Slasher Showdown: Freddy vs Jason vs Michael vs Chucky vs Leatherface (Part 1: 50-26)
"Jimbo, don't be such a dead fuck."
What does it say about us as a culture that one of our most enduring sub-genres is watching depraved men hack up pretty teens into bits? That we rock and we like cool shit! Go USA!
In my ever-growing attempt to figure out what exactly this blog is, I decided we'd pivot away from the territory of musical comedy that my first two articles have covered, lest people think all I do is talk about people who do funny songs. So we find ourselves in a completely different section of pop culture entirely. And I'm excited about this one, because, mm, I love me a good dumb horror movie.
In the "slasher" sub-genre, there exist several icons, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say if you polled the general public, the five names you would hear the most would be Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky & Leatherface (who may be referred to as "the Texas Chainsaw guy", or even simply, "the guy with the chainsaw".) All of these killers star in franchises that have their own unique charms, strengths, and weaknesses. And oh boy, can there be some weaknesses.
If you need a quick primer on any of the franchises, you can find them below (listed in chronological order from the first film of each franchise):
-Texas Chainsaw: Attractive young people get lost in the backwoods and a crazy guy who wears other people's faces on his face carves them up with a chainsaw. Said crazy guy is given many news throughout the franchise, but is generally referred to as Leatherface. The continuity of these go all over the damn place, even for a sub-genre that often leads to pretty disconnected entries, but usually he has some of sort of crazy cannibalistic family he's being manipulated by into bringing them their meat. Like Michael and Jason, Leatherface doesn't speak, letting his weapon do the talking for him. The franchise will sometimes makes him a more overtly cruel figure, especially after the 2000s, but in my mind Leather is just a sweet boy who doesn't know what he's doing. (9 films, 1974-2022)
-Halloween: Michael Myers, on the other hand, is just evil incarnate. To quote his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis, played by the irreplaceable Donald Pleasance (that's not a Malcolm McDowell diss, by the way, who as I'll get to does fine when he takes over the role in the remake) Michael lives behind a mask that hides "the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes". Michael killed his sister and her boyfriend when he was only 6 years old and spent years locked up in a mental institution, until he broke out on Halloween night in 1978 and went on another killing spree. That killing spree included the close friends of Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in a truly iconic role, a character who's sometimes related to Michael and other times is just a random lady he hates. And one movie doesn't have Michael at all and is about evil masks. It's pretty rad. (13 films, 1978-2022)
-Friday the 13th: Jason is possibly the most iconic of all the villains here. Everyone knows that image of the killer in the hockey mask. Yet, he's not even the killer in his first film, with that film's murders being carried out by his mother as revenge for the counsellors as Camp Crystal Lake letting her son drown years ago. Although Mrs. Voorhees dies at the end of the first film, that supposedly dead drowned son keeps coming back after that, increasingly more zombie like in each film, until eventually the guy can straight up take bullets to the chest like someone's flicking rubber bands at him. (11 films + 1 crossover movie, 1980-2009)
-A Nightmare on Elm Street: The man of your dreams himself, Freddy Krueger. Freddy represented a shift from your typical silent slashers, as the character, as iconically portrayed by Robert Englund, is always ready with a quip before he finishes you off. Freddy was a child murderer (and sometimes more) who was burned alive by the parents of Elm St. in an act of mob justice. This only made him stronger though, giving him the power to haunt their children in their dreams. As a result, these are often some of the most visually dynamic films of these franchises. (8 films + 1 crossover movie, 1984-2010)
-Child's Play: The killer I was certainly most scared of as a child. There's something so primal about the idea of a killer doll that just terrified me as a kid, way before I ever saw these movies. Of course, if I had watched them, I'd have known they were some of the most fun films on this list, especially the Bride and Seed entries that veer into full on comedy territory. Chucky, who is actually serial killer Charles Lee Ray inhabiting the body of a doll through voodoo, is another quipster, always trying to bring upon his signature cackle. He eventually gets a wife, played by Jennifer Tilly, and even a gender-non-conforming child. Child's Play is a notable franchise for, outside of its 2019 remake, being the only series here to never change screenwriters. Series creator Don Mancini has written all the Chucky films, making it one of the more consistent franchises here in terms of tone, even as two entries go into all-out broad satire mode. (8 films, 1988-2019)
So, without further ado: we got 50 movies over 50 years, let's rank the bastards!
