20 best movies like The Toolbox Murders (1978)

Barbara Hershey stars as Carla Moran, a hard-working single mother until the night she is raped in her bedroom by someone - or something - that she cannot see. Despite skeptical psychiatrists, she is repeatedly attacked in her car, in the bath, and in front of her children. Could this be a case of hysteria, a manifestation of childhood sexual trauma, or something even more horrific?

After a seemingly innocent prank goes horribly wrong, a group of sorority sisters are stalked and murdered one by one in their sorority house while throwing a party to celebrate their graduation.

A group of film students set out to finish filming a movie that was never completed after its director was murdered. After they begin filming, they realize they're in for a bit of trouble, not unlike the late director...

Five friends are stalked and murdered by a masked assailant while preparing for Valentine's Day.

Alice is a withdrawn 12-year-old who lives with her mother and her younger sister, Karen, who gets most of the attention from her mother, leaving Alice out of the spotlight. When Karen is found brutally murdered in a church, suspicions start to turn toward Alice. But could a 12-year-old girl really be capable of such savagery?

A young opperata is stalked by a deranged fan bent on killing the people associated with her to claim her for himself.

Thirty years ago, in the sleepy community of Waterbury, a killer known as “The Executioner” murdered Sarah Bennett's parents. Now Sarah and her husband Dylan have returned to town, only to find herself the centerpiece in a series of horrifying murders centered around the seven deadly sins.

Claire Parker is going to die. At the hands of a sadistic and depraved killer, she will endure a terrifying, unimaginable brutal death--and it will all happen again. After being beaten, dragged, sliced, and stabbed, Claire awakens at work--where it all began--untouched and unharmed. But the hellish ordeal is far from over. The madman is back and he's ready for more blood...

A masked killer, wearing World War II U.S. Army fatigues, stalks a small New Jersey town bent on reliving a 35-year-old double murder by focusing on a group of college kids holding an annual Spring Dance.

Wes Block is a detective who's put on the case of a serial killer. His victims are young and pretty women, which he rapes and murders. The murders are getting personal when the killer chooses victims who are acquaintances of Block. Even his daughters are threatened.

A ditsy reporter enlists the help of a sleazy private eye to solve a series of gory killings of female strippers at a Chicago nightclub.

A frustrated Boston detective searches for the maniac responsible for mutilating a number of university coeds.

An anorexic young woman escapes from a psychiatric clinic and meets a young man who wants to help. She is caught and returned to her parents, who are soon beheaded by a garrotting stranger making the rounds about town, apparently striking only when it rains. The orphaned young woman and her new lover launch their own investigation and are endangered when a link is discovered with the victims and a particular operation performed years before.

A Boston police detective investigates a series of gruesome decapitations of various college coeds commited by a helmeted, black-leather clad serial killer which leads him to suspect a well known anthropology professor as well as his female live-in assistant.

After Washington DC detective Alex Cross is told that a family member has been murdered, he vows to track down the killer. He soon discovers that she was not his first victim and that things are not what they seem.

An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.

Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.

Innocent lives hang on the whim of an elusive psychopathic murderer whose strange riddles and impossible timelines force three people into a mission to end the game before one or all of them die.

Cherry Falls is a quiet little town - until the night that a serial killer begins preying on its youth. After a third teen is found slain, the killer's modus operandi emerges: the victims were all virgins. Sheriff Marken is concerned for the safety of the teens in general and in particular his own daughter Jody, who is still a virgin...

An American writer in Rome is stalked by a serial killer bent on harassing him while killing all people associated with his work on his latest book.

Mary Murdock, a college student, thinks she's hit and killed a cat with her car driving home drunk from a party. She is horrified beyond words when she gets home and discovers a man's nearly dead body impaled on the bumper of her Jeep. Terrified and irrational, Mary is faced with a series of decisions that determine her fate.

A young reporter (Lucy Liu) wakes up and realises that she is not alive anymore. She goes on a personal vendetta for a group a cultists that are responsible for her death.

During a New Year's Eve celebration, a punk-rock singer gets a phone call saying that when New Year's strikes in each time zone, someone will be murdered--and she will be the last one.

A seasoned police detective and his partner have just uncovered a string of unusual murders that lead them to a serial killer, who believes that he is the descendant of Judas.

After learning of an urban legend in which a demented serial killer named SMILEY can be summoned through the Internet, mentally fragile Ashley must decide whether she is losing her mind or becoming Smiley's next victim.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.

