The 50 Best Slasher Movies of All Time
This it does with surprising fealty in many ways—its depiction of a string of murders in Texas is actually pretty accurate to the historical record, but that accuracy sometimes comes at the cost of a complete narrative. In the end, this film is a gritty, sober, almost depressive slice of rural bloodthirstiness that raises more questions than it answers. We should note that there is one extremely goofy kill, involving a trombone, that seems much more slasher-esque than the others. Happy Death Day Director: Still, it has a few things going for it.
If you ask us, Happy Death Day seems more like a one-and-done proposition, best left to stand on its own. Prom Night Director: Stalked by an axe-wielding killer in a ski mask, the frenzied, eight-minute scene spools out for an eternity as Wendy is chased through the locked, echoing halls of the high school, illuminated in impressionistic, Argento-esque shafts of red light. Not all of Prom Night can live up to it the disco dance sequences are dreadful , but the chase alone makes it a classic. Terror Train , Director: Today, this mostly run-of-the-mill slasher is buoyed by several oddities: First, by the fact that magician David Copperfield is present, literally playing a magician red herring; and secondly by the novel concept of a masked killer who is regularly switching masks throughout the movie, leaving the characters guessing.
The Slumber Party Massacre Director: In fact, Brown originally wrote the film as an early parody of the genre, playing off the tropes established by Halloween and Friday the 13th , but the movie was ultimately filmed as a legitimate horror vehicle instead, leaving it in a unique tonal middle ground that retains a fair amount of black comedy.
Halloween II Director: Halloween 2 is an odd beast. Loomis, as both are consumed by a fire that was supposed to be the end for both characters.
It would have been a fitting end. Whereas the peak films of Dario Argento or even Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava, at their best are assessed with a certain critical goodwill in mind, the same is not true of what one might call the true giallos , those dime-a-dozen proto-slasher mysteries that more accurately captured the spirit of the yellow paperbacks from whence they sprung. Torso certainly feels like one of those lurid, gaudy films, although director Sergio Martino does infuse it with a certain artistic flair, especially in the depiction of the stocking-faced killer, whose blank gaze is more than a little disturbing … as is his penchant for sawing women apart.
Still, Torso is as exploitative as the title no doubt sounds, with plenty of nudity and a hedonistic, Bohemian attitude periodically punctuated by strangulations.
Discussion
Few scenes so well capture the voyeuristic terror of witnessing a crime unfolding. The Final Girls Director: Killer doll, very cheesy, plenty of one-liners, right? Well yes, and no.
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In the end, though, its greatness and inherent watchability boils down to the charms of the wonderful Brad Dourif, who found in Chucky the vessel he needed to become a genre legend forevermore. Friday the 13th Part 2 Directors: Steve Miner and Sean Cunningham. Scream 2 Director: It was going to be hard to follow up the original Scream for plenty of reasons: Aside from it being one of the more innovative, self-aware horror films in years, Wes Craven killed off all of its bad guys in the final scenes of the movie.
As always, the film is painfully critical of the horror movie genre while still scaring the pants off audiences in voice-morphed, quizzical phone calls and Ghost Face pop-ups. It remains the only Scream sequel to approach the original in terms of overall quality, thanks to its ability to turn over new leaves in examining the conventions of film sequels. Maniac is a rather impressive reimagining of the exploitation horror film of the same name, an attempt to take some grindhouse material and redress it in a modern skin, equal parts shocking and thought-provoking.
Rather, the audience hears the running background noise of his madness as he mutters to himself and stalks his female victims. The House on Sorority Row Director: This one revolves tightly around a group of seven girls who accidentally murder their overbearing house mother in a prank gone wrong … which is itself another major staple as a motivation for early slasher villains.
As they try to cover up the crime, members of the group start showing up dead, begging the question of who or what is doing the killing. Friday the 13th Director: The Friday the 13th movie that launched a thousand imitators: The horror genre was birthed and once dwelled solely in the cave of the written word. The placement of text was paramount in crafting that creepy feeling up and down your spine. The word compelled you forward in perverse curiosity, even while it promised the worst possible outcome ahead. We are talking the old and dead here: New media, such as radio, supported the horror with sound, but still relied upon the word to carry it.
Fear, as any campfire enthusiast can tell you, is all in the cerebral telling of the tale. Yet, as horror progressed into cinematic media, and as cinematic media became skilled at scaring you with all the other tools in its torture kit, good writing became an underutilized, if often completely forgotten implement. As such, a well-written horror film is almost oxymoronic.
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Yet there is a faint glimmer of light in this dark, dark house and we at Red Fez would like to highlight a few of our favorites. There are a good number of horror movies that do well with mediocre scripts The Shining and a few that are terrifying despite their terrible scripts Event Horizon , The Blob but a short list of films that are made great by their script is difficult to draft together.
Yet, difficult though it was, we have made an attempt at just that. There is always a tension between screenwriting and the other parts of movie-making. By the time you see a film the actors, directors, cinematographers, musicians and editors and producers have all had their opportunity to impact a script.
How do you know what was scripted or not? After much discussion, our criteria came together: A well-written movie, then, takes into consideration the concept, the pacing, the setting, the dialogue. These movies may not be well acted, or have amazing effects, or be the scariest movie you have ever seen, but they succeed, first and foremost, in telling a terrifying tale. The reason for that probably deserves another essay and list. Largely, we felt that the film had to actually scare you. This is not to say that older movies are not capable of frightening you — or are not well written —however it is at about this time that the other elements of film-making makeup, special effects, cinematography, direction really start catching-up to, and in some cases even start supplanting, the script.
Our list looks at films where script rises to the fore against a healthy arena of competition other fully-developed film-making techniques. Now, in honor of striking fear into your brain as well as your heart, here are our top 10 best-written horror films:.
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Adrian Body and Sarah Polley star in this Canadian feature about rogue geneticists who grow tired of growing creepy flesh-caterpillar fang-pets for corporate no-gooders and decide, instead, to play God. What we like best about this film is that in the end, despite and perhaps because of the likeability and relatability of the main characters, the humans are by far the creepiest creatures in this flick.
However, what current audiences tend to forget is that these tropes only exist because of this masterpiece by Ridley Scott. Based on a relatively simple premise of an inhuman stowaway, Alien succeeds on the merit of well-written, realistic characters and an entirely fresh concept. Our goal here is not to create an exhaustive list. Indeed, the more we discuss this, the more we come up with other movies that almost make the grade, or entire sub-genres that we have missed entirely.
We had a long list of also-rans and have ignored almost 70 years of film-making canon. But we hope this gives you a good start for watching some of the most satisfyingly crafted and scary films in the last forty years. Fiction, poetry and art you love Log In Sign Up. People Authors Books Publishers.
Red Fez’s Top 10 Best Written Horror Films
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