Warning: Spoilers Lie Below
F-Tier: Thanks, I Hate It!
50. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)
"Try anything and you're cancelled, bro."
Well, we have to start somewhere. Texas Chainsaw '22 is prestige horror cosplay. It looks pretty and acts moody but has nothing in its head. It tries to touch on everything from gentrification to school shootings, all with the finesse of a chainsaw to the face. By the time Leatherface hijacks a bus-ful of bloggers who threaten him with the quote above, you're about as 2022'd out as you can be. Yet the movie keeps going, throwing in some of the worst lega-sequel shit I've ever seen by bringing back the character of Sally Hardesty from the original movie, played by a different actress since the original actress is, you know, dead, and turning her into a gun-toting badass sheriff. To focus on some positives, this certainly isn't the worst acted film on this list, and there is some pretty decent gore. So, shout out to those actors (most of them anyway, there are still your occasional stilted slasher performances here) and make up artists who worked on this film. You did the job you were hired for, even if it was for a thoroughly misconceived product.
Best Kill: Something I want to highlight from each entry here is the best slash from the slashers themselves. Meaning that that will eliminate some of the legendary kills these franchises have inflicted on their villains, such as Jason's face sliding down a machete, or Child's Play 2 inflating and exploding Chucky. That's not an issue here either way, as Leatherface survives this battle, and in fact it's his last minute kill that gets this award. One of the only decent moments this movie doles out comes at the very end, when the 2 lead sisters are driving off into the distance, satisfied with their victory over Leatherface. That's when he just fucking pops up out of nowhere, grabs one of the sisters out of the car, cut her damn head off with a chainsaw, and just holds it up as the other sister drives away in terror. The only thing that dulls this moment is the stupid decision to make it a driverless car (as seen above). There would be interesting conflict in her being stuck in the back as someone else makes the decision to drive her away from her sister, or her doing it herself out of fear, but instead it just feels...silly.
49. A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
"Your mouth says no, but your body says yes."
Let's get the elephant in the room out the way: this is the movie that finally pushes past innuendo and confirms Freddy Krueger was a pedophile. On one hand, I get the idea of making the audience confront the most disgusting realities of these characters they on some level enjoy, Devil's Rejects style. But this movie forgets to make Freddy any enjoyable, so if biffs that too. Jackie Earle Haley is a fine actor, and he does a decent job coming up with a take on Freddy that's at least a little different from what Robert Englund brought to the character, but the movie never gives any life to Freddy. Fair enough that it wants to tone down the quipiness of the sequels and go back to the more menacing Freddy of the first 2 movies, but this Freddy never has any weight to him. He just seems like a guy jumping out in front of you and going "arghhh, aren't I so darn scary?" Scary Terry has more menace to him. And frankly, I just don't see the appeal of playing up the "realism" in a franchise about a charred up ghost who can kill you in your dreams. One of the many brilliant things about the character is how he serves at a horrific metaphor for suppressed generational trauma. This movie has no time for metaphor and can only make everything thuddingly obvious. And truly, in a franchise so rich for potential with imaginative and visually interesting kills, shame on them for pretty much only choosing to go with crappy looking CGI recreations of stuff that looked way better in the original.
Best Kill: Nightmare '10 is one of those movies like Ghost Ship that starts off with what could be a pretty solid short film before devolving into mediocre slop. The opening is essentially just a pretty effective scene of a guy who's at the end of his rope from being driven crazy by nightmares, until he finally slits his throat (in a pretty gruesome shot) in front of his girlfriend. It makes me realize that the Smile movies (which I don't even love) are basically the far more successful version of what this movie is going for; having a sense of genuine realism in how they examine the trauma the leads are going through, while still having room for memorable bits of magical realism.
48. The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (aka Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation) (1995)
"I mean, who do you think killed Kennedy?"
