The 10 Best Tim Curry Movies And Shows To Remember His Life And Legacy

Before transitioning to film, Tim Curry was a stage actor who made a name for himself in the West End. It was there he met Richard O’Brien and the two began to craft what would become The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the film that would turn Curry into a star.

While The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now known rightfully as one of the most important films of the ‘70s, upon its release, it was mostly ignored, all except for Curry’s performance. Curry was magnetic as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, with his sheer presence impossible to ignore. There’s the pageantry he exhibits with each step in those wonderful high heels, the lustful looks he throws at everyone, and the line delivery that turned everything he said into a sultry quote. Curry owned the film, and it’s not much of a surprise. The role was written for him after all. To this day, it’s impossible to dissociate Curry from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its delectable B-movie charms that would inspire musicals like Little Shop of Horrors (1986). One can’t exist without the other.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show helped get Tim Curry’s foot in the door in the world of Hollywood, and while he would appear in movies like Times Square (1980) and Annie (1982) in supporting roles, it was Clue that gave Curry one of his best leading roles.

Clue is a great example of a murder mystery that’s just as fun to watch on repeat as it was the first time. Tim Curry’s Wadsworth is the glue that holds the cast together, bouncing around the mansion and trying to make sense of all of the murders taking place. It has everything a comedy fan could want. The writing is sharp, with plenty of great remarks by Curry, good physical comedy, and over-the-top reactions that harken back to the era of Vaudeville. What made it even better were the film’s three different endings, each revealing a new culprit and motivation for the crime, all with Tim Curry manically revealing the hows and whys to the audience. It’s not easy being the best performance in a cast that included Christopher Lloyd and Madeline Kahn, but leave it to Tim Curry to leave a lasting impression.

Regardless of whether he’s playing a hero or a villain, Tim Curry is always fun to watch. He rarely, if ever, comes across as intimidating, but leave it to Legend to transform Curry into the Lord of Darkness himself and own every minute he’s on screen.

Legend was a fun fantasy film, but much like David Bowie in Labyrinth (1986), its villain is what makes it shine. While he’s not present in most of Legend’s 94-minute runtime, when the Lord of Darkness makes himself known in the film’s finale, it’s striking. Curry completely loses himself in the role, with some truly amazing make-up that would take five hours to apply each day. Curry’s theatricality makes the Lord of Darkness delightfully sadistic, with his facial expressions in particular being especially impressive given the layers upon layers of make-up Curry had to act through. Even though the Lord of Darkness isn’t Satan, when people think of Satan or devils in cinema, they think of Curry’s role in Legend.

While Curry had quite the career in film, his contribution to the world of animation is just as important. Curry would appear in countless shows, but one of his most notable roles, and the role that netted him his only Emmy, would be as Captain Hook in Peter Pan & The Pirates. 

If you’re only familiar with Peter Pan (1953) and Disney’s sanitization of J.M. Barrie’s novel, then Peter Pan & The Pirates gives you all of the swashbuckling adventure that you could have ever wanted from the story. Each of the 65 episodes tells a standalone adventure that has plenty of whimsy you would expect from a Peter Pan story, but with a much greater focus on characterization. The Lost Boys and Hook’s crew are well fleshed out, and Curry’s performance as Captain Hook is incredibly underappreciated. He’s ruthless and cunning, but with a level of intelligence that many adaptations often neglect to feature. Thanks to the show’s release on Fox Kids, not many people saw it, but it’s a true definition of a hidden gem.

Curry may have scared people as the Lord of Darkness in Legend, but It made him, once again, into a pop culture icon as Pennywise the Clown. To this day, there are people who are terrified of clowns thanks to Tim Curry.

Nowadays, many horror fans seem to take opportunities to dunk on It in favor of praising It (2017) and Bill Skarsgård’s take on Pennywise, but there’s one thing that Curry’s performance has over Skarsgård: he doesn’t forget to be a clown. Curry’s Pennywise can be fun and friendly when he needs to be, which is how you deceive and capture children. The iconic scene where he’s speaking to Georgie through the sewer works as well as it does because he’s saying and doing everything correctly to lure a child into his thrall. When Skarsgård does it, you wonder why any kid wouldn’t run away in terror. When Curry does it, it’s inviting. Plus, the way Curry takes joy in the torment he’s inflicting makes his brand of villainy all the more twisted. There’s a lot of camp to Curry’s Pennywise, but for some, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Home Alone (1990) was a cultural phenomenon when it came out, and in the era of quick sequels, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Home Alone 2: Lost In New York was quickly greenlit. Is it as good as the first film? No, but it does have a snooty Tim Curry, which more than makes up for it. 

