10 Great Horror Movies Released Unrated

by Patrick Bromley

Some of the best and best-loved horror movies of all time bypassed the MPAA and we're better for it.

1. Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir. George A. Romero)

Let's begin with the movie that inspired this list. Writer/director George A. Romero followed up one of the greatest horror movies ever made with an ever better sequel, one that's more ambitious, more thematically resonant (and prescient!), bigger and splashier and funnier and more violent. It's literally one of the best horror movies ever made. Rather than getting branded with the dreaded X for its extreme gore (courtesy of makeup effects master Tom Savini), Romero opted to put his sequel out unrated and pretty much told the MPAA to go fuck themselves in the process, once again reminding us that he was one of the great mavericks of horror. While the movie might feel dated in some ways and to some audiences (not me), I'd argue that the gore effects are still just as intense and effective today as they always were, provided you're not someone (like Doug) who can't get past the orange tint of the blood.

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986, dir. Tobe Hooper)

One of my favorite Tobe Hooper movies -- the one I'm fond of saying is the Tobe Hooperiest of all the Tobe Hooper movies -- was threatened with an X rating no matter how many cuts the director went back and made, so Cannon finally did the right thing and put the movie out in theaters unrated. Even in its uncut form, the movie isn't as gory or gross as some of the other movies on this list. I suspect it's an issue of tone -- the movie is cranked and manic that it feels violent even when nothing violent is happening and Hooper never tells us when to laugh or when to scream, instead making us do both simultaneously. There's no way the MPAA knew what the fuck to make of this one in 1986. Time has been good to it, though, and I think it would get an R these days. I'm glad it went out Unrated, though. Tobe was an outlaw artist making outlaw art.

3. Hatchet II (2010, dir. Adam Green)

Back when I was on Twitter, I posted that Victor Crowley walked so that Art the Clown could run. What I should have said is that Adam Green walked so that Damien Leone could run, seeing as Green did the "new horror icon in a hyper-gory throwback slasher released to theaters unrated" first. It did not work out well for Green; his movie was pulled by AMC theaters in under a week (incidentally the day before I planned to drive into the city to see it because fuck me) and the experiment in Unrated horror was chalked up to be a failure for nearly a decade. The sequel still managed to find an audience on home video and streaming, enough that there were two more sequels in the franchise (for now), plus comic books and toys and all kinds of Victor Crowley merchandise. I get that the "unrated" tag is less of a stigma in indie horror -- it's probably more of a badge of honor, if we're being honest -- but Green was trying to take Hatchet wide and got unfairly spanked for it. I'm still glad he was able to pave the way for the Terrifier franchise to kick the door down, hopefully for good.

4. Re-Animator (1985, dir. Stuart Gordon)

It's hilarious to think that Re-Animator could exist in any form approved by the MPAA. Stuart Gordon's debut masterpiece isn't just gorier than an R rating would ever allow, but also super sexual in a way that feels almost deviant. The movie's best sight gag -- maybe the best sight gag in all of '80s horror -- would have doomed the movie to an X rating, so Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna opted to release it without a rating. An R-rated cut does actually exist and runs about seven minutes longer and includes excised subplots about Dr. Hill (David Gale) hypnotizing people. That footage is available on the Blu-ray. I've seen the "integral cut" that includes everything and can confidently say that the tighter unrated cut is the best version of the movie.

5. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987, dir. Sam Raimi)

Sam Raimi's splatter classic was, for many years, one of the great "I dare you" litmus test for horror fans -- a vomitorium (in the words of Roger Ebert, who liked the movie) designed to separate the casual viewers from the hardcore genre lovers. While the original Evil Dead is much scarier and darker in tone, Evil Dead 2 ramps everything up to such an exaggerated degree that it would surely have run afoul of the MPAA. Despite Raimi's contractual obligation to deliver an R-rated movie, the producers recognized that cutting out all the good stuff would ruin Dead by Dawn and slash its already-brief runtime down to about an hour. The distributor -- a shell company front for DEG -- got the movie into theaters unrated, where it wound up grossing over $5 million all told. Like so many '80s horror movies, it was through VHS and cable, where the lack of a rating hardly hurts a movie, that Evil Dead 2 found its enormous cult following.