As the you can see above, this is a movie that's such a mess they couldn't even figure out the title. The film was originally given a limited release under the title The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, before being shelved and ultimately re-released under the title Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation on home media after the success of stars Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. This one just feels unfinished, with lackluster kills and a nonsensical story that drifts into the suggestion the Sawyer family (renamed the Slaughters here, cus I guess that's spookier) are taking orders from the Illuminati, before doing absolutely piss all with that suggestion. Pretty much the only highlight of this thing is a silly noise McConaughey makes as he jumps from a window. Go watch that, have a laugh, and you've got all you need out of this.
Best Kill: Oh, uh boy. Yeah, this one doesn't even really have much in that department. There's an ok scene where McConaughey runs over a guy, I guess.
47. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
"I bet she wears crotchless panties and barks like a dog!"
Best Kill: Pretty much the only advantage everyone seems to agree the theatrical cut has over the "Producer's Cut" is the kill of the jerk ass uncle. In both versions, Michael takes him out with a slasher staple: tossing the guy into an electrical server. But the theatrical version takes things even further, frying him until his head pops, Scanners style. Which, yea, a Scanners pop is pretty much a guaranteed spot in this slot.
46. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
"I told you, Charlie's dead. It's Hoyt now."
It's strange how backwards these franchises get, that we end up with moments like this, with a prequel to a remake. Prequels are a tricky bit of business, often attempting to explain away "burning questions" we never had about the original works ("didn't you always wonder why Han Solo was called that? No?!") For example, R. Lee Emery's menacing Sheriff Hoyt character was one of the best things the 2003 Chainsaw remake had going for it, as the film played up the unsettling uncertainty of his connection to the law. Here, we just explain, 'oh yea, he shot a cop and stole his uniform'. The only time the film does this trick in any way that works is the explanation of how Monty - the wheelchair bound, legless character from the previous film - ended up in his predicament. It's a genuinely chaotic scene where Leatherface has to amputate his leg after a bullet wound, then nicks the other leg, and is told to "even him up". The movie has a real commitment to being nasty, but that's one of the only times it ties that into a genuine sense of fun. I'm not averse to horror movies that want to take things pitch black, but this lands right in the thick of the 2000's "torture porn" era (that was ushered in by its prequel) where there's no art or grace to the aesthetic, and no thought put into the cruelty beyond "aren't we so edgy and TWISTED?"
Best Kill: So one thing you can at least count of these torture porn movies for are some solidly gory kills (as long as they don't over-do it on the CGI, as we'll see in Texas Chainsaw 3D). So we get a couple options here, like the guy who's lifted up by a chainsaw through the gut and then tossed against some lockers. But I'm ultimately going to go with the biker who's held down with a chainsaw under him and has his belly turned into burger meat before Leatherface brings the saw back up through the top, cutting his chest in half. That's some impressively nasty work.
45. Leatherface (2017)
"You're an idiot and a fool, and I don't know why God bothered to make you."
Best Kill: I'm counting a kill from the kid we're supposed to think is Leatherface for the majority of the movie, because it basically counts. And hey, he goes all Ed Norton at one point and curb stomps a guy against a big rock (remember that fucked up episode of The Honeymooners?) So that's something, I guess.
44. Halloween (2007)
"Bitch, I will crawl over there, and I will skullfuck the shit out of you!"
So, two issues I talked about earlier with Texas Chainsaw: The Beginning were how prequels can try to over-explain things that are best left unexplained, and how the 2000's got a little too try-hard with how edgy their horror was. Well, here's another movie that offends on both those counts. Rob Zombie is a tricky guy. I see the artistry in all his work, but he's only ever pulled it together for one movie that truly works, 2005's The Devil's Rejects. And even that eventually got a sequel so bad I'd rank it lower than anything on this list. This isn't as bad, but it's another time he missed the mark. The opening scene of Halloween is one of the most effective in all of horror. It says everything it needs to in about 2 minutes: Michael, even from a young age, moved like a shark. He operated on killer instinct above all else, which is what makes the final reveal that his parents seem so normal all the more haunting. Well, Rob's take is just "what is his parents were actually hellbilly Rob Zombie characters, and the mom is a stripper and the dad is actually just his stepdad who's mean to him and says words like 'skullfuck'?" This whole early chunk of the movie just feels like a fundamental misread of the character. The only time the movie is in any way compelling is the 10 or so minutes that look at child Michael's life at the mental institution after he's killed his sister and step-father. Partly because, as I mentioned in my spiel above, Malcolm McDowell is quite good as Dr. Loomis (in general, as per usual with his films, Zombie stuffs a lot of great character actors into here), but also because this is the only time the movie feels engaged in its ideas in a non-superficial way. But once that 10 minutes is up, we just get a rote retelling of the original Halloween with none of the flair. In a way, I appreciate the boldness of a Halloween movie that waits a full 50 minutes to get to Laurie Strode. But you can feel Zombie's interest in the material nosedive once we get to the final hour, making the film feel all the more pointless.
