Our slasher franchise Final Four: Nightmare vs. Chain Saw and Halloween vs. Scream
Round 4: Freddy, Michael, Leatherface, and Ghostface are the last slashers standing
Film Features Scream
And then there were four. Having cut through the competition in rounds one, two, and three, two pairs of franchises remain in our five-day effort to decide the best slasher movie series of all time. It’s come down to two match-ups: Can Halloween fend off a challenge from its most sardonic offspring, the Scream movies? And can The Texas Chain Saw cannibal clan survive a nightmare on Elm Street?
Tomorrow is the championship round, where the winners of today’s bouts move on to square off for the title of Ultimate Slasher Franchise. Come back then for the grand finale. And in the meantime, scroll down to vote in the readers poll, and decide who will advance to the fan’s finals.
Halloween vs. Scream
Winner: Halloween
Most of the franchises in this tournament wouldn’t exist without Halloween. Scream, its hippest offspring, is no exception. Wes Craven’s 1996 original acknowledged as much, building a set piece around actual footage from Halloween (directed by Craven’s ’70s master-of-horror contemporary, John Carpenter) and later hiding Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott in a closet just like the one Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) cowered in during her first evasion of Michael Myers. Yet for all Ghostface owes to the other, older killer in a white mask, the Scream series also laid some runway for the Halloweens that followed, reviving the slasher movie for a savvy new audience. Hell, Scream’s screenwriter, Kevin Williamson, even worked on Halloween H20, a legacy sequel released before that term was coined.
What we have here is a true generational clash: old school versus new, classic versus postmodern, reigning institution versus whip-smart deconstruction. Scream is undoubtedly more clever, building meta commentary into its return engagements, allowing its characters to meditate on the mechanics of sequelizing, garbled continuity, trend-chasing, and cliché. And unless one counts an unfortunate residency on MTV, the Scream series has never hit the rock-bottom lows of Halloween’s worst; on a whole, the former’s four current entries probably average out better, thanks to Craven’s steady hand behind the camera and a second film that comes closer than any Halloween sequel to matching the quality of the revered original.
Yet what the Halloween franchise lacks in consistency it makes up for in surprising variety. While the formula may be largely static—with one notable exception, every movie involves Mike taking the knife to a new gaggle of victims on the eponymous holiday—the execution has allowed for some genuine stylistic deviation. Halloween remains one of the only slasher franchises to accommodate multiple big-name auteurs; whatever one thinks of their contributions, Rob Zombie and David Gordon Green truly put their mark on the material, making films that deliver the obligatory slayings while also working in their own idiosyncratic preoccupations. The series has also reckoned with its own history in arguably deeper ways than Sidney’s serialized arc of ongoing misfortune, affording Curtis the opportunity to terrifically play two very different traumatized, aging versions of Laurie.
What the younger franchise has going for it is witty self-awareness: All its characters seem to know they’re in lesser sequels, and keep bringing up the fact. But does simply acknowledging that horror series tend to decline compensate for succumbing to that decline? In the end, Scream has followed a rather typical downward slope of diminishing returns, each new movie a little worse than the last. Halloween, for all its single-minded repetition of premise, has zigged and zagged, sometimes skidding off the road with an abominable resurrection (or Resurrection) but also taking some eccentric turns along the way.
Both franchises have stubbornly soldiered on, putting their Final Girl heroines through another round of hide-and-shriek for the sake of another box office windfall. But only one of them has found a Season Of The Witch in that ongoing cycle of cash-grab continuations. This is one game, in other words, that the smart-aleck killers of Scream must lose. [A.A. Dowd]
A Nightmare On Elm Street vs. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Winner: A Nightmare On Elm Street
On the scare front, this is a rather even match between two long-running sequel machines born from classics of the genre. Although the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre has a feverish, feral quality that stays with the viewer long after the movie ends, never discount Wes Craven when it comes to creating viscerally upsetting sequences. Both series kicked off with shocks for the record books: The death scene early in A Nightmare On Elm Street where a screaming teenager is thrown around the ceiling of her bedroom is an all-timer, on par with Leatherface impaling one hapless victim on a meat hook and smashing another in the head with a hammer. That the two franchises have respective roots in reality, with conceits based on true stories, only enhances the fear factor: Chain Saw creator Tobe Hooper was inspired by the horrific crimes of necrophilic serial killer Ed Gein, while Craven got the idea for Elm Street from a newspaper story about a Cambodian refugee who died in his sleep after complaining of a monster chasing him in his dreams.
