10 Silly Villains That Ruin Serious Horror Movies

7. The Slayer - The Slayer

Deadly Blessing
21st Century Film Corporation

The Slayer is a famously terrible American horror movie from 1982. Although it was banned as part of the 1984 Video Recordings Act, it was forgotten swiftly afterwards and barely ever got a re-release. This wasn't because it was gory, but because it was just a mess of a film with an incredibly disappointing monster.

The plot of the movie centers around a group of friends taking a holiday on an abandoned island. Whilst they relax and have a good time, it turns out that one of the friends, Kay, suffers from vivid night terrors, and the beast that she dreams about seems to be murdering her friends on the island, or it could be her killing her friends in a somnambulist trance. It sounds like a good setup for a horror movie, but the reveal of the ‘slayer’ itself near enough ruins the whole movie.

Whilst the visual design of the slayer is quite intimidating, the beast is only seen for a total of five seconds at the end of the film. All it does is roar then disappear, leaving an incredibly underwhelmed audience asking what on earth just happened. There have been good examples where having no reveal/a short reveal of the killer is very effective, but the five second reveal in this movie ruins the psychological aspect of the film’s plot entrirely; turning it into a poor excuse of a monster movie.

 
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Contributor

Writer from the North East. Knowledgable in Horror Movies, Silent Movies, World Cinema and Retro Video Games.