Best Kill: As much as the early scenes with Michael as a kid feel like they're trying way too hard, the scene where he confronts his bully in the woods and beats him to death with a tree branch is undeniably effectively visceral (also effective along those lines is when adult Michael snaps and starts his Halloween night killing spree by murdering, among others, security guard Danny Trejo, who's delivery of "I was good to you, Mikey!" will just rip your heart out).
D-Tier: So Bad, It's...Fine
43. Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
"Do your thing, 'cuz!"
This movie is duuuuuumb. Like "Alexandra Daddario is 27 and with no makeup is playing a character who should logically be in her 40s, but also the script just treats her like she's 23 anyway" dumb. I almost want to give it points for having such a thorough understanding of just what movie it is. But there are two types of "knowing what movie you are". One version shows you knowing what you're making is absurd, but you're delivering the high quality version of that absurd product. The other version just goes "well this is dumb, so why try?" We're definitely more leaning towards that second option here. Still, this is one of those movies that's too goofy to even get mad at. Its so content with being ridiculous it even tries turning Leatherface into the good guy at the end. Truly a movie with rocks in its brains.
Best Kill: Uh, well it might have been Leatherface chopping off the mayor's hands and feet and throwing him in a meat grinder, except instead of doing the easy and obvious thing of filling a dummy with meat and tossing it down there, they go with truly awful looking CGI that ruins the moment. So, instead it's a guy getting cut in half. That's always fun.
42. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
"Looks like you had a little mishap."
Never a great sign when the most memorable part of a movie is its teaser trailer. Alright, to be fair, this one also has Viggo Mortensen and Ken Foree, who are always welcome faces. Foree especially adds some juice to this movie. Every time you feel it losing you (which is often), they can cut back to him in his side-quest and you have at least something to keep you going. This gets what the series should be a bit more than the other entries we've covered so far, as we follow a couple that get lost in some rural part of Texas, only to encounter the most depraved family this side of the Fireflies. But as I alluded to above, this one just feels painfully dull and more than a little bland. There's nothing wrong with getting back to basics, but a lot of this just feels like its hemming too close to the original to leave any impact. Only with a sort of slickness added that makes sense given the state of horror in the early 90s, but just feels out of place in a Chainsaw movie. This was New Line's attempt to make the character into a big slasher mainstay along the lines of Freddy or Jason (though Leatherface is deservedly iconic, he's never really been a consistent box office draw the way those two were in the 80's). You'd think they'd put more energy into it, but maybe too many hands were in the broth, because in the end it just doesn't feel like much of anything. Though props to at least one fun scene of Leatherface trying to work a Speak & Spell, and failing as he keeps entering "food" when he sees an image of a man. That's a surprisingly cute cannibalism gag.
Best Kill: Woof, not a ton of options here, as the MPAA really neutered this movie. In horror you can really get away with how unsettling it is not to see the scary thing, as the original film in this franchise brilliantly shows, but here you can just clearly tells all these kills are cut down. Also, if I'm following my rules here that the kill has to delivered by the slasher himself, we only have two options and both are pretty lame. So I'm extending Leather's options at least to his extended family, since they help him with the murders anyway. So, uh, there's a little girl in the Sawyer family in this one, who I didn't mention before because she adds nothing really. But we do see her first kill, which is her working this sort of Rube Goldberg machine that leads to a sledgehammer smashing a guy in the head. It's a kill I like more in concept than execution, especially since the MPAA heavily cut it down, but it's at least a fun idea.
41. Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
"Trick or treat, motherfucker!"
