For this list I wanted to take a look at some horror movie villains but that is a pretty broad category so I am narrowing it down a bit. There will be some separate lists for other sorts of villains and monsters and there is a bit of cross-over or wiggle room with some of these but whatever else these characters are, they are slashers first and foremost. As with all of my lists, these are my favorites and not an objective list of best or scariest. Scariness was one of the sets of criteria I used here but that was informed mostly by when I encountered the characters as a kid. Other criteria included impact on horror films as a whole, unique features that differentiate the character from the crowded field of schlocky slashers, their look and just generally how cool I think they are. Disagree with me on characters and order? Awesome, sound off in the comments with your picks below.

 

10. Angela (Sleepaway Camp)

When ranking the truly noteworthy slashers you have to look for characters that bring a little something extra to the party and Sleepaway Camp’s Angela has that in spades. What could have been (and still kind of was) a cheap Friday the 13th knockoff was elevated by a decidedly off kilter backstory and a killer who packs a bit of extra punch. Angela carried several films, played by Felissa Rose in the first, then Pamela Springsteen in the second two and then back to Rose. Angela isn’t flashy but she’s got it where it counts.

9. Dr Decker (Nightbreed)

Dr Philip K Decker is not a super well known killer or the sort of guy to hang a franchise on but he was incredibly effective and creepy in Nightbreed as protagonist Boone’s psychiatrist who moonlights as a masked killer and who is framing Boone for the murders through hypnosis. After Boone is killed for the murders and comes back as something more than he was, Decker pursues him and ultimately becomes more himself. Decker has a lot going for him both by being lethal, creepy, dangerous and very capable not just of directly murdering but of manipulating just about everyone with whom he comes in contact. That he is played in the movie by horror master David Cronenberg and his name is a two part homage to Philp K Dick and his Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) character Deckard makes him that much more badass.

8. Chucky (Child’s Play)

The soul of serial killer trapped  in the body of a My Buddy knock off doll called a Good Guy, Chucky begins his life as a slasher trying to hijack the body of Andy, the boy who receives him as a gift. Chucky, voiced by the always reliable Brad Dourif, is as funny as he is twisted and has endured through several sequels that have taken the series in a more comedy/parody direction but which are generally pretty fun and gory. There is something inherently creepy about dolls like Chucky before you throw a serial killer’s soul in there so the character plays off the already embedded fears a lot of us have for these sorts of things. Just to prove his staying power, Curse of Chucky just released in September of this year (2013)

7. Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

Letherface cuts such an iconic image that the chainsaw has become somewhat ubiquitous with pop culture depictions of slashers regardless of the character they are focusing on. He isn’t necessarily a slasher in the traditional sense of going around killing people like a Jason or Michael Myers but what he lacks in range he makes up for in being a disturbing motherfucker with a mask made of human skin. That he is part of a larger clan of cannibal freaks does not take away from his own personal lethality and his lumbering, body desecrating form is never something you want to see whether his family is around or not. Also my man wears a tie during all this and that is just classy.

6. Candyman (Candyman)

Based on the Bloody Mary myth where if you say her name five times she will appear, Candyman does it one better by casting the already intimidating and creepy Tony Todd as a dead killer with a hook for a hand. Candyman, in addition to looking scary as shit without any masks or real theatricality, works through visions and illusion as much as he does with his hook and is concerned with advancing his own legend using humans as his agents of murder. This is a fairly disturbing concept and plays into the foundation of myth and legend as well as tapping into the delusional architecture that goes into some mental illness. Candyman only got three movies but that is enough to cement him into our new mythology and I am sure that would make him happy enough.

