Pinhead, Jason, and 6 other killers remain in our slasher-movie franchise bracket
Round 3: Can Freddy’s wisecracks beat Chucky’s? Will Norman Bates survive Halloween? See who survives the Elite 8
Film Features Pinhead
So long, Santa. It was nice knowing you, Jigsaw. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, generic baby-doll-mask killer from Happy Death Day. After surviving the mass reaping of round one in our Ultimate Slasher Franchise Tournament, all of the fiends above (and six more besides) got the axe in round two. Now we’re on to the Elite Eight in our bracketed attempt to determine the greatest slasher-movie series of them all.
Round three comes down to just four showdowns, but each is a doozy. In fact, were we making a list of the 10 best slasher movies of all time, most of these franchises would likely earn at least one slot. But we’re not just judging the merits of milestone originals. Every sequel counts in these battles, which means your detours to space and prominent supporting roles for Busta Rhymes or Roseanne Barr could cost you at the bell. Or not—all of these horror icons have a habit of surviving whatever you throw at them.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the Final Four. And don’t forget to weigh in with your own votes in the readers poll below.
Halloween vs. Psycho
Winner: Halloween
Finally, a fair fight. These seminal slashers, released 18 years apart, have been in dialogue ever since 1978. If Psycho often gets credit for starting the slasher genre, Halloween crystalized its rules, with original scream queen, Psycho star Janet Leigh, passing the crown to her daughter, Halloween’s Jamie Lee Curtis. Even the MOs of the killers are similar, with Michael Myers and Norman Bates being quiet, unassuming children when they started taking out family members.
Franchising the movies would prove equally challenging, as both series offered a mixed bag of follow-ups and their own respective, divisive, auteur-driven remakes. Hollywood has been trying to get a sequel right for these properties since the ’80s, which is why there are no less than three versions of Halloween II (Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, and David Gordon Green’s Halloween), edging out Psycho’s two cracks at a direct sequel (Psycho II and the made-for-TV movie Bates Motel).
These movies’ cultural import cannot be overstated. After all, Halloween and Psycho are probably the only movies in this tournament that don’t merely come up in best-horror-movie conversations but also in conversations about the best movies of all time, period. (Okay, Texas Chain Saw Massacre might qualify there, too.) While John Carpenter’s Halloween is not quite as accomplished as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (it’s hard to compare a director’s third movie to another’s 64th), the sheer amount of interpretations, ripoffs, and general cultural staying power help old Michael Myers eke out a victory. Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates is iconic, but it’s been dang-near impossible to find someone to fill his shoes; we don’t care how many weddings they’ve crashed, not just anyone can be the manager of the Bates Motel.
Meanwhile, Michael Myers, with his weird William Shatner mask, is as timeless as the bogeyman. He’s as much a part of Halloween as jack-o’-lanterns. So hit the showers, Psycho! [Matt Schimkowitz]
Friday The 13th vs. Scream
Winner: Scream
If this was a match-up of killer costume designs, Jason Voorhees would win in a very slow walk, leaving the smashed remains of that dimestore Ghostface mask in his wake. But it’s in their treatment of their would-be victims that these two franchises—both blood-soaked imitators of a sort, repurposing the mayhem of either recent contemporaries or more distant ancestors—reveal their deeper worth. Or to put it another way: Name one non-Jason “starring” character from the Friday The 13th franchise who invokes even a fraction of the pathos that Drew Barrymore summons in those iconic first 12 minutes of Scream. And that’s to say nothing of Neve Campbell’s consistently grounded lead performance throughout the entirety of the series’ run.
Like most slasher flicks, the Friday The 13th movies typically treat acting like a tertiary concern at best, letting the occasional memorable death—and a brutally efficient marquee killer—do all of the heavy lifting. But in the Scream series, even the villains are characters (they have to be, to keep us guessing on who’s secretly behind the latest murder spree), and they’re almost always more interesting once the mask comes off.
It feels strange to treat the human element as paramount here, in a branch of horror so dedicated to rendering people as just so many piles of hapless murder meat. But Scream frequently transcends the genre it endlessly winks at—and the killers it regularly namechecks, including Jason himself—by treating Sidney Prescott and her friends as more than just faceless killer bait. [William Hughes]
A Nightmare On Elm Street vs. Child’s Play
Winner: A Nightmare On Elm Street
It’s the ultimate battle of the catchphrase-spouting supernatural killers! Sure, Chucky may have a penchant for rhymes (“Don’t fuck with the Chuck!”), but can he really compete with a guy who drives a girl’s head through a television set while acidly quipping, “Welcome to prime time, bitch”?
