Horror movies have been giving characters spectacular deaths since the dawn of motion pictures, but it didn’t really become a proper art form until the arrival of the slasher movie. These murderous psychopaths — some of them masked, some of them supernatural, some of them hiding in plain sight — have a dual role in the horror genre. They are our boogeymen, the characters who go bump in the night and send chills down our spines ... but they are also the heroes of each movie. After all, you typically don’t go to slasher flick to root for that bland final girl to survive. You go so you can root on the killer as he delivers violent mayhem. (Yeah, being a horror fan is kind of messed up.)

In honor of MTV’s new Scream TV series (which is sure to have its share of memorable kills), we’ve assembled a list of the 10 most clever horror movie slasher kills. In a genre where everyone is competing to stand out from the pack, these are the kills that reign supreme. Scream premieres Tuesday, June 30 at 10 PM ET/PT on MTV.

10. Chainsaw Tossing in American Psycho

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Horror movie slashers tend to work up close and personal. They’re close-range killers – if you manage to escape, they’re forced to pursue. But Patrick Bateman isn’t your typical horror movie slasher. Played by Christian Bale in the days before he was winning Oscars and playing superheroes, Bateman is a white collar psychopath who’s not afraid to go a little blue collar with his weaponry. After a potential victim evades his bloodthirsty chainsaw attack, this crafty serial killer realizes that she’s going to get away. So he stands at the top of the stairs, carefully aims him hardware, and drops it with killer precision. Other horror movie icons may be more famous for their chainsaws, but only Patrick Bateman thought to use one for a long distance kill. [Watch the full clip]

9. The Raft Massacre From The Burning

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“Cropsy” may not have the cultural relevance of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, but few ‘80s slashers are as brutally effective. The masked killer at the center of The Burning only has one movie to his name, but it’s a doozy. While most horror movie villains stalk and isolate their prey before going in for the kill, Cropsy is all about engaging large groups. In fact, this scene is so inventive not because the kills are unlike anything we’ve seen before, but because the nature of the attack is so unique. Here is a slasher, armed with razor sharp shears, attacking an entire raft full of kids and dispatching them all with ease. That kind of efficiency gives every famous slasher a run for their money in the “greatest horror movie killer of all time” department. [Watch the full clip]

8. Death by Sleeping Bag in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

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Even the weakest Friday the 13th movies offer their fair share of grisly pleasures, but it’s still surprising that the weakest film in the long-running series features one of Jason Voorhees’ most famous kills. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is a fairly dull affair, but it does feature a moment where the hockey-masked zombie hillbilly serial murderer with mommy issues scoops up a hapless woman in her sleeping bag and bashes her against a tree. It may not be particularly fancy, but few horror movie kills combine character, location and context so perfectly. Jason has made a career out of killing people in the wilderness surrounded by camping gear. When it comes to classic Jason kills, this is the pinnacle. [Watch the full clip]

7. The Reverse Bear Trap in Saw

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The Saw series introduced a new kind of slasher – a murderer who never actually commits his own murders. Instead, “Jigsaw” places his victims in terrifying traps and terrible circumstances, where the only solution is to draw blood or die. Although the series grew increasingly elaborate with its gruesome traps over the course of seven entries, the most memorable of them comes from the first movie. In a flashback, Amanda (Shawnee Smith) recounts her terrifying survival story. She wakes up to find herself wearing a “reverse bear trap,” a device that will literally split her head apart if she doesn’t remove it. Unfortunately, the key to the trap has been surgically placed into the body of another man ... a man who turns out to be alive. Few horror movie kills actually instill you with genuine guilt, but this one really hurts. [Watch the full clip]

6. Death by Basketball in Deadly Friend

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One of Wes Craven’s lesser known films, Deadly Friend is a sci-fi horror movie that was famously compromised by studio-mandated reshoots and rewrites. The result is a compromised curiosity ... albeit a curiosity with one of the craziest kills in horror movie history. You should probably watch the GIF above free of context, because you will never see it coming and it will make your jaw drop to the floor. Seriously. Then you can go on to learn that she’s a girl who’s been enhanced with futuristic robot technology and she’s taking some much-needed vengeance. But this is the kind of great kill that works beautifully out of context. Just show it to your friends and cackle at their reactions. [Watch the full clip]

