Editor’s Note: We’ve spent a while searching for a fitting replacement for Ashe (who we still miss), but we’re elated to welcome David Christopher Bell to our team. He’ll be writing insightful lists for us every Thursday from now until we stop blackmailing him for that thing he did in Florida in 1986. Please give him a warm welcome! It’s funny. After Anthony Perkins first appeared as Norman Bates there was absolutely no going back from it. No matter what role he was put in after Norman, when audiences looked at him all they could see was the shower-interrupting taxidermologist that they feared so deeply. This proved to be a major hindrance in his career, causing him never to land any major role in the industry afterward. Now if only he had worn a mask. After all, if horror films have taught us anything it’s that no matter how effective a performance is, if you have a bunch of rubber on your face, mainstream audiences aren’t going to end up learning your name or recognizing your face. So in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, the following are some of those very names and faces that are responsible for some of the greatest movie nightmares of modern horror. People who you could walk right by on the streets and never know that they are to thank for all those times your childhood-spawned neuroses forced you to double-check under your bed.

I’m a great big fan of Christmas, and I’m already compiling a long-list of festive goodies that will make my Christmas Merch Hunter Bumper Annual Special 2011 the column-based event of the year. And since the holiday season is now creeping upon us, with branded chocolate boxes and cookies already in my local store (cue near-mental breakdown of all parents in vicinity), it is high-time I suggested some merch products that channel the spirit of the season, without the explicit baubles and sparkle and whatnot. What follows then is a trio of goodies that are as camp as Christmas (to borrow a popular phrase from round these parts) and don’t care a jot about class or what anyone else thinks of them. This week’s column was brought to you by the letter T. For tacky.

After their university’s dean forces them out of their cushy jobs in the world of academia, parapsychologists Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), and Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), go into business for themselves. They eradicate specters aka bust ghosts throughout New York City. Along the way, they’re hired by Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver), a woman whose apartment is haunted by a demonic, ancient Sumerian demigod—an entity that is far more powerful and destructive than anything the ragtag Ghostbusters have ever faced.