Looking at this Final Four contest from the comic-shop perspective of “Who would win in a fight” yields no easy result either, given Leatherface’s sheer size and animal bloodlust. But the Sawyer family butcher also has a childlike mind that leaves him open to emotional manipulation, which the clever Freddy Krueger could finesse without too much effort. (We’ve already seen the games he played with another hulking opponent’s fragile psyche.)
That brings us around to the legacy and progression of each series, an area where Elm Street has an edge over virtually every other slasher franchise. Whereas most experience a continuous drop-off in quality after the first or second installment, the Nightmare movies actually stayed—and sometimes got even more—imaginative as they went along. And while there’s certainly a dip in the middle (Freddy’s Dead damn near made good on its title), Craven’s return entry New Nightmare brought it back to heights of creativity and intelligence practically unheard of so late in the franchise game.
Texas Chain Saw, meanwhile, only had its tongue intermittently planted in cheek, and the series descends into trend chasing, fan service, and prequel psychologizing in its hapless latter days. As far as remakes go, Leatherface’s Platinum Dunes makeover is, by most estimations, better than Freddy’s. But it also further convoluted the Massacre mythology, obscuring any real advantage even there. And so with apologies to America’s family, the Sawyers, we must usher Elm Street into a primetime slot… bitch. [Katie Rife]
READERS POLL
The A.V. Club and our readers continued to see eye to (gouged out) eye yesterday, as our two parallel brackets overlapped via identical results. Halloween and A Nightmare On Em Street—a.k.a. the two franchises advancing to the finals in the main tournament—annihilated here, too, sending poor Norman Bates to the bottom of the lake and foul-mouthed Chucky back to the factory. The other two contests were closer, with Hellraiser fending off a blow-out (but not a loss) in its battle with the Chain Saw boys, while Friday The 13th got within a couple-hundred votes of winner Scream.
So who’s going to the finals of the reader poll? Cast your vote for the semi-finals below, or by clicking here.
54 Comments
What Halloween lacks in visual imagination makes up for in edge of your seat atmosphere of fear and terror wrought by the simplicity of a quiet stalker in a creepy AF mask that kills for no reason or motive, just pure evil.While you may leave the theater from A Nightmare on Elm Street talking to your friends about some of the more wild and fantastical ways in which Freddy dispatched his victims, you’ll leave Halloween looking over your shoulder and in the dark corners of the street as you head back to your car, and once more over in the back seat just for good measure.
This is a good way to put it. Just last night I was walking down my hallway in my dark house, and the thought crossed my mind that Michael could suddenly appear from behind a door. Definitely made me walk faster.
Yeah, but how many kids (and adults) fought sleep like hell because we didn’t want Freddy to get us? That’s what makes him so great, the premise is fantasy but the inevitability that no matter how much you fight it you have to go to sleep is genuinely frightening.
the premise is fantasy but the inevitability that no matter how much you fight it you have to go to sleep is genuinely frightening.Exactly. Halloween is really, really good, but you’re still just dealing with a scary guy. He can be stabbed, shot, run over with a car, he’s generally bound by the laws of physics, etc. Like most slashers, you can play the “I’d do X” game to avoid/escape/kill Michael Meyers. With Elm Street, you’re not just up against Freddy, you’re up against sleep. And once you fall asleep, the whole dream world is against you, (I’ll never forget the “gooey stairs” from the first movie.) All the rules either don’t exist or are unknown. It’s the only slasher where the hero “win” at the end feels like more of a stretch than the magical resurrecting villain.
They’re both terrific movies IMO. And very different ones. I’d give Halloween the nod, though; it has stayed almost ageless due to its lean, elegant simplicity, and it’s certainly the more influential of the two—possibly the single most influential horror movie ever made.
