There have been some great horror movies over the years that ended up helping launch some of the best franchises in movie history. In many cases, especially in the older days, movies were not made thinking of franchises. Alfred Hitchcock was not thinking of creating a franchise when he released Psycho in 1960.
In recent years, it seems that movies are made with the intention of creating franchises, and often those movies never hold up to the horror films from the past that were just trying to tell a good story. The best movies that ever started franchises instead opted to tell the best scary story it could, and the franchise easily followed.
10
Friday The 13th (1980)
When looking back at the 1980s, it seemed like every horror movie was made with the intention of becoming a franchise starter. However, when Sean Cunningham co-created Friday the 13th, he was capitalizing on something else. This wasn’t about a franchise, it was about a themed horror movie, and it worked great.
Friday the 13th followed Black Christmas and Halloween as holiday-themed horror movies, and none of these films had received a sequel, much less a franchise. However, like Halloween, enough people loved the idea of the story that it fit perfectly into the confines of a franchise, although it changed things considerably.
Friday the 13th was a slasher movie about a woman killing teens at a campground in revenge for her own son dying at the location years before. To fit this into a franchise idea, the son turned out to still be alive, and Jason Voorhees was born to carry it on. However, the first movie, with Pamela as the killer, remains the best.
9
The Conjuring (2013)
James Wan released The Conjuring in 2013, and it would be ridiculous to think that he wasn’t looking at turning it into a franchise. He had already seen success with Saw, which had released seven movies before he ever directed The Conjuring. However, it is doubtful that Wan could have known what was about to happen.
The Conjuring was based on real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren and the cases they claim to have investigated. The first movie was about a haunted farmhouse in Rhode Island, and a mix between the location, the masterful direction, and the spooky story created a perfect storm.
What is shocking is that it didn’t just spawn sequels, but an overarching Conjuring Universe with The Conjuring, Annabelle, and The Nun all tying into this world. This franchise has grossed $2.7 billion, and the first movie remains a masterpiece of horror cinema.
8
Scream (1996)
Wes Craven wanted to make a self-referential horror movie in the 90s, and he first attempted this with his A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. This franchise was hit-or-miss through the years, so when he released Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, fans couldn’t grasp what he was doing. Luckily, he didn’t give up.
Craven then created Scream, which featured teenagers who were aware of horror movies and slashers, and who talked about the tropes and rules of these movies as a slasher killer was hunting them down one by one. It was a brilliant idea and Scream ended up spawning a long-running franchise.
There have been good and bad things in this franchise, but the first Scream movie was a perfect horror film that created a brand-new genre that carried Hollywood through the 1990s.
7
Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was never meant to be a franchise when Tobe Hooper directed the first movie in the series. This first movie was just a down-and-dirty horror movie from the 1970s that broke all the rules and bordered on censorship for various reasons, including the violence shown throughout its running time,
That first movie saw a group of young adults driving through small towns in rural Texas where they made the mistake of stopping at the house of a cannibal family who used human meat to serve the residents. This was where Leatherface was born, and after the controversy died down, the franchise kicked into motion.
There have now been nine movies in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise, but the first film remains the best of them all, and one of the greatest horror movies of the 1970s.
6
Evil Dead (1981)
In 1981, Sam Raimi released one of the greatest low-budget indie horror movies of all time. Raimi worked with friends from college to make this horror movie about some young adults who end up fighting for their lives against demons from the other side. It was a brilliant movie and made Bruce Campbell a star.
It was also highly controversial, added to the video nasties lists of the 1980s and only becoming popular thanks to people like Stephen King promoting it as loud as they could. A sequel, The Evil Dead II, is considered superior, but the original movie has more heart and passion than even that bigger budget attempt.
This movie not only started a successful franchise that is still going to this day, but it also opened the door for other low-budget horror filmmakers to reach for their dreams. There might not be a more important horror movie in the 80s than Evil Dead was.
5
A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)
A Nightmare on Elm Street came after Wes Craven read an article about people dying in their sleep with no apparent reason. He then remembered a moment when he was a child and saw a man in a green and red shirt while looking out his window and the man noticed and stared back, scaring Craven.
Wes Craven then took the idea of this man and had him killing teens in their dreams, rather than in the real world. It wasn’t an idea for a franchise, but instead, it was Craven coming up with an idea that scared him and ended up scaring an entire generation of kids. However, it created a franchise.
The problem with A Nightmare on Elm Street is that the movies varied wildly in quality, with the third one of the best sequels ever made and the latter few releases disappointing to both critics and fans alike. However, there is no discounting how great the first movie in this franchise really was, as it changed everything about slasher movies.
4
Night Of The Living Dead (1968)
Night of the Living Dead might be the most successful indie horror movie ever made, and it was also a film that was the biggest achievement for director George A. Romero. This was the movie that created the entire zombie genre, as Romero changed the monsters from a Haitian voodoo origin to the actual walking dead.
Shot in black and white, Romero created the new monsters that have now grown into a world-wide phenomenon that included one of the most popular horror TV shows in history in The Walking Dead. It also created its own franchise, although Romero lost the rights to the first movie before moving on to Dawn of the Dead.
While Dawn of the Dead was the better movie, there is no discounting what Night of the Living Dead brought to horror cinema. This movie changed the genre, and Carpenter achieved something incredible with almost no money and using all practical effects.
3
Halloween (1978)
In 1978, John Carpenter created his own holiday-based horror movie. While Black Christmas came out first as the first slasher movie of the new genre, Halloween was so good that most fans consider it the first slasher movie that started the craze that dominated the ’80s. Halloween was just that good.
Interestingly, John Carpenter never wanted Halloween to be a franchise surrounding the serial killer Michael Myers. When Halloween was such a massive success, the studio wanted more and convinced Carpenter to bring back Michael Myers, and he did in the sequel. That was supposed to be the end.
John Carpenter wrote the third movie, and it had nothing to do with Michael Myers, and he wanted it to be a new original horror movie every year. However, the studio returned to Michael after that, and the first masterpiece slasher movie helped build a successful franchise.
2
The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
In 1991, a horror movie did the unthinkable. The Silence of the Lambs was the first horror movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars, and it was also one of only three movies to win all five major Oscars awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay.
Based on the novel by Thomas Harris, this wasn’t even the first movie based on Hannibal Lecter, as Manhunter came out in 1986 with Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecktor. However, it was The Silence of the Lambs that followed up its Oscar success with a new franchise, and this was the movie that started it all.
The Hannibal Lecter story continued with Anthony Hopkins returning to the role in a sequel and a prequel, and there were even two television series based on the franchise, including the brilliant Hannibal by Bryan Fuller.
1
The Exorcist (1973)
The Exorcist broke the glass ceiling when it received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, despite not only being a horror movie but being a horror movie with some vile and disturbing scenes and images. This was not something the Oscars usually looked at in those days, and it showed the brilliance of the film.
Based on the novel by William Peter Blatty, with a script by the author, William Friedkin directed the exorcism movie that all future movies in the genre have all been compared to. Linda Blair was shocking in her role as the possessed child, while Ellen Burstyn and Max von Sydow delivered masterful performances as well.
This was a horror movie that stood on its own as one of the best in the genre, and it shockingly ended up creating a franchise, although it took four years for the first sequel and then 13 years before the third. There has since been seven movies and a TV series, but the first Exorcist movie remains the best of them all.
