10 Great Horror Movies That Are Actually Ripoffs Of Other Films

The horror genre has existed in cinema for decades now, with a multitude of monsters, killers and spooks to show for it. But with each successful film or antagonist comes a ripoff or two. It's to be expected, after all, and sometimes, these ripoffs work out like catching lightning in a bottle. In no time at all, studios have got another success on the way and the cycle continues. As such, we've decided to take a look back at some of the best horror ripoffs to ever grace the silver screen. Some of these titles were even so influential and successful in their own right, that you may not realize they were ripping anything off to begin with. You can, as always, chime in via the comments section below if you've got any picks of your own, but without further ado, here are our 10 favorite horror movies that are actually just ripoffs of other films. Enjoy! 1) Orca When Steven Spielberg directed Jaws, an adaptation of Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name, audiences went into a frenzy. The ocean was no longer a place for fun but crowds of people were suddenly horrified of the dark watery depths which surrounded them. As a result, many studios tried to buy into this newfound fear of the ocean. Plenty of the films produced happened to follow sharks similarly to Jaws, but one chose to focus on another aquatic predator. The Orca, to be exact. The opening scene sets the entire tone for the film. We start off with the beginning moments of a shark attack, with a vicious Great White going after a couple of panicky swimmers. It seems to be another rehash of Jaws until something stops the shark - an Orca, otherwise known as a killer whale. It manages to kill the shark, as if saying, “Hey, Jaws, watch out! This movie is bigger and better!” Of course this film is nowhere near as good as Jaws, but I’d definitely bet on it over any of the actual Jaws sequels. It has a few interesting characters that keep you captivated and a score from legendary composer Ennio Morricone that is unbelievably beautiful. If not for the awesome action of a killer whale causing massive explosions and outsmarting its captors, the film is worth a watch for some gorgeous examples of cinematography and music. The ending credits are especially great, as we watch a pack of killer whales swimming through the ice caps of the arctic. The sunlight beams down below the ice, creating an angelic glow beneath the water as Morricone’s soothing music continues to play over the credits. 2) Godzilla After the success of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in 1953, Japanese film producer Tomoyuki Tanaka had the idea for his own giant monster movie. He wrote a script titled The Giant Monster From 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and pitched it in April of 1954, and it was quickly approved for production. It wouldn't be until later though that the title was changed to Godzilla. The actual Godzilla monster would be designed by Teizo Toshimitsu, who initially wanted to use stop-motion animation to bring the monster to life much like King Kong from 1933. But with Toho’s small size at the time, it would’ve taken at least seven years to complete the stop-motion work. It was then decided that Godzilla would rather be brought to life by an actor in a suit. In the end, all of their choices were the right ones because Godzilla became way more popular than The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in every way. The film ultimately spawned dozens of sequels and spinoffs, many of which are still being produced today. Not to mention that the Godzilla franchise has spawned its own number of ripoffs, one of which introduced the giant turtle Gamera, who would also go on to become quite iconic. It’s fascinating seeing how such a simple concept from a film like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms can be tweaked and somehow become even more successful. 3) Friday The 13th The slasher genre had existed before Halloween, with films like Black Christmas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But it wasn’t until John Carpenter's classic that the slasher genre broke through in full force. It seemed that no holiday was safe from the trend, and slashers were being greenlit and produced at unbelievable speeds to try and recreate another success like Halloween. Many of them failed, but one film in particular caught the eyes of audiences with its brutal violence and sleazy nudity - Sean Cunningham’s Friday the 13th. After the movie became a mind-blowing financial success, everyone seemed even more interested in producing slasher fare. Even Halloween 2 seemed effected by Friday the 13th’s impact, replacing its predecessor’s reliance on suspense with gratuitous violence and gore. It was Friday the 13th Part 2, however, that introduced masked maniac Jason Voorhees into the picture. Since then his name and appearance have become iconic and even synonymous with the horror genre. The Halloween franchise especially started to use Jason’s bulky, fierce qualities with Michael Myers, who originally appeared like any other average joe. For whatever reason, Halloween and Friday the 13th seem to just be stuck in a cycle of copying one another. It might’ve been more fit for Jason to face off with Michael rather than Freddy Krueger in that aspect, now that they seem to have made each other who they are today. Let’s just hope that Friday the 13th continues to copy Halloween and that after the release of 2018’s Halloween sequel, we can finally get a new film for Jason. After all, it would be the 13th outing in the series. 