It's that time of year where everyone's sitting down to watch something spooky or Halloween-themed, be it a Charlie Brown special or a slasher movie with a masked killer on the loose. Slasher films are a major sub-genre of horror and there are plenty of discussions over which movie has the scariest villain.
But when looking at which franchises have the highest kill count, it's often a surprise that so many original films in a slasher series have such low kill counts. This list features modern, classic, early, and proto-slasher films with each kill count getting lower and lower.
Warning: Spoilers for the movies mentioned in the list.
10 Black Christmas (1974) - 8 Kills
One of the earliest examples of a full-blown slasher movie, the original Black Christmas is a disturbing and devastating horror movie where a man sneaks into a sorority house that he's been making obscene phone calls to and begins to kill the young women off, one at a time. What makes this slasher truly chilling (along with the abundance of snow) is the killer's compulsive need to call the house after each kill. This detail gives a hint to the fate of the film's final girl.
9 Scream (1996) - 7 Kills
Wes Craven's Scream is not only one of the best horror movies ever made, it also resurrected the slasher genre for the latter half of the 1990s. Despite its popularity and ability to satirize horror while it expertly raises the slasher bar, Scream's body count is fairly low with only 7 kills. One character death that could count towards this movie's kill count was the murder of Maureen Prescott, mother of protagonist Sidney, as it sets the entire narrative into motion. However, this happens before the movie even begins, so it's not part of the tally.
8 Candyman (1992) - 6 Kills
Despite being a bloody albeit thought-provoking slasher film, the kill count in Candyman is fairly small considering how far-reaching the Candyman legend goes in the film.
The first shown kill is a babysitter named Clara in a story that's being re-told to Helen, the movie's protagonist, and there's mention of Candyman also killing the baby she was taking care of— though it's debatable whether or not this counts as an actual kill as it may have just been an exaggeration added to the urban legend.
7 I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) - 6 Kills
Some wild teens are driving down a winding coastal road when they accidentally hit someone with their car and decide to dump his body and pretend as if nothing ever happened. One year later, the same teens are stalked by a mysterious figure, and one-by-one they are killed off. The movie has 6 total deaths, despite one kill being off-camera, it is very crucial to the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Even with a low kill count, it's still a memorable slasher.
6 Child's Play (1988) - 6 Kills
Charles Lee Ray, the serial killer trapped in the body of a Good Guys doll, may have killed a number of people before the events of Child's Play but as Chucky, he was only able to make 4 of the film's 6 kills. The first kill of the movie was of course Charles Lee Ray's, which prompts him to transfer his soul into the doll in the first place. The last kill of the movie was then Chucky's, but it wouldn't stick, as he was resurrected for the sequels.
5 Halloween (1978) - 5 Kills
Originally titled "The Babysitter Murders", John Carpenter's Halloween was credited for years as the first slasher movie, and while this is false, it was a conscious influence of other slasher films throughout the 1980s. With gripping suspense and a movie villain who's still a box office draw thanks as proven by 2021's Halloween Kills, the original movie has only 5 kills in the film (6 if you include Lester the German Shephard). It goes to show that kill count doesn't really matter in a classic slasher flick.
4 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) - 5 Kills
While visiting their family's old property in rural Texas, Sally and her brother Franklin bring their friends along, not knowing that they would all come face-to-face with Leatherface and his family of cannibals, who rob graves and kill people, using their bones for furniture and their faces for masks.
For how notorious and terrifying it is, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is another slasher film with a surprisingly low body count— though, with a limited cast, it's an inevitability that the kill count would be small.
3 Peeping Tom (1960) - 4 Kills
Despite being a proto-slasher film released the same year as Psycho (which also went on to influence the more major films in the slasher genre) Peeping Tom didn't receive nearly as much praise at the time. Peeping Tom is about a man obsessed with fear, who kills women with his small film camera so he can capture their terrified faces on film as they die. The film has been retroactively praised by critics and has reached cult status even, despite the low kill count.
2 A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) - 4 Kills
The classic slasher movie villain with perhaps the most terrifying ability— to kill you in your dreams— Freddy Kruger's first movie A Nightmare On Elm Street has an unbelievably low kill count. Yup, even though Freddy killed 20 children when he was alive, there are only 4 kills in the movie with roughly 20 minutes between each one. What A Nightmare On Elm Street lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for with quality kills that each have their own elaborate set piece built around them.
1 Psycho (1960) - 2 Kills
Still one of the most respected and influential horror movies more than 60 years after it was first released, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho has a really surprisingly low kill count with only two deaths in the film. The story of Norman Bates and his mother is rooted in isolation since the building of a major highway has brought fewer and fewer guests to their roadside motel. Norman ends up killing Marion Crane after she checks into the Bates Motel, and later, P.I. Arbogast who's investigating Marion's disappearance.