The horror genre is composed of as many original stories as it is recycled stories. Plenty of horror filmmakers have come up with fresh concepts over the years to elevate and propel the genre forward. No genre could survive without new ideas to keep it interesting and exciting. If everything was a rehash of the same few original stories, we would grow tired of any genre very quickly. Still, horror filmmakers like to gravitate back toward successful films and put their own spin on the source material. In between the newly conceptualized stories, the horror genre will either remake or recycle popular horror movie premises because it did so well the first time. Many movie genres practice this to capitalize off the success of an original idea. With horror, most fans are more than willing to watch the same plot remade regardless of the film’s quality because we enjoy the initial premise too much.
A perfect example of this stems from the Halloween franchise. After the success of John Carpenter’s slasher hit, other horror filmmakers were eager to jump on the bandwagon and fans were willing to come along for the ride. While not the first slasher film, it was one of the earliest and certainly the most influential in the genre. Halloween‘s influence can be seen seeped throughout the movies of the genre and many of these movies are littered with references or callbacks to the original. After it was released in 1978, it kick-started a slasher craze that lasted throughout the ’80s. Many of these slashers drew direct inspiration from Michael Myers’ masked maniacal killer and Laurie Strode’s fierce final girl. Some of these slasher movies wound up being almost carbon copies of Carpenter’s masterpiece. So, without further ado, here are ten of the best movies that ripped off Halloween:
10 Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Aside from both films taking place during a holiday, Silent Night, Deadly Night has much more in common with Halloween than you may think. SNDN adopts a somewhat similar premise to Halloween’s by having the killer experience a traumatic event as a child that turned him into a vengeful murderer as an adult. Billy witnesses his parents’ death at the hands of Santa after his senile grandpa warned him that Santa punishes naughty people. Now 18 and out of the orphanage, Billy adopts the Santa persona himself. With a few differences such as Billy not killing until he was legally an adult and not wearing a mask, the movies are actually quite similar. Both take place on a major holiday and feature the homicidal killer wearing costumes pertaining to that holiday. Both Billy and Michael take out their vengeful nature on the people of their hometowns and their violent nature stems from events in their early childhood. The tagline for SNDN actually acknowledges the similarities by stating “You’ve made it through Halloween, now try and survive Christmas.”
9 Happy Hell Night (1992)
Trading the group of high school students for a group of college students, Happy Hell Night is quite reminiscent of Carpenter’s classic. It takes place 25 years after a murderous, and possibly demonic, priest named Zachary Malius (Charles Cragin) murdered seven college students. When a fraternity prank gone awry accidentally sets Malius free, he returns to campus to repeat his crimes. Malius doesn’t wear a mask, but his natural face is creepy and pale, similar to Michael Myers’ mask, and the movie takes place on Halloween night as well. From the escape from a mental institution to the rage-fueled senseless killings, Happy Hell Night is essentially the cousin to Halloween. It also features a young Sam Rockwell at the beginning of his career, similar to Jamie Lee Curtis beginning her career when she took on the role of Laurie Strode.
8 Blood Rage (1987)
Blood Rage is essentially what Halloween would have been like if Michael had a brother. The movie centers around twin boys Todd and Terry who seem like sweet kids until one of them takes an ax to the face of a patron at the local drive-in theater. Todd (Mark Soper) is blamed for the crime and institutionalized, while Terry goes free. Years later, at Thanksgiving dinner, word spreads that Todd has escaped. However, the real killer may have been among them all along. Obviously, bloody chaos ensues once both brothers are out and about together again. It takes so much inspiration from Halloween that it almost feels like a remake. It features an escaped mental institution patient who goes on a killing spree on a major holiday while someone else who knows how dangerous he truly is attempts to track him down.
7 Lovers Lane (1999)
Once again swapping holidays, Lovers Lane is set during Valentine’s Day and centers around a man who committed a series of murders 13 years prior and comes back to hunt down the victims’ children. There is of course a psychiatrist that knows the true nature of the killer and tries to track him down. The filmmakers did include a twist ending to spice things up a bit, but the movie still boils down to a copycat of Halloween. With its masked killer with his weapon of choice (a hook in this instance) and a shy final girl, it’s the late ’90s iteration of the psychotic, obsessive slasher villain.
