Scholars and fans will forever argue about the slasher movie’s origins, particularly which films deserve credit for establishing the genre before Halloween. What’s indisputable, however, is the seismic impact John Carpenter’s seminal slasher had on horror: Michael Myers’ inaugural round of trick-or-treating might not have been the first of its kind, but it was the one that inspired filmmakers everywhere to take note. Major studios, regional upstarts, and grindhouse hucksters alike were united in the cause of cashing in on Carpenter’s phenomenon over the next decade. While many of these productions (like Friday the 13th) carved their niche into the splatter scene, others were more brazen about exploiting the night he came home. Much like the knock-off merchandise that adorns dollar store shelves during Halloween, these films aren’t quite the real thing, but they’re charming all the same.
Absurd (1981)
When Joe D’Amato and George Eastman hatched a spiritual sequel to the gore-soaked shocker Anthropophagus, they turned to Halloween for inspiration. Eastman is Mikos Tanoupoulos, a homicidal Vatican experiment who escapes confinement to terrorize a small town on Super Bowl Sunday. While his imposing stature and lucid backstory make Mikos less furtive and enigmatic than The Shape, the effect is similar, especially once he targets a babysitter and some kids who think he’s the boogeyman—all while a priest follows in pursuit, insisting he’s pure evil incarnate. You’ve seen this before, only with more subtlety and meticulous craftsmanship since comparisons to Halloween begin and end with the plot. Beating Rob Zombie to the punch by 25 years, D’Amato unleashes Eastman’s mammoth Myers clone with a blunt force trauma approach, staging brutal carnage involving power drills, scissors, and ovens for 90 gut-spilling minutes. Absurd might not match the infamous, fetus-munching delirium of Anthropophagus, but it’s a more consistently engaging splatter show that helped to usher in a notorious era of Italian schlock that thrived on exploiting American hits.
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain AKA Nightmare (1981)
At first glance, Romano Scavolini’s jaunt on the sleazoid express isn’t an obvious Halloween riff. A fractured, impressionistic portrait of madness, it finds reformed maniac George Tatum (Baird Stafford) relapsing when he visits a 42nd Street peep show after being released from a psychiatric ward. Cryptic visions of murder and mayhem haunt him as he grabs a car and embarks on a trip down south, and it becomes abundantly clear that, like Michael Myers before him, he’s headed home, where a family lives in his old house. Crossing state lines instead of county lines, Scavolini cuts between George’s southbound murder spree and the family’s exploits, particularly those of devious, prankster son C.J., whose Halloween masks come in handy during the topsy-turvy climax. A true Video Nasty, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain is infected with a psychotronic madness that weaves graphic violence through sexual trauma. Forget one horrific night—this is the week George came home, and your mind will never be wired the same way after witnessing it.
Silent Rage (1982)
“What if Chuck Norris played Sheriff Brackett in Halloween?” is the pitch for Silent Rage, even if director Michael Miller insists Frankenstein was his true inspiration. Let’s consider the facts, though: it opens with a disturbed man inexplicably brutalizing a family at a boarding house before Sheriff Dan Stevens (Norris) and his men nearly shoot him to death. He’s transported to an institute, where a medical team sees him as a perfect guinea pig for an experimental formula that bolsters cellular regeneration. It all goes predictably awry when the invulnerable, mute maniac regains consciousness and escapes the facility to wreak havoc in town. An assortment of POV shots and eerie synth music accompany gory stalk-and-slash sequences in suburbia and a hospital, making Silent Rage a sort of Cliff’s Notes version of Halloween and its first sequel. While Frankenstein was an inspiration, the shadow of The Shape looms just as large. If anything, its ungainly structure earns comparisons to Shelly’s novel since it’s a typical Norris vehicle, sporting biker gang brawls and a romantic subplot haphazardly grafted onto the era’s slasher movie fare, creating a cinematic Frankenstein like no other.
Sorority House Massacre (1986)
Roger Corman never met a trend that he couldn’t capitalize upon. Carol Frank’s Sorority House Massacre was his second stab at Halloween, arriving four years after The Slumber Party Massacre. To its credit, this is a two-for-one deal: in addition to rehashing the story of an escaped lunatic returning home, it also evokes the dream logic of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies when Beth (Angela O’Neill) moves into a sorority house and has recurring visions about her family’s murder. Somehow, these repressed memories inspire Bobby (John C. Russell) to escape an institution and head straight to the sorority house. Halloween déjà vu lingers, with entire scenes lifted before the climax reveals the obvious familial connection between Beth and Bobby. A film whose inelegance is reflected by its serial killer’s slipshod appearance (he’s less “The Shape” and more “disheveled dude”), Sorority House Massacre finds some charm in its fun group of sorority sisters, whose bubbly interplay imagines a world where Carpenter’s immortal classic sports a montage of gal pals hanging out and dressing up to mall muzak.
Offerings (1989)
When Michael Myers returned in 1988, he brought a resurgence in Halloween knock-offs with him. Arguably the most notorious spawned from the no-budget depths of Oklahoma, where writer/director Christopher Reynolds thoroughly committed to the bit with Offerings. Eerily familiar opening credits—complete with an amateur Casio score that’s a few notes removed from Carpenter’s iconic synth stylings—herald a film that’s more than mere homage. Where most Halloween imitators borrow its structure and a couple of scenes, Offerings continually draws comparisons to Carpenter’s film and its slasher contemporaries. A prologue melds the “disturbed kid” and prank-gone-wrong tropes when some bullies shove the weird, mute, and possibly homicidal John Radley down a well. Left comatose and disfigured, he spends ten years institutionalized until he awakens and returns home seeking vengeance. As John retraces The Shape’s steps, Offerings takes the audience along for a familiar ride, serving up half-eaten animal carcasses, disturbed gravesites, and ominous classroom lectures on fate as the psycho’s doctor follows in pursuit. Reynolds offers one clever wrinkle, though: each time Radley dispatches a victim, he sends their body parts along to Gretchen, his only childhood friend. Let’s just say you’ll think twice about eating sausage pizza again after watching Offerings.
HauntedWeen (1991)
Halloween knock-offs are a dime a dozen, but this homespun, Kentucky-fried effort is the only one that hails from John Carpenter’s hometown of Bowling Green. Hatched by Doug Robertson, this 16mm odyssey reimagines Carpenter’s classic as a hayseed haunt. On Halloween night in 1970, Eddie Burber isn’t old enough to participate in his family’s annual haunted house attraction, which doesn’t stop him from sneaking in through a crawlspace and accidentally impaling a girl. He also decapitates her for good measure, forcing him and his dear old mom to live in hillbilly exile until her death 20 years later when her loving son takes her corpse home. As fate would have it, a local fraternity looks to hold a “Fundraiser Hellraiser” in the Burber House, where Eddie is eager to resume his carnage. Hauntedween charms with the sheer force of personality: even before it treats you to the idiosyncratic, ramshackle delight of a backyard Halloween haunt’s dime store masks and food coloring blood, it wins you over with its charismatic good old boys. Sigma Pi’s mullets, Survivor t-shirts, and thick Southern drawls glimpse into a world where someone’s cool older brother and his buds put on a community theater rendition of Halloween at a kegger circa 1985.
