10 Most Underrated Splatter Movies, Ranked

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10 Most Underrated Splatter Movies, Ranked

Rotham November 23, 2025 0 Comments

Splatter movies get messy, because they’re usually all about showing over-the-top violence and bloodshed, usually within a horror context. The Evil Dead might be the quintessential splatter film, while Evil Dead II shows how splatter movies can also function as hybrids of horror and comedy. There are also all the Saw sequels that are pretty splatter-heavy, plus the Terrifier movies in more recent years.

Maybe those better-known examples are already a little niche compared to other films, since violent movies aren’t for everyone, and even comedic splatter movies can still be pretty disgusting. But the following ones can be considered underrated by splatter film standards, sometimes because they’re even more extreme than most titles in the sub-genre, and sometimes because they’re weird and potentially alienating in other ways.

10

‘City of the Living Dead’ (1980)

Lucio Fulci was best known for his gruesome horror movies, including 1979’s Zombie Flesh Eaters, sometimes known as “Zombi 2,” with City of the Living Dead also demonstrating his style pretty well. It’s a down-and-dirty story about a portal to Hell being opened after a priest takes his life, with a reporter making the discovery and then attempting to prevent the dead from taking over the Earth come All Saints’ Day.

It’s kind of just an excuse to show lots of grisly sights, and some memorably morbid death sequences, but that’s the splatter sub-genre for you. City of the Living Dead is kind of barebones, and you get out of it what you’d expect, based on the title and the director attached, but if that’s your thing, then that’s okay.

9

‘Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl’ (2009)

Certainly don’t get Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl mixed up with any of the old-school Universal Monster movies, because even if the title might sound reminiscent of those, the content here is infinitely more extreme. It was co-directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, who’s famous (or infamous) for directing 2008’s Tokyo Gore Police, which is a movie that tells you just what it is from the title alone.

There’s certainly some trashiness implied by the title Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, but what might surprise you is how much bad-taste humor there is alongside all the deliberately provocative and over-the-top gore. It’s a movie that wants to offend you, and it’ll likely succeed at that, but it’s going to be included here anyway because it is just that relentlessly gruesome, and has stuff that will surprise people who might otherwise think they’ve seen it all.

8

‘Bad Taste’ (1987)

A band of aliens with bulgy, skeletal-like features in Bad Taste.

Speaking of bad-taste humor, you get some of that in Bad Taste, because of course you do. This was the first feature film Peter Jackson directed, and is easily his roughest, also serving as a taste of things to come, since Dead Alive (AKA Braindead) was the splatter film of Jackson’s that’s easily the most recognizable, and quite comfortably the most entertaining, too.

But Bad Taste has a similar sense of anarchy and does also manage to be violent in a very over-the-top way, albeit being perhaps too rough around the edges for its own good. It’s the kind of movie that’s threatening to fall apart at just about every turn, which could prove frustrating or endearing, depending on what you’re after in your low-budget horror/comedy flicks. What is funny, though, is how far removed Bad Taste is from The Lord of the Rings, which Jackson directed not all that many years later, in the overall scheme of things.

7

‘Splatter: Naked Blood’ (1996)

If you watched a movie called Splatter: Naked Blood and you weren’t grossed out by what you saw, you’d probably be disappointed, because you know what you’re getting into with a movie that has the guts to call itself that. “Guts” is a good word to use here also for obvious reasons, with this film being about a drug that turns pain into pleasure, and what that does for three people involved in an experiment that concerns trying said drug out.

It is as exploitative as exploitation movies get, but it’s clearly trying to be sickening, and so in making one feel sick, is that not a sign that Splatter: Naked Blood is successful? Actually, it’s hard to say. It’s complicated. One could feel this movie does its job a little too well, but then again, if you’re shocked, you did also just watch something called Splatter: Naked Blood, so…

6

‘Violent Sh*t III: Infantry of Doom’ (1999)

There are multiple entries in the Violent Sh*t saga, and yes, the movies really are called that, though Violent Sh*t III: Infantry of Doom is sometimes given the cleaner alternate title of Zombie Doom. This one is actually fun, somehow, unlike the other ones, which are kind of dire, but in any case, what you get with a Violent Sh*t movie is a lot of sh*t happening that just so happens to be violent.

