Slumber POLLty Massacre: Favorite Offbrand Old School Slasher Flick

other than no votes for the burning, these results are pretty much totally otm

actually i would also have dug some love being thrown at terror train and my bloody valentine, now that i give the list a better once over. still, top 2 are both amazing and desrve their spots.

the right winner won.

are there other films like these not listed of note? kinda really into the creepy 80s generic slashers, although I've been told "Three on a Meathook" (not on this list) ain't very good

Pieces is quite watchable iirc.

I want to vote Silent Night, Deadly Night, because I watched the sequels in the early 90s during a time that wound up being pretty important for me (I would write stuff with the TV going, just because I seemed to get good work done that way, and I went through the whole SNDN series that way), but the first one is one of those "this is seriously depressingly nihilistic and amoral" slashers.

I just watched this for the first time a couple nights ago (with a live improvised score) and yeah, it’s just so mean-spirited and ugly. Just ridiculously cruel to every character, I’m pretty sure every woman murdered in it is topless at the time, it’s like the stereotype of amoral misogynist slasher flicks taken to the next level.

Pieces is a blast though!

Yeah, how the eff was Pieces not among these poll options?!? YOU BASTARDS! BAS........TARRRRRRRRDS!

agree that SNSD encapsulates everything that was wrong w this subgenre taken to the nth degree, it's practically archetypal in its grossness

Adding to the post upthread stumping for Slumber Party Massacre, the first was written by Rita Mae Brown and all three installments were directed by women.

I can't remember if I've seen that or not

The killer's preferred method of dispatch is a giant penis substitute drill.

yeah well it's not alone in that respect (Body Double!)

I watched it last night and it was ... really bad? I mean it had one trick (jump scare/fake out) that it does over and over again in lieu of plot, character, dialogue, atmosphere, subtext etc. The villain is just awful, no distinguishing characteristics at all, a completely boring automaton. The production value (usually something I can enjoy or overlook depending on the era) is terrible the sound was bad. just new levels of badness all around.

Look, you'll notice I said nothing about the quality of the film...

I was just expecting something interesting to occasionally happen but aside from some of the totally bizarre and hamfisted sexual stuff (the little sister sneaking upstairs to steal a peek at her older sister's copy of the Playgirl with Sylvester Stallone?! yeah ok lol) it was just really boring, a series of badly executed cliches strung together.

As hinted a few posts back, Pieces is the only slasher film I would (mostly) unreservedly recommend (because, speaking as a big horror fan, most entries in the genre are the hottest of trash). Everyone who's seen it at my behest has been thoroughly entertained.

hey I too have watched many a bad slasher flick, I get the genre

The Burning was kinda fun.

just imagining the newspaper headline the next day

"NEGLIGENT SUMMER CAMP LETS 10 CAMPERS GET MURDERED!"

"CAMP COUNSELOR IS FORMER BLACKFOOT DELINQUENT!"

"LOTS OF BUTTS!"

had no idea Fisher Stevens was Woodstock! lolol

The House on Sorority Row (1983) 0

robbed!!!!!!

lmao at shakey completely misunderstanding slumber party massacre, it’s a slasher parody played straight (and it rocks, what other slasher film has the characters eating pizza from a box that’s on top of a dead delivery guy)

did I ever mention I did some work for George Mihalka of My Bloody Valentine fame? anyway, good movie. the remake is silly gonzo fun as well

Nobody voted for My Bloody Valentine??

also robbed!!!!

definitely one of the most novel settings of any horror film

I read a good piece ages ago on My Bloody Valentine and class, but it appears to be impossible to google for (thanks, Kevin Shields).

Prom Night was a series!

Seen about a third of these, and Black Christmas is immeasurably the best of them.

i'm tempted to watch all of the ones I haven't seen this week.

black christmas is a perfect film but house on sorority row is my personal favorite for its dreamy psychedelic third act and of course the acting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeZOjz2qKFc

so I enjoyed the OG My Bloody Valentine, but the twist bothers me because....if everybody knew Axel's dad was one of the two supervisors killed years ago, would they really be so gung ho about having a valentine's party that might dredge up bad memories in him?. felt like a "deus ex machina" but not enough to affect my enjoyment.

characters you actually rooted for too, for the most part. also I love any movie that does at least one POV killing.

watching 3 on a Meathook, against my better judgment

2 on a meathook is already straining credulity.

1 on a forklift was a better film

well that was certainly terrible.

it was like a Bread music video with a few murders thrown in

last scene almost a note for note copy of the end of Psycho

plot twist obvious from opening minute

entire 10 minute scene which is stock footage from some local band's club show

there is at one point a murder where comedy sound effects play as the pick axe goes into the victim, and yet the scene isn't played for lols, it's probably the only effect they had on hand.