A criminal psychologist loses his arm in a car crash, and becomes one of three patients to have their missing limbs replaced by those belonging to an executed serial killer. One of them dies violently, and disturbing occurrences start happening to the surviving two.

A group of paranormal investigators enter the abandoned home of paedophile and serial killer John Gacy, hoping to find evidence of paranormal activity. Upon entering the house they set-up cameras throughout the abandoned house while going room to room with hand-held cameras, performing séance's and asking for John Gacy to come forward. As the evening progresses it seems the investigators are not prepared for the horror still within the house.

A naked teenage boy covered in blood appears at a remote sheriff's station one year after the brutal unsolved murder of a local girl. Now Sheriff Jack Shepherd, guilt ridden over the girl's murder, must confront his own demons as he desperately searches for the boy's true identity and possible victims. Little does Jack realize that he has started down a path that will bring him face to face with an unthinkable horror. Before sunrise the living will pay for the pain the dead have suffered.

In the Oregon mountains, a pair of hunters encounter a machete-wielding killer in an abandoned church. Meanwhile, five campers arrive to examine some property one of them has inherited but are warned by the forest ranger not to venture forth. Soon after they set up camp, they begin hearing strange noises, encounter a mysterious singing girl and start disappearing one by one.

In 1916, a shadowy serial killer is targeting women with "afflictions". One night, during a thunderstorm, the mute Helen feels menaced.

A masked maniac terrorizes the same small community where a murderer known as the Phantom Killer struck decades earlier.

The corrupt Lord Ambrose D'Arcy steals the life's work of the poor musical Professor Petry. In an attempt to stop the printing of music with D'Arcy's name on it, Petry breaks into the printing office and accidentally starts a fire, leaving him severely disfigured. Years later, Petry returns to terrorize a London opera house that is about to perform one of his stolen operas.

A group of young horror fans go searching for a film that mysteriously vanished years ago but instead find that the demented killer from the movie is real, and he's thrilled to meet fans who will die gruesomely for his art.

For years he terrorized California motorists as he rode the endless highways searching for his next victim. The discarded bodies turned up beaten, sexually assaulted and horribly mutilated. Deceptively charming and intelligent, the scheming murderer easily avoided police at first. But as police closed in and the killer’s pattern grew more erratic, the only question was how many more will die?

The police force of a remote Midwestern town search for a killer Santa Claus who is picking off citizens on Christmas Eve.

Veronica, the new girl in town, is lured into the woods by a group of senior boys looking to make her a victim. But the boys don't know that Veronica's been trained to handle herself in surprisingly lethal ways.

Fiona Wagner, a journalism student, tracks a cold-blooded killer with the help of her detective father and a therapist.

Boston is being terrorized by a series of seemingly random murders of women. Based on the true story, the film follows the investigators path through several leads before introducing the Strangler as a character. It is seen almost exclusively from the point of view of the investigators who have very few clues to build a case upon.

A deranged, misogynistic killer assaults a journalist. When he discovers that she survived the attack, he follows her to the hospital to finish her off.

A psychotic redneck who owns a dilapidated hotel in the backwater swamps of Louisiana kills various people who upset him or his business, and he feeds their bodies to a large crocodile that he keeps as a pet in the swamp beside his hotel.

During a routine case in L.A., NY private investigator Harry D'Amour stumbles over members of a fanatic cult who are preparing for the resurrection of their leader Nix, a powerful magician who was killed 13 years earlier.

Communication is the key to the survival for nine strangers who have been kidnapped by a masked gunman and told that one of them will die every ten minutes until they discover how they are all connected. Who of the nine lives and who dies?

Six young adults struggle with their personal demons while staying at a secluded mansion during a dark and stormy night where a seemingly innocent game of 'taboo' brings out their inter-most secrets which soon leads to murder.

A crazed killer stalks college students who gave up their vacation to clean a deserted dormitory.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a small group of survivors, who call themselves Foragers, plan to rebuild civilization from their headquarters in an empty hospital based in what is left of Philadelphia. But they're soon forced into a face-off war with the Rovers, another gang of survivors whom are a brutal gang of cannibals.

A serial killer terrorizes a woman searching for the remains of her dead sister, trapping her in a web of horror and erotic intrigue.

Five friends welcome real life vampirism into their lives. They cut their own wrists and let their friends drink from them. Rod, the leader, and a very psychotic young guy, ends up killing Heathers parents and stealing their car to go on a crazy raod trip. His behaviour begins to frighten his friends, though they went along with it at first. All end up in prison except Heather.

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.