Slasher

WATCHknown

A Bay of Blood

The hinge between giallo and slasher. Friday the 13th Part 2 lifts two murders almost shot for shot.

WATCHcult

Absurd

D'Amato remaking his own Anthropophagous as a Halloween knock-off. Grim and dull in equal measure.

WATCHknown

Anthropophagous: The Beast

Famous for two shots and unwatchable between them. George Eastman wrote himself the title role.

WATCHknown

Basket Case

A young man carries his surgically-separated deformed twin in a wicker basket, and they are taking revenge.

WATCHknown

Blood Feast

The first gore film. Shot in four days for 24,500 dollars and it looks it, which is half the appeal.

WATCHcult

Bloody Moon

Jess Franco doing a slasher for German money. Contains the stone-saw scene and little else.

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Candyman

The shadow-puppet sequences are the best thing in it. A sequel that is actually about the original.

WATCHcanon

Candyman

Philip Glass wrote the score believing it was an art film. That mistake is why it sounds like nothing else.

WATCHknown

Death Trap

Hooper's follow-up to Chain Saw, shot entirely on a sound stage lit in red. A hotel, a scythe and a crocodile.

WATCHdeep cut

Delirium

A Vietnam veteran, a vigilante group and a plot that gives up. Not the Lamberto Bava one.

WATCHobscure

Don't Go in the Woods

Shot in Utah for 100,000 dollars with a score that never stops. Beloved by a small and stubborn group.

WATCHcult

Evilspeak

Clint Howard, a military academy, a computer and a lot of pigs. Better than it has any right to be.

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High Tension

The film that named New French Extremity in the popular imagination, and its ending is still being argued about.

WATCHcult

In a Violent Nature

A slasher shot entirely from behind the killer, at walking pace, with no score. A formal experiment that works.

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It Follows

One rule, followed exactly. The most frightening use of a wide shot in modern horror.

WATCHcult

Madhouse

A deaf teacher, a disfigured twin and a rottweiler. Shot in Savannah and better made than most of the list.

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Maniac

Joe Spinell wrote himself the lead and Tom Savini blew his own head off on camera.

WATCHobscure

Mardi Gras Massacre

An Aztec-obsessed killer in New Orleans. A Blood Feast remake in all but name, and slower.

WATCHknown

MaXXXine

The weakest of West's trilogy and still a better-shot 1985 Los Angeles than most films manage.

WATCHcult

Nightmare Maker

Susan Tyrrell as the aunt, giving a performance far too committed for the film around it.

WATCHcult

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain

The distributor went to prison over this one. The only DPP case that put a man behind bars.

WATCHknown

Opera

Argento's last great film, and the needles taped under the eyes are the image of his career.

WATCHknown

Pearl

Technicolor melodrama with a pitchfork. Mia Goth's final monologue is a single unbroken take.

WATCHcanon

Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon's animated thriller about a pop idol losing herself, and Aronofsky bought the remake rights just to reuse a shot.

WATCHcult

Pieces

A chainsaw killer on a Boston campus, made by Spaniards, and it is gloriously incoherent.

cult

Pranks

A dorm over Christmas break and a plot that runs out. Notable mainly for an early Daphne Zuniga.

obscure

Revenge of the Bogey Man

Roughly 40 percent flashback to the first film. A sequel assembled rather than made.

WATCHobscure

Sissy

An Australian wellness influencer at a hen weekend. Much sharper and much nastier than the premise suggests.

WATCHknown

Sleepaway Camp

A cheap, badly acted summer camp slasher with an ending that has been argued about for forty years.

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Sleepless

Argento's late return to the giallo, with Max von Sydow as a retired detective and a genuine nursery-rhyme killer.

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Stage Fright

A killer in a giant owl mask trapped in a theatre with a dance troupe. Michele Soavi's debut and the best late giallo.

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Strange Darling

Told out of order in six chapters, shot on 35mm by Giovanni Ribisi. The structure is the whole trick.

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Tenebrae

Argento's last great giallo, and the one with the three-minute crane shot up the side of a house.

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Terrifier 3

Unrated, made for very little, outgrossed studio horror, and the effects are the entire proposition.

WATCHobscure

Terror Eyes

A motorcycle killer in Boston with a kukri. Rachel Ward's debut and a real giallo influence.

WATCHknown

Thanksgiving

A fake trailer from Grindhouse turned into a real slasher, and it is a very good one.

known

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Vincent Price murders the surgeons who let his wife die, each death based on the plagues of Egypt. A gorgeous, deranged art deco comedy.

WATCHknown

Theatre of Blood

Vincent Price as a hammy actor murdering the critics who denied him an award, each death staged from Shakespeare.

WATCHcult

The Blackening

A group of Black friends at a cabin play a racist board game that traps them, and the whole film is the joke that the Black character always dies first.

WATCHcult

The Boogey Man

A haunted mirror and a Halloween score Ulli Lommel could not afford to license properly.

WATCHknown

The Burning

The best film on the prosecuted list. Savini's raft scene is why it was on it.

WATCHcanon

The Cabin in the Woods

A machine for explaining why every other film on this site is shaped the way it is.

WATCHknown

The Funhouse

Hooper on a real budget with Rick Baker's monster. Nowhere near nasty enough to be on this list.

WATCHknown

The Loved Ones

An Australian teenager says no to a girl for the school dance, and she holds her own dance instead.

WATCHobscure

The Slayer

A painter's nightmares kill people on an off-season island. Genuinely atmospheric and badly underrated.

WATCHcanon

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Almost bloodless and completely unbearable. Heat, noise and exhaustion doing all the work.

WATCHcult

The Toolbox Murders

The first fifteen minutes are notorious. The remaining seventy are a different and much duller film.

WATCHknown

Torso

The giallo at its most slasher-like, and the last act is a genuine masterclass in silent suspense.

WATCHcanon

Trap

Shyamalan's high-concept swing: a serial killer takes his daughter to a pop concert that is a police trap for him.

WATCHknown

Trick 'r Treat

Four interlocking Halloween stories and the best anthology since Creepshow. Warner shelved it for two years.

WATCHobscure

Unhinged

Three women, a mansion, rain, and a twist. Shot in Oregon and stranger than its reputation.

WATCHcanon

Us

The premise does not survive scrutiny and the film is so well made you will not care until afterwards.

WATCHcult

Visiting Hours

Michael Ironside stalking a hospital. A real cast, a real budget, and no business being on the list.

WATCHknown

Woman of the Hour

Anna Kendrick's directorial debut, about the serial killer who appeared on The Dating Game mid-spree.

WATCHcanon

Wrong Turn

Competent, well shot, and exactly what it says. Stan Winston did the mutants.