10 Ripped Off Characters Movies Didn't Even Try To Hide

Okay so we really could have included any of the Friday the 13th series in this entry, given the fact that Sean S. Cunningham’s iconic abandoned summer camp slasher was originally envisioned as a fairly shameless cash-in on the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween a year or two earlier.

That said, the first film is actually a twisty whodunnit which doesn’t feature Jason until its closing minutes, and even the film’s first follow up eschewed a masked killer in favour of - well, Jason with a sack on his head. So, not as scary, but not too shameless a Michael Myers Xerox.

Yes, from the third instalment onwards the two silent stalking mass murderers were all but impossible to tell apart, but the seventh instalment of Jason’s long-running saga actually features a far more shameless—and inexplicable—rip-off. Among the cadre of new characters introduced only to be summarily offed was Tina.

Tina is a teenage girl who accidentally uses her previously latent telekinetic powers to kill her abusive parent after being pushed around one time too many—Morrissey, is that you? Because you’ll need to Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before.

The Carrie knock off came almost a decade after the release of Brian de Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s debut, and the decision to rip the character off years after her peak popularity wasn’t enough to stop critics reviling Jason’s seventh outing.