Among the many deleted scenes to be found in the DVD release of 1994’s smash hit Pulp Fiction is a snippet involving Missus Mia Wallace videotaping a reluctant Vincent Vega shortly before they head off to Jack Rabbit Slims for a night of five dollar milkshakes and twist contests. Missus Mia asks Vincent whether he’s a Beatles fan or an Elvis fan, because you cannot possibly be both. The same can be said for the subculture of B-horror fangirls: you’re either a Bruce Campbell fan or a Jeffrey Combs fan. Sure, in this case you can be both, but one of them always takes precedence. Me? I’m a Jeff girl, all the way. And here are five very good reasons why…

1 – Re-Animator

This gooey, Lovecraft-inspired splatter flick was aimed at the boys when it hit screens back in 85, a year that saw a brilliant wave of darkly comedic horror flicks (The Return Of The Living Dead and Fright Night came out the same year). Re-Animator was the biggest and bloodiest and aimed itself straight at the libido of every horny teenage boy with a by-now notorious Head-Giving-Head scene involving a hapless Barbara Crampton and David Gale’s severed noggin. But the girls glommed on to the handsome lead – and no, it wasn’t Good Boy Dan. It was Herbert West, the asexual, four-eyed arrogant asshole whose dedication to perfecting his life-preserving reagent has more to do with his own overblown ego than his respect for human life, if any. Whip-thin, well-groomed and always ready with a razor sharp comeback, Herbert oozed class, cynicism and sexuality, although Combs himself denies the latter, claiming that his screen presence radiated zero testosterone. Much as I love Jeff, I gotta call him on that one: WRONG, four eyes! Your Herbert West made science sexy forever after.

2 - Masters Of Horror: The Black Cat. Based on my least favorite Edgar Allan Poe story, established Lovecraft master Stuart Gordon gave Poe a go, retelling the classic tale of a tortured man with an autobiographical twist and casting none other than his best fiend Jeffrey Combs as the Gothic Literary Master himself in this 2007 outing for Showtime’s hit series “Masters Of Horror.” Buried beneath a HUGE prosthetic nose, Combs quickly makes you forget all about the monstrous schnozz by literally seeming to channel the long dead Poe. With a slurry Southern accent, drunken fumblings and a truly touching love for his beautiful young wife Virginia (played by the stunningly lovely Elyse Levesque), Combs transforms this hour long tale of horror into a stunningly multifaceted and genuinely moving experience, turning in his absolute best performance since his debut in Re-Animator.

3 – Bride Of Re-Animator

Jeff is back with his glowing green hypo and snide remarks in this 1990 sequel to the original cult classic, and he seems not to have aged at all…which is good considering that the film picks up the story eight months after the Miskatonic Massacre. Herbert is more arrogant than ever, verbally abusing severed heads, turning random body parts into pets and assembling a FrankenGirl out of discarded parts to keep a disillusioned Dan from leaving him. At film’s climax, when the Bride is unveiled and presented to the doctors, she rejects Herbert, recoiling from him with a look of disgusted horror. Jeff’s reaction – big, sad puppy dog eyes and a plaintive, almost pleading declaration of “I made you!” could melt any heart….even a dead, re-animated one. Just beware of tissue rejection: it’s a bitch. Literally!

4 - The Frighteners

Before he made the legendary trilogy of The Lord of the Rings into an epic cinematic masterpiece, Peter Jackson made some of the best horror movies that ever splattered across the screen. 1996’s The Frighteners was no exception. This comedic tale of ghost hunting gone wrong was pitched as a Michael J. Fox vehicle, but Jeffrey Combs yanked the scenery out from under everyone as the seriously disturbed Milton Dammers, a hapless FBI agent who gets all of the “fruity cases.” A self-declared “asshole with an Uzi” Jeff sported a slick Hitler hairdo, Dumbo ears and a hideously scarred torso, emblazoned with the emblems of his sordid occult dealings. From his timid, queasy entrance to his explosive exit, Jeff chews every inch of scenery he’s in and enthusiastically spits it right back in your face. You just can’t not like Milton. He’s like a lost puppy…with a flaming case of rabies.

5 - From Beyond

Following hard on the success of Re-Animator, Lovecraft was again looked to for inspiration and the result was 1986’s sleeper horror hit From Beyond, starring Barbara Crampton’s tits shoved into a very tight black leather bondage suit. Oh, and Jeffrey Combs was there too, cast as the unfortunately named Crawford Tillinghast, who has unwittingly opened a door to a freakish alternate dimension where hideous demons dwell. Stripped of his hair and sporting a supernatural “dog dick” in the middle of his forehead, poor Jeff is humiliated, emasculated, rescued from death by Ken Foree (who towers over him by nearly a foot) and sexually molested by Babs while unconscious and unable to enjoy it. Jeff’s Crawford comes off like Herbert West’s insecure kid brother, wide eyed and determined to do good, even if it means not getting into a willing Babs kinky panties. Jeff manages to keep a straight face during the ludicrous third-eye-emergence scene and apparently didn’t mind too much that his pajama bottoms became see-through during a flooded-basement scene. Hey, guy’s got a perfectly round ass, what can I say?