After In a Violent Nature, there are still plenty of brutal slasher movies left to watch. The new horror offering premiered at Sundance in 2024 before coming to theaters on May 31. Helmed by director and special effects supervisor Chris nNsh, the movie, which stars Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic, Cameron Love, Liam Leone, and Reece Presley, has turned out a solid performance on Rotten Tomatoes, earning a Certified Fresh score of 83% aggregated from reviews written by more than 100 critics.

The movie hearkens back to many classic slashers, particularly the Friday the 13th franchise, with antagonist Jason Voorhees providing a major inspiration for the 2024 movie’s hulking, silent killer. The movie even pays homage to this inspiration by featuring a performance from Lauren Taylor, who played one of Jason’s earliest victims in 1981’s Friday the 13th Part 2. While In a Violent Nature‘s brutal kills put it a cut above many other horror movies in terms of intensity, for viewers who are hungry for more, there are quite a few earlier slashers that match its extreme approach.

1

A Bay Of Blood (1971)

An Influential Italian Giallo

The brutality of Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood is perhaps best exemplified by one of the Italian movie’s many alternative titles, which is Twitch of the Death Nerve. A major inspiration for Friday the 13th, the murder mystery’s lakeside setting, high body count, and And Then There Were None approach to murder and mayhem laid the groundwork for many slashers to come.

The movie is also notable for featuring some of the goriest murders of the early 1970s, a period in cinema that birthed a series of intense horror movies including The Last House on the Left and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These murders include a grisly decapitation, a billhook splitting a man’s face in two, and a sequence where a couple is impaled simultaneously with a spear while mid-coitus, a kill that was later recreated in Friday the 13th Part 2.

2

Anthropophagus: The Beast (1980)

A Violent Video Nasty

Another Italian offering, the 1980 movie Anthropophagus: The Beast was directed by Joe D’Amato, who was best known for his lurid horror titles and adult films. This movie was one of 39 titles that were successfully prosecuted in the UK for being in violation of the Obscene Publications Act 1959, a group of titles that subsequently became known as “video nasties” that also includes A Bay of Blood and D’Amato’s later movie Absurd​.

Anthropophagus, which stars George Eastman and Tisa Farrow, the sister of Mia Farrow, is a grotesquely violent movie that follows a group of vacationers who stumble upon an abandoned Greek island where they are stalked by a cannibalistic murderer. The violence and gore in the movie are almost unparalleled as the murderer’s violent nature threatens to consume everything and everyone around him, including himself.

3

The Prowler (1981)

An Intense Early Slasher

The most important contributor to the potency of the early ’80s slasher The Prowler is make-up effects maestro Tom Savini. Savini, who is also an actor known for movies including From Dusk Till Dawn and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, cut his teeth as a guru of gore on early genre movies made by director George A. Romero, including the 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. He went on to set the gold standard for the 1980s slasher film by crafting the kills for the original Friday the 13th.

The Prowler, released one year after Friday, showcases some of Savini’s most grotesque and convincing effects of all time. The kills enacted by the movie’s army fatigues-clad killer include pitchfork impalations and a brutally detailed glimpse at a character being stabbed through the skull with a bayonet. Naturally, the movie was also targeted as a video nasty in the UK, though it avoided full prosecution.

4

The Burning (1981)

A Classic Summer Camp Slasher

Another Tom Savini title, The Burning was another movie like A Bay of Blood and Anthropophagus that was successfully prosecuted as a video nasty. A summer camp slasher in the same vein as Friday the 13th, The Burning ups the ante by putting younger characters in the path of the killer and featuring brutal slayings by a killer wielding a pair of hedge clippers. One of the movie’s most memorable sequences involves an entire raft full of campers being massacred in a melee of bloody violence.

The Burning is also notable for featuring early performances from a cadre of well-known actors including Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter. While it does not enjoy the same reputation as a household name slasher title like Friday the 13th, the movie has retained a sizeable cult following and is available on Blu-Ray and 4K UHD via Scream Factory.

5

Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

An Iconic Franchise Entry

The third title in a row to feature gore effects by Tom Savini, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter proves just how influential the make-up wizard was over the slasher genre’s Golden Age in the early 1980s. This movie, which was intended to end the slasher franchise that has since gone on to include eight more installments at the time of writing, features some of the most intense and shocking kills ever perpetrated by Jason or any other Friday the 13th killer, a roster that also includes his mother Pamela Voorhees and a later copycat.