Both series began life as pure horror, slowly introducing dark humor along the way (though as corny as the Nightmare franchise later got, it never tipped over into full-on campy comedy the way Child’s Play did). The excesses of long-running slasher silliness were endemic to both, and by their later installments, you could count on some one-liners sure to elicit groans. The killers were respectively well-known enough—ubiquitous enough, even—to make appearances in pop culture outside of their respective films, dropping by Saturday Night Live and World Championship Wrestling. The pair even share a director in Ronny Yu, who helmed both Bride Of Chucky and Freddy Vs. Jason—proof of some overlapping creative DNA behind the scenes.
But at the end of the gore-drenched day, the guy who can invade people’s dreams triumphs over the doll who curses a blue streak. Admittedly, Chucky is still going strong—albeit on the small screen—while Freddy is currently MIA. But if the gloved killer has taught us anything, it’s that you shouldn’t sleep on his odds of returning. [Alex McLevy]
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre vs. Hellraiser
Winner: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Both the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the original Hellraiser are outsider visions, films that shook up the horror establishment through the violation of taboos. Hellraiser’s unspeakable pleasures are erudite, evoking BDSM and an addict’s futile quest for the ultimate high. Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s transgressions are more primal. As in, maybe the ultimate primal transgression: cannibalism, which the backwoods Sawyer clan practices with disturbing abandon.
Looking at both franchise-starters, Texas Chain Saw gains a slight edge by virtue of grimy realism, which is so intense that some still think that the events of the film really happened. (No such danger with Hellraiser.) But when you look at the two series as a whole, it’s actually a sense of humor that gives Chain Saw a solid lead. The Hellraiser movies remain committed to edginess even as the scenarios descend into absurdity, which can be fun only in an unintentional way. But The Texas Chain Saw Massacre encourages viewers to darkly snicker, starting with the outrageous first sequel, which posed the Sawyers in a parody of The Breakfast Club on the theatrical poster. And a satirical blade cuts deeper than a self-serious one, no matter how into knife play Pinhead and his disciples may be. [Katie Rife]
READERS POLL
No big surprises or upsets on day two. Though Monday’s reader results deviated a little from The A.V. Club’s, allowing a couple of different franchises to advance to round two, Tuesday’s have put this parallel bracket back on the same course as our main one, with an identical elite eight squaring off in today’s round three of the readers poll. Yesterday’s biggest blowout? Nightmare On Elm Street putting the razor-gloved smackdown on Wes Craven’s earlier horror series, The Hills Have Eyes. The closest match wasn’t all that close—Saw put up about half the numbers as its victorious, similarly pint-sized competition.
Still, we have a suspicion that things might have get a little tighter in round three, especially when it comes to one long-running slasher legacy franchise and the young, more tongue-in-cheek series taking it on. But that’s not our call in this poll; to have your say, vote below or here.
52 Comments
Leatherface gets to the Four but not Pinhead? The Hell you say.
A perfectly cromulent choice in my book. I would submit that Pinhead isn’t a slasher at all. For at leas the first two movies, he isn’t even the villain. And “Hellraiser” is a terrific movie, sure, but it never matches the queasy intensity of TCSM.Then again, I’m rooting for Leatherface to take this thing. Gotta cheer for the home team.
I’ve never seen TCSM but is it even really a slasher movie? Psycho for that matter. Aren’t both of those closer to Silence of the Lambs or Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer than Friday the 13th? I realize this comment is a bit late. I guess Psycho is a kind of proto-slasher but post-Halloween, there were rules, as they say. And TCSM—again, never seen it—looks to me to be more about brutal provocation along the lines of Henry than a “horror movie.”
“Texas Chain Saw Massacre” has a much different tone and aesthetic than “Silence” or “Henry”, hewing much closer to an exploitation film than any of the other slashers in the contest. And it definitely fits the slasher bill: you’ve got a silent hulking maniac in a mask cutting up horny kids out in the boonies. If that’s not a slasher, I guess I don’t know what is. And for all the grime it is quite striking visually. Heartily recommended, as is part 2, which is slicker but full of pitch black comedy.
