One-slash wonders: 20 horror villains who never got another stab at fame
These one-and-done monsters and maniacs didn't launch their own franchise. But are any of them worthy of a return?
Film Features halloween
Clockwise from top left: The Burning (MGM); Shocker (Universal Pictures); Valentine (Warner Bros.); Trick ‘R Treat (Warner Bros.); The Prowler (Sandhurst) (Screenshots: YouTube) Graphic: Rebecca Fassola
The horror genre was made for sequels, which explains why we’ve seen Dracula dozens of times and characters like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees have persisted for decades. It’s a realm of cinema so ripe for franchises that it’s often more notable when someone isn’t brought back.
In the realm of “one-slash wonders”—horror big bads who appeared in just one film and never scored a second chapter—there are lot of famous faces. While some definitely deserve a long-awaited follow-up, others are probably best left in a single installment. From slasher classics to new menaces, here’s a chronological list of 20 one-shot horror villains, and our thoughts on whether not they’re worthy of a comeback.
63 Comments
Valentine has a special place in my heart dude to my Buffy/Angel obsession at the time.
Me too! And the movie is so bad but I made all my friends go to the theater with me to watch it.
I just added Darkness Falls and my love of Anya was definitely a contributing factor. Plus its prologue is so perfectly autumnal.
Yep! I even tracked down the really bad movies Nicholas Brendon was in. Psycho Beach Party and Piñata: Survival Island. Absolutely terrible. I loved them.
But is any fate worse than Fred winding up in Hallmark movies?
Not even becoming Illyria could top that fate.
I saw Piñata! Oof
I dug it myself. A true last of the slashers slasher.
“Dug” it, huh? Boo.
Lighting my single candle to memorialize the Tooth Fairy in Darkness Falls (2003) and beg for a sequel or reboot.
It’s been a minute since I’ve watched the original Black Christmas, but I don’t think Agnes is in it; she’s in the 2006 remake. You don’t really know much about Bill in the original, for that matter. You don’t even learn his name—or his intentions, which makes it all the more creepy.
You’re correct. Agnes is referenced very obscurely, but that was it in the original. The 2006 remake is the one that went ALL IN on the backstory, in true ‘00s fashion by basically putting every possible concept hinted at in the original in to the backstory. While it is obviously nowhere as good as the original, its almost charming just how batshit the remake (first one anyways) is by cramming in every fucking idea in to a single movie.
I watched the remakes only once each. I might have to check out the first one again based on what you’re saying. I tend to prefer the originals for all sorts of reasons, but a main one is that they typically don’t over-explain things. I love the original Halloween, for example, because Carpenter and Hill had in mind, in part, that evil exists everywhere and can’t always be explained by the paint-by-numbers-he’s-a-serial-killer-because-x-y-and-z approach that Zomibe, etc. took. The original Black Christmas got it right.
Oh yeah its still one of the perfect slasher movies in just how right it got the killer’s motivation. Leaving so much of it up to interpretation, and basically letting us just judge who/what the killer is based on his actions and words.
1) I’ve never heard of the majority of the films in this list, and of the ones I’ve heard of, Killer Klowns is the only one I’ve bothered to see2) The main reason slashers (or any movies) get sequels is whether or not the studios profit, not because of any inherent qualities of the villain. Let’s face it, Friday the 13th didn’t get all those sequels b/c Jason is at all interesting, it’s because they were cheapies w/no-name actors they could hire for SAG minimum. Combined with some sex and inventive kills, teenagers were more than happy to buy tickets.
Not to mention marketability of the villain. Sometimes it can be hard to tell just what audiences will latch on to as an icon so the weirdest stuff will turn in to a franchise.
I mean, a good villain certainly helps. Chuckie and Freddy Krueger have personality. Jason sure as hell doesn’t.Mike Meyers doesn’t, either, but Halloween and Halloween II had Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, and John Carpenter behind the camera. I think the Final Destination movies better illustrate what makes these movies successful: inventiveness. Kill people in ridiculously gruesome ways, and audiences will come back to see if the franchise can top itself. I haven’t seen any of the Saw films, but wasn’t part of the franchise’s appeal the increasingly intricate death traps its killer would come up with?