Jason’s kills in the movie include crushing a man’s skull against a shower wall, impaling a young Crispin Glover’s hand with a corkscrew, throwing an axe through a doorway into a woman’s chest, and much more. However, what is perhaps the pièce de résistance of the movie is Jason’s own violent treatment at the hands of the young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman).

6

The Mutilator (1984)

A Disturbing Beachside Slasher

The 1984 cult movie The Mutilator, is a disturbing movie in several ways. The first is its location. While a beach-set horror movie isn’t entirely unusual and there are examples as wide-ranging as 1964’s The Horror of Party Beach and 2021’s Old, the 1984 title is set over Fall Break during the time that tourist season has ended and the shores are eerily empty.

Over that curious setting, given a strong sense of place by the movie being filmed in the real beach town of Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, writer-director Buddy Cooper and co-director John S. Douglass layer some of the most unusual and distressing kills of the year. The killer, who is the resentful father of one of the youthful vacationers at the center of the movie, uses a variety of weapons to deliver intense kills, including a battle axe, a boat motor, and a wickedly sharp fishing gaff.

7

Evil Dead Trap (1988)

A Gory Japanese Outing

Not to be confused with the Evil Dead franchise created by Sam Raimi, Evil Dead Trap (Shiryō no wana) is a Japanese offering from the slasher genre’s Silver Age. It layers a heaping helping of J-horror tropes over a reasonably typical slasher setup that isolates a news team in an abandoned military base, breathing new life into those tropes along the way.

The movie shoves its characters through a twisted labyrinth of mayhem and gore, including a notable scene where a character triggers a trap that feels like it could have come straight from the mind of Jigsaw. In addition to the brutality of the gore, the movie also showcases an artistry that amplifies the intensity of the kills in a manner similar to the best work of Italian horror master Dario Argento, whose works include Suspiria, Tenebrae, and Deep Red.

8

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

A Brutal Remake Of A 1974 Classic

2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a remake of the 1974 Tobe Hooper classic that was one of the most important movies in the early development of the slasher genre, alongside titles such as Black Christmas, Peeping Tom, A Bay of Blood, and Psycho. However, the original Hooper movie, which was made with a shoestring budget, hardly features any blood or gore. Instead, the editing and acting drove home the intensity of Leatherface’s murder sequences with powerful implication rather than special effects.

The Platinum Dunes remake, which boasted a $9.5 million budget, had no such considerations to make. As a bridge between the slasher genre and the more torture-heavy movies to come throughout the 2000s, including the Saw and Hostel franchises, the new version of Leatherface brings much more gory, intense violence to the table.

9

Hatchet (2007)

A Modern Twist On The Slasher

Hatchet announces its intention to be a modern revival of the Golden Age of the slasher genre right away in the opening credits. The hatchet-wielding killer at the center of the movie is played by Kane Hodder, a fan-favorite horror star who is best known for playing Jason Voorhees four times, between 1988’s Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and 2001’s Jason X. Also on hand in the cast are Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund, The New Blood director John Carl Buechler, and Candyman himself, Tony Todd.

The horror bona fides of its cast are just the beginning of Hatchet‘s homage to classic slashers. The low-budget movie likewise embraces the genre with a variety of gleefully brutal kills including a scene where Hodder’s Victor Crowley splits a woman’s head in a bloody explosion by ripping open her jaws.

10

Terrifier 2 (2022)

A Violent Art The Clown Rampage

Terrifier 2 follows the latest rampage of All Hallows‘ Eve and Terrifier killer Art the Clown, amping up the gore and violence considerably from the already violent original entries. Thanks to writer-director Damien Leone’s extensive experience with make-up and special effects, the movie pulls off many moments of operatic violence despite its microscopic budget and its two-and-a-half-hour runtime. This includes a moment so intense and notorious that it is known only as the “bedroom death” by those who have seen the movie.

Because of its brutality, Terrifier 2 became a theatrical hit, grossing $15.7 million against its $250,000 budget. It was able to pull off this achievement by garnering word of mouth thanks to stories of audience members falling ill while witnessing Art the Clown’s brutal violence, something that makes it the perfect modern horror offering to watch after In a Violent Nature.