AKA the one with Tyra Banks and Busta Rhymes. Honestly, that's not the reason why this one is so low on the list. This Halloween embraces being "the dumb one" of the franchise, and I want to embrace it back in that regard. But honestly this one isn't dumb enough for my liking. Doing a premise as ridiculously early 00's as "Michael invades a Big Brother-esque reality show webseries" saps the film of any real tension. So just give me more gloriously dumb scenes like Busta Rhymes donning a Michael Myers costume and doing a serial killer version of that Spider-Man meme before yelling at Michael to fuck off, which he does. Or, of course, in the movie's most memorable moment, Busta Rhymes straight up going all kung-fu on Michael and kicking him out the window. As this list will show, I really don't mind an entry of these franchises that wants to go all out on those kind of dumb moments. The problem with Resurrection is its mostly just dull when it isn't being ridiculous. Points also docked for an opening scene that undoes the impactful ending of H20 to quickly kill off Laurie Strode.
Best Kill: One of the only times this movie makes use of its "Michael meets the 21st Century" premise in a fun way is when Michael impales a guy through the throat with a tri-pod.
40. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)
"Let's go! I wanna learn stuff from you."
The movie that brought the Freddy phenomenon to a sudden halt. There are always weird rules and logic to how Freddy works, but this is the movie that gets tripped up on all that to the point of incoherence. It also loses the series' delicate handle on tone. These are meant to be fun movies about uncomfortable subjects, but you just can't open a movie with a bunch of mental patients raping a nun and then later have a scene where Freddy takes on the persona of "Super Freddy" to murder a comic book fan. There's some pretty cool dream imagery in here, and some solid effects from KNB EFX Group, but anything approaching the story is pretty much a disaster.
Best Kill: One thing this movie does have going for it are a couple decent moments of body horror, provided by the legendary KNB Group as I said above. One such moment is Freddy stabbing a wanna-be model in the stomach and feeding bits of herself back to her until her face becomes a hideous, stuffed mess. Just delightfully mean-spirited.
39. Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)
"That makes me think of a little girl in a pink dress, sticking a hot dog through a donut."
Best Kill: The worst Friday still gets one of the most memorable kills in the franchise, with Jason (still in possession of that coroner you can see gnawing on his heart above) splitting a girl in half vertically with a fence post. The version in the director's cut is some truly insane gore.
38. Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
"I'll get you, my pretty, and your little soul too!"
Another "final" entry that isn't actually the final entry. Much like Chucky would later do, Freddy's Dead (that's what I said) sees the series following the natural evolution of its ever-growing push into humor and essentially becoming a full on comedy. It even contains perhaps the franchise's most infamous moment, as Freddy goes all 8-bit in one of his kills to hawk Power Gloves like this was The Wizard. The movie becomes such a cartoon that you want to have fun with it, but it becomes hard when it also increasingly uses that cartoon logic to hand-wave away the fact that nothing that's happening makes any goddamn sense. Most of it is just a worse, more incoherent version of Dream Warriors, with Freddy going after troubled teens in an institution after he's already killed all the kids in Elm Street (don't try and think about that for too long). We also get way more Freddy Krueger backstory than we ever needed, with flashbacks giving him an abusive dad played by Alice Cooper, and an never-before-mentioned wife & daughter. Nightmare movies, when will you learn all the backstory we need on Freddy is that he's an evil guy who got all burned up and can now haunt kids in their dreams? That's a perfect movie set up!
Best Kill: The only time this movie really manages to use its cartoon logic for something approaching effective horror is when Freddy takes out deaf character Carlos. After cutting off his ear, Freddy gives Carlos a deformative hearing aid that causes his ears to pulse and vibrate in agony upon the slightest bit of noise. Cue: giant rainstorm of nails. Freddy then adds to the torture by pulling out a chalkboard and slowly scraping his finger blades along it, causing poor Carlos's head to pulse with such intensity it explodes. Again, a Scanners pop is gonna get you this award.
37. Halloween Kills (2021)
"Evil dies tonight!"
