10 Rip-Off Movies (That Messed Up What They Copied)

Perhaps the single most ripped off film on this list and maybe in cinema history, Friday the 13th itself owes a debt to John Carpenter’s Halloween, transplanting the chill ride from suburbia to the setting of an abandoned summer camp and thus starting a trend for wilderness slashers which persists to this day.

With so many filmmakers aping the film’s style and content it was inevitable that a few would become cult classics in their own right. 1980’s The Burning used impressive special effects to overcome its similarity and provide huge aesthetic inspiration for last years’ American Horror Story: 1984.

Meanwhile 1983’s Sleepaway Camp spawned an entire franchise off the back of that unforgettable twist ending. As such, it falls on Don’t Go In the Woods to provide a perfect example of a forest-set slasher knock off which missed out on everything which made the original Friday the 13th work so well.

The film misses any effective shocks, replaces the unsettling score with squawking oh-so eighties synthesizers, and couldn’t afford more than a drop or two or corn syrup for its set piece kill sequences.

Most of the movie is spent meandering through the titular forest and many audiences would rather befall the bloodless fate of its characters then sit through the interminable runtime, but the film did manage to make the UK’s much-maligned video nasty list, so at least it earned a minor place in horror history despite missing the mark disastrously.