7 Underrated Horror Movies That Should Have Started Franchises

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So, no horror movies that had a resolved narrative by the time the credits rolled, e.g. Silver Bullet, The Burning or John Carpenter’s The Fog, which doesn’t count as a franchise since the only other film is a remake many decades later.

1) Alligator

image courtesy of group 1 films

Alligator is both a rock-solid monster movie and a highly enjoyable take down of particularly self-serving members of the one percent. The plot follows a little girl who adopts an alligator from an alligator farm only for her alcoholic father to flush it down the toilet in a rage. There, the gator grows to a massive size, at which point it breaks out of the sewer and goes on a rampage across Chicago.

We spend most of our time with Robert Forster’s Detective David Madison and Robin Riker’s Dr. Marisa Kendall, who just so happens to be the little girl who adopted the gator in the beginning. After the gator has devoured an attention-seeking big-game hunter and seriously ruined a high-society wedding, Madison and Kendall lure it back to the sewers and kill it with explosives. But, while we’re still down there in the sewers, we see another little baby gator, who has apparently also been flushed. Even if the sequel hadn’t included Forster and Riker (both of whom deliver excellent performances), it would have been good to see some more actually well-done gator carnage. Alligator could have been incredibly silly. Most films involving antagonist gators or crocodiles are. But Alligator pulls off a hat trick by walking a fine line between horror, action, and comedy. It works, and with the same creatives behind the camera (namely director Lewis Teague and writer John Sayles) it could have worked twice.

Stream Alligator on Prime Video.

2) My Bloody Valentine

image courtesy of paramount pictures

My Bloody Valentine has a pretty grim ending, and it should have been explored further. It’s odd it wasn’t, too, because not only does the ending directly set up a sequel, but it’s also a holiday slasher movie that actually performed fairly well at the box office.

It wasn’t a blockbuster, as it only generated less than one third the profit domestically that Friday the 13th did the previous year, but Paramount still made money on it. It would have been interesting to see how far Axel Palmer, now fully insane and short one arm, could have gotten after climbing out of the mine that served as his Camp Crystal Lake. Perhaps if Paramount knew that My Bloody Valentine would have become one of the ’80s most respected slashers (it even did okay with critics), it would have funded at least one sequel. And one sequel was really all it would have needed. Fortunately, the movie’s ending still works within a one-off narrative. The audience is forced to wonder about Axel and his whereabouts after the credits have rolled.

Stream My Bloody Valentine for free on Kanopy.

3) Curtains

image courtesy of jensen farley pictures

In Bob Clark’s 1974 classic Black Christmas, Lynne Griffin played a member of a sorority who is attacked by a mysterious man and left in the sorority house’s attic with a plastic bag over her head. That’s where she remains throughout the movie. Griffin returned to slasher territory with the highly underrated Curtains, but this time she wasn’t the victim, she was the assailant. Both of these movies end with the antagonist alive and (physically) well, and both could have received a sequel.

In other words, consider this lobbying for both Black Christmas and Curtains. But at least Black Christmas has received two very loose remakes. Curtains, however, has been mostly forgotten. For the uninitiated, the plot follows a group of female actresses who have gathered to audition for a role in a film called Audra. One by one the actresses are picked off by someone in a “hag” mask, including one while she is ice skating (in what is undoubtedly the film’s most famous scene, for good reason). Technically, there are two killers, with Samantha Eggar’s Samantha Sherwood shooting both director Jonathan Stryker and his lover, Brooke, who has replaced Samantha as the recipient of his affections. The rest of the deaths are by the hand of Griffin’s stand-up comedian Patti O’Connor, who spends the final scene performing a monologue from Audra for her fellow patients in a psychiatric hospital.

Stream Curtains on Prime Video.

4) The Stuff

Larry Cohen’s The Stuff is a riff on The Blob with a sharp satirical edge. Fueled by an excellent lead performance by Michael Moriarty, it’s a smarter film than one might imagine given the poster, which features a screaming man oozing from his eyes and mouth.

The titular “Stuff” is essentially a highly addictive yogurt. Unfortunately for those that consume it, the “Stuff” is actually alive and turns its new hosts into zombies. By film’s end most of it has been destroyed, but more of it still remains. It’s being produced in multiple locations, and only one has been shut down. This is confirmed in a post-credits scene, so there definitely could have been more to this tale had The Stuff made money. Even with a slim $1.7 million budget, it didn’t.

5) Night of the Creeps

image courtesy of tristar pictures

It may have been one of the best horror movies of summer 1986, Night of the Creeps made for an incredibly impressive directorial debut for Fred Dekker. It was ahead of its time, though, to the extent that audiences at that time simply weren’t interested. The same could be said for his similarly impressive sophomore film, The Monster Squad.

Unfortunately, the gleefully entertaining Night of the Creeps was dumped into just 70 theaters, so it never had much of a chance. The substantial cult following it has developed over the years though has likely allowed it to turn a profit. But it’s too late for this story about of a zombie-producing parasite from the bowels of a spaceship to get the sequel promised in the final frames. In fact, there are two endings, one which ended up in the theatrical release and one which was Dekker’s intended conclusion, and both promise more of the alien slugs. The theatrical ending has a slug jumping out of a dog’s mouth while the original ending has Tom Atkins’ Det. Ray Cameron, who sacrifices himself to end the invasion, emerge from a burning home and have the slugs burst out of his head, at which point the slugs go to a nearby cemetery, thus continuing the infestation of Earth.

6) Dolls

In between helming H. P. Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator and From Beyond Stuart Gordon directed an original film: Dolls. The plot is essentially Puppet Master or Child’s Play if the tiny antagonists just went after those who put kids in harms way.

There were quite a few doll-focused horror movies released throughout the ’80s and ’90s, and the result was one of the best entries getting lost in the shuffle and subsequently forgotten. But Dolls was deserving of attention, unlike something like Demonic Toys or Dolly Dearest. And, considering it ends by showing another pair of child-neglecting parents entering the dolls’ vicinity, there was almost certainly supposed to be more. Or, rather, there would have been had the film been profitable enough to get the ball rolling.

Stream Dolls on fuboTV.

7)The Blob (1988)

Image courtesy of tristar pictures

Just as 1986’s The Fly received a sequel, so too should have 1988’s The Blob. Now, yes, technically Chuck Russell’s remake of the ’50s Steve McQueen classic is part of an existing franchise, but it stands so far apart tonally from the 1958 original (and 1972’s Beware! The Blob) that it essentially functions as the start of something new. A something new that would never be expanded thanks to poor ticket sales.

The Blob is one of the few horror movies out there where it feels like genuinely anyone can die. It’s especially effective given the film takes place in a small, Mayberry-like small town filled with good people. It doesn’t matter if you’re seemingly the protagonist just as it doesn’t matter if you’re a child. You’re still fair game. Yet, by the end, Kevin Dillon’s Brian Flagg and Shawnee Smith’s Meg Penny still have a pulse and the alien organism has been put on ice. But a piece of it has survived and is now in the possession of the small town’s resident crazed preacher, who is clearly considering setting the small blob free of its current constraint: a glass jar.

Stream The Blob with a Paramount+ subscription on Apple TV.

What one-off horror movie would you have liked to see get a sequel? Let us know in the comments.