Might as well put these together, as the misbegotten end thirds to David Gordon Green's trilogy of Halloween films are both equally troubled in different ways. This one is probably the more enjoyable overall watch than Ends, but it's similarly messy and feels perhaps even less essential in the end. That film is at least a change of pace for the franchise, as we'll get into, but this flick is basically just a souped version of 1981's Halloween II, promising us a second half to the night Michael came home with an increased kill count from the previous installment, and the kills themselves being more gnarly. And honestly, when this one stops trying to be anything more and just commits to being a straight slasher, it delivers some of the most fun of this whole trilogy. The scene where Michael goes all Terminator and dispatches a team of firefighters is beyond absurd, but is the type of excess I can get behind. I'm much less convinced when the movie tries to say something, and gives us a subplot on mob mentality that almost immediately tips over into parody, with the entire town wildly chasing around a random mental patient who they're convinced is Michael, all while constantly repeating "evil dies tonight" like it's a college football chant. What's worse is the movie takes the genuinely interesting development and dynamic set up between the three female leads of the first movie and somehow leaves all three feeling sidelined here, with Jamie Lee Curtis aggravatingly spending another version of Halloween II mostly stuck in a hospital bed.
Best Kill: Uh, well it would be the woman who gets a broken-in-half fluorescent light shoved up her throat, but the sequel pulls a big ol' pile of bullshit and tells me that character survived that. So instead, I'm gonna go with "Big John" (yes, that's the character's name. He has a gay lover played by MADtv's Michael McDonald named "Little John". Make of that what you will.) getting his eyes crushed like Pedro Pascal in Game of Thrones.
36. Halloween Ends (2022)
"I'm the psycho. You're the freak show."
Some would wonder why I don't shove this one dead last. Ends certainly pissed off a lot of fans of the franchise, both casual and die-hard, as it concludes David Gordon Green's modern trilogy by side-lining Michael for a majority of the film in favor of a troubled teen named Corey Cunningham. This last minute swerve threw a lot of people for a major loop, and as a result this is one of the most hated films on this whole list. I want to stand up for it more. It's really trying something different for the type of film that it is, and it has errant moments that are truly effective. Unfortunately, as the film goes on you get less and less of those, as the story increasingly loses any sense of nuance and just becomes a muddled statement on the nature of evil. What does the movie have to say about evil? It isn't sure, exactly, but uh....evil is out there! You gotta watch out for it!
Best Kill: Gonna have to count Corey kills here, since he's essentially the de-facto Michael. I almost went with kid he accidentally kills in the open, since it's just such a bold way to start off a slasher like this. But in terms of traditional slasher kills, I'll give it to the bully whose face Corey lights up with a blowtorch. Taking the time to show the flame heating from red to blue and then back to an even brighter shade of red really adds to the visceral feeling of the kill.
C-Tier: Worth Watching Once, I Guess
35. Child's Play (2019)
"System reboot!"
The Child's Play remake already arrived with a fair amount of controversy from horror fans, as it was the first of the series to be made without any involvement from series creator Don Mancini, who was off creating a TV show spin-off for the character at the same time. As a result, the movie just doesn't have the personality the series had built up to that point. A lot of the scenes of young Andy interacting with his friends here just feel like a bad Stranger Things rip-off. It also doesn't help that the character of Chucky gets un unnecessary update for the modern age, removing his serial killer backstory entirely and making the film more of a "technology gone wrong" tale. Mark Hamill is predictably solid as the iconic killer doll, as well as Aubrey Plaza as Andy's struggling single mom and Brian Tyree Henry as a cop looking into Chucky's murders . There's some decent gore too, and the pace rarely ever drags to a point of being flat out boring. The movie is entirely watchable, just, ya know, juiceless.
Best Kill: It takes a second for the Chucky doll here to malfunction to the point of homicide, but we get a doozy of a kill once it finally does. When Andy's mom's douchey boyfriend goes home the family he never told her about, Chucky strikes while he's taking down Christmas lights. The doll pulls the lights down and around the guy's neck, trapping him on the ground while he sicks an automatic lawn mower on the guy. It mulches up his head and leaves a portion of his scalp flying in the air. The only thing dinging this one is a lame ass joke, with Chucky repeating the "this is for Tupac" line he heard Andy's friends say earlier.
34. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
"Cookie woman!"
Best Kill: Not a ton of great kills here, but I do enjoy Tina's douchey boyfriend take a garden claw to the face.
33. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
"There's a maniac trying to kill us!" "Welcome to New York."