But with this third movie specifically, it feels like a very low-budget take on The Most Dangerous Game, with an island setting and a group of people having to survive against a group of masked mercenaries led by an individual known as Karl the Butcher. This is relentlessly goofy, gross, crass, and oddly compelling if you like indulging in a trashy no-budget 1990s movie every now and then.

5

‘The Machine Girl’ (2008)

You can throw The Machine Girl in the same category as Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, as they’re all Japanese films from the late 2000s that aim to shock and gross out viewers. The Machine Girl probably feels the closest to an actual movie of the bunch, for whatever that might be worth, but it would be going too far to suggest that it’s otherwise approachable.

In this film, a young woman seeks violent revenge against villains who killed her family, and since her hand has also been cut off, she puts various weapons where that hand used to be while getting her vengeance. The Machine Girl starts at a 10 or 11, and then just keeps escalating all the bloodshed and gore to increasingly ridiculous extremes, but there is something mesmerizing about witnessing just how far it’s willing to go.

4

‘The Monkey’ (2025)

While The Monkey is probably more well-known than most of the movies being mentioned here, it’s worth including because it’s a bit over-hated (as opposed to being underrated in the sense that no one knows about it). It’s a horror movie about a cursed toy monkey that causes various bloody deaths to happen whenever it’s activated, and yes, that might sound ridiculous, but the film knows that, and it’s more of a horror-comedy as a result.

If you go in mostly wanting horror, you might be a little disappointed (and there’s at least one other 2025 Stephen King adaptation that might prove more satisfying for you, if you’re in that camp), but if you want lots of blood and gore that’s consistently tongue-in-cheek, that’s what The Monkey has plenty of. It’s more funny than it is scary, but you could arguably say that about Evil Dead II, too, so that’s not really a factor in impacting The Monkey’s effectiveness as a splatter movie.

3

‘Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell’ (1995)

Sometimes known as The Japanese Evil Dead, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell might well have one of the best titles in cinematic history. It also runs for just one hour, and is such a scrappy production that if someone there was $1 spent for every minute of the film, you might believe them. Even then, that’s kind of what makes it great. It’s bloody and silly in ways that prove oddly charming.

What else is there to say about Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell? It’s bite-sized, ridiculous, and pretty neat for what it is.

In the film, there’s a haunted house, and some people investigating it and then having to survive what’s inside, including a bodybuilder. What else is there to say about Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell? It’s bite-sized, ridiculous, and pretty neat for what it is, and the story around how long it took to actually be properly released is also interesting.

2

‘From Beyond’ (1986)

While Re-Animator is the better film, and the more famous one, From Beyond is still worth watching if you liked that 1985 cult classic, since the films shared a director (Stuart Gordon), two stars (Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton), and a producer (Brian Yuzna). From Beyond was based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, and said story involves a dangerous parallel universe that’s discovered through various science experiments that, naturally for the horror genre, go too far.

It’s probably not as polished as some of the body horror movies David Cronenberg directed, but From Beyond does scratch that same kind of Cronenbergian itch, and wouldn’t make for a bad double feature with The Fly, which also came out in 1986. From Beyond is very gruesome, of course, and also a bit seedy (the same can be said about Re-Animator), but it works as a B-grade splatter film for sure.

1

‘Versus’ (2000)

The Versus (2000) protagonist wielding dual katanas — Man with swords being cool in Versus – 2000

There are so many things going on all at once in Versus, and it’s kind of like a martial arts movie, a samurai film, and a yakuza flick all at once, plus there are supernatural elements found in the story. It’s about various people of different backgrounds having to survive in a forest after a portal abruptly opens and all sorts of dangerous creatures/foes start emerging from it.

It feels like it’s from the imagination of a 5-year-old playing with their toys; like whatever they had pictured in their mind was given the money to be brought to screen, admittedly with more violence than a 5-year-old could probably picture (one would hope, at least). The director of Versus, Ryûhei Kitamura, also helmed what would have to be the wildest of all the Godzilla movies, Godzilla: Final Wars, so if you like one, you’ll probably dig the other.