No Sequel: A Look Back at Standalone Slashers of the 1980s

Much has been written about the origin of the slasher film. Both Black Christmas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974 marked early rumblings of the horror subgenre. Then John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece Halloween solidified those influences, and Sean S. Cunningham’s low budget blockbuster Friday the 13th kicked off the many attempts to replicate its success throughout the 1980s. Those films led to lengthy franchises that made killers like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees icons of horror. However, in between their endless sequels came plenty of other slasher films that never resulted in extensive mythologies. Some of those are rightfully forgotten, cheap cash-ins that put whatever minimal budget into the kills while sacrificing every other cinematic possibility, like Madman or The Prowler. These and plenty others are what made critics like Roger Ebert dismiss the slasher subgenre as “The Dead Teenager Movie.” 

However, within this glut of one-note retreads were a few standout slashers that weren’t sequelized ad infinitum. These stories about killers who were obviously inspired by Myers and Voorhees still brought something new to the formula but didn’t leave open space for a sequel. Or if they did, said space was firmly unoccupied by the presence of further chapters. The best of these films allowed for experimentation on what a slasher could be and how versatile the genre could be. 

These slashers sought to take the basic tenets of these two titans and craft original stories outside of them. Most opted for the neighborhood myth route, which falls more in line with the origin story of young Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th: an elaborate urban legend that takes place several years before the main story, either as an outsider who was jilted by a lover or horribly scarred to the point of madness. Either way, it devolves into bloodshed. This method works for establishing the culture of the town that usually serves as our setting, how the youthful generation of the time dismisses this backstory as ancient history while their parents’ generation fears reprisal that will gruesomely be proven prescient, all while a silent killer stalks in the night ready to murder.

My Bloody Valentine (1981) is one of the best examples of such a mythology. The sleepy Canadian mining town of Valentine Bluffs is holding a Valentine’s Day Dance, the first since an infamous cave-in at the mines 20 years prior that left miner Harry Warden trapped for days. At the following year’s dance, Warden murdered the supervisors who left him trapped. Despite Warden’s vows to return for another rampage if the dance ever came back, the youthful miners doubt such repercussions will come. My Bloody Valentine’s setup firmly fits the traditional campfire legend, but the details provide more of a sense of place, as this town is populated with generations of families who worked in the mines. One of our protagonists, Tom (Paul Kelman), tries to make it out of town on his own, but he fails and has to drag his tail between his legs back home just in time for the murders to transpire. Such a conceit allows for a completely different dynamic, as gory murders amplify the fear of never being able to leave your hometown.

The alternative route for fleshing out a slasher killer comes from a more intimate perspective: following the killer in his day-to-day, forcing the audience to be a passenger along for the ride as they commit their murders. This isn’t a direct copy of Michael Myers’ backstory in Halloween as much as an inversion. This angle takes the hollow shape of a killer that John Carpenter created and fills in the blanks to make them more flawed, human, and prone to violent attacks. It’s a trend the various sequels to Halloween desperately tried to fill, ironically in an effort to catch up with killers like these that were more in fashion by the time Michael Myers returned after a long absence in Halloween 4.

Frank Zito (Joe Spinnell) in Maniac (1980) is one of the more infamous examples of such a killer. We see all these events from Zito’s perspective from the start, walking alongside him through the grimy streets of late ‘70s New York through his fragmented view on reality. Frank has been out of sorts since the death of his mother, hearing voices that are motivating him to murder several people — mostly women, outside of makeup effects designer/exploding head reference Tom Savini — through graphically violent means. In between the gore, we see Frank monologuing to the mannequins in his apartment, all adorned with the scalps of his female victims. His monologues are all about the fear of “losing” these women; he must “keep them” from leaving, much in the same way he feels his mother did. At one point, he directly says this to the camera, insinuating that he can’t let go of the grasp he has on the audience. Zito wants the audience to be literally captive, witnessing his depravity like the blank, staring mannequins. This marks an early meta-contextual note for the slasher genre that’s upsetting yet deeply engrossing.

Despite these two formulas being the standard, the true joy of exploring these slashers is in seeing filmmakers experiment. As with any trend, this subgenre had so much competition coming out in such rapid succession that you had to evolve to stand out. In 1980, Fade to Black took another meta-contextual version of the intimate killer perspective by following obsessive film fan Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher) as he stalks the streets of Los Angeles in various cinematic-inspired costumes committing darkly satirical murders. Visiting Hours (1982) shifts the protagonists and killer to more adult subject matter, as journalist Deborah Ballin’s (Lee Grant) frank on-air discussions about the inherent misogyny of modern society stir the anger of a killer (Michael Ironside) with particular prejudice towards independent women. Alone in the Dark — another gem from 1982 — brought on a recognizable slasher face in the form of Dr. Loomis himself (Donald Pleasence), but added a few more character actors (Jack Palance, Martin Landau, and Erland van Lidth) to play infamous serial killers with distinctive personalities as they escape from Pleasence’s mental institution during a blackout.

As the ‘80s wore on, these kinds of slashers became less en vogue. At this point, Jason was skulking around on a boat en route to Manhattan, and Michael was revealed to be the product of a vague shadowy cult. A Nightmare on Elm Street completely reinvented what a popular slasher could be, making Jason, Michael, and any of their direct imitators quickly feel like old hat. Still, there were a few notable oddities in the classic vein before the ‘80s ended. April Fool’s Day (1986) took the slasher formula and created a more self-aware slasher that’s faithful to the spirit of its titular holiday. Following a group of prank-prone college kids staying together during a weekend retreat, April Fool’s Day feels like a precursor to the Scream era of meta-slashers, taking audience expectations and subverting them with a gleeful twist that still remains divisive. A more traditional setup was used for 1989’s Intruder, in which a group of supermarket employees are graphically murdered during the final night shift before the store’s closure. Intruder is the directorial debut of Scott Spiegel, a frequent Sam Raimi collaborator who embraced the Evil Dead series’ love of bizarre camera angles and unique kills to give a seemingly anonymous slasher premise an engaging personality.

While many of these one-and-done slashers may seem lost to time, the subgenre’s survival via the VHS rental market allowed young horror fans to discover these films as an alternative when the bigger horror titles were likely checked out. One can see the lingering fingerprints of these films on modern horror. Remakes have been produced that experiment with modern film trends, whether it’s the evolution of direct POV to be the literal cinematography style for 2012’s version of Maniac or the extra dimension of 2009’s My Bloody Valentine 3D. More subversive comedic horror films like You’re Next and Happy Death Day have clear DNA from Fade to Black and April Fool’s Day. Newer, more intimate slashers like Hush or It Follows take pages out of the eerie, quiet home invasion sequences of Alone in the Dark and the looming threat of misogyny from Visiting Hours, respectively.

Clearly, lacking a sequel doesn’t immediately negate a slasher film’s quality or staying power. If anything, franchising Halloween and Friday the 13th tarnished their reputations as a sacrifice for both gaining prominence in pop culture. With a standalone slasher immediately following the two heavyweights’ introductions, there’s less expectation beyond the kills and more room for experimentation. Some may not have been widely loved at the time or were briefly successful before fading into obscurity. Yet the sequel-less slashers that stood the test of time became something far better than a franchise that demystified their killers. They became singular, self-contained entities worth watching and slashing through for decades to come.