One thing Halloween nails is how spooky even a nice neighborhood can look after dark, when all you can see of people is backlit shadows. Add in the masks and other weirdness of the holiday itself and I find myself taking a good look at people as they walk by, often not recognizing friends or neighbors. Halloween 100% captures that (in fact, embraces it – including killing off one poor dude early on who they thought was Michael).
I just watched Halloween 2 for the first time and holy crap it bothered me that they just kinda went “oh, Michael’s still alive, shit.” Once they figured out they KILLED A RANDOM KID.
I still to this day look at the backseat of my car when I’m going to the gym early in the morning and it’s dark out.
While I definitely understand Halloween winning out over Scream due to variety and haunts, I’d have to disagree about each Scream sequel being a little worse than the last.Sure, Scream 3 was definitely a nadir, if for no other reason than Kevin Smith not understanding the assignment, but Scream 4 was a worthy successor to the original. Can’t wait to see what Kevin Williamson’s cooked up for Scream 5!
Hell yeah, Scream 4 is my favorite Scream. I agree that 3 is the only kind of bad one.
Scream 3, though directed by Wes Craven was written by Ehren Kruger instead of Kevin Williamson. As far as I know, Kevin Smith just had a cameo appearance as Silent Bob.
If we’re talking about the entire series, Scream is far more consistently good than Halloween. There are four movies, and really only the third is genuinely bad. And even it’s not nearly as terrible as some of the Halloween entries.
Agreed. If we’re talking the entire franchise (the whole gimmick that sets this “Best Horror Movie” tournament apart from others) then Halloween, despite its legendary status, needs to sit the down. As people have been saying all week, Scream is far more consistent. Even its worst movie is still better than 85% of all other horror sequels
Strongly agreed with this. I’m not surprised Halloween won out, but I think the AV Club is giving the game away when it writes, “on a whole, the former’s four current entries probably average out better” but still chooses Halloween to win. Top to bottom, Scream is the most consistent franchise and the only one where I actually continue to see value in and rewatch all of the sequels (even 3), which I can’t even say about a majority of the sequels for Halloween much less all of them.
Personally hoping Nightmare wins. People don’t like it now, but I’m a big fan of the Pop Culture Freddy run of Elm Street 4-Freddy’s Dead. Freddy was at his best with big makeup effects and cracking bad jokes.
Scream beats Halloween for me. As the review notes, the Scream entries do average out better, which kind of says it all. The original Halloween is better than any individual Scream movie, but the Halloween franchise itself is a convoluted mess full of bad sequels, and, worst of all, two Rob Zombie garbage-fests. I’d take Scream 3 over most Halloween movies.
As great as the original Halloween is, there are too many bad entries in the franchise to give it the win over Scream.
I feel like Friday the 13th losing to Scream last round is a crime. Ghost face never killed in Space
Not yet, anyway.
And Jason never killed in the hood. Leprechaun was robbed!
Jason did kill in New York….or well mostly on a boat on the way to Manhattan. But it was a magic boat that somehow could travel from land Crystal Lake to Manhattan
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As a horror geek this is the final 4 I believe we should have. Friday would be #5 to me.Halloween is better than scream as Scream is only around because of Halloween (well and promo night) so that was easy.The other one…. I would give it to Texas over Nightmare just because the Original Texas movie holds up better than ever horror movie ever. It’s probably the greatest and amazingly the most beautful shot horror movie ever as it’s so simple that you feel it and feel the need to shower everytime you see it but it’s so amazing.Nightmare 1,3 and New Nightmare are all great. Nightmare 2, 4 are bad to me. Nightmare 5 and Freddy’s dead are Friday the 13th 3,8 level of bad.I will say maybe I can see Freddy winning over Leatherface because all of the Texas sequels and prequels were not needed but we needed Nigthmare 3 and New Nightmare so I’m okay with your choice but I disagree.Halloween better win the whole thing because Nightmare became too stupid and silly for too long even if Halloween Resurrection maybe as bad or worse than Freddy’s dead.
I definitely endorse Texas Chain Saw over Nightmare on Elm Street. Nightmare’s sequels have been campy and cheesy from the beginning, even New Nightmare. True, both franchises have been tainted by inferior remakes, but Nightmare is only the lesser offender in that regard only because no one can replace Robert Englund as Krueger. And that to me suggests that the Nightmare franchise has little chance of revitalizing itself as years go by. So in quality and staying power, not to mention sheer horror, TCSM by a mile.
