10 Slasher Movies That Never Got A Sequel (But Should Have)
Because the world deserves more of Leslie Vernon.
The most well known slasher movies tend to be the ones that spawn giant franchises. After all, iconic characters like Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers have had decades to leave an impression on audiences. Meanwhile, slasher flicks that weren't lucky enough to get a sequel are sadly overlooked, becoming just an obscure part of horror history.
That makes sense, as the slasher genre was ridiculously crowded in the early 1980s after everyone tried to capitalize on the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th. In 1981 alone, there were at least thirty major slashers released, so how the hell was the average viewer expected to keep up? Naturally, only a few stood out and did well in theaters, and the ones that bombed never had their killer return again.
Looking back on the decade after the hype has died down, a whole lot of gems were buried in the sea of new releases. Many of these movies were just as worthy of a franchise as Friday the 13th and Halloween, but they simply suffered from bad timing. With these 10 great slasher films, it's hard not to imagine what could have been had the studio given the filmmakers just one more instalment.
10. Black Christmas
It's kind of strange that Halloween and Friday the 13th received so many sequels, yet Black Christmas never even had one. After all, it's arguably the first slasher movie ever made, and even all these years later, it's still one of the best.
The film follows a group of sorority girls who begin receiving threatening phone calls from a strange man, something which later became a huge cliche. From there, the girls are picked off one by one and the authorities try to figure out who the killer is. All of the tropes of the slasher are there, right down to the POV shots of the man approaching the girls ready to strike. It's also got the trope of the killer still being out there at the end, perfectly setting itself up for a sequel.
Yet no sequel was ever made, and now Black Christmas is just a standalone little oddity. There would have been so much potential to develop the storyline over the course of a few films, and in fact, Bob Clark once said that a sequel would follow the killer escaping from a mental institution and returning on a different holiday. When Clark scrapped that idea, John Carpenter made his own film based on the concept: Halloween.
In some way, then, fans did actually get their Black Christmas sequel, just in a very unexpected form.