10 Hidden Gem '80s Slasher Horror Movies
Those underappreciated, under the radar slasher movies that deserve more attention.
Across the various subgenres of horror, there's a special place in the hearts of fans for the slasher movie. With 1974's Black Christmas viewed as the launching point for this subgenre, the humble slasher was taken to an entirely different level with the huge success of John Carpenter's Halloween in 1978.
Of course, a successful concept will always spawn copycats looking to join the party and reap the rewards of a boom period for a certain style of film. As such, Halloween was followed by plenty of similar pictures as the '70s rolled into the '80s and beyond. While some of those slashers were pretty darn awful, others were absolutely great as the horror landscape fully embraced this subgenre across the '80s.
However, not all of those great slashers may have received the praise they deserved, with some flying under the radar, being overshadowed by bigger budgeted features, or simply being released towards the end of the decade as audience's tastes started to veer away from the subgenre.
With that in mind, then, here are ten such underappreciated hidden gems that have plenty to offer for those who love nothing more than a good slasher movie.
10. Pieces
From J. Piquer Simon, Pieces - aka Mil gritos tiene la noche - centres around a killer who takes the body parts of his victims to create a human jigsaw of sorts. Hence, that'd be the 'pieces' of the title.
What you see in that image is Timmy, a ten-year-old who murders his mother with an axe after she finds him with a jigsaw puzzle of a naked lady. Of course, that's always a sane and rational way to deal with being told off by a parent...
Being even more of a little sh*t, Timmy hides in a closet and pretends to have witnessed his ma's murder when the police find her chopped-up remains. 40 years later, a Boston college campus finds itself in the midst of a sinister sort who not only kills people, but removes certain body parts as part of these attacks.
There's actually a nice slice of whodunnit to Pieces, as several people are teased as being responsible for these murders, and the eventual reveal comes complete with a bonkers mish-mash of a corpse that's made out of the various body parts assembled across the film's 90-minute runtime.