Yeah TCSM is such a great movie that the one movie can carry it so far in any tournament.
And TCSM 2 is no slouch, either.
I should rewatch it one day. The whole cannibal family thing always freaks me out but the original is so great that I can watch it over and over again.
I’m a bit torn but leaning Chainsaw as well, mostly because it isn’t based in the supernatural. It’s easier to shake off a horror movie that couldn’t happen in real life. TCSM always stuck with me because it was just about some kids who pulled up to the wrong farm. You’re in the middle of nowhere, no one’s coming to help you, and the madness going on around you just can’t possibly be happening.
Nightmare 3 is the best because it has Laurence Fishburne calling Freddy a “pussy”. That alone makes it worth watching.As someone who’s only just recently watched the first three Nightmares for the first time, I’d say that 2 isn’t that bad. Like, Freddy never tries to possess anybody after this movie but that’s not its fault.
And the old rule is true. If Laurence Fishburne is in a movie, that movie has to be good! And that’s why part 3 was good!I think the only part of Freddy’s dead (part 6) that was “good” was when the one guy picked up a bat and beat Freddy’s head in! I mean I think that’s what I would do in my dreams right away, give me a bat and beat this skinny dork up!
Agreed with that! Nightmare on Elm Street is definitely a ‘fun’ horror movie while Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a full-on ‘horror’ movie. I sat in stunned silence for a bit after I saw Texas for the first time and was still uneasy after a few days, whereas Nightmare I was just having a jolly ole’ time. I know both are valid experiences when watching horror films, but Texas gets the edge.
I was 10 when the 1st Nightmare came out and saw it at age 11 and I was scared to death of it. With that said all the movies since (I saw part 3 in the theater) have been a little bit less scary because Freddy really got too silly part 4 on.While I saw Texas Chainsaw for the 1st time when I was either a late teen or early 20’s and right away I felt how brilliant this movie was. The movie came out before I was born in 73 and it was still so real and didn’t feel dated to me ever. Like it’s close to a perfect horror movie as there is.
That’s fair, I was kind of the opposite. I was in high school when I first saw Nightmare with a bunch of other sardonic teenagers, whereas I didn’t see Texas for the first time until a few years ago. The feeling of dread throughout the whole movie is palpable. Fucking terrifying. Different first experiences do make a difference in how we view their horror-ness, I suppose. But yes, Texas Chainsaw is brilliant in the most beautifully grotesque way.
That’s the thing it’s so gross and you feel like you need a shower and you can’t take a moment to calm down because it keep coming. It really is to me one of the 3 best horror movies I’ve ever seen and I can always watch it because as much as it creeps me out, it’s so great.I have to be in the mood to watch Nightmare on Elm Street.
That’s fair, I was kind of the opposite. I was in high school when I first saw Nightmare with a bunch of other sardonic teenagers, whereas I didn’t see Texas for the first time until a few years ago. The feeling of dread throughout the whole movie is palpable. Fucking terrifying. Different first experiences do make a difference in how we view their horror-ness, I suppose. But yes, Texas Chainsaw is brilliant in the most beautifully grotesque way.
TCSM all the way because Nightmare on Elm Street became so watered down in pop culture that little kids dress up like Freddy. TCSM can’t be edited down to primetime TV move night fare. It’s so gruesome and disturbing.
I’m surprised that TCM made it this far, as I wouldn’t call it a slasher movie. Not that I’m complaining!
I’m certainly glad Halloween won over Scream. I liked the first Scream, but find
the series a little bit bland. I’ve seen them all, but, with the
exception of the first one, I can’t remember, nor care to remember, who
the killer(s) were or what their motivation was. I tend to like a bit of
tomato paste in my slasher movies (though of course the 1978 Halloween had no need of it), and the Scream movies always have mysterious credits for “Special
Makeup Effects” while simultaneously containing no such effects. And I
hold that against the movies, though the overriding blandness is far and
away the greater crime.
