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)

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