This movie is probably most notorious for being the movie where Jason doesn't take Manhattan, at least not until the last 20 minutes or so. Most of the movie is spent on a boat trip to said destination from Crystal Lake, which I guess has been connected to the Hudson this whole time. Now I don't mind some "Jason on a boat" antics, but we just spend a lot of this movie's extended 100 minute runtime in stasis, stuck with its bland characters. The Friday side characters are always a mixed bag that range from memorably quirky to the just plain forgettable. We get a bit of the former here and a lot of the latter. That runtime is also padded out with a subplot about the main girl having visions of Jason as a child that ultimately don't lead to anything. Manhattan's watchable, but you can feel the "we have to make an eighth one of these?" blues to it.
Best Kill: The film's most memorable moment, outside of the couple shots of Jason in Times Square they managed to get, comes when boxer Julius gets a turn at Jason. He straight wails on the guy for over a minute, with Jason just standing there taking it. Then, when it's time for Jason to answer back, he just knocks the guy's head off with one clean punch, leading it to land straight in a dumpster.
32. Child's Play 3 (1991)
"Don't fuck with the Chuck!"
Best Kill: Killing off a toy executive by strangling him with a yo-yo string is cute. Extra points as well for the Home Alone-esque (which, I guess this would have been coming a year after, so maybe that's an intentional homage) series of traps Chucky lays out for him before the kill.
31. Cult of Chucky (2017)
"Do me a favor, Chucky. Keep your fucking mouth shut."
This movie goes so batshit with its plot mechanics that I wish I could move it even further up the list, but unfortunately it's kind of a massive mess. We get the setup for a clean story with Nica, the lead of the previous Chucky film, now trapped in a mental institution after no one would believe her claims of a killer doll murdering her family. A Chucky doll is brought in to help out as some sort of immersion therapy, only for mysterious deaths to start happening around the institution. That's a solid premise, but the story keeps getting more muddled as it keeps adding more Chuckys to the mix, including one that's just a mutilated head being tortured in a cabin by a grown up Andy Barclay. That connection to the past of the franchise extends to Jennifer Tilly as well, whose character we try and rope into things. It's admirable how the movie attempts to tie in to the entire franchise, but it ends up a bit of a mess in execution.
Best Kill: It takes some really sweaty plot work to get to multiple Chuckys running around, but things are obviously going to be a bit of fun once that actually is in place. Seeing 3 Chuckys work together to kill a guy at once is the type of chaos I can totally get into.
30. Friday the 13th (2009)
"Your tits are fucking, just, so juicy, dude."
You might expect me to fully hate the glossy 2000's reboot of the Friday series. But this is another one of those movies that's just too dumb to hate. This thing moves with chowder in its brain, almost to the point of pride. Maybe it's after seeing Nightmare and Halloween try way too hard to prove how intense they are with their remakes, but I end up appreciating this one having nothing more on its mind than just making a dumb movie for teens. Now, would I appreciate some characters that don't feel like a constant reminder of why the 00's were the most obnoxious decade in recorded human history? Of course. But, given the timeframe in which this did come out, it could have been way worse.
Best Kill: In the movie's smartest sequence, we get an extended fake-out where the opening is basically its own mini-Friday movie. We meet what seem like our group of annoying teens for the movie, only for Jason to pick them off one-by-one, before finally dropping the movie's title card about 25 minutes in. That sequence has a couple of gnarly kills, including the most effective of the film, as Jason strings a girl up by her sleeping bag over a fire and basically turns her into a human S'more.
29. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
"Jesus ain't got nothin' to do with this place."
Halloween 4 is about as "back to basics" as you can get. After general audiences were disappointed with Season of the Witch's non-Michael featuring supernatural storyline, Return gives you exactly what it says on the tin: Michael returns to Haddonfield on Halloween night and kills some teens. The main thing giving this movie energy, aside from some solid workmanlike directing, is Danielle Harris as Jamie Lloyd, the daughter of Laurie Strode, who's dead from a car accident in this timeline. Kid characters in horror movies are a real tricky gamble, but Jamie always commands your sympathy as she just tries to put the story of her murderous uncle past her. Return isn't going to blow anyone's socks off, but if you want an example of just a well made generic 80's slasher, it's the exact type of thing you're looking for.
Best Kill: That'll have to be Earl the truck driver, whose throat Michael straight rips out like he were MacGruber.