I watched Chopping Mall a few months ago. Oh dear.

that movie is great

Slumber Party Massacre, uhhh.....

s'alright. think the most horrifying line was the older sister fishing by saying "you were beating off all the boys in 5th grade" and the younger sister unwittingly confirming this was true.

but yeah, i picked up on what it was going for. problem was I wanted to watch an Argento tonight and then after dicking around logging back into work to figure out something, it suddenly became 11:30 and that wasn't happening.

if I want to watch something with guts and body count tonight

Chopping Mall or

something else?

and if so

what

else

iirc chopping mall delivers, but also sleepaway camp ii

Watched Maniac Cop the other night. Pretty solid offbrand slasher flick (Larry Cohen script). Pretty much coulda just been called Cop.

I have recently watched the following (some from this list, some outside):

TERROR TRAIN: found this mostly annoying. the plot twist was fairly stupid, because why in the fuck would the killer jump from costume to costume if he already had the perfect disguise, the magician's assistant? it feels like the masks were meant to throw people off of the scent, but it feels more like cheating. also the killings were fairly boring and there was way too much soap opera college kid drama on the train that I didn't care about. but lol @ David Copperfield appearing.

HELL HIGH: This was sold to me as an underrated lost slasher film (indeed, I had to watch the fucker on Youtube). I found it to be half-interesting, half dumb. Basically about a woman who accidentally killed two high school kids when she was a little girl (throwing mud in their face when they were on a motorcycle, and went tumbling, and impaled themselves on.....two metal rods that just happened to be in the middle of the mud patch? idk). and then fast forwarding to her as a biology teacher and fucked up shit makes her snap. Just when the movie starts to go in an interesting director, the biology teacher is killed, stifling the momentum.

THE MUTILATOR: this sucked, flat the fuck out. it often gets boosted for its impressive gore, but it is so fucking boring between slayings that I couldn't even get to the end. it's not like the gore effects were Savini level, either.

THREE ON A MEATHOOK: the worst shit I've ever seen. also only available on Youtube. got sampled on a Mortician album. cool title, plus there are interesting bits of dialogue in the beginning, and it's a neat trick having the main character being gaslit into thinking he's the killer. but after the fast and furious opening ten minutes, apparently they only had 30 minutes of movie scripted, so the main character goes to a bar, where he spends an inexplicably lengthy amount of time watching a terrible bar band play what sounds like their imitation of Blood Sweat and Tears heartland music - like you get through about three songs in their set, with the main character just staring and watching them blankly. like a half an hour of watching him watch a band and then befriend the bartender who he then goes home and has romantic lovemaking with. the plot twist is remarkably dumb but it's the type of gonzo idea that could have worked in a better B-movie.

WIZARD OF GORE: idk that this really counts in this category but I loved this ridiculous-assed movie. especially the pretentious overacting of Montag, who was actually not an actor but a stagehand that got promoted when the actor quit. the premise is kind of neat too - the magician is actually killing people, but he's spellbinding both them AND the audience to not realize it until a half hour after the show, where they finally succumb to their injuries. dumb ending, but fits the film. need to see more Herschell Gordon Lewis.

MADMAN: watching this one now. generic but fun so far. also has Gaylen Ross from Dawn of the Dead! hilarious that itw as supposed to be a Cropsey film but The Burning beat them to it.

oh and BASKET CASE but that amazing piece of art belongs in its own category

It's not on here, but it fits - TOURIST TRAP.

Ok, wanna start by saying the telekinesis at times really got in the way of this movie. and I wasn't surprised to find out afterwards that it wasn't part of the original story, but was demanded by the director/producer. at times it hamstrung things, because he used telekinesis to kill the very first person, then from then on, often just used it to control his mannequins.

I feel like the movie woulda been better if they got rid of the animation of the mannequins and telekinesis and just made Chuck Connors a creepy disturbed guy who killed people and manually turned them into inanimate mannequins.

but...I still liked it, flaws or not. it was definitely original in its concept, and I very much enjoyed the remote setting of the movie, Chuck Connors's mannerisms/demeanor, and the creepy-weird vibe of the museum. I definitely support more odd-ball movies of this type.

anybody seen Cemetery of Terror (1985)? definitely fits this category, though this one was Mexican. definite homages to Halloween in some ways, but mostly it's a thin story with really effective atmosphere and framing. about a serial killer brought back to life through a satanic ritual.