Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, Chucky, Ghostface, Leatherface… they are some of the most iconic villains in all of horror. With countless movies, TV shows, merchandise, and more blood spilled than you could fill a swimming pool with, even people who haven’t seen these movies will know exactly who they are. However, they aren’t the only people who deserve the iconic status.

In the three ages of slasher movies, (the beginnings in the sixties and seventies, the golden age in the eighties, and the meta ones of the 2000s) dozens upon dozens of slasher films have been made. It makes sense. They’re super cheap to make, don’t require a ton of effort, and they were major box office draws, especially in the eighties. As the opening text of the silly 1981 slasher parody movie Student Bodies states, “last year, 26 horror films were released. None of them lost money.”

RELATED:

Friday the 13th, Prom Night, Night of the Demon, New Year’s Evil, Terror Train… the list goes on and on. And, if Student Bodies is anything to go off of, none of them lost money.

On top of the kills, the most interesting part of any of the films is the killers. You don’t see a Nightmare on Elm Street for the gripping character dramas (ha) you see them for Freddy. However, limiting yourself to just the big guys is doing the rest of the industry a disservice. There have been far more interesting villains that belong in the pantheon of icons than they’re given credit for. Now, here I am to shed some light on these monsters and madmen, as they deserve. If you don’t see your favorite underrated villain on here, well… I can’t get all of them.

7. Angela Baker (Sleepaway Camp)

Sleepaway Camp as a whole isn’t a top-tier slasher. Like most of them, it has its ups and its downs. The acting can be a bit stilted, the dialogue weak, and some of the logic isn’t exactly airtight.

So, which slasher film did I just describe?

In any case, this one stands out to horror aficionados because, on the whole, the good does outweigh the bad in the original film. It has a plethora of sequels that are best left forgotten. One of the draws of this film compared to others like Friday the 13th is that actual campers are involved this time. It’s kids getting knocked off one at a time. The center of it all is Angela Baker, a quiet, demure camper who prefers to stay in the background and only really interacts comfortably with her protective cousin. As the film progresses, you feel more and more certain that Angela is the one killing people. However, we’re left with an ending so shocking that it might be in the running for one of the best endings… period. Not just in horror, but period. The final frame leaves you with your jaw hanging open, trying to comprehend what you’ve just seen.

Angela is the killer in most of the rest of the series, but by the second film, the horror aspect of the original is all but gone, replaced with plain silliness. Pamela Springsteen (sister of famous singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen) chews the scenery with a fork in every scene she’s in. You can tell she’s having a ball. Regardless of that, stick with the first film.

6. Blade (Puppet Master)

Forget Chucky, this is the real creepy doll. Puppet. Whatever. Now this one might be stretching a bit, seeing as how there are about a dozen Puppet Master films and Blade isn’t the only killer puppet in the film, nor even the leader, but he’s certainly the mascot of the series for the few who have seen them. The films themselves are extremely hit-and-miss (much like all slashers) and I wouldn’t call any of them “great” per se. However, it’s hard to deny how cool he looks, and out of all of the puppets, he’s certainly the most dangerous. His look is based on the deranged German actor Klaus Kinski, who might very well have been crazier than anyone on this list. Seriously. Look it up. That guy was a maniac. An interesting thing about Blade and the other puppets is that he’s not strictly evil. He follows the orders of whoever is in charge, and if that person is evil enough, he might find himself on the wrong end of a puppet betrayal. (Note to self, Puppet Betrayal for a band name.)

5. Mark Lewis (Peeping Tom)

Now we get to the killer in a film that should have been an instant classic, the proto-slasher Peeping Tom actually beat out Hitchcock’s Psycho in theaters by one month. The film, however, was so controversial that it destroyed the career of its director, Michael Powell. While not a slasher in the same way as Friday the 13th, it did lay a lot of groundwork for what the genre would eventually become. It’s unique in that its killer is also the protagonist. He knows that what he’s doing is wrong, but he can’t stop himself. The abuse he suffered at the hands of his father would damage anybody. You certainly sympathize with him, but at the same time, what he’s doing is evil. He has a halfway decent body count for an early killer, though they certainly weren’t bloody kills. If the film hadn’t suffered such controversy upon its release, we might be talking about Mark Lewis in the same conversation that we discuss Norman Bates.