6. Day of the Dead (1985, dir. George A. Romero)

It's probably unfair to include two George Romero films on this list, not to mention two George Romero zombie films from the same trilogy. But Day of the Dead -- for my money still the most underrated of the original three in the first zombie trilogy -- had a different path to going out Unrated than its predecessor. Romero had originally planned for something epic and massive in scope, but his insistence that the film be released without a rating (thereby limiting its marketing possibilities and, by extension, its box office potential) meant that his budget was cut in half. Romero had to rework his entire idea to fit the new monetary constraints, which is how we wound up with the claustrophobic story of zombies vs. army set entirely underground. He still made the most of his budget and his lack of rating: Day of the Dead boasts what I still think are the best and gnarliest gore effects of all time.

7. Terrifier 2 (2022, dir. Damien Leone)

This was the most successful unrated horror movie released since AMC squashed Hatchet II -- that is until Terrifier 3 came along and blew it out of the water, opening at #1 in a record-breaking bit of business. Damien Leone's follow-up to the breakout Terrifier is a better movie in every way and remains the best of the three to this point primarily thanks to the addition of Lauren LaVera as Sienna Shaw, a worthy adversary to Art the Clown and one of the all-time great Final Girls. The insane amounts of gore (created by director Leone himself) that has become a staple of the Terrifier franchise means these movies are never going to get the MPAA's stamp of approval, but what's great about the time in which these movies are getting made and having so much success is that they no longer need the stamp. Sooner or later we may live to see the death of that censorship body, and it's fitting that Art the Clown help kill it.

8. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990, dir. John McNaughton)

I mean, most of the movies on this list were released unrated because they're gross and violent in a fun, over the top way. Henry is a different animal altogether: a gritty, grounded descent into the most fucked up and depraved shit put to film. It was shot in grey Chicago in 1985 but slapped with the dreaded X rating (in this case, maybe deservedly so) and sat unreleased until it finally went out to theaters without a rating in 1990. I don't think there's anything in Henry that's actually dangerous -- it's a movie, after all -- but it feels dangerous when you're watching it, less an indie film than some kind of docudrama snuff movie. A masterpiece, sure, but yikes.

9. Demons (1985, dir. Lamberto Bava)

I'm on record as being a Lamberto Bava guy, but even the people who don't love his movies tend to agree that Demons rips. A group of people get trapped inside a movie theater when a cursed artifact unleashes an outbreak of "demons," which are basically zombies but with claws and fangs, all set to a heavy metal soundtrack. While certainly less extreme than a lot of the other movies on this list, I get that Demons was probably too intense and gory to get an R rating in the mid-'80s. Nowadays I suspect it would fare better. Bava followed up Demons with Demons 2 just one year later in 1986, but that was cut down to an R for the US release after originally getting branded with an X. It's fun but not as good as Demons. 

10. Basket Case (1982, dir. Frank Henenlotter)

Frank Henenlotter's debut feature is one of those movies that defines the 42nd Street grindhouse scene of 1980s New York, both because of where it's set and where it was made popular. Shot cheaply on 16mm on location in the grimiest parts of the Big Apple, Basket Case follows a young man and his (formerly conjoined) twin brother Belial, a deformed potato with arms who's carried around in a wicker basket while the pair exact revenge on the medical personnel who separated them. It's an insane premise realized with maximum insanity as well as being one of the grimiest, scuzziest, weirdest, most fucked up horror films of the early '80s. The MPAA couldn't have had any idea what to make of Basket Case, but neither did the original distributor, who cut most of the violence and disturbing content despite still putting into theaters Unrated. When the film became a midnight cult movie later on, that stuff was reinstated. The world is better for it.