5. Soda and Steamrollers in Maximum Overdrive

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Can technology itself be a slasher? That’s a debate horror fans can grumble and argue about as much as they want, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t include a scene from Maximum Overdrive on any list of the most inventive horror movie kills. The first and only film to be directed by Stephen King, this movie is all cocaine-fueled insanity, one of the great bad movies of all time and a total trash masterpiece. The film peaks early with the clip above. Every machine on the planet has mysteriously gone rogue, with everything from trucks to lawnmowers to ATMs lashing out on the human race. But nothing tops the evil soda machine, which launches cans of delicious soft drinks into a little league baseball coach’s head until he’s dead. Well, nothing tops it except for the malicious steam roller that arrives to transform one of his players into paste. [Watch the full clip]

4. Impaled by a Shotgun in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

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Michael Myers isn’t as stylish as his horror movie contemporaries. He rarely showcases the vicious brutality of Jason or the freaky creativity of Freddy. He tends to kill quickly and efficiently. He gets the job done and he moves on. Still, that blunt, straightforward resourcefulness has led to at least one very surprising kill. With no sharp edged weapons in sight. Haddonfield, Illinois’ Public Enemy Number One grabs a shotgun as his weapon of choice and proceeds to never fire a single shot. But he does impale a victim with it and pin her to a wall. After all, Michael has a reputation to uphold and there was no way he was going to get caught dead using a firearm. Who do you think he is, a normal mass murdering psychopath? [Watch the full clip]

3. Vehicular Execution in Death Proof

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Most horror movie killers don’t have much in the way of personality – they are simply the delivery mechanism for gnarly violence. So slashers are defined by their weapons. This is what makes Kurt Russell’s Stuntman Mike so unique: he has a proper personality that is thematically reinforced by his weapon of choice. His weapon is, of course, his badass stunt car, which he uses to viciously stalk and murder young women who happen to be driving in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death Proof is full of jaw-dropping scenes, but the best of them comes around the halfway point, where Mike dispatches a car full of victims with a head-on collision. Director Quentin Tarantino slows down time and replays the accident from four angles, showcasing the increasingly brutal ways in which each occupant dies. [Watch the full clip]

2. The Frozen Head Smash in Jason X

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There are many slashers, but there is only one Jason Voorhees. No one else would be allowed two entries on this list. This guy is an icon for a reason. Here’s how crazy the Friday the 13th series eventually got: eventually, the only thing left to do with Camp Crystal Lake’s resident murderer was cryogenically freeze him, unthaw him in the future, and let him wreak havoc in space. Yes, Jason X exists and it is, somehow, one of the best movies in the series, and it also features Jason’s best kill ever. Jason doesn’t seem particularly surprised to find himself on board a spaceship a few centuries after he was last active because he gets to work right away, shoving a victim’s face into liquid nitrogen and then shattering her head against a hard surface. If you watch this movie with a group of friends who don’t guffaw and cheer ... Well, you need to find new friends. [Watch the full clip]

1. Johnny Depp Gets Sucked Into His Bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street

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Since Freddy Krueger conducts his murderous business in the realm of dreams, the sky is the limit when it comes to his methods. He conjure anything he wants, transform into anything he wants, and make every possible nightmare come to life. And yet his best kill, and easily the most inventive kill in horror movie history, is actually fairly straightforward. Johnny Depp’s Glen, after falling asleep at the worst possible moment, is literally sucked into his bed, which then regurgitates him as a geyser of gore. It’s an old school practical effect executed to perfection, but it’s also genuinely terrifying. It may feel a little quaint compared to the insane special effects wizardry that invades the series in later entries, but it’s easily the most unsettling demise in a series defined by unsettling demises. [Watch the full clip]

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