Let's call it the demon leer—the horror-movie effect created by pasting an incongruous grin across the face of a character who, on the evidence of a cold, soul-piercing stare and corpselike quietude, is clearly deranged. The appeal of this effect for filmmakers is that it is entirely sufficient unto itself. Like the jump scare—the similarly cheap thrill with which it is sometimes allied—it can be dropped into any movie, at any point, and be counted on to work its sinister magic without a lot of narrative botheration.
As a cinematic resource, the demon leer can be traced back at least to The Man Who Laughs, a 1928 silent film for which Universal's soon-to-be makeup master Jack Pierce devised a bizarre, toothy prosthetic look for the story's maimed protagonist. The Man Who Laughs isn't a horror movie: It's a romantic fantasy along the lines of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Universal's Lon Chaney hit of five years earlier. But Pierce's makeup design for the film has been influential in the horror genre—most clearly on the Marvel characters Venom and Carnage—and was a model for the Joker, the DC supervillain who debuted in the 1940 Batman #1.