6 Friday the 13th (1980)
It could be argued that the original Friday the 13th was just taking advantage of the newly developed obsession with slasher movies that had developed among horror fans. However, director Sean Cunningham has actually admitted in interviews that he wanted to create a movie that ripped off Halloween. It has a somewhat different plot from the first Halloween, but it follows the same formula that Carpenter used for his film. Even though the killer in the first movie wasn’t actually Jason Voorhees, but instead his vengeful mother, the plot is essentially the same. A masked serial murderer targets one small town location, uses a knife as their weapon of choice, and kills everyone in their path until there is only one victim left. Friday the 13th at times feels like watching Halloween but set in a different location and time of year due to the similarities between the masked maniacs. Luckily, the summer camp environment sets it apart just enough for it to have a dedicated fan base of its own.
5 Edge of the Axe (1988)
Yes, Edge of the Axe really is about a homicidal axe murderer. Released ten years after Halloween came out, the hard-to-find movie is a blatant rip-off of the horror classic, but not in the most obvious ways. The movie follows an axe-wielding murderer who terrorizes a small town in the Northern California mountains while two computer-obsessed adults try to solve the murders. This plot doesn’t sound all that similar to that of Halloween, but it is. A small town is targeted by a seemingly unstoppable masked psycho with a disturbingly good knack for hacking people to bits. Also, just like Michael, the killer here has a set weapon of choice that they don’t stray from. In this case, it is an ax as opposed to Michael’s butcher knife.
4 Frayed (2007)
Frayed is not a well-known slasher nor is it easy to find. It has a total of 316 watches on Letterboxd, and it is only available to rent on Prime. Despite its relatively obscure status, it is still like a carbon copy of the first Halloween. Actually, it’s closer to a remake than a direct copy of the slasher hit. It centers around a small-town sheriff whose worst nightmare comes true when his homicidal son Kurt escapes the psychiatric hospital he was living in. An intense and violent manhunt as information about Kurt’s evil past comes to light. That description alone could be detailing the life of Michael Myers. Michael brutally and suddenly kills his older sister at the beginning of Halloween, and the opening of Frayed is almost identical. Kurt is shown at a child’s birthday party before abruptly murdering his mother in a vicious way. What follows is a violent family drama similar to that of Michael and Laurie, although the family dynamic wasn’t revealed in the first movie.
3 He Knows You’re Alone (1980)
He Knows You’re Alone was released just two years after Halloween and during the early stages of the slasher craze. The movie features a serial killer who only targets women, but only specific women. He goes after engaged women and those closest to them. The main bride Amy (Caitlin O’Heaney) begins to occasionally see the killer from a distance, just as Laurie does. Also like Laurie, no one believes that Amy is seeing anyone in the distance. Of course, both women were right about the masked figures they were seeing. Michael and the killer in this film are eerily similar, with the only real difference being that Michael has a more impulsive approach to his crimes, whereas this killer is a bit more intentional with his victims.
2 Nightmare (1981)
Also known as Nightmare in a Damaged Brain, Nightmare is one of the most blatant rip-offs of Carpenter’s Halloween. The plot centers around an escaped mental institution patient named George who is plagued by troubling nightmares. As soon as he is back on the streets again, he can’t help but kill innocent people. Still, there is one family in particular that he sets his sights on, and he won’t rest until he gets them too. Sharing a nearly identical childhood story to Michael’s, George’s adulthood killing spree spawned from the childhood trauma of butchering a neighborhood couple. George dons an equally creepy old man mask and continues on his seemingly random manhunt. Before the family dynamic between Laurie and Michael was introduced in the sequels, the first Halloween made Michael out to be a killer with no motives other than he wanted to cause harm. George is essentially the same in Nightmare, which arguably makes both of them more frightening.
1 Final Exam (1981)
Released just three years after Halloween hit the big screen, Final Exam is perhaps the most blatant, unabashed rip-off of Halloween out there. The poster itself is enough to let the viewer know they are in for some Halloween-esque action, as it features the dark silhouette of a menacing killer holding a knife that is almost exactly the same shape as Michael Myers’ silhouette. The killer doesn’t sport a gross old Halloween mask, but he doesn’t need to because the camera purposefully does not linger on his face long enough to catch a good glimpse. Final Exam‘s psycho killer is inarguably the most similar to The Shape as he kills without a clear motive or end goal. He focuses all his energy on the tiny North Carolina college campus he is enamored with, just as Michael does with Haddonfield. Although it centers around college students as opposed to high school students, the characters, setting, and kills are all incredibly reminiscent of Halloween. Both films being set in small towns helps as well, but it also boils down to both killers following a nearly identical pattern of killing and the emotionless, ruthless persona they each obtain.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