4. Leslie Vernon (Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon)

A third-age slasher that is a fun deconstruction of the genre in a way that almost feels like Scream, Behind the Mask follows a wannabe up-and-coming serial killer who lives in a world where Michael, Jason, and Freddy, as well as all of the other slasher villains, especially the ones from the eighties, are real people who view what they do as more of a hobby or a job than anything else. It has its callbacks like any good third-age slasher (for example, Kane Hodder, the best Jason, is seen walking into the house from A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Leslie has a mentor that is vaguely implied to be a killer from further down this list. He has a documentary crew follow him around as he prepares for his first night of slaughter of a group of teenagers having a party. The great part is that Leslie Vernon is such a fun, affable guy, that both you and the documentary crew almost forget that he’s preparing to graphically murder several people. However, once the big night comes, he turns into a scary, threatening force. The exact implications of what is going on finally starting to sink in, and actor Nathan Baesel perfectly pulls off the switch. If you haven’t seen this movie, definitely give it a shot.

3. Harry Warden/The Miner (My Bloody Valentine)

This one gets points for the coolest costume. The gas mask he’s wearing almost makes him look like an inhuman figure, which adds to the terror. It’s hard to remember that there’s an actual human being underneath that gas mask. Like any good slasher villain, whenever you see him on screen, somebody’s gonna die, and it’s gonna be bloody. Like a lot of masked killers in the genre, there’s a lot of mystery around the character that makes him fascinating as well as scary, and the eventual reveal is great. He’s creepy and suitably deranged. Oh, and he has a song written about him in the film which, as the kids say today… I think, slaps. (Is that the word? I feel like that’s the word the kids are using.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuY7GsM6tvE (Author’s note: not sure how to get that video into the article, but trust me, it’s fantastic)

2. Mick Taylor (Wolf Creek)

The antagonist of the underrated Wolf Creek, his Australian serial killer is based on a handful of real-life Aussie killers, most notably Ivan Milat, AKA The Backpack Killer. John Jarratt (who hosted a gardening show before taking this role) plays Mick to absolute perfection. His laugh alone is enough to cause nightmares.

No, really. One of the lead actresses for the film said that Taylor’s laugh, which John Jarratt reportedly took four months to get right, actually gave her nightmares.

When we first meet Mick, he’s like a more grizzled Crocodile Dundee. He’s friendly and helpful enough, but at the same time, there’s always a slight twinge that this guy is a bit… off. Then the weapons come out, and we get to see who this guy really is. The Wolf Creek series, which included two movies with a third reportedly on the way and two seasons of a TV show, has had its successes, but on the whole, this film doesn’t get nearly as much love as it should. Mick Taylor has all of the trappings of being one of the icons of the horror genre. Maybe if the film had been released twenty years earlier.

1. Billy (Black Christmas)

Pretty much everything that Halloween is praised for, Black Christmas did first… and better. Billy is a hundred times scarier than Michael. Fight me. In fact, in terms of scariness, I’d put Billy at the level or above most of the iconic slasher villains. The only one who might match up is prime Freddy. Long take from the perspective of the killer to open the film? Black Christmas. Holiday slasher? Black Christmas. The shadowy figure that could always be somewhere, but often you don’t get a good look at him? Black Christmas. Score? Uh… well, I’ll give that one to Halloween.

Billy is a chatty killer done right. He’s not cracking jokes, he’s not saying goofy things, and what he’s ranting about is just unnerving. Sometimes you can barely make out what he’s saying at all. You know nothing about him and by the end of the movie (uh, spoilers for an almost fifty-year-old slasher film, I guess) we still don’t know much of anything about him. Heck, Billy probably isn’t even his name. It’s just a name that was thrown out a couple of times during his insane rants.

Naturally, we’re ignoring the remake that decides to give the character a detailed backstory, thereby ruining most of what made him scary, which is totally the first time that’s ever happened in a horror movie, right guys?

The genius of the character is that on the rare occasions we do see him, he’s shrouded in shadow, save for a visible left eye. His being a hulking mass of shadow makes him seem like a monster out of your nightmares, but the eye shows that there is some level of humanity to him. He’s remorseless, he’s insane, and he has no mercy or kindness, but at the end of the day, he’s still unmistakably a human being. The idea that a person, any person, could do something like the things that Billy does is a frightening thought all on its own.

His kills are much more raw and visceral than Michael’s, though they still take the same route as Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Psycho where the camerawork makes you feel like you’re seeing more than you really are at times. And, unlike the rest of the pantheon of iconic killers, Billy didn’t get an ever-increasing number of sequels to dilute the character. He’s a perfect horror movie villain, even beyond slashers.

To make a full list of great, underrated slasher villains would be a monumental task. There are so many out there that a whole book could be written about them instead of a top seven listicle. This article was harder to write than I thought it would be.

READ NEXT:

Join The Team

Top 7 Underrated Slasher Villains

5 Interesting Facts About Quinlan Vos

5 Things From ‘Star Wars’ Legends That Made Their Way Into Canon