8 Horror Movie Series Infamous for Their Gore

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Jeremy has more than 2200 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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The genre best avoided if you're squeamish would have to be horror. Any other kind of movie can be violent (hell, even romance movies, at times), but horror’s the kind of genre where a relatively bloodless horror flick (especially if it’s above a PG-13) proves kind of surprising. And that does mostly apply to more modern horror movies, since most made before 1970 really aren’t too bad by today’s standards, even if, like Psycho, they were shocking for their time.

More than individual violent horror films, though, the ranking below intends to highlight some series that are well-known – or infamous – for their violence. Certain older ones started out only moderately violent, then got bloodier later on, while others have entries that have had their shock value muted a bit with the passage of time, but are still included here more for historical significance.

8 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' (1974-2022)

If you want to be annoying with movie trivia, you can always drop a “Did you know the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre wasn’t actually very violent?” and technically be right, and maybe stand a chance at surprising someone on the receiving end of that information. Like, it is an effectively terrifying and quite unpleasant film, owing to its intensity, but there’s not an excessive amount of blood or over-the-top violence actually seen on screen, even with the whole “chainsaw” and “massacre” thing going on.

Some violence is obscured, and it doesn’t focus on graphic death scenes the way you might expect. As for the sequels, follow-ups, and remakes… you know, the other Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies? Yeah, they're generally more over-the-top and messy in the way you'd expect, based on what this series is called. Maybe less was more, though, because the first is still terrifying, and does that kind of thing where you think you’ve seen a lot more by way of gore and visceral horror than you actually have, owing to the psychological impact of it all.

7 'The Living Dead' Series (1968-2009)

Zombie hands reaching for a screaming man in Day of the Dead - 1985

Another instance of a horror series starting out with only a moderate amount of violence compared to what it became, here’s George A. Romero’s Living Dead series, which began with Night of the Living Dead. For 1968, this early and genre-defining zombie movie was probably quite grisly, yet the violence here is unlikely to shock anyone who’s seen any subsequent zombie film; all the ones likely inspired by Night of the Living Dead.

Day of the Dead is full-on and grisly enough that it’s still alarming on a blood-and-guts front, even 40+ years later.

Romero himself upped the violence in later films, and not just because they were shot in color, making the black-and-white blood now very red. Dawn of the Dead is gorier, and then Day of the Dead is full-on and grisly enough that it’s still alarming on a blood-and-guts front, even 40+ years later. There were a few other fairly violent zombie movies Romero directed later, too, plus 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake, since if you want to count that one, it’s pretty gnarly and bumps up the level of violence compared to the 1978 original.

6 'Friday the 13th' (1980-2009)

It is forever cursed that Friday the 13th has 12 entries, rather than 13, if you're willing to include the 2009 remake and 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason. May as well, because they're quite a bit bloodier than most of the early movies in the series, though for their time, the 1980s ones (2/3s of the series all up; eight films) were fairly infamous, and occasionally banned, too.

Nowadays, most of the murder scenes in the Friday the 13th series probably wouldn’t unnerve many horror fans familiar with the much more brutal slasher movies of the 2000s onwards, but Friday the 13th is still worth including here. It was apparently a lot for the MPAA (now MPA) back in the day, and the violence here was usually a bit gnarlier than what was found in the likes of the Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

5 'Hellraiser' (1987-2022)

Pinhead (Doug Bradley) is the famous horror icon of the Hellraiser series.

You’ve got some pretty memorable villains in the Hellraiser series, in the form of the Cenobites, which are demonic creatures who were once human, and they harvest human souls for the purpose of torturing them. There’s an extra layer of sadomasochism present in the torture, and in the way some of the Cenobites look, so that adds a bit by way of discomfort to some of the violence seen throughout the series.

There were cuts that had to be made to the violence in the first movie, and the sequels kept going with the uncomfortable and gory stuff established in the original. Pain, and the causing of it, are forever linked with the villains of the series, so it hopefully goes without saying that the Hellraiser films generally aren’t for the squeamish.

4 'Evil Dead' (1981-2026)

Ash (Bruce Campbell) gets his hand possessed in Evil Dead II.

The progression of the Evil Dead movies is wonderfully chaotic, since you’ve got the fairly low-budget and bloody original, the similarly bloody (but tonally sillier) second movie, and then the ridiculous and not very horror-focused third movie, all directed by Sam Raimi. Then there have been two Evil Dead movies not directed by Raimi that largely kept things centered on horror and extreme violence.

There’s some camp here, even in some of the bloodier Evil Dead movies, but the only one that isn't really a bloodbath is the third movie, Army of Darkness. So, as far as splatter movies go, the ones in the Evil Dead series (again, other than Army of Darkness) deservedly stand as some of the best and most notorious, with a sixth movie due in 2026. Admittedly, nothing’s known about that one at the time of writing, regarding its tone or level of violence, but it would be surprising if it lacked blood and guts and other messy things.

3 'Hostel' (2006-2011)

Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is gagged with a chainsaw in his face in 'Hostel'.

Since it’s been a trilogy since 2011, it might feel like a bit of a stretch to call Hostel a series (there is one trilogy featured in a bit, but there is at least a fourth movie planned for it), but still, Hostel is too violent to overlook for present purposes. The films center on torture, with an underground group trying to lure and capture tourists who then get tormented – and eventually killed – for the entertainment of sadists.

And then if you're watching Hostel, maybe you're doing the same, but at least you know the violence is staged, so it’s not really the same. That’s about all you get, as far as commentary or some kind of deeper purpose goes, and that’s all a bit of a potential stretch. Hostel is unpleasant and successfully gory, sure, but not in a way that usually feels clever or worthwhile beyond shocking for the sake of being shocking.

2 'Saw' (2004-2023)

Defending Saw after criticizing Hostel might seem a little strange, but some of the better Saw movies do work as psychological horror films rather than only being bloodbaths. And the first movie, though still gritty and sometimes bloody, really doesn’t focus too heavily on the violence, being more willing to be tense and psychologically harrowing, and is all the more effective for it.

As for the later, bloodier Saw films? Some are pretty trashy, but others keep asking some interesting moral questions and prove good at building tension. And there’s the soap opera nature of it all, with Saw’s commitment to ridiculous twists – and keeping a single narrative going, stretched out both comically and impressively for so many movies – also making the series oddly watchable and interesting, just from a storytelling perspective. No, really. It’s Sawt of enthralling.

1 'Terrifier' (2016-2024)

David Howard Thornton in Terrifier 2 (2022)

Some slasher movie villains really do like to chop (and slash) through their victims with speed, but Art the Clown is not that kind of slasher movie villain. His whole thing is drawing out the deaths of his victims, which means that the series he dominates, Terrifier, is filled with so much by way of prolonged, horrific, and bloody sequences, with any victim’s eventual death looking like a mercy by the time Art’s decided he’s done with them.

If you’ve seen any of these movies (but especially Terrifier 2), then you'll unfortunately know it sometimes takes a very long time for Art to decide that. These are pretty tasteless movies, but they do know what they are, and films #2 and #3 are honestly pretty good. They're tasteless, like the first, but they do tell more of a story and give you a bit more of a reason to care about what’s going on. And they might well be even more ruthless than the first, so if you want more than just violence, but you're also impressed by special effects that are used in depicting said violence, then the sequels are the best of both worlds.