For Saw, while the crazy traps were a big draw, it didn’t take long for most of the fanbase to be showing up to see what insane shit is going to happen next in the story. I think the marketable villain thing was more of an 80s thing as that’s the era when they seemed to be going hard at trying to launch as many horror movies as possible. It definitely wasn’t just the villain being good either, because I totally agree with you on Jason. I’ve actually been watching a lot of 80s horror recently, and the villain with a gimmick or catchphrase is basically everywhere, and you can just see them hoping that the audience will latch on to something to propel another easy franchise.
I think that’s the biggest issue. Jason wasn’t even in the first movie but it was cheap and well-enough made that it turned a profit and justified a sequel. But from II on out he has been in the top 3 all-time fan-favorite slashers. And like Freddy, he can be used somewhat comedically even though he doesn’t talk.
By all accounts, Paramount hated the franchise and actually wanted to stop producing sequels because they were so embarrassed by it, but the movies were so cheap to produce and made so much money at the box office that they couldn’t justify not making the films. Finally they just sold the rights off to another studio.
I can’t say I’m entirely surprised to hear that, but eventually you have to stop taking yourself so seriously and be in on the joke. Or sell it to someone with less of a stick in their ass, whichever.
In the pre-internet days, these slasher movies were definitely a reliable way to get nudity on a screen.
I’d love a Leslie Vernon return.
Shocker is a great flick. Mitch Pileggi just owns the scene anytime he’s on screen. He’s both funny and terrifying and you get a real sense he wouldn’t hesitate to fuck someone up for no reason.
Almost forgot to check the greys before I posted, and I’m glad I did before I posted the same. Skinner looked to be having the time of his life in Shocker. Great soundtrack too.
It really is surprising that there aren’t eight Killer Klowns movies by now.
I’ve tried to watch Klowns a few times, and I just can’t make it through.It’s just so fucking slow. Even when I start in the middle, I can’t make it to the end.You get the joke in about two minutes, then it just becomes a slog.
I haven’t seen it since high school. It just seems to be widely known with a large following. A sequel or two could have been both welcome and a vast improvement.
My Bloody Valentine was amazingly bloody for 1981. I remember watching a doc on the slashers and they signaled MBV as special because the Canadians took advantage of being in Canada to duck the MPAA censors and just go ‘hey Friday the 13th made a buttload of cash, lets go further and cash in.’And boy did they ever, they didn’t skimp on the gore and it was a great grossout. One of my first Grindhouse movies.Speaking of which, watch the trailer for it and you will see where Eli Roth got his ideas for the spoof trailer now real oncoming “Thanksgiving”
Chopping Mall is one of my favorites, despite its misleading title
(Spoilers! There is NO “chopping”… tho ol’ Dick Miller meets with an electrifying end!)
Counter-point to bringing back anything having to do with The Burning: almost impossible to do this without the Weinstein’s profiting in some way. It was the first film ever produced by Miramax (& their 2nd distribution). Harvey has Story By credit in addition to being Producer, and Bob shares screenplay credit and editorial credit.
I’d go for Clown (2014) over Stitches. Seems way easier to continue the premise of a clown suit that slowly merges with the wearer. Especially if Jon Watts was willing to revisit his debut feature now that he has some MCU cache to leverage.
I always thought Stage Fright/Deliria could use a sequel. I’d love to see a killer with a giant owl head terrorizing theater kids again.
I always liked how even if the director was a bit of a jerk, he led from the front against the serial killer and it’s more bad luck than anything else that his ideas which were often quite sensible under the circumstances didn’t work out.
Yeah it’s kind of neat because instead of everyone walking around and getting picked off they all see that there’s a killer and try to band together so he’s chasing them all around the rest of the movie. But mostly I just want to see more of the owl mask killer because that’s a cool ass visual.
Ah, my annual opportunity to say how much I unironically dig 1981’s My Bloody Valentine, which is a GREAT underseen horror flick; and that Rawhead Rex may be a goofy fucking film but it has some great stuff in it, including a couple of mouth-claspingly funny/awful moments. Demon pissing on a priest? It has you covered. Also: come on now…Jane Doe was a terrific standalone film. But Jane Doe as a “villain” is not the reason why.
come on now…Jane Doe was a terrific standalone film. But Jane Doe as a “villain” is not the reason why.Yeah, I haven’t even seen it and it sounded like a stretch.