Grindhouse slasher, I guess? But yeah, the principal features are gore and trying to escape.
If you haven’t seen TCSM then it would be harder for you to judge. It’s more of a slasher than Black Christmas in my book. It doesn’t have a villainous protagonist/POV character like Henry who is mostly killing anonymous people the audience doesn’t care about (until the end). Our POV is with the group of teens who are getting killed, eventually whittling down to the “final girl”.Silence of the Lambs is about an FBI agent investigating a case. Which would actually put it slightly closer to TCSM 2, although it just feels wrong making that comparison given how thoroughly different those two films are.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies are noting like Henry or Lambs. Please watch a trailer for one of them or something.
TCM is definitely a slasher film.
It arguably laid the groundwork for the classic slasher formula of teenagers find themselves being picked off one by one (often in a place where no one can help them like a summer camp, cabin in the woods, or their dreams) by a (more often than not masked) killer and only one of them (usually a girl) survives.
What can you do but laugh at someone who thinks Scream is a better slasher franchise than Friday the 13th?
The Scream movies are very fun, but their somewhat absurd reluctance to kill off most of the recurring characters (RIP to that one) should knock them out of the competition. Plus, we’re comparing The House That Savini Built to hit-or-miss chases with blood trickle kills? Nah.
No Way Scream wins over Friday the 13th
First thing’s first, Bates Motel was neither a sequel, nor a movie. It was a TV series that reimagines Norman Bates in sort of contemporary times, his mother still alive, and while he still had a chance to get help. It wasn’t a perfect show (Rihanna was a terrible casting choice for Marion Crane), but it made Norman Bates a more tragic and sympathetic character. It’s more suspense thriller than horror, but is no less horrifying than the original film, if not more so. Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga give career best performances, and I highly recommend it for both fans of the original film and newcomers alike (although watch the original film first to fully appreciate what they’ve accomplished). The show alone is superior to even the best Halloween movies, while the original Psycho is just better in every way. Halloween is a fine horror movie, but it doesn’t quite hold up and I don’t get the affection over it, other than the spectacle and ironic amusement over how clunky it is to have a Dr. Exposition explaining everything.Also, while I haven’t ever sat down to watch any of the Hellraiser films, I once flipped to this scene on Showtime and it blew my little still Catholic early teens mind. Melting the cross over the priest’s hand showed how God truly has no power, and following him just makes you the target of sadism incarnate. 25+ years later, he just seems like a silly Christian Freddy Krueger to me now, but I’ll never forget this. Blasphemy gives me life.
Although Hellraiser IV: Bloodlines is universally hated, Pinhead has some of the best lines in it.
“Do I look like someone who cares what God thinks” is, bar none, my favorite Pinhead line and one of my favorite movie lines of all time.
A clip of that gets played in the intro to the Fear of God podcast and I didn’t know what it was from. I’ve only seen the original Hellraiser, so if it’s in there I just forgot.
To your first point, they were referencing a TV movie with Bud Cort called Bates Motel. He was Norman Bates’ roommate in the asylum who was left the hotel when Norman died. Maybe an extended pilot for a show that didn’t get picked up. Being a TV movie (and all but forgotten) it’s surprising to see it mentioned.
Wow, I had no idea. A 3.8 on IMDB. It’s weird to acknowledge that but not the series.
Like you said, it wasn’t a direct sequel, which is what it was looking at.
I’m pretty sure it was a pilot that didn’t make it to series. The only reason why I know there was a 1980s Bates Motel show is because the last time I was really hung over, which thankfully was nearly a decade ago, I spent hour upon hours for reading about all about Psycho and its various sequels. For some reason, it was the only thing I could concentrate on.
I have nights (or weeks, sometimes) like that. Just get something locked in head and have to read all about it and its spin-offs and variations. Having now read the Wikipedia entry, looks like the end of Bates Motel was meant to set up a series that was never ordered.
If you think that’s bad, get a load of what happens to the clergymen in Rawhead Rex.
