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While Randall Flagg is known to most Stephen King fans, even if they haven't dived deeply into his books, he's actually not the King of Horror's worst villain. Stephen King's books are remarkable in the sense they're unremarkable the horror usually starts slow, in a small town, or unfolds in an everyday scenario that suddenly goes nightmarishly wrong. The protagonists fighting the evil are usually no mythical heroes, but everyday people, the kind you might make small talk with while waiting in line at the grocery store, or wave hi to while you're walking your dog.

It's the ordinariness of his settings and of his characters that makes Stephen King's villains so memorable. His villains take all forms, too, with the author willing and eager to spread the horror around; Stephen King's villains are human, supernatural, and other. A rabid dog, a possessed car, an unhinged nurse, a malevolent vampire,...

The revised and expanded version of The Gunslinger makes The Man In Black a pivotal villain in King's connected universe. Flagg, Walter, Marten are the same person: a powerful, ambiguous, ageless villain. Flagg is revealed to be a master manipulator, influencing Roland's journey through Mid-World and beyond over countless years.

Stephen King's epic The Dark Tower series has no shortage of memorable antagonists, but a change made in the revised and expanded edition of The Gunslinger helped elevate one villain above all others. King's long and storied fantasy series acts as the backbone of his connected universe, containing elements from many of his other novels and short stories. Perhaps the most important of these cross-over elements is the villains that Roland Deschain and his ka-tet encounter throughout the course of his journey across Mid-World.

Chief among those villains is The Man In Black, who acts as Roland's primary foil in The Gunslinger,...

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Jimmy Sangster today, at the age of 83. While Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing may be the first names Hammer Horror fans think of, Sangster was just as influential when it came to the success of Hammer’s films in the 50′s and 60′s.

Having written The Mummy, Horror of Dracula, and The Curse of Frankenstein, Jimmy Sangster was one of the men responsible for the creating some of Hammer’s most beloved films and horror franchises. After the success of those films, Sangster worked consistently with Hammer as a writer on dozens of films in the 60′s, including Dracula: Prince of Darkness. In the 70′s, Sangster tried his hand at directing and took on The Horror of Frankenstein and Lust For a Vampire.

Jimmy Sangster was married to his longtime wife and actress Mary Peach and they lived together in London.