"""The Town That Dreaded Sundown"" became an influential on some antagonist in many other horror films with the sack mask he wears. The same type of mask was used on Jason Voorhees in ""Friday the 13th Part 2"", and on one of the killers in ""The Strangers"". In 1978, the influential horror film ""Halloween"" introduced the iconic Michael Myers. One of the earliest 1980s horror icon is Jason Voorhees from ""Friday the 13th"" franchise. Jason is featured in all of the films, as the killer or the motivation for the killings. Freddy Krueger from the hugely influential ""A Nightmare on"
"The Toolbox Murders The Toolbox Murders is a 1978 crime mystery slasher thriller film directed by Dennis Donnelly, and written by Ann Kindberg, Robert Easter, and Neva Friedenn. The film was marketed as being a dramatization of a true story, and was briefly banned in the early 1980s in the United Kingdom. A man dressed in black drives through Los Angeles and flashes back to a girl dying in a car accident. The man arrives at an apartment complex and kills a female tenant (who recognizes him) with a drill. Afterward, the man dons a ski mask and murders two"
"Halloween (1978 film) Halloween is a 1978 American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut. The film tells the story of serial killer Michael Myers as he stalks and kills teenage babysitters on Halloween night, fifteen years after he murdered his teenage sister, Judith Myers. Having escaped a sanitarium, he returns home to the sleepy town of Haddonfield, Illinois while being pursued by his psychiatrist Samuel Loomis. Michael stalks high school student Laurie Strode and her friends as they babysit and carries"
"plans embedded in a microchip in her forehead, but is chased by the gangster's henchmen. The local police chief, Capt. Gallagher (Lazenby), gets put on the case and assigns an investigator, martial arts expert Detective Ash (Kelly). Death Dimension Death Dimension (also known as ""Death Dimensions"", ""Freeze Bomb"", ""Icy Death"", ""The Kill Factor"", and ""Black Eliminator"") is a 1978 American B-list action thriller and martial arts film by Al Adamson starring Jim Kelly, Harold Sakata, George Lazenby, Terry Moore, and Aldo Ray. The story is about a scientist, Dr. Mason (T.E. Foreman), who invents a powerful freezing bomb for a"
"The Manitou The Manitou is a 1978 American horror film produced and directed by William Girdler. It stars Tony Curtis, Michael Ansara and Susan Strasberg. It was based on the 1976 novel by Graham Masterton, which was inspired by an old legend about the American Indian Manitou spiritual concept. Girdler died in a helicopter accident prior to the movie's release. A woman named Karen (Strasberg), who is suffering from a growing tumor on her neck, enters a hospital in San Francisco. After a series of X-rays, the doctors begin to think it is a living creature: a fetus being born"
"Death Dimension Death Dimension (also known as ""Death Dimensions"", ""Freeze Bomb"", ""Icy Death"", ""The Kill Factor"", and ""Black Eliminator"") is a 1978 American B-list action thriller and martial arts film by Al Adamson starring Jim Kelly, Harold Sakata, George Lazenby, Terry Moore, and Aldo Ray. The story is about a scientist, Dr. Mason (T.E. Foreman), who invents a powerful freezing bomb for a gangster leader nicknamed ""The Pig"" (Sakata). Mason changes his mind and kills himself in order to not let his secret fall into the hands of the Pig. The scientist's assistant Felicia (Patch Mackenzie) runs away with the"
"kill. In the first film, Craven wore the costume during the opening murder scene where the character is struck by a phone and by Ulrich only once during a finale scene where the character prepares to murder Randy. Despite Stu wearing the costume in the film, actor Lillard never actually wore the outfit. ""Scream 2"" features a slightly redesigned version of the mask from the ""Fearsome Faces"" line, possessing slightly-altered eyes and an indented chin. Following ""Scream 2"", the Ghostface mask became part of the ""Ghostface"" line of masks featuring several variations of the design including glow-in-the-dark models. The plain,"
"the smell of his basement / Where we watched Faces of Death, and we regretted it"". Faces of Death Faces of Death (also released more recently as The Original Faces of Death) is a 1978 American mondo horror film directed by Conan LeCilaire and written by Alan Black. The film guides viewers through graphic scenes depicting a variety of ways to die and violent acts. The movie was written by John Alan Schwartz (credited as ""Alan Black"" for writing) and directed by Conan LeCilaire (also John Alan Schwartz). Schwartz also took credit as second unit director, this time as ""Johnny"
