10 Best Early '80s Slashers You've Never Heard Of

The early 1980s was the Golden Age of the slasher movie, with hit movies and cult classics like Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th Part 2, The Burning, Halloween II, and My Bloody Valentine dropping left and right, paving the way for many hundreds of cinematic killers wielding edged weapons. However, there are many hidden gems buried among the dozens of slashers that debuted between the beginning of 1980 and the end of 1983.

These 10 titles might be considerably more obscure than, say, the movie that introduced Jason Voorhees, but that doesn’t make them any less special or worth watching for a dedicated slasher fan.

10. Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

Dark Night of the Scarecrow was a CBS TV movie that channeled the slasher trend with the story of a mentally disabled man (Larry Drake of Darkman and Dr. Giggles) who is falsely accused of an assault and murdered by an angry mob while dressed as a scarecrow. The mob is then stalked by an ethereal scarecrow killer. While the standards and practices of network television prevent it from being particularly gory, it makes up for that with oodles of atmosphere and a cast packed with character actors, including Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman’s Lane Smith and Dog Day Afternoon’s Charles Durning.

9. Fantasies (1982)

Fantasies is another TV movie slasher that is well worth watching in spite of its bloodless kills. This plays like an especially good Lifetime movie, following the rich inner life of its female protagonist (the spectacular Suzanne Pleshette of The Birds and The Bob Newhart Show). The fact that said protagonist is a soap opera creator trying to keep her show on the rails when a killer begins targeting its stars also allows the movie to pack itself with cameos from notable soap stars of the 1970s and 1980s. The icons on the chopping block include Ryan’s Hope’s John Gabriel, The Young and the Restless’ Peter Bergman, and Santa Barbara’s Robin Mattson.

8. Deadly Lessons (1983)

Would you look at that, here comes another TV movie. There are plenty of bottom-of-the-barrel TV movie slashers, but the genre was at the height of its powers in the early 1980s, to the point that even network television couldn’t help but crack the formula time and again. This movie about a murderer striking at a girls’ school is jam-packed with notable names, including Donna Reed, Bill Paxton, Larry Wilcox, Ally Sheedy (two years before The Breakfast Club), Rick Rossovich (three years before Top Gun), and Nancy Cartwright (six years before The Simpsons).

7. The Queen of Black Magic (1981)

This Indonesian supernatural slasher stars international scream queen Suzzanna as a woman who is accused of witchcraft and kicked out of her village, which causes her to actually seek out knowledge of witchcraft and return to exact her revenge. This movie is beautifully shot and features some mind-bending special effects sequences that rival anything coming out of Hollywood in the early 1980s.

6. Exposed to Danger (1982)

‘Exposed to Danger’ (1982)Credit: Mill Creek Entertainment

Much like Fantasies, the Taiwanese movie Exposed to Danger (also known in English as Breakout from Oppression) is a horror movie answer to a typical “women’s picture.” After being wrongfully accused of murder and spending the better part of a decade in prison, Tien-Chi (Hsiao-Fen Lu) tries to rebuild her life in a small seaside town, only to find that she is being targeted by a mysterious killer. While the final 15 minutes or so randomly recreate the ending of Friday the 13th quite faithfully, the rest of the movie is completely original and its horror scenes pulse with a frantic energy that will have you on the edge of your seat.

5. 10 to Midnight (1983)

This campy slice of early ‘80s cheese is notable as the first and only slasher movie to star action icon Charles Bronson. This zany movie (which was helmed by J. Lee Thompson, who made the 1981 slasher classic Happy Birthday to Me) also notably features a killer stalking women while wearing nothing except for a pair of gloves. Now, you wouldn’t catch Jason doing that.

4. Madhouse/And When She Was Bad (1981)

This offbeat slasher was directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, who is perhaps best known as the executive producer who constantly clashed with James Cameron on the set of Piranha II: The Spawning after promoting the then-unknown filmmaker to director when he fired the previous director shortly before production. Madhouse follows a young teacher, Julia (Trish Everly), being stalked by her evil twin (Allison Biggers), who makes her life a living hell by siccing her giant dog on unsuspecting victims. In addition to featuring a killer with a particularly unusual M.O., this movie has one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in all of slasherdom, when she has to explain to her students that one of their classmates has been murdered.

3. Murder by Phone (1982)

And we’re back to TV movies! Murder by Phone follows in Madhouse’s footsteps by featuring a deeply bizarre weapon. In this case, it’s a machine that causes telephones to explode. As the leading man (Richard Chamberlain of The Towering Inferno), who randomly has a doctorate in ecology, races to stop the killer, viewers are treated to a series of deliciously over-the-top explosions. It’s a hard movie to dislike.

2. Till Death Do Us Part (1982)

‘Till Death Do Us Part’ (1982)Credit: Vestron Video International

The last and best TV movie on this list hails from Canada. Till Death to Us Part (which features a gaggle of Canadian horror character actors from movies like Videodrome, Happy Birthday to Me, and Visiting Hours) follows a group of couples who go on a retreat to receive a radical form of marriage counseling. The movie is playful, weird, and has a live-wire energy that makes it a delight from start to finish.

1. The Clairvoyant (1982)

The Killing Hour (1982) - Trailer HD 1080p www.youtube.com

While The Clairvoyant contains a scene of police brutality that is upsetting enough to deserve a content warning, that moment born from the same sensibility that otherwise makes it such a stunning slasher movie. It takes a no-holds-barred approach to depicting the horrifying scenes that pepper its engrossing story, which follows a clairvoyant woman (Elizabeth Kemp) who finds herself unconsciously drawing scenes of murders that are about to take place.

So, have you seen any of the hidden gem slashers on the list? If not, is there one in particular you’re curious to check out? Let us know in the comments below!