Through a Glass, Darkly: Horror Movie Characters That Wear Eyeglasses

Everyone loves a good horror movie, and these films also provide great fodder when it comes to ideas for fancy dress parties or Halloween bashes.

If you feel like portraying one of the greatest glasses-wearing horror film characters of all time, use the list below as inspiration. Whether you’ve got your eye on a Reanimator-style outfit or if Hellraiser is more your thing, we’ve got all the information you need!

Dracula – Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1992

Gary Oldman played Transylvania’s most infamous resident in this 1992 movie directed by Frances Ford Coppola. The film was roundly applauded by audiences and critics alike, with Oldman’s standout performance as Dracula helping the movie to make the top ten highest-grossing pictures of 1992.

Oldman’s intense performance in Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a key part of the movie’s insidious, subtly-building menace. The film’s hair and make-up designer has spoken about how Coppola was keen to create a completely new style of Dracula for the movie, without the cape, pale skin, and widow’s peak. To this end, Oldman’s Dracula is portrayed, in terms of dress, as a somewhat leftfield gentleman, almost a dandy, with a gray suit, top hat, and tinted eyeglasses that give him a distinctive – and dangerous – edge.

Mort Rainey – Secret Window, 2004

Based on a Stephen King novella, Secret Window tells the story of Mort Rainey, a successful writer going through a difficult divorce who takes refuge at his remote lake house to get away from his troubles for a time. Rainey soon realizes he’s being stalked by someone who’s convinced the writer has committed plagiarism.

Johnny Depp stars in the film and, throughout, wears a pair of spectacles by the designer brand Moscot featuring brown Havana frames, lending the actor the perfect rumpled artist / intellectual look perfect for the role.

Herbert West – Reanimator, 1985

Based on the serialized novelette by H.P. Lovecraft, 1985’s Reanimator starring Jeffrey Combs, is a cult classic. Playing the lead role of Herbert West, Combs wears a pair of iconic aviator-shaped eyeglasses featuring thin metal gold rims and a distinctive double bridge.

These types of specs were regular wear for your bog-standard mad scientist in the 1970s and 1980s, as is the case in Renanimator, where West, a medical student, believes he’s created an agent which can bring the dead back to life…

Michael Myers – Halloween, 1978

True, Michael Myers isn’t usually seen wearing glasses, but he did don a pair of black, thick-rimmed specs in the original Halloween movie of 1978 when he used them to accessorize his ghost costume- effectively just a white sheet with eye holes cut out. 

This horror-movie-inspired look has become so well-known that it can frequently be seen at fancy dress parties as well as during Halloween itself. This is a perfect example of art imitating life and back again!

Katherine McMichaels – From Beyond, 1986

From Beyond is a body horror sci-fi that follows a pair of scientists who develop a device called The Resonator, designed to stimulate the pituitary gland. In true horror style, however, the device has unforeseen consequences, and one of the scientists ends up getting dragged into another dimension, subsequently returning as a shape-shifting monster determined to hunt down his colleagues.

In a starring role, Barbara Crampton plays the beautiful and stylish Dr. Katherine McMichaels, wearing the sort of oversized glasses that are extremely hot right now. Want the look? Choose statement round frames in tortoiseshell – paired with a lab coat, of course!

Jack Griffin – The Invisible Man, 1933

Claude Rains starred as The Invisible Man in the original film of the same name in 1933. Following a secret experiment, Jack Griffin discovers he has become completely invisible. Covering himself in bandages and wearing a pair of goggle-like dark eyeglasses, he hides away from the world. It soon becomes clear that the experience has driven Griffin insane. After initially using his new invisibility to perform a series of pranks, things quickly escalate, with deadly consequences.

Shooting the film came with certain challenges in terms of effects. The appearance (or non-appearance!) of invisibility was achieved by shooting against a black set where the walls and floors were covered in black velvet to avoid any sort of reflection. The actor, covered in black velvet tights from head to foot, wearing whatever clothes the scene required, then did his part. Following this, prints and duplicate negatives of the film were made, with the latter serving as mattes for printing – the negative matte was then used to mask the area in which the invisible man moved.

Butterball – Hellraiser, 1987

Cult British supernatural horror Hellraiser features a host of grotesque characters, not least of which is Butterball. This slug-like monstrosity wears black leather and a pair of small, round-framed sunglasses with arms embedded into the side of his head. Oh, and he’s also got hooks in his stomach, just to give his look that all-important finishing touch.

The film marked the directorial debut of Clive Barker and was based on the 1986 novella, The Hellbound Heart. The movie was widely praised by critics and remains one of the ‘must-watch’ horror films of all time.