When it comes to slasher movies, they often have a terrible reputation among horror fans as lowbrow cinema. However, that does not mean that all slasher movies are bad. Outside of the more popular with Jason, Freddy, and Michael Myers, many other slasher movies remain criminally underrated and deserve a lot more eyes on them.
The slasher movie has been around for about 50 years now, with many calling Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho the first actual slasher movie. In the ’70s, it was time for Black Christmas to start the new genre with Halloween quick on its tails to light the world on fire. With so many good and bad movies to come along since, here are 10 of the most underrated slasher movies in history.
MANIAC
One of the most recent slasher movies on this list hit in 2012 and starred Elijah Wood or all people. The film is Maniac and is the remake of a 1980 movie of the same name starring Joe Spinell. Franck Khalfoun, who previously directed P2, helmed the film with Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension) producing.
Wood portrays Frank Zito, a schizophrenic man with a traumatic childhood who kills women and scalps them to add hair to the mannequins in the shop he owns. While critics remained divided, this slasher movie is smart and has the interesting tactic of shooting it in the first person POV of Frank, the killer.
APRIL FOOL’S DAY
When April Fool’s Day came out in 1986, many fans dismissed it as another bargain-basement slasher movie. Many who did watch it was not happy with the twist at the end, although when looking back on it today, the film was way ahead of its time. See, April Fool’s Day was a slasher movie, but it was also a self-referential horror movie similar to those that hit one decade later.
The film sees a group of college friends on a spring break vacation when they start to get picked off one by one. The film’s title gives away the entire premise as this slasher movie was an April Fool’s joke on the audience.
HATCHET
One of the most underrated horror film directors working is Adam Green, who directed two great low budget horror movies in Hatchet and Frozen. When it comes to Hatchet, it picked up a few sequels that were mostly straight to video. This is sad because Hatchet is a quality addition to the slasher movie genre.
Victor Crowley is the monster in this movie, a unique and new twist on the slasher killer. Green even went all out and had a fantastic cast that included roles for Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), Kane Hodder (Jason), and Tony Todd (Candyman).
MANIAC COP
Maniac Cop is a slasher movie straight out of the pure excess of the ’80s. The film is directed by William Lustig and written by B-movie auteur Larry Cohen. The film was ravaged by critics but has developed a massive cult fanbase through the years.
The movie takes place in New York City, and the slasher killer in this is a police officer dubbed as the Maniac Cop. When one police officer played by the brilliant Tom Atkins leaks the news, the public develops a fear of the police. For Evil Dead fans, Bruce Campbell also appears as a police officer suspected wrongly to be the Maniac Cop.
BEHIND THE MASK: THE RISE OF LESLIE VERNON
Released in 2006, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is a part-mockumentary and part-slasher horror movie. In the film, young documentary filmmakers are making a film based on a slasher killer named Leslie Vernon. He goes through the early part of the movie, explaining how he pulls off the stunts that happen in all slasher movies.
However, things turn on its head in the second half when Leslie Vernon turns his attention to the documentary filmmakers, who he had already pegged as his next victims.
HAPPY DEATH DAY
Released in 2017, Happy Death Day was a horror comedy that was one part slasher movie, one part sci-fi flick. In the film, produced by Jason Blum and Blumhouse Productions, a college student named Tree is murdered by someone dressed in the mask of the school mascot. The twist is that she wakes up back in her bed.
The sci-fi angle is that she has to relive the day she is murdered (her birthday) over and over again with memories of everything that happened in her previous murders. It is Groundhog Day in the world of slasher movies and is both smart and very funny.
TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL
Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil is a slasher movie turned on its head. The basis of this film is classic movies like Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The twist is that the hillbillies in this movie are not the slasher killers. As a matter of fact, there are no real slasher killers at all.
A group of kids heads out to the woods of West Virginia, and when they see Tucker and Dale, they assume they are crazed hillbillies. A series of misfortunes are misinterpreted by the kids as the two killing people, and the kids go on the offensive against the confused country boys.
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER
Before Michael Rooker broke out as Merle on The Walking Dead and Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy, he was making lots of small appearances in great movies. In 1986, Rooker got a chance to take the lead in a film where he took on the role of a serial killer based loosely on real-life killer Henry Lee Lucas.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a difficult watch as it subverts what many slasher movie fans were used to at the time. The movie does not take place through the eyes of the victims but the serial killer himself. This puts the audience in an uncomfortable position as a voyeur, watching him kill again and again.
SLEEPAWAY CAMP
Released in 1983, Sleepaway Camp remains one of the deepest cult classics in slasher movies today. The film takes viewers into a situation similar to Friday the 13th, where a slasher killer hunts kids at a summer camp and picks them off one by one in unique and disturbing ways.
However, the movie is known for the ending. Much like the original Friday the 13th had a surprise killer in Jason’s mother, Sleepaway Camp had one of the final girls turn out to be the killer in Angela, who has a huge surprise of her own in store for her intended victims.
WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE
When Wes Craven created Scream, it was a massive return to form for the horror icon. However, this return happened two years before, and no one paid any attention. Scream was a meta-slasher movie where the kids all knew the tropes of the genre and used them to try to survive. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was just as meta and is criminally underrated.
In the movie, Wes Craven wants to make a new Nightmare movie and brings back Robert Englund and Heather Langenkamp to reprise their roles. However, as they prepare to make the movie, the real Freddy Krueger tries to break through to the real world and starts to haunt the dreams of Lagenkam’s son.