Bates Motel (modern TV series) had a real banger of a final shot, with those two tombstones.Bates Motel (old failed pilot) had the red-haired lady from Head Of The Class, so there’s that
Of what remains: Halloween vs. Psycho — Halloween. That’s a no-brainer. Even at its worst, Halloween is always strange and memorable. No Psycho film had Busta Rhymes doing kung fu. Friday the 13th vs. Scream — Friday the 13th. I know that, on the whole, Scream is much better. I like or love all four films. But as a series, it has to be Friday the 13th, which might just be the horror franchise. As great as Scream is, at the end of the day, I just want a good time, and Friday the 13th basically always deliversA Nightmare on Elm Street vs. Child’s Play — A Nightmare on Elm Street. Consistently imaginative and malleable in a way most franchises can never achieve. That said, it does have the absolute worst remake.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre vs. Hellraiser — Hellraiser. I love the grimness and nastiness of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with Tobe Hooper’s film being maybe the best film in the bracket, but Hellraiser is so much more satisfying and thoughtful. Not to mention the fantasy of it all is shockingly great.
The Elm Street remake wouldn’t have been so bad if they had committed to the twist they teased in the third act that Freddy Krueger really might have been just this simple grounds keeper who loved entertaining the children and was wrongly accused and lynched, making his afterlife revenge on the children of his executioners all the more twisted and ironic but then they quickly pulled a 180.
I would have liked that a lot, and it would have improved the film. And I actually enjoy Jackie Earle Haley’s take on Freddy. That said, there are foundational problems with the remake that are also hampering its effectiveness and functionality as a movie.
It wasn’t bad because of that. It needed some sense of fun and creativity to it and probably should have been rethought from the beginning. It forgot why people liked Elm Street movies in the first place. Plot points don’t matter much when the movie is miserable to watch no matter what is happening.
but Hellraiser is so much more satisfying and thoughtful. Not to mention the fantasy of it all is shockingly great.
But those reasons are also why Hellraiser isn’t a slasher film. It should have never been on here. It can qualify as a lot of things (from postmodern gothic to 20th Century fairy tale) but slasher isn’t one of them.
It’s not a good film either. Surely, that should be a consideration.
If we’re talking about franchises, Chainsaw sequels are far more better, smarter, more interesting, and more gonzo than the Hellraiser sequels.
Also RE Friday vs Scream, they ask, “Name one non-Jason “starring” character from the Friday The 13th franchise who invokes even a fraction of the pathos that Drew Barrymore summons in those iconic first 12 minutes of Scream.” Tommy Jarvis. Literally pops in your head the moment the question is asked if you know the series.Also the banana eating girl in part 1.
Agree on Friday over Scream, disagree on Hellraiser over Chainsaw. Hellraiser is supernatural horror, which generally should disqualify it to start with, but regardless Friday was the seminal slasher series for more than a decade and its film openings were events. Hellraiser was more of a curiosity.
Elm Street all the way now.1) Original: discovers Depp, works through lots of innovative practical effects and can be forgiven the ONE effect that doesn’t hold up (extended arms)2) II – camp, queer icon3) III – Heather Langenkamp remains the best 80’s final girl, all the way dowm to getting a namesake in current 80’s retro love. Plus, that nun is creepy4) IV is full on 80’s glory (music video Freddy!). III and IV together are peak quippy Freddy5) Yes, 5 and 6 are the nadir, but they TRY something with the franchise and don’t involve space and begin the call back process that is key to ….Final Nightmare. If you want meta, you got meta. Julie’s ceiling death, the pajamas, the grey hair. Best case late series reinvention winners.
The worst Friday The 13th movie is about as bad as the worst Scream movie, but the thing is 3/4 of Scream movies so far are the worst Scream movies.
Ooof I don’t know about that. Screams 2-4 are meh, but some of the Friday the 13th films (Jason Takes Manhattan, X) just become a unique level of bad.
The insanity of Jason 8 and X are far more enjoyable and fun than Screams 2-4. With slasher horror flicks, “a unique level of bad” is always preferable to “meh” quality.
Nah, all the Scream sequels are great except for 3.
I think there is only one bad Scream movie. That’s why I think it would win the tournament. It has a much higher batting average than any of the other series. Opinions differ, I guess.
Also, to answer the question about Friday the 13th victimes…Kevin Bacon!
Very much so in agreement with this final 4, even as I’m a bit surprised Halloween was picked over Psycho and very surprised Scream was picked over Friday the 13th.
Freddy besting first Leatherface, then Michael to take it all?
Yeah, Psycho vs. Halloween felt like the definitive matchup here. At this point, it’s Myers coasting to victory.