28. Friday the 13th (1980)
"Kill her, mommy!"
Best Kill: Sometimes you just gotta give it to the obvious one. If you only remember one thing from this movie, it's likely going to be Kevin Bacon getting an arrow pushed through his throat. The effects provided by Savini here are legendary, especially that blood sport gushing from his neck.
27. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)
"My brother killed my sister when she was 17." "Well, that's sucky."
And now we enter (spoilers for what's gonna kick off part 2) a trio of Halloween films about how much it would suck to have been in a Halloween film. Coming hot off the heels of the success of Scream, H20 sees the Halloween series get a glossy makeover, complete with sexy teens and meta in-jokes. It's a bit of an odd mix for the series, with it losing some identity in the process. What saves this one, though, is the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie. I really like this depiction of Laurie, 20 years on from the most traumatic night of her life. She's more put together than she would be in the 2018 timeline, but still struggles with issues like alcohol and being over-protective with her teenage son. The teenage son in question, played by Josh Hartnett, is unfortunately quite bland, and honestly never feels like he factors into the story in that significant of a way. Also, I have to quote this bit from Roger Ebert's review of this movie wholesale, because I love it: "There is a scene in the movie where a kid drops a corkscrew down a garbage disposal. Then the camera goes inside the garbage disposal to watch while he fishes around for it. Then the camera cuts to the electric switch on the wall, which would turn the disposal on. I am thinking, if this kid doesn’t lose his hand, I want my money back." I hope he got it back!
Best Kill: The opening scene of this film features a young Joseph Gordon Levitt taking a ice skate to the face. Kinda feels like I have to give it to that.
26. Halloween (2018)
"There's nothing new to learn. There are no new insights or discoveries."
Here's one that would be up a few slots if I did this list a few years back. This is definitely an enjoyable movie in the moment while you're watching it, but both as the start of an ultimately disappointing trilogy and even as a stand-alone movie, it's one that hasn't quite stood the test of time like I'd like it to have. Well, the worst thing about the movie still hasn't changed at least. The subplot where the Dr. Loomis stand-in ends up being some crazy murderous Michael fanboy has always been disastrous. I'm also not quite as impressed as I once was with the ways this examines Laurie's life post Halloween, as I think the movies directly before and after it in this list do that in more interesting ways. But that's not from lack of effort from Jamie Lee Curtis, who's fantastic here. We do get some interesting scenes as well exploring the dynamic between her, her daughter, and her granddaughter. The movie has a fair amount of charm too, with a constant influx of mostly fun side characters. But eventually it does start to feel both over-stuffed and undercooked, just trying to do a bit too much at once without really zoning on in the best way to tell the story of generational trauma it seemingly wants to tell.
Best Kill: That stuff with Michael's doctor is really lame, but it is almost worth it just for the moment where Michael crushes the doc's head with his boot like a bug. Truly one of the best head splats I've seen in a long time.
Coming Soon: Part 2 Next Week!
"There's nothing new to learn. There are no new insights or discoveries."
Here's one that would be up a few slots if I did this list a few years back. This is definitely an enjoyable movie in the moment while you're watching it, but both as the start of an ultimately disappointing trilogy and even as a stand-alone movie, it's one that hasn't quite stood the test of time like I'd like it to have. Well, the worst thing about the movie still hasn't changed at least. The subplot where the Dr. Loomis stand-in ends up being some crazy murderous Michael fanboy has always been disastrous. I'm also not quite as impressed as I once was with the ways this examines Laurie's life post Halloween, as I think the movies directly before and after it in this list do that in more interesting ways. But that's not from lack of effort from Jamie Lee Curtis, who's fantastic here. We do get some interesting scenes as well exploring the dynamic between her, her daughter, and her granddaughter. The movie has a fair amount of charm too, with a constant influx of mostly fun side characters. But eventually it does start to feel both over-stuffed and undercooked, just trying to do a bit too much at once without really zoning on in the best way to tell the story of generational trauma it seemingly wants to tell.
Best Kill: That stuff with Michael's doctor is really lame, but it is almost worth it just for the moment where Michael crushes the doc's head with his boot like a bug. Truly one of the best head splats I've seen in a long time.
Coming Soon: Part 2 Next Week!
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