10 Horror Movie Rip-Offs You Won’t Believe Exist

10. Bloody Murder (2000)

Written by John R. Stevenson and directed by Ralph E. Portillo, Bloody Murder and its sequel, Bloody Murder 2: Closing Camp are like kindergarten collages of ideas and scenes snipped from better movies.

The most obvious lift is from the Friday the 13th franchise – the setting is Camp Placid Pines, covering for Camp Crystal Lake and the killer wears a hockey mask and boiler suit. There’s also a suspiciously similar plotline involving an urban myth of a bullied and abused child who, fully grown, now supposedly haunts the woods near the camp. His name is Trevor Moorhouse, which is in no way intended to ape the name Voorhees.

However, the sinister Trevor Moorhouse is not the central killer in either of the Bloody Murder movies, providing more of a murderous cameo at the end of each film to give them a sting in the tail. Instead, Placid Pines’ not-so-happy camp counsellors are being terrorised by a psychopath with a grudge because of an because of an incident in the past, cosplaying Moorhouse in order to carry out his murders.

Both films spin out various unlikely red herring scenarios before the masked murderer is revealed, and if that sounds oddly similar to the plot of every Scream movie then congratulations, you’ve just identified the other major lift this franchise makes from the established horror milieu. It’s even called Scream Bloody Murder in the UK, just to stick the knife in.

There are also elements ripped off from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween, but by this point we’ve already established that Stevenson is the cinematic equivalent of the guy that sells bootleg t-shirts outside of gigs.