Pieces (1983)
Pieces is a Spanish-American slasher film that mixes weird painfully awkward scenes with over the top violence. It is about an unknown slasher killing college girls on campus. The killer uses the parts of these girls to make a human jigsaw puzzle because of a childhood trauma involving…a jigsaw puzzle and matricide with a hacksaw? 
As the movie unfolds, we suspect various characters of being the murderer, and a young whipper-snapper named Kendall gets asked by the police to help them solve a crime. The detectives are so enamored with young Kendall that they actually have him helping develop the killer’s profile. It’s like the police have no clue, and decide that this kid looks smart. Let’s get him to help!
In the end, the killer is revealed to be someone we least expect. There’s an insane ending involving Kendall and a newly discovered corpse. However, if you wait for the grand finale, it’s a real ball buster.
Halloween (1978)
Alright, no need to explain this one. Everyone has seen the movie and the ending is pretty iconic. Slasher fights Final Girl. An old, bald psychologist comes to the rescue at the very last moment and shoots the bad guy. 
Michael falls to his supposed death. However, Doctor Loomis goes to look out the window and the body’s gone. The doctor does not look too surprised because he knows pure evil when he comes across it!
I love how Halloween II starts right there and shows Michael walking to the neighbor’s house, stealing a knife, and stalking Laurie to the local hospital to finish the job. Great ending and sets up the sequel perfectly.
Friday the 13th (1980)
The whole movie makes you think it’s all about a random killer and there’s not much talk about Crystal Lake itself. It’s at the very end when the killer is revealed that the backstory comes out. 
The big reveal that the killer is this soccer mom in a sweater followed by her awesome decapitation by the Final Girl is enough for a great ending.
However, it ain’t over yet. After all of that, we get lulled into the possibility of a slow, sappy ending that fades from the Final Girl alone in the boat to the credits. Just when we think the movie is over, a deformed boy grabs the girl and pulls her into the lake. It’s still not over though, because she wasn’t harmed by the boy. He just dunked her. Alice does not know just how lucky she was to survive a baptism by Jason Voorhees. It’s tough to watch Jason X and think he would let her go.
An American Werewolf in London (1981)
This movie is a horror-comedy and it’s sometimes easy to forget that because the film can be so scary at times. However, in my opinion, it is the ending that suddenly makes you smile and reminds you it’s all about having a good time.
The movie goes down this depressing, suicidal rabbit hole culminating in the massacre of David. There is chaos in the streets of London. 
A werewolf that looks like a giant, furry cat with fangs is ripping pedestrians apart. The creature is trapped in an alley and shot down by the London police. Our bullet-ridden protagonist lies naked on the concrete. His crying lover stands over him. Then suddenly, it all goes black and–
Ba-bom-a-bom-bom)
(Ba-bom-a-bom-bom)
(Ba-bom-a-bom-bom)
(Ba-dang-a-dang-dang)
(Ba-ding-a-dong-ding)
Blue moon (moon, moon, moon, blue moon)
You saw me standing alone (dip-de-dip-dip, moon, moon, moon, blue moon)
Without a dream in my heart (dip-de-dip-dip, moon, moon, moon, blue moon)
Without a love of my own (dip-de-dip-dip) (ba-bom-a-bom-bom)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
George A. Romero created an iconic movie that forever changed horror films. It showed humans being eaten by what looked like other humans with tattered clothes, rotten flesh, and some parts missing. 
It’s a dark and bleak film with tons of social commentary throughout the movie. Everyone likes to quote the first scene in the cemetery, and it is pretty cool, but the movie is full of some of the greatest moments in horror.
The ending is the biggest commentary of all. It’s a social statement that resonates today. The ending makes the audience analyze who is worse, the humans or the zombies. Are the dead the only wandering zombies cannibalizing others? Is a zombie apocalypse any more dangerous for a black man than living in a society run by greedy, uncaring white men? It creates all sorts of philosophical questions when plain old humans kill the would-be Final Boy.
I love writing and drinking coffee. I’m also into skulls and stuff like that.