5. Norman Bates (Psycho)

The first real horror film slasher of substance, Norman Bates isn’t a supernatural monster with a machete or a glove with knives on the fingers but through Alfred Hitchcock’s masterful direction he has carved out a place in all our collective psyche. Anthony Perkin’s detached portrayal of a man who has split his personality to keep his dead mother alive is chilling and while Psycho is fairly tame by modern standards, the shower scene is a big enough deal that all you have to do is call it the shower scene and everyone knows what you are talking about. There are shower scenes with full frontal nudity that don’t command that level of recognition. Psycho’s sequels offered diminishing returns but Bates remains a fascinating character such that we are heading into season 2 of Bate’s Motel, a prequel (of sorts) series that gives us a look at Bates as a teenager and how he became what he did while his domineering mother controls his life. That is fairly good longevity for a horror character created in 1960.

4. Ghostface (Scream)

Scream is something of a deconstruction of slasher movies and is known for its full awareness of the conventions it is following or eschewing and that is thanks in no small part to Ghostface and his mocking phone calls quizzing potential victims about horror movies before gutting them like fish in as horrible ways possible.  The four film Scream series has had its ups and downs and Ghostface is never the same person from film to film but he is still consistent from film to film in creativity, brutality and sarcasm. Ghostface is unique on this list for both being a horror movie convention and being created by horror movie convention. Sure, he led to a string of imitators that damaged his own brand a bit but how much more evidence do you need that this is an influential and significant horror slasher?

3.  Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

The most solidly iconic of all of the horror film slashers, Jason’s trademark hockey mask, while not actually appearing until his third film, is the go to imagery for the genre. Establishing the horror convention of the bad kids who do bad things get killed, Jason was a mindless killer to a point but he was also a crusader looking for revenge not just for his own death but for that of his mother. He is an unstoppable killing machine without pity or real weakness and whether he is at his home Camp Crystal Lake, in New York or in Outer fucking Space, Jason is impossible to put down for good. Even other slashers like Freddy can’t put this guy down for the count. With a ridiculous number of films including a remake, Jason shows that his legacy is just as unstoppable as he is.

2. Michael Myers (Halloween)

Predating Jason by two years and sporting a bleached out William Shatner mask, Michael Myers is not dissimilar from the hockey masked killer especially as the series toiled on with the character becoming more and more supernatural, Michael Myers is scarier because he didn’t start out as a hulking undead slasher. Myers was a mental patient who murdered his family as a child and who escapes from a mental institution to kill off his sister to finish the job. Myers is not a hulk of a monster but a guy in a deadfaced mask with a dogged determination to kill the hell out of whatever stands in his way. Some of his later films have things get a bit ridiculous such that H20 had to go ahead and toss out all of the continuity aside from the first two and a remake took things back to the psychological factors that led to his murders but it just goes to show that Myers is an enduring character that not even terrible writing can kill off.

1. Freddy Kruger (NIghtmare on Elm Street)

For my money Freddy Kruger is the scariest and most effective horror slasher for the simple reason that he is the only one of the bunch that can come after you in the prescribed way in the films for days, months and years after you have seen the movie. A suspected child molester burned alive by a group of parents, Kruger has come back as a murderous ghost who takes revenge on the children of his killers by killing them in their dreams. This is a brilliant concept. I was terrified of Kruger for years as a kid because I was plagued by nightmares featuring the killer almost nightly. Sure, he can’t actually kill you in your dreams but you can sure as hell have nightmares about the guy doing the things he does in the movie and that is something that none of the others can do. When you factor in a tremendous performance by Robert Englund and the menacing but hilarious one-liners he spouts you have even more reason to love the character. It is fair to say that only a handful of the Nightmare movies are worth a damn, they still showed a consistent level of creativity throughout their run and the concept was so sturdy that it was able to support a meta film within a film in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare that brings Freddy into the ‘real’ world to threaten the actors and director of the films themselves. A remake starring Jackie Earl Haley is much maligned but is another example of the character’s impact and longevity.

So there you have it. Those are my 10 favorite slashers. If you agree or disagree, let me know in the comments below and offer up your list. Let’s be nice and not asshats about it though, okay?