Taking Kevin McCallister out of his home in Chicago and letting him run wild in New York is obviously escalating the stakes, but what helps sell the concept even more is how Macaulay Culkin has to play off Tim Curry. From the moment Kevin walks into the Plaza Hotel, Tim Curry’s concierge is there to be a royal stick in the mud. He has customer service face written all over him, and you can tell he’s just internally boiling with rage and waiting for an excuse to explode. What makes his performance here all the more noteworthy is that he’s barely in the film. He’s not the main villain and in only a handful of scenes with a few minutes' worth of screentime, but everyone remembers him as being more important than he actually is. That’s the sign of a great actor.

The ‘90s were a real golden age of animated movies. It seems like not even a month went by without a well-animated film releasing, and leave it to Tim Curry to elevate Ferngully: The Last Rainforest into one of the better films of the era.

The film is unabashedly pro-environmentalism, which helped it stand apart from other films of the era that had more cartoony and silly premises. That isn’t to say that Ferngully isn’t silly, since it features Robin Williams providing hours of improv much like how he did in Aladdin (1992), but it can also have some pretty frightening imagery. Case in point, Tim Curry’s Hexxus,  a monster made of pollution that chews the scenery as much as trees are cut down in the film’s 76-minute runtime. His song “Toxic Love” oozes the same kind of energy that made “Sweet Transvestite” from Rocky Horror a hit, and the animation really sells how dangerous a creature Hexxus is by constantly growing and shifting into a literal spectre of death. What can be said other than Tim Curry is great at being a bad guy.

Only 11 people have ever earned the title of honorary Muppet. The late Robin Williams and Dolly Parton have earned their laurels, but none have ever lived by that title more than Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island. 

While all of the other films on this list have amazing performances by Curry, he himself viewed his performance as Long John Silver as his favorite role in any project. Whenever he was onscreen, Curry was grinning from ear to ear, relishing the chance at appearing alongside Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, and Sam the Eagle. He acted as if he himself was a Muppet, complete with exaggerated line deliveries and huge sweeping gestures. He was a bad guy, sure, but it was hard not to love the guy, especially when he was acting as a mentor figure to Jim Hawkins. He just seems so happy to be playing the role and loving every chance he had to sail the high seas, singing with the Muppets all the while. Muppet Treasure Island is one of those perfect films that anyone can watch and enjoy, regardless of how old or young you are, and a part of that is thanks to Curry’s charisma.

Before SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) became the predominant breadwinner for Nickelodeon, it was shows like The Wild Thornberrys that made the channel the go-to hub for kids' shows in the late ‘90s, and Curry would have a hand in shaping one of the most enduring parts of the show’s legacy.

While the show primarily centered on Eliza Thornberry traveling with her family and talking with animals all across the world, it was her father, Nigel Thornberry, who would become an internet icon. Curry played Nigel as cartoonishly British as possible to the point where even decades after the show's release, his voice still rings in fans’ ears. Curry plays Nigel with the same lust for adventure and discovery that made characters like Long John Silver so much fun to watch, but while he could be somewhat of a clueless dad, it was never to the point of other horrible animated Nickelodeon fathers like Timmy’s dad in The Fairly OddParents (2001). He always made sure Eliza was alright and would risk his life to save her and his family. We all at one point wished we had a father like Nigel, even if he’s been relegated to meme status nowadays.

There have been a lot of Scooby-Doo movies, and while dozens of them range from forgettable to garbage, occasionally, there’ll be a diamond in the rough, and that diamond is Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost.

Obviously, this is the film that introduced the world to the Hex Girls, and we should be grateful every day for that, but Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost also gave us, yet again, a delicious Tim Curry performance. Curry plays a horror writer who invited Mystery Inc. to the autumnal town of Oakhaven, and even though he screams villain in every possible scene, like always, it’s just a delight watching Tim Curry ham it up and have the time of his life being bad. The film, like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998), is one of the rare occasions where the supernatural threat is actually real, giving the film stakes that other entries just don’t have. It’s a great entry-level horror movie, and a perfect film for Halloween, and Tim Curry knows how to elevate a simple straight-to-DVD movie into one of the most essential films in a 50+-year-old franchise.