4) Ghoulies While Ghoulies is notoriously considered one of the worst horror films ever made, I have a huge soft spot in my heart for it. With an appearance from Jack Nance and some rather lovable puppet designs, there’s a lot to love. Even if it's just a cheap Gremlins knock-off. I especially adore the setting, which happens to be an abandoned Hollywood mansion that once belonged to a satanist and his cult. There’s plenty of gothic set pieces spread throughout the house, including a fountain and some rather vicious fish Ghoulies that spawn from it. The soundtrack is another big reason why I love it, too. While it’s not as perfect as Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Gremlins, it’s certainly just as fun. Richard Band was a great composer and knew exactly what he was doing. Interestingly, Ghoulies did so well at the box office that it spawned three sequels. The first takes place at a carnival where the Ghoulies inhabit a haunted house attraction. The effects seem to be improved too, with cool uses of stop-motion and endless examples of chaos near the end as the Ghoulies break free of their haunted house and begin invading an entire carnival. My favorites of the series are Ghoulies 3 and Ghoulies 4, however. The third uses the raunchy comedy subgenre of films like Revenge of the Nerds as a basis for its story, while the fourth is a direct sequel to the original. We get a return from Peter Liapis who played Jonathan in the first film and learn that he now works as a police officer who ultimately has to fight a satanist attempting to resurrect her master. With such a dark plot, the filmmakers threw in a couple of Ghoulies for comedic relief, which altogether makes for one hell of a time. Unfortunately, the original Ghoulie puppets were switched out with dwarf actors for budgetary reasons in the fourth film, but I truthfully think getting a direct sequel to the original was worth it. 5) House Of 1000 Corpses Rob Zombie’s directorial debut began with House of 1000 Corpses, a sort of patchwork tribute to exploitation cinema like many of Zombie’s other films that came after. While most people despise House for being way too similar to a variety of other horror films, including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, I cant help but love it. Even for a ripoff, there's plenty of heart to be found. There have been films like Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof which struggled to emulate the exploitation era, but Zombie does it perfectly with House of 1000 Corpses. It’s your usual setup for a slasher movie - dumb teenagers end up in the clutches of a degenerate family of psychopaths - but it works so well. Even Zombie’s music video styled cinematography works because it’s so heavily based in the style of 1970’s horror films. It legitimately feels like it could’ve been made around that time period, which makes it all the more worthwhile. It's a true shame that none of Zombie’s succeeding films managed to contain the same ludicrous imagery that House presented us with. 6) Zombie Although George A. Romero created the zombie subgenre in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead, it wasn’t until a decade later with Dawn of the Dead that the genre really became popular. As such, a series of copies and ripoffs were being produced at an alarming rate from all over the world, each one trying to cash-in on Dawn’s success. But it was Lucio Fulci’s Zombie that really lived up to the name. Zombie is something of an unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead, having been released in its home country of Italy as Zombi 2 where Dawn of the Dead was released as Zombi. But the connections end there, as Zombie takes its viewers to the genre’s tropical voodoo roots of films like I Walked With A Zombie and White Zombie. Because of this, most of the film takes place on a tropical island, but there’s still plenty of flesh-eating Romero-styled zombies to be found. One of my favorite sequences that makes use of the island setting has a zombie actually wrestle with a shark underwater. It’s a truly exploitative battle that could only happen in the grindhouse era of cinema. There’s also a variety of gruesome kill scenes, including a painful shot of a woman being stabbed directly through her eyeball. Many fans agree that the special effects in this Italian bloodbath are actually even better than those in Dawn - and how right they are. Once the film ends, we’re presented with an eerie view of the undead walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s an ending of apocalyptic proportions, complete with rotting fleshy makeup and a killer score. 7) Xtro The science-fiction genre saw some of its biggest success with Alien in 1979 and E.T. in 1982. But one of the best cult classics of the genre would be released in 1983, where it would attempt to ripoff these properties. This film was Xtro, and it became one disturbingly memorable experience. That's partly because it doesn’t slow down for even a minute, opening with a hellish sequence which is almost impossible to predict. Xtro then takes itself down a winding path of cosmic horror, following an alien life form that crashes to Earth. We get to see the monster literally crawl out of the ground, like some kind of alien seed, before killing a couple driving out on a country road. But this is no generic slasher film, for the alien soon invades a small cottage and impregnates the woman living there. She immediately gives birth to a fully grown man, the reincarnation of the alien which attacked her. We realize it’s actually the man who was abducted in the opening credits - and the film just gets crazier from there. With killer clowns, ravenous black panthers, explosive toy-sized tanks, and vicious alien creatures - Xtro is an unpredictable film that must be seen to believe. As for its two sequels, there are some redeeming qualities for each one, but they both pale in comparison to the original. They lack the creativity and bizarre content of the original Xtro, and exist as sequels in-name only. There were reports of the original director coming back to do a fourth Xtro film nearly a decade ago, but as there’s been no news since, the project is most likely and unfortunately dead in the water. 