10 Most Underrated Slasher Movie Villains
Not every slasher villain can have the career of Michael Myers... but maybe these guys should have.
Slasher movies are part of the bread and butter of horror cinema. Ever since the movement was born in John Carpenter's Halloween and Bob Clark's Black Christmas, the slasher movie has become one the horror's most beloved subgenres, birthing whole franchises and mythologies which span decades.
An enormous part of the slasher movie's popularity is due to its villains; Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Chucky and the like. These characters have become pop culture icons, all of them arguably more popular and well-remembered than any of their victims, or even their movies' heroes.
They can't all be winners though, and for every Freddy or Jason, there's at least ten other failed slasher villains who didn't quite make the mainstream. Here we take a look at ten of the most underrated slasher villains of all time - the lost and overlooked, the also-ran and the almost-was; one-hit wonders who did well but failed to take off; promising young upstarts who were overshadowed by a later incarnation. The one thing they have in common - they deserved more.
10. Frank Zito - Maniac
A remake of William Lustig's 1980 video nasty, this 2012 psychological slasher film cast Elijah Wood as the demented Frank Zito, mannequin store owner and murderer.
A troubled young man with a traumatic past and a fetish for collecting human scalps, Frank's life is further complicated when he begins to fall for artist and photographer Anna (Nora Arnezeder). Struggling to balance his growing affection for Anna with his passion for murdering women and sticking their scalps onto his mannequins, Frank cuts a bloody swathe through Los Angeles, before finally coming for Anna directly.
While Lustig's original movie is considered to be a cult classic in some circles, this remake, by Franck Khalfoun, isn't to be sniffed at either. Wood is delightfully chilling as Frank, building on the budding menace viewers first saw him display in 2005's Sin City - marking the star as one of his generation's most interesting character actors.
His Frank Zito emerges as one of horror cinema's creepier slasher villains.