"Nightmare in Blood Nightmare in Blood is a 1978 American horror film directed by professional late night television horror movie host, and writer, John Stanley. Attendees at a horror-film convention in San Francisco keep disappearing. It turns out that the guest of honor is a real vampire, and his henchmen are kidnapping the convention guests. A horror writer, a Sherlock Holmes fan and an Israeli Nazi-hunter set out to stop him. Primary filming occurred at the Fox Oakland Theatre in Oakland, California. The Fox was renamed the ""Palace"" in the film. The film ran in the drive-in theater circuit for"
"A remake was released in 2007, directed by Rob Zombie, which itself was followed by a 2009 sequel. An eleventh installment was released in the United States in 2018. The film, directed by David Gordon Green, is a direct sequel to the original film while disregarding the previous sequels from canon, and retconing the ending of the first film. A sequel is in early development. Halloween (1978 film) Halloween is a 1978 American slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with producer Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut. The film"
"The film series is ranked second at the United States box office—in adjusted 2008 dollars—when compared to other American horror series. Both the original film and the 2018 sequel have received critical praise, while the other films have received mixed or negative reviews. The original ""Halloween"" (1978), co-written and directed by John Carpenter, tells the story of Michael Myers as he stalks and kills teenage babysitters on Halloween night. The film begins with six-year-old Michael (Will Sandin) killing his older sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) on Halloween night 1963 in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. He is subsequently hospitalized at"
"Black Mamba (film) Black Mamba is a 1974 horror film starring John Ashley. A doctor gets involved with a woman who practices witchcraft and can turn into a python. She intends for a young child to be her next victim. The doctor tries to stop her. It is notorious for depicting an autopsy performed on a real human corpse. A real corpse was exhumed from one of the local prisons and used on film. ""It is a wild film,"" said Ashley, """"very graphic, very gory."" The film was originally known as ""Witchcraft"". Ashley said it co-starred one of the top"
"colors were the most clashing colors to the human retina. Craven strove to make Krueger different from other horror film villains of the era. ""A lot of the killers were wearing masks: Leatherface, Michael Myers, Jason,"" he recalled in 2014. ""I wanted my villain to have a mask, but be able to talk and taunt and threaten. So I thought of him being burned and scarred."" He also felt the killer should use something other than a knife because it was too common. ""So I thought, 'How about a glove with steak knives?' I gave the idea to our special"
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 film) Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1978 American science fiction horror film directed by Philip Kaufman, and starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy. Released on December 22, 1978, it is a remake of ""Invasion of the Body Snatchers"" (1956), which is based on the novel ""The Body Snatchers"" by Jack Finney. The plot involves a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague who discover that humans are being replaced by alien duplicates; each is a perfect copy of the person replaced, only devoid of human emotion."
"more on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory in the United States and Canada in 2016. This release contains a 2K scan of the interpositive. The Chicago Film Critics Association named it the 59th scariest film ever made. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 film) Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a 1978 American science fiction horror film directed by Philip Kaufman, and starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum and Leonard Nimoy. Released on December 22, 1978, it is a remake of ""Invasion of the Body Snatchers"" (1956), which is based on the novel ""The Body Snatchers"" by Jack"
"The Sleeper (film) The Sleeper is a 2012 horror film written and directed by Justin Russell. In 1979, a giggling man with milky white eyes (credited as ""The Sleeper"") breaks into a bedroom in the Alpha Gamma Theta sorority house in the middle of the night, killing a resident with a hammer. Two years later, the sorority is organizing a party to welcome new pledges, an event that prompts the return of the Sleeper, who has been living on the campus in secret, spying on the Alpha Gamma Thetas, and threatening them over the phone. On the day of the"
"car-accident. Mansion of the Doomed Mansion of the Doomed (UK theatrical title: The Terror of Dr. Chaney; also known as ""Massacre Mansion"", ""Eyes of Dr. Chaney"" and ""House of Blood"") is a 1976 American horror film directed by Michael Pataki and starring Richard Basehart and Gloria Grahame. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. An insane surgeon finds himself cutting up people for their eyeballs in the hope of performing transplants on his daughter who lost her own in"