8) Blood Diner In 1963 director Herschell Gordon Lewis created Blood Feast - what would widely become known as the first “splatter film.” While he would eventually create a long-awaited sequel in 2002, there were originally plans for a different sequel in the 1980s. This one, however, would eventually become its own film, Blood Diner, and ended up as a tribute to Gordon’s Blood Feast. Written by Michael Sonye and directed by Jackie Kong, the film has none of the crew from Blood Feast. Nevertheless, that classic’s spirit remains intact and what we ended up with is one of the greatest horror comedies of all-time. Much like Xtro, this is a movie that’s nearly impossible to predict. It follows two brothers who want to resurrect the goddess Sheetar. In order to do that, they must first build her a body out of young female victims, and then create a cannibalistic feast in her honor. The best part, however, is that they’re instructed to do so by their uncle - a disembodied brain and pair of eyeballs that float around in a jar. He’s one of the funniest depictions of a villain around, with some of the wackiest lines of dialogue I’ve ever heard. By the time we get to the climax, there’s a crowd of hungry zombies, a reanimated goddess shooting lightning bolts from her fingertips, and a feast consisting of human body parts. It’s great. Blood Diner is a movie that goes above and beyond your average horror comedy - creating an atmosphere of loony hilarity that you’ll never forget. 9) Dementia 13 Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most popular directors around, and like many other iconic actors and filmmakers, he got his start working with cult director Roger Corman. In fact, his first feature film was Dementia 13, which he made for Corman to ripoff the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Originally written by Coppola to include a gothic atmosphere and outrageous kill scenes as Corman demanded, he was also given complete control over shooting. For one reason or another, however, Corman was displeased with the final film and hired Jack Hill to direct new sequences. Nevertheless the movie stands out as a very haunting example of atmosphere. While the story and characters don’t exactly shine, it’s the set pieces and tone that make it. The opening scenes especially manage to be extremely memorable, as it begins with a murder in almost Tales from the Crypt-like fashion. My favorite part is the audio in this scene, which consists of music from an old transistor radio sinking into a lake besides the freshly-murdered corpse. It’s certainly a powerful directorial debut for Coppola and also shows just how great a horror ripoff can be with a small budget and just enough creativity to do something passionate and interesting. That said, plenty of filmmakers can learn a lesson or two from Dementia 13. 10) The House By The Cemetery The House By The Cemetery is the third installment in director Lucio Fulci’s unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy. While the prior two films deal more with zombies and the undead coming back to life, this one focuses more on a Frankenstein-esque story in the vein of The Shining or The Amityville Horror. The storyline doesn’t quite make sense, but it’s still a disturbing depiction of gothic imagery with brutal deaths, crazed flying bats, and an immortal decomposed scientist. And it's this decomposed scientist that ends up being the film's main antagonist - by the time he shows up, all Hell breaks loose. Dr. Freudstein is as disturbing as they come; filled to the brim with evil and maggots. If you can get over the annoying kid included in the main cast, you’ll have an extremely atmospheric and haunting film to watch on a rainy day. In fact, I’d recommend watching all three Gates of Hell films, which include Fulci’s City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. As you can see, ripoffs aren’t always a bad thing, and can lead to some rather creative and innovative examples of cinema. Maybe if studios and filmmakers chose to ripoff obscure types of films like these instead of simply remaking and rebooting everything, we could have a rather glorious new age for horror movies. Besides, who wouldn’t want to see more killer whales, undead scientists, and shapeshifting aliens in their horror flicks? It really is about time that filmmakers begin taking risks again and producing content that goes above and beyond the generic found footage or jump scare fare. The horror genre is limitless and full of possibilities, and we should all begin realizing that. If some of Hollywood’s biggest and brightest filmmakers and franchises started off with ripoffs, it’s a sign that it’s not always a bad thing. And it’s certainly a better option than outright remaking everything, right?