some point early in the film, or maybe just all "signs point to an eminent monkey disaster." Either way she won't do any real fighting until the end. David Carradine in Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) is a good one, and William Katt in House (1986) is a good example of just some schlub acting as DH.

The Reluctant Hero
Like the Proactive Hero there are two types of Reluctant Hero. The base trait they both share? They don't want to fight. They are the Coward Hero and the Uncooperative Hero.

The Coward Hero is usually a female (hey, don't look at me, I just watch these movies). She isn't necessarily a coward in the shameful sense. I mean, how would you react if you opened your door to find a werewolf? I bet you'd run and hide and hope the police show up before it eats too many of your friends. But that, in a nutshell, is the Coward Hero's reaction. She just wants out of there. She'll spend the entire movie trying to escape and evade the villain until she's finally cornered and forced to make a stand. Dee Wallace is valiantly protecting her son in Cujo (1983), but nonetheless is hiding in a car for half the damn movie.

This could also be called the Rite of Passage Hero since by the end our Coward will be forced to prove herself. This character is also almost always in high school or college. Once the character becomes too old it starts to seem a little embarrassing that they're such a pussy, even if it's realistic. For example, I recently had a friend bitch to me about Cujo, citing that they thought it was stupid that "the lady" didn't try to fight the dog.

Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (1978) seems to be the quintessential and certainly best known Coward Hero at this point. Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead (1981) is of course the greatest male CH.

The Uncooperative Hero doesn't want to help, not cause he's scared shitless, but cause he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't want to get involved. Let the town die, what does he care? This guy usually has a chip on his shoulder. He's an outsider. Maybe a drifter: "Not my town." Or a criminal: "So now you need my help? Fuck off." Of course, by the end of the film it'll turn out that our Uncooperative Hero has a heart of rainbows and he'll kill him some monsters real good. Kevin Dillon in the 80's remake of the The Blob springs to mind.

The Once Was Hero
Technically the Once Was Hero is a supporting character, but deserves inclusion since the OWH's mere presence in a film dramatically weakens the status of the actual Hero by generally being braver, more interesting, and having a better character-arc. It's like the screenwriter accidentally chose the wrong character to focus on.

The OWH was at some point in his/her life a Proactive Hero, and then gave it up, now becoming a Reluctant Hero. He most likely lives in shack in the woods or an old house in a quiet neighborhood, where our young Solo Hero will seek him out and ask him for help. The OWH will say "no," muttering about how he's too old or it isn’t his problem anymore. Our protagonist will then try to convince him that he's still important.

At this point the Once Was Hero will either get really cranky and send the Hero off, or get really cranky and begrudgingly go with the Hero. If he sends the Hero off then when ours kids are about to get axed by the villain later in the film, he'll show up and be badass. If he goes with the Hero he'll probably be drunk most of the time and then shape up just in time for the climax.

Quite often the OWH dies after he's done saving everyone (maybe a martyr death where he takes the villain with him), but not always. He survives the movie just as frequently.

In horror movie series the OWH was often the Hero of an earlier chapter or a surviving supporting character they've decided to expand upon when they couldn't get the main actor to return (like Burt Gummer in the Tremors series). Over the course of her franchise, Ripley went from Reluctant Hero in Alien to Proactive Hero in Aliens/Alien 3 to Once Was Hero by Alien Resurrection (a perfect example of a supporting character as Hero. Who was even supposed to be the protagonist? Winona Ryder?).

A very small but fun subset of the OWH is the Presumed Once Was Hero, who was never actually a Hero in the past; our dumb young Solo Hero erroneously assumes he was. Roddy McDowell in Fright Night (1985) and Bruce Campbell in My Name Is Bruce (2008) are two great examples.

Well, look at the time. That’s about that for this class. Join me for the next installment of HORROR 101, won’t you?