There are plenty of horror movies out there that should have kicked off franchises. But, be it a divisive reception from general audiences or, far more commonly, general audiences just not showing up, it never happened. This is especially true of the slasher subgenre. Many “man in a mask” movies came out in the wake of Halloween and Friday the 13th‘s success and, while Sleepaway Camp and Prom Night received sequels, the following examples did not. We’re not saying they’re fantastic slashers, but they do have something that many other one-offs did not. Just that little extra edge that helps them become slightly more memorable.
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But, to be included, the slasher’s narrative must have left a window open for a sequel. Meaning, nothing applied where the finale is concrete. The killer is dead, there’s nothing in the film’s rules that allow for resurrection, cut to credits. In other words, nothing like The Burning or Fade to Black.
1) Blood Rage
Blood Rage is a little seen 1987 slasher with a solid plot, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman star Louise Lasser in the lead role, Mark Soper doing well in dual roles, and some fantastic kills. It also has a rather ambiguous ending.
The narrative follows twin brothers Todd and Terry. The latter is a psychopath, and after they see their mother making out with her boyfriend while they’re all at the drive-in theater, Terry kills a teenager with an axe and proceeds to frame his brother for the crime. Ten years later, Todd has escaped from the mental health clinic where he’s been hospitalized and makes his way home. Little does he know Terry’s murderous rage has come back, and while everyone is terrified of Todd, it’s Terry who is butchering people. Their mother has never caught on that Terry is the villain of the two, and when Todd arrives home she shoots who she thinks is Todd, but is actually Terry. Thinking she’s murdered the bad son, she takes her own life. Technically, it’s a happy ending, as the serial killer is dead. However, we’re left with a lingering shot of Todd that makes us wonder how sane he really is and, especially after seeing his mother take her own life, whether he’ll pick up where his departed brother left off.
Stream Blood Rage on Night Flight Plus.
2) Curtains
Curtains is a fairly traditional Agatha Christie-style murder mystery. It’s just all the suspects are ambitious aspiring actresses vying for the same role. It could be any of them.
It’s a great core concept, and we eventually learn that ambition and dislike of competition is, in fact, Patti O’Connor’s motive. Patti is the only one to leave the film’s mansion locale with a pulse, and the final scene has her in a psychiatric hospital. She very easily could have broken out of that hospital in a sequel, or even pulled a Halloween II within the hospital. It may have been a little clunky or cliche, but whenever a flesh and blood movie killer is still alive at the end, that hints they’ll return some day.
Stream Curtains on Prime Video.
3) My Bloody Valentine
One of the very best holiday slasher movies ever made, My Bloody Valentine is the best installment of the entire subgenre to never receive a sequel. It received a remake in 2009, but that doesn’t count as the 1981 movie kicking off a franchise.
Throughout the film, we think that the much discussed killer in a miner’s outfit, Harry Warden, has come back. After all, there’s someone celebrating his murder spree anniversary by committing a murder spree in a miner’s outfit. But Harry Warden is dead, and the killer is actually one of the two protagonists, Axel Palmer. The last we see of Axel, he’s dragging himself away with his one remaining arm screaming that he’s not done yet. It’s great as a one-off ending, because we the audience just imagine Axel out there, but it was clearly trying to lead to a sequel. It could have been great, but at the end of the day My Bloody Valentine did not live up to the success experienced by Friday the 13th (another Paramount film) the year before.
Stream My Bloody Valentine on Kanopy.
4) He Knows You’re Alone
He Knows You’re Alone was a little too slow to be a massive hit like Friday the 13th, but it still has an ending that’s open to interpretation when it comes to sequel potential. Not to mention, this film’s killer is still alive at the end.
Specifically, the narrative kicks off by having a man murder his ex on her wedding day after she dumps him for a new man. The end of the movie has Amy, the final girl, dump Phil, the man she’s with towards the beginning (who isn’t a big part of the film’s events). She is now engaged to Marvin, the man with whom she does share the screen throughout the movie. She is in her wedding dress in front of a mirror, spins around, and says “Phil, what are you doing here?” and then we hear her scream. Furthermore, she does not kill the film’s antagonist, Ray, so really a sequel could have Ray, Phil, or both as the killer or killers. Perhaps they could have had Tom Hanks return in the sequel and do something other than randomly walk around a theme park with the protagonist for 20 minutes then disappear from the narrative entirely.
Rent He Knows You’re Alone on Amazon Video.
5) Shocker
Before he was reinventing horror in the ’90s with Scream, the late Wes Craven was closing out the ’80s with Shocker. It was his attempt to replicate the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street and, suffice to say, this wasn’t it. But it does have its fans.
Freddy Krueger operates in the dream world, but Shocker‘s Horace Pinker thrives via electricity. He was killed by the electric chair, so now the current is his world. And, by film’s end, he appears to be caught in a television. But just as Nancy turned her back on Freddy and seemingly made Nightmare a one-off, Shocker could have received a sequel. It’s not as if either Craven film played by the rules of reality, so Pinker certainly would have returned had the film been a hit. But it only netted $16.6 million. Fortunately, Craven would come back strong with The People Under the Stairs, which was a critical and commercial hit.
Rent Shocker on Amazon Video.
6) Slaughter High
Slaughter High is hampered by its cheapness (it’s an accessible watch, but next to impossible to find a cut of this movie that doesn’t look like it was ripped from a VHS tape) and the acting is quite spotty, but it’s a straightforward old school slasher. It even has a score by Harry Manfredini, whose contribution to Friday the 13th became iconic. In fact, his music for those films makes a few-seconds cameo here and, as a whole, the soundtrack sounds awfully similar in spots to Friday the 13th: A New Beginning‘s.
We follow a group of ten twenty-somethings who mercilessly bullied a kid named Marty when they were in high school. Their harassment escalated so much that poor Marty ended up disfigured. Now, ten years later, they’ve received an invitation to a high school reunion, only to find out the high school is shut down and they’re the only invites. Dressed in a jester costume, Marty kills them one by one. And, by film’s end, Marty is the only survivor, so there was definitely the opportunity for this film to have led to a sequel.
Stream Slaughter High on Tubi.
7) The Final Girls
For the sake of clarity, we haven’t been saying that these slasher films should have received sequels, but rather that the door was open for a potential sequel. Some of these movies work best as one-offs, and of them all, that’s never been more true than The Final Girls.
The narrative centers on Taissa Farmiga’s Max Cartwright, whose mother was an actress who once starred in a Friday the 13th-esque slasher titled Camp Bloodbath. Max’s mom died in a car crash three years prior to the events of the film, and there’s now a screening of Camp Bloodbath at the local theater. She and her friends go but then find themselves sucked into the movie itself. For Max, this is a mixed bag. On one hand, she gets the chance to experience some closure with her mother. On the other hand, she and her friends have to deal with a masked killer. The end of the movie has them escape the film, but in the final scene we and they come to realize that it’s merely the start of Camp Bloodbath 2: Cruel Summer.
Stream The Final Girls for free with ads on The Roku Channel.
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