"by William Friedkin and starring the young Linda Blair. The film saw massive success, and the first of several sequels was released in 1977. 1976 brought the equally creepy suspense thriller, ""Marathon Man"", about a man who becomes the target of a former Nazi dentist's torment after his brother dies. The same year, the Devil himself made an appearance in ""The Omen"", about the spawn of Satan. 1978's ""Halloween"" was a precursor to the ""slasher"" films of the 1980s and 1990s with its psychopathic Michael Myers. Cult horror films were also popular in the 1970s, such as Wes Craven's early"
"slasher films, most prominently in the parody film ""Scary Movie"" (2000) where a killer dressed as Ghostface commits a series of murders and is later revealed to be several people as in ""Scream""; this parodic version of Ghostface later appears in the June 1, 2016 ""Erma"" comic strip, named ""Prank Call"", wherein the character is making prank calls whilst quoting ""Scream"", alongside the series' titular character. In the parody film ""Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth"" (2000), a killer wearing a Jason Voorhees-style hockey mask is set on fire, his mask melting to resemble that"
"and ""The Wicker Man"" (1973). This episode includes interviews with writer-producer Anthony Hinds, writer-director Jimmy Sangster, director Roy Ward Baker, Barbara Steele, star of ""Black Sunday"" (1960), director-producer Roger Corman, director Piers Haggard, John Carpenter again, and actors Barbara Shelley and David Warner. Also included are archive interviews with Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. In the third and final episode, Gatiss looks at American horror movies of the late 1960s and 1970s, including ""Night Of The Living Dead"" (1968) and ""The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"" (1974). As well as the emergence of slasher films, Gatiss examines the other great horror"
"that John Carpenter made in 1978, but instead ""[codified] the formula"" of ""Halloween"", and ""[boiled] it down to its essentials"" so that it could be copied by other filmmakers. In his assessment, ""Friday the 13th"" changed the horror genre by purposefully not providing back‑stories for characters so that when the audience witnessed a character's death, they are ""strangely unaffected"". Instead, ""Friday the 13th"" focuses on the history and motivations of the killer, who would exact revenge not on the people directly responsible, but on innocent people—a formula Karnick notes was replicated in ""A Nightmare on Elm Street"", ""Child's Play"", ""Scream"","
"Mansion of the Doomed Mansion of the Doomed (UK theatrical title: The Terror of Dr. Chaney; also known as ""Massacre Mansion"", ""Eyes of Dr. Chaney"" and ""House of Blood"") is a 1976 American horror film directed by Michael Pataki and starring Richard Basehart and Gloria Grahame. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. An insane surgeon finds himself cutting up people for their eyeballs in the hope of performing transplants on his daughter who lost her own in a"
"""Wet Wilderness"". Come Deadly Come Deadly is a 1974 pornographic horror film written and directed by Gil Kenston. A man wearing a wide-brimmed hat, white gloves, and a stocking over his face rapes a woman, then smothers her. Two weeks later, as her cast mates are rehearsing for William Shakespeare's ""The Taming of the Shrew"", Ann is raped and strangled by the same man in the loft above the theatre. Thinking the killer could strike this particular theatre again, Detective Winston Rains goes undercover as the play's leading man in an effort to catch him. Rains walks Julie home after"
"Savage Weekend Savage Weekend is a 1979 American slasher film directed by David Paulsen and starring Christopher Allport, David Gale, William Sanderson, and Caitlin O'Heaney. The film follows a woman who retreats to upstate New York with her wealthy boyfriend, her sister, and friend, only to be stalked by a killer in a disfigured mask. Filmed in 1976 as The Killer Behind the Mask, the film was also titled The Upstate Murders before being released in 1979 by Cannon Films. It has been cited as an early prototype for the slasher film, predating both ""Halloween"" and ""Friday the 13th"". Falling"
"Faces of Death Faces of Death (also released more recently as The Original Faces of Death) is a 1978 American mondo horror film directed by Conan LeCilaire and written by Alan Black. The film guides viewers through graphic scenes depicting a variety of ways to die and violent acts. The movie was written by John Alan Schwartz (credited as ""Alan Black"" for writing) and directed by Conan LeCilaire (also John Alan Schwartz). Schwartz also took credit as second unit director, this time as ""Johnny Getyerkokov"". He also appears in one of the segments of the film, as the leader of"
