10 Essential Early '80s Slashers Streaming For Free On Tubi

This article has spoilers for many of the 1980s' slasher movies discussed.

The slasher subgenre of horror movies burst onto the scene in the early 1980s in the wake of John Carpenter’s 1978 juggernaut Halloween and the first Friday the 13th. While slashers have continued into the present day, and many of the more modern titles have become instant classics in their own right, there’s nothing quite like the first wave of '80s slashers. With their final girls, gory practical effects, and whodunit narratives, the tropes seen in these films would go on to inspire the groundbreaking Scream franchise and other meta-slasher horror comedies.

For horror fans who might be new to the slasher subgenre, or for more seasoned fans looking for a rewatch, Tubi offers several titles from the early wave of slasher movies. From underrated gems to some of the most infamous titles ever produced, the free streaming service has a little something for everyone.

10 Pieces (1982)

Directed By Juan Piquer Simón

Pieces isn’t exactly a good movie, but it’s one of the most entertaining so-bad-it’s-good movies out there. A black-clad killer goes on a rampage on a college campus, hacking up co-eds with a chainsaw and other weapons. The film features a college student protagonist, Kendall, who is inexplicably loved by the local police force — with one cop proclaiming he trusts the kid with is life. The love and admiration they have for Kendall, who doesn’t prove himself to be exceptional in any way, is just one of the many absurd quirks Pieces offers viewers.

With numerous quotable moments, questionable acting choices, unforgettable line deliveries, and, of course, plenty of gratuitous violence, Pieces delivers the goods. The movie also contains one of the most wild and nonsensical endings ever conceived; it’s certain to send audience members into hysterics. Perfect for a party, or for anyone looking for a bloody good laugh.

9 Hell Night (1981)

Directed By Tom DeSimone

Starring Linda Blair in one of her post-The Exorcist horror movie roles, Hell Night follows a group of Greek pledges who stay the night in an abandoned mansion where a man murdered his entire family years before. Naturally, someone — or something — starts picking the students off one by one. Paced well and featuring some solid jolts, Hell Night gets the job done when it comes to the slasher basics, but it’s also unique for utilizing elements of the haunted house narrative.

Blair’s Marti is an interesting character, as she comes from a lower-class background, setting her at odds with her wealthy classmates. She discusses the differences between their classes with Jeff, Marti’s love interest and one of the few of his ilk that doesn’t seem to enjoy fraternity life all that much. This theme of class disparity isn’t explored as deeply as one might hope, but its very presence in the film makes Hell Night an interesting entry into the slasher canon.

8 Happy Birthday To Me (1981)

Directed By J. Lee Thompson

Helmed by J. Lee Thompson, director of the original 1962 Cape Fear, Happy Birthday to Me features an oddball plot focusing on teenage members of an exclusive school clique getting killed off by an unseen murderer. Unseen, that is, until the film reveals the killer a little after the middle of the film, then subverts that reveal with a wild, albeit implausible, final act twist. It’s altogether a satisfying end to one of the more unique slashers to emerge during the first wave of films.

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The poster for Happy Birthday to Me gives away one of the movie’s most inventive kills, involving a shish kebab skewer, though the decision to include the image on promotional materials made the poster just as iconic as the scene itself. And while the shish kebab scene might be the film’s most memorable moment, it’s not the only gnarly murder the movie has to offer.

7 Terror Train (1980)

Directed By Roger Spottiswood

Starring venerable scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis, who belts out a few of her trademark blood-curdling shrieks in the film, Terror Train makes excellent use of its often claustrophobic locomotive setting. Viewers can really feel the proverbial noose tighten around Curtis’s character’s neck as the killer, who mostly wears a Groucho Marx costume, slashes his way through her friends aboard the train.

Like some other films of the early slasher era, Terror Train dips its toes into transphobic waters. It turns out the killer has been disguising himself as a magician’s female assistant in order to maneuver through the crowd largely unnoticed. While this depiction isn’t as offensive as that of other movies — the female disguise is just another illusion performed by the magic-obsessed killer — it still unintentionally equates gender-bending with psychotic murderousness.

6 The Prowler (1981)

Directed By Joseph Zito

The Prowler isn’t discussed as much as some of its slasher companions, but it’s an underrated gem worth checking out, particularly for the absolutely nasty gore effects from “The Sultan of Splatter”, Tom Savini. Director Joseph Zito would go on to helm Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter three years later, but his chops as an expert slasher director are on full display here. He crafts a brutal, often intense, and altogether satisfying film that never fails to entertain.