I really have to stick up for the Psycho franchise. The above explanation as to why Halloween wins over Psycho focuses less on the movies and the status of the killers as icons, which isn’t really the goal here as I understand it.It must have seemed insane to make a sequel to Psycho, a film by one of the greatest directors of all time. That’s a lot to live up to. But the sequels are good. Sure, they’re not nearly as brilliantly crafted and can be somewhat hysterical in tone, but they’re surprisingly strong continuations of Norman Bates’s story. In particular, Psycho, Psycho II, and Psycho II all form a self-contained, cohesive trilogy, something you can’t say about Halloween. Halloween has been so uneven as a franchise that they’ve had to reboot it like three times. The first is unimpeachable, which makes it difficult for any follow up to match John Carpenter’s original. What’s more, the first film thrives off of ambiguity and the unknown. Michael Myers is scary because we don’t know what drives him or whether he’s even human or the embodiment of evil. Once you start to explain this stuff, like sequels inevitably do, you lose what made the original concept work. I think that Halloween is probably the most difficult of these franchises to properly follow up, and all the sequels make that clear.
Agreed. Those PSYCHO sequels are solid thrillers that get overlooked, and I think are far more satisfying than most of these franchises’ later installments. This whole contest really gets summed up by the first film in each franchise, which is why HALLOWEEN and TCSM will likely face off at the end.
I know this is just a dumb online bracket for fun without anything riding on it, but it does seem like they’re thinking only of mostly just the first film rather than the entire series.
Good morning, readers! Vote in the reader bracket embedded at the bottom of the piece or at this URL: https:// http://www.polltab.com/bracket-poll/j15R5Jpe3b
Scream a better *franchise* than F13? Ok sure.Next week: Greta Van Fleet defeats Led Zeppelin in the AV Club’s “Best Band That Sounds Like Led Zeppelin” bracket!
I feel like this should come down to Halloween vs. Texas Chainsaw and Texas Chain saw is the best movie of any movie of all of these slashers…. I would give Halloween the win over everyone else.I am glad you picked Scream over Friday. Friday is a Halloween rip off and lets be honest so many of those movies sucked!!!!!! While 3 of the 4 Scream’s were great and even part 3 was better than all but 1 or 3 Friday movies.
I kind of feel like Halloween was the obvious victor from day 1.
It’s Friday the 13th for me, dawg, and a lot of that is because of the camp setting. Halloween used the suburbs…or that one street in Hollywood, Orange Grove, that looks like Illinois; Nightmare has dream; Friday the 13th has the woods and camps (before they go to space). Do I think they could go back to that setting and use it for more sequels? No. The dream setting is why Freddy should make a comeback to kill tiktokers and MAGA chuds, and annoyingly extra activists. The reboot of Nightmare is one of the worst films ever made…imagine if that got a sequel? yikes. Root for the pedo? double yikesWhat Scream had was meta-commentary…and then they just made it more and more straightforward and it was just rote and boring…and then Cabin in the Woods out meta-ed everybody and made Scream eternally irrelevant.Also, I think people really underrate Hellbound: Hellraiser II, it is really gross and imaginative and spends quite a bit of time in a hellworld (in this case, a labyrinth).
I don’t know the “1-2-3, A-B-C” of how we get there, but after reading your comment—with its modern political and media references alongside Freddy’s name—I know one thing to be true: We have to make a Nightmare On Elm Street where Freddy becomes President.
I don’t agree with TCM over Hellraiser, but I get it. I’m glad Scream won over F13. Ugh are those movies BAD. People keep talking about how iconic they are, but that’s mostly do to how many they were. They just kept cranking them out. How many do you actually want to watch? I’d probably take any Scream movie over any F13 movie.And on top of that, Scream and Ghostface are pretty darn iconic. I was listening to a podcast the other day and one of the hosts said his 8 year old daughter wanted to go as Ghostface for Halloween. She’d never seen any of the scream movies, but Ghostface’s mask was iconic and well known she chose it.It reminded me of being a kid and the hockey mask being iconic. I’d never seen any of the F13 movies, but I knew about the hockey mask. Although the iconic slasher killer to me was a portmanteau of Jason and Leatherface: a killer in a hockey mask with a chainsaw (see Simpsons, Tiny Toons, Zombies Ate My Neighbors for other examples of that).
As much as I personally like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween is and deserves to win for pioneering the slasher genre and for coming through the more difficult Western Conference. Freddy is Lebron before going to LA in this scenario.