Definitely worth watching.
Agreed on both counts – the film is definitely worth watching and Doe as villain going forward (or backward) probably wouldn’t work.
Maybe not a sequel, but the Klowns are still hanging around:https://www.killerklownsthegame.com/
Mulling over this list, I can’t say any of these are compelling enough to hand a franchise around. Maaaaybe the Miner.
It’s surprising that Alice Sweet Alice never got a sequel given that the killer gets away at the end. Plus it did the killer-wearing-Halloween-mask thing a few years before Halloween.
Sam in TrT is literally Sam Hein . . as in the physical embodiment of the Spirit of Halloween. Not exactly a kid, just kid-sized. Also, not a villain.
I haven’t watched all of these, but really, you are rooting for Hollywood to make MORE sequels? What is wrong with you?
Was thinking the same thing. I’ve seen most of these movies and pretty much none of them need a sequel (or prequel, or re-launch, or re-image, etc.) — especially if you want to keep spending time writing about the lack of originality due to a focus on sequels and existing IP…
By the end of this list I was half expecting an appeal for Hollywood to start a Babadook vs. Predator franchise.
How the hell is the Babadook a slasher movie? For one, no one is ever killed. And for 2, the entire premise of the movie is that it’s her grief that is causing the terrifying things to happen to her, not any type of actual person/creature wanting to harm her. There is literally NOT a slasher in this movie.
It Follows has not aged well. I remember seeing it in theaters and that I mostly like it, aside from the ridiculous pool scene where they are trying to “capture” what’s following them. Watching it recently it is really bad. It’s not scary at all and when I watched it with friends we laughed through most of it. The Soundtrack is excellent though.
I watched that first My Bloody Valentine for the first time in about twenty years, just this summer. That movie is absolutely silly and, I mean, silly fun only about fifteen percent of the running time.I have no idea why it got a remake (which I liked more). Having said that, I liked the miners used in the Sabrina episode. I bought their cosmic, wraith-y non-motivation more than whatever was going on in the original.Also, Darkness Falls: one of those movies that we only had three copies of at the video store where I worked, but they were always checked out, so finally I watched it out of curiosity. And that is the end of my story.
Do I want The Babadook 2, or really, do I just want Jennifer Kent to be a director that’s a household name? Whichever gets me there quickest.
Dr. Giggles is the one that I’ve heard passing reference in pop culture conversations over the years. I think a reboot of that would not only work (if done well), but renew interest in the original movie. I haven’t even seen it, and the mere mention just now reminds me I’ve been wanting to check that out.
You get out of Dr. Giggles exactly what the premise promises, and no more: a slasher dressing up like a doctor to kill people with surgical tools and titter constantly. Horschach would make a more terrifying slasher by that metric.
Absolutely agree on Babadook 2, though.
Jennifer Kent is an amazing director. But a Babadook 2 would be a step backwards for her.
I wish they’d show some of these on cable (yes, cable) during October instead of the 100th showing of Halloween, F13, NoES, etc. I love those films, but only so many times I can watch them.
I was going to suggest Motherface from Dude Bro Party Massacre III, but then I remembered…of course, she already had two other go-rounds.
‘”One-slash wonders: 20 horror villains who never got another stab at fame”’One-Slit Wonders, was right there…
What, no love for May, who followed her mom’s advice and made her own friend?
Excellent pick, May was a trip and I would definitely squirm through a May II.
She could always make…MORE FRIENDS! 😉
Isn’t the whole point of the Babadook that you have to learn to live with your demons? What possible storyline could there be to continue that?
Does anyone remember a horror movie from either the late 80’s or early 90’s called Vergil or Virgil? I always remember seeing the cover for it in the flyers for upcoming movies the old video stores used to give out, it had a blonde guy standing topless with tribal tattoo’s across his body and a tag-line along the lines of “Freddy and Jason better watch out. ”.
I never ever saw it in the store though.
Saw Jennifers Body in the theater and still do not understand the love for that movie. It’s so terrible but not even in a fun way.