"film trend of the era, the theme of Satanism and demonic possession in films such as ""Rosemary's Baby"" (1968), ""The Exorcist"" (1973) and ""The Omen"" (1976). This episode includes interviews with writer David Seltzer and directors Tobe Hooper and George A. Romero, who also made ""Martin"" (1978), another personal favourite which Gatiss considers neglected. Gatiss meets David Warner, Barbara Steele and John Carpenter again, accompanying Carpenter on a tour of the set locations for ""Halloween"" (1978). He also visits the Bates Motel, the set location for Alfred Hitchcock's ""Psycho"" (1960). The series was followed in October 2012 by ""Horror Europa"","
"Scared to Death (1981 film) Scared to Death, also known as The Aberdeen Experiment and Scared to Death: Syngenor (DVD sleeve re-title), is a 1980 B horror/science fiction film directed by William Malone and starring John Stinson. A monster stalks Los Angeles as a Bio-Engineered creature called a Syngenor (which stands for SYNthesized GENetic ORgansism) takes refuge in the city's sewer system and then hits the streets at night in search of human spinal fluid. The only person who stands in the way of the creature's unstoppable killing spree is Ted Londergan, a former detective turned Private Investigator. When he"
"making. “We’d be sitting around thinking of ways to kill a zombie.” These ways include stabbing one in the ear with a screwdriver, and cutting one’s head to pieces with a helicopter’s rotors. ""Halloween"" (1978) and sequels ""Friday the 13th"" (1980) and sequels ""The Howling"" (1981) With its full on screen transformation and a scene where Eddie Quist gets acid flung into his face before a transformation, this movie shows the human body realistically distorted, and mutilated in the case of the acid, in a way new to film at the time. ""An American Werewolf in London"" (1981) Released in"
"nearly a decade and had a wide VHS release in the 1980s. In 2004, Image Entertainment released the film on DVD. It had its broadcast premiere with a national syndicated showing on Mr. Lobo's ""Cinema Insomnia"". Nightmare in Blood Nightmare in Blood is a 1978 American horror film directed by professional late night television horror movie host, and writer, John Stanley. Attendees at a horror-film convention in San Francisco keep disappearing. It turns out that the guest of honor is a real vampire, and his henchmen are kidnapping the convention guests. A horror writer, a Sherlock Holmes fan and an"
"The Hatter's Ghost The Hatter's Ghost () is a 1982 film directed by Claude Chabrol. It is based on the 1947 story ""Le Petit Tailleur et le Chapelier"" by Georges Simenon. It takes place in Brittany and was shot in the towns of Concarneau and Quimper. Labbé, a hatter in a French provincial town, appears to lead the life of a respectable citizen but is in fact a serial murderer. The only person to suspect this is his neighbour, Kachoudas, an Armenian tailor. After Labbé kills his own wife, he kills six of her friends to stop them from visiting"
"Haunted (1977 film) Haunted (also released as The Haunted) is a 1977 American independent horror film written and directed by Michael DeGaetano and starring Aldo Ray, Virginia Mayo, and Ann Michelle. Its plot follows the descendants of those who accused a witch in Arizona during the Civil War, who are subjected to inexplicable deaths. ""Haunted"" was filmed on location in Arizona over a period of 24 days on a budget of $250,000. According to writer-director De Gaetano, budgeting issues necessitated that portions of the script be un-filmed, resulting in ""a good deal of the philosophical depth of the film"" disappearing."
"death. Linda walks up to the dead killer and removes his helmet, revealing him to be Bubba. The killings now over, Doc walks away with the traumatized Linda. Prior to directing the film, writer and director Terry Lofton was a stuntman on ""The Dukes of Hazzard"" in the 1980s. The film was released on VHS by Magnum Entertainment. Lofton later produced a making-of the film in 2005 titled ""Nail"". It was released on DVD by Synapse in 2005. ""TV Guide"" was given one out of four stars rating. In his book overviewing of splatter films of the 1980s, Scott Aaron"
"Leatherface Leatherface is a main character in ""The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"" series of horror films and spin-offs created by Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper. He wears masks made of human skin (hence his name) and engages in murder and cannibalism, alongside his insane family. Leatherface appeared in the original film in 1974 and also in its six subsequent continuations and the remake. Wisconsin killer Ed Gein, who wore a mask made of human skin, was reportedly the inspiration for elements in the original film. He is considered the main antagonist of the franchise because of his presence in all films,"