10 Horror Movie Franchises That Forgot How To Be Scary

John Carpenter's classic hit is still an effective chiller, bringing pure, indescribable evil in the heart of the American suburbs, ripping a malevolent hole in the fabric of society that can never be closed. It's not the first slasher film - that honour is debatably held by Peeping Tom, Psycho or Black Christmas depending on your school of thought - but it was certainly the first to show producers just how profitable they could be. Naturally, it set off a long chain of imitators and wannabes.

But few are as effectively chilling as the original. Carpenter's score, though attempts have been made to replicate it, is as haunting as it is simplistic. Not since Jaw's "duh dumps" can the slightest of noise make one jump.

But the studios smelled money and demanded a sequel, forcing Carpenter, on a bender, to write out a script that expanded on the killer's familial history with Jamie Lee Curtis' unlucky teen. It's something he regrets, and as the films fell deeper down the well of unwritten history, from parts 5 and 6's Thorn cult to Rob Zombie's 'white trash' stepfather re-imagining, everything that made the character scary - which is to say, the vagueness of it all - was removed.

Pure, inexplicable evil is scary. A kid with an abusive stepfather and a stripper mom? That's an episode of Dateline.