The masked killer, dressed in full World War II-era combat fatigues, dispatches his victims with the cold ferocity of a trained soldier. He is dispassionate and indiscriminate in his killing, neither enjoying it nor hating it. It’s just a job that must be done. This gritty quality to the many murder scenes, combined with the ultra-realistic effects Savini is known for, makes them all the more disquieting. This makes the titular villain of The Prowler one of the best slasher villains of all time.

5 The Burning (1981)

Directed By Tony Maylam

Another in a long line of slasher films featuring the effects work of Tom Savini, The Burning also boasts a few big-name actors making their screen debuts — namely, Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Holly Hunter. It’s also notable for being the first writing and producing credit of Harvey Weinstein, who rode the slasher wave to fame and fortune, and later spurred the #MeToo movement with his vile actions.

Those who have seen it know it is hands down one of the most gruesome '80s horror movie death scenes, and a fine showcase of Savini’s bloody work

Apart from the cast and crew, The Burning also gained infamy for one particular scene, in which a number of the teenage characters are slaughtered on a raft by the film’s slasher, a garden sheers-wielding burnt man named Cropsy hell-bent on revenge. Those who have seen it know it is hands down one of the most gruesome '80s horror movie death scenes, and a fine showcase of Savini’s bloody work.

4 Prom Night (1980)

Directed By Paul Lynch

Jamie Lee Curtis screams and screams again in Prom Night, a good old-fashioned whodunit in which the principal characters being stalked and killed hold a terrible secret from their past. The violence here is a bit more subdued, save for a few memorable kills sprinkled throughout. Prom Night is perhaps more famous for its disco dance numbers, in which Curtis out-steps her partner by leaps and bounds. The scenes are a perfect time capsule of the era, and part of what makes Prom Night so endearing.

Naturally, the real draw here is Curtis’s performance as Kim, the film’s final girl. Curtis always brings a sense of affability to these characters, and Kim is no exception. Audiences have no trouble rooting for her survival as the bodies pile up around her and the ski-masked killer closes in. Unfortunately, there isn’t much chance for Curtis and the villain to go to toe, as she does in Halloween and other slasher films, before the killer is unmasked and dispatched.

3 Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Directed By Robert Hiltzik

It’s impossible to discuss Sleepaway Camp without addressing its infamous and controversial twist ending, in which it’s revealed that the film’s protagonist, Angela, is not only the killer, but in fact biologically a male. Turns out, Angela’s demented Aunt Martha forced Angela to adopt a girl’s persona at a young age, and this gender confusion manifests itself as a desire to kill anyone who wrongs Angela or gets too close to their secret. It’s by and large one of the most unforgettable horror movie twist endings in history.

Critics and horror fans alike are divided on whether the ending of Sleepaway Camp is transphobic or not, though some positive assessments assert that the film is an over-the-top warning against forcing individuals to conform to gender and sexual identities they don’t actually identify with, making the film perversely pro-trans in its messaging. After all, the surreally cartoonish and selfish Aunt Martha is the film’s true villain, a figure more horrifying than any ghastly deeds committed by Angela, of which there are many.

2 Maniac (1980)

Directed By William Lustig

One of the grimiest slashers ever made, Maniac eschews a whodunit narrative by focusing its attention on the killer, Frank Zito, as he hunts and kills women on the streets of New York City. The film is instantly unpleasant in this way, but brilliantly so, as it becomes more of a psychological study of a twisted mind, seen from the killer’s point of view. Still, going along with Zito for his nightly work is difficult to watch, and viewers aren’t terribly sad when he meets his inevitable end.

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The effects work by Tom Savini is as gnarly as ever here, with one particularly memorable moment occurring early in Maniac, when a character played by Savini gets his head exploded by a shotgun blast to the face. The other highlight is the film’s finale, in which the ghosts of Zito’s victims tear the killer to pieces, which echoes Savini’s work on Dawn of the Dead and other zombie movies.

1 The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Directed By Amy Jones

Written by noted feminist activist Rita Mae Brown and one of the few slashers to be directed by a woman, Amy Jones, The Slumber Party Massacre is a deadpan, self-aware slasher movie, full of meta jokes and characters who seem to know they’re in a horror movie. It subverts many of the slasher tropes throughout, but its most notable subversion is the absence of a final girl; there are several survivors in the film, all of whom get to triumph over the driller killer in the end.

In this way, The Slumber Party Massacre avoids singling out one woman as more virtuous, and therefore more deserving of survival, than all of her peers. The horror film also subverts the “sex equals death” rule of the slasher film by largely removing the subject from the conversation. The killer isn’t enraged by promiscuous women exclusively — he hates and kills them indiscriminately, representing the wholesale disdain for women seen in patriarchal societies.

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