I definitely think the original Halloween is the better film overall, but I do think that Nightmare is maybe the most brilliant horror premise ever created: a killer who kills you in your dreams. So simple. So scary.Every single audience member knows what a nightmare is and what a nightmare feels like. They also know that they’re helpless in nightmares. And, finally, they know that they might have a nightmare just hours after watching the movie…There’s just no conceivable hook better than that. And the fact that Craven had that premise AND created the perfect villain to match it* AND turned the whole thing into a brilliant metaphor for repressive parenting? That’s a once in a lifetime idea right there.John Carpenter directing Halloween is like someone inventing sliced bread. You’re never going to improve on it. HOWEVER, Wes Craven came up with the perfect topping to go with that sliced bread and, in some ways, that’s almost more impressive.
*I’m talking about the original film’s terrifying Fred Kreuger, less so the eventual goofball Freddy Kreuger from the sequels (although he’s fun in his own way)
Not just knowing how a nightmare feels, but seeing yourself as one of the characters because there is no way to avoid sleep.
I know it’s not a horror movie, but it’s still got some cares … but Mrs. F. just told me she’s never seen ‘Poltergeist.’ Crazy but she’s a young’un. So now we have a scary movie scheduled for Saturday night. I haven’t seen it uncut without commercials in a while, but I actually have the DVD if it’s not streaming anywhere.
Aw, I think Poltergeist qualifies as a horror movie. Yes it’s supernatural but it also exists to just scare the everloving shit out of you.
What Poltergeist absolutely is a horror movie.
You mean it’s not a slasher film? Because I’m pretty sure Poltergeist counts as a horror film.
I guess I do mean slasher … horror to me has lots of grossness and grisly-ness. Poltergeist is lacking in both of those. I’ve always thought of it more as a scary movie / thriller in my own head.
You really don’t need gore for a horror movie.
These are the correct choices, but I still think that Scream stole Friday the 13th’s spot. It has more variety than Halloween (Jason takes Manhattan, space, and Elm Street), and I think an overall more consistent track record. Only Freddy can compete with Jason’s inventive kills. (Which would be my choice for final victor, personally.)
Yeah, people joke around about space and Manhattan Jason, but 1 – 6 are all solidly scary slasher films. If we’re comparing volume of quality across a franchise, Friday’s the winner.
was Blair Witch ever a possibility to include in this tournament?
What really hurts Halloween in this is its embarrassingly high amount of terrible sequels. Besides the first two, and the 2018 reboot, the endless amount of medicoreness just cuts it down from being the best slasher franchise.Scream, while having the advantage of having less movies, still manages to be thrilling, terrifying, and fun which is what a slasher should be. The only one in the series that’s just ok is Scream 3 and even that has a lot of great moments. Comparing Elm Street to Texas Chainsaw is a little too much like apples to oranges for me. Elm Street you go see for the creative, nightmarish fantasy kills, but definitely gets annoying by the constant changing of “rules” to defeat Freddy. Texas Chainsaw is grimy, gross and ugly and loves it, but it also has waaaaaay too many sequels that are basically the exact same thing.
In honesty, # of quality Friday 13th movies > # quality Halloween movies. Yeah you’ve got some really silly Friday entries, but the first 4 films alone outnumber total good Halloween movies.
By these standards, I might posit Child’s Play should have lasted longer than it did. Thrilling, terrifying, fun with better good entries than bad, and a decent amount of new ideas, Chucky’s is a healthy franchise that had a fighting chance better than people gave it creadit for.
I like Scream and I’m not a huge Friday fan but Scream should never have beaten Friday. Jason is iconic, the series has variety, and delivers unparalleled consistency. Halloween versus Friday would’ve been a worthy matchup. Halloween versus Scream is obvious.I love TCSM but I agree that Nightmare is the better franchise. 1 and 3 are great, and the others even when bad are entertaining. New Nightmare is arguably a baby Scream too, laying a lot of Craven’s groundwork for that franchise.I think I’m partial to Nightmare as a franchise. Halloween is the best movie of the bunch, but man those sequels can be baaaaad (including Halloween Kills which was awful), and when they’re bad they’re too serious to be fun. When Nightmare’s bad you still get Freddy being a dick. Go Nightmare!
Scream is the only one of those that can be considered a good movie overall. It may not be the “scariest”, but it by far the best of those 4.