10 Bonkers Horror Movies About Cursed Objects

The trope of cursed objects is a unique corner of horror. Not to be confused with killer dolls and mannequins (that's a whole other niche), we're talking about your ordinary household objects come to life to wreck people's lives (and sometimes murder them) in the most bonkers, off-the-wall, and outrageous ways. Perhaps a comet or asteroid crashes into earth, causing a strange transference of energy, or an experiment goes horribly wrong. Sometimes, it's a phenomenon with no logical explanation, so it's even more difficult to defeat.

Cursed and killer objects in the movies ebb and flow with time. The 1970s and '80s were a particularly hot time for the subgenre, featuring a slew of deadly inanimate objects like a killer bed (more on that later), a killer car ("Christine"), a killer elevator ("The Lift"), and a killer lamp ("Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes"). Cursed objects were less prevalent in the '90s, with the last two decades seeing a surge of the murderous whatchamacallits. From mutant donuts to semi-trucks going haywire, here are 10 other absurd movies about cursed objects that are guaranteed to raise an eyebrow (and probably make you laugh).

Peter Strickland's "In Fabric" insightfully engages consumerism. With a killer dress at the heart of its premise, it's a weird and wacky story. While shopping one evening, Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) buys a blood-red dress perfect for going out on dates. Newly divorced, she hopes the new outfit will gain her attention and flattery. What she doesn't anticipate is that the dress is possessed. It causes her to break out in a rash whenever she wears it.

Things quickly escalate after the dress breaks the washing machine and causes Sheila to sprain her wrist. But that's just the beginning. Her life hangs perilously in the balance until her inevitable demise in a car crash. The dress changes hands, and the cycle begins anew. As before, the dress is out to kill and won't stop until it strangles everyone who gets in its way. 

Capitalism is murder, and we're suffering for our next big purchase. "In Fabric" further deconstructs our reliance on things to complete our lives and make us happy, but nothing can take away the emptiness with which many are afflicted. Things are simply a distraction from our real problems. As ridiculous as it is, the film has something profound to say about life in the 21st century.

"Killer Sofa" is one of the more ludicrous entries on this list. A recliner commits crimes of passion when it becomes fixated on a young woman named Francesca (Piimio Mei). Harboring a vengeful soul, the recliner murders anyone that gets in its way and disrespects it or Francesca. Director Bernie Rao plays it both serious and comical, a balancing act that's difficult to pull off. Rao does an admirable job of luring the audience in with the promise of murder and mayhem concocted by a killer piece of furniture.

After having the recliner delivered, Francesca immediately takes a liking to it. A provocative sequence suggests she finds pleasure in the overstuffed armchair. Instead of drawing things out, Rao lets the recliner show its intentions early. Francesca's best friend Maxi's (Nathalie Morris) grandfather detects something is off. When he touches the recliner, he sees visions of its history. Surmising it's a dybbuk, a spirit that seeks to inhabit a human body, he plots to destroy it.

Bodies hit the floor all over the place in "Killer Sofa." Rao, who also wrote the script, comments on consumerism and how we're all slaves to capitalism. Nevertheless, don't read too much into it. More than anything, "Killer Sofa" is dumb fun.

Starring Robert Englund as laundry proprietor Bill Gartley, Tobe Hooper's "The Mangler" prides itself on the outlandish conceit of a killer laundry press. Blue Ribbon Laundry Company is one of the most sought-after establishments in the city, but a series of unfortunate accidents makes it a killer place to work. When a young woman named Sherry (Vanessa Pike) cuts her hand on a lever, her blood seeps into the contraption and causes it to malfunction. So begins the Mangler's reign of terror.

Despite the accident, work resumes immediately. Sometime later, another worker, Mrs. Frawley (Vera Blacker), gets yanked into the machine. Her body is ground into minced meat and folded like a quesadilla in a greasy frying pan. Officer John Hunton (Ted Levine) is hot on the case. With help from his hippie brother-in-law, Mark (Daniel Matmor), John pieces together the wild notion that perhaps the machine is possessed.

"The Mangler" (based on a Stephen King short story) gets even crazier from there. During Sherry's accident, two movers lug around an ice box for delivery. The ice box slams into the evil laundry press and part of the Mangler's demonic power is transferred to it. It's later reported that upon delivery, a young boy suffocated inside the fridge. On the scene, Mark nearly dies trying to inspect the box. Talk about absurd! Interestingly, the film has an underlying theme about the acceptance of death. Although "The Mangler" is assuredly silly, it's surprisingly earnest in its delivery.

Spectators gather in the desert to watch a "movie." They raise their binoculars and peer over the dusty haze. The camera pans across a littered junkyard. A lone tire wiggles from the earth, sits upright, and begins its rollicking, murderous roll to a nearby motel. Yes, it's as outrageous as it sounds. "Rubber," written and directed by Quentin Dupieux, satirizes the theater-going experience and piracy with gummy, rubbery precision. The tire first crushes bottles but quickly realizes it has psychokinetic powers and can explode objects and animals. It then turns its sights upon a rabbit and a crow, their bodies exploding into a flurry of fur and feathers.

A woman named Sheila (Roxane Mesquida) passes by in her convertible and becomes its next target. The tire tracks her to a motel, exploding heads all the way. The violence is so over the top that it's guaranteed to elicit chuckles and plenty of WTFs. When a cleaning lady is killed, the cops and paramedics arrive to investigate the murder. A young boy witnesses the tire roll into Sheila's motel room, but no one believes what he's seen. And who could blame them? It's a killer tire, for crying out loud. Even within Dupieux's postmodern meta flick, it takes quite a bit of suspension of disbelief to get into the story. The film doesn't take itself too seriously, so you enjoy the ride for what it is.

After the Earth passes through the tail of a comet, random objects come to life and attack. But that's not the kicker for Stephen King's "Maximum Overdrive." Soon, semi-trucks spring to life and wreak absolute havoc on a truck stop outside Wilmington, North Carolina. Bill (Emilio Estevez), a down-on-his-luck fry cook and ex-con, leads the cast, who find themselves trapped inside.

King, who wrote and directed the film, teeters between grounded reality and exaggerated fantasy. Day and night, the semi-trucks circle like vultures, hellbent on toppling civilization as we know it. Eventually, they run out of gas and threaten the group if they don't refill their tanks. The situation grows increasingly dire, and Bill plots a scheme using grenades to blow up a platform truck (equipped with a machine gun). He also suggests the group escape to a nearby island. Through some ingenuity (and just plain luck), Bill manages to get the group to safety and sail off onto the horizon. Meanwhile, the trucks demolish the truck stop.

"Maximum Overdrive" often plays it way too safe. It could have been way weirder, but it's certainly bonkers in its own right. There's even a truck decked out with a Green Goblin mask with beady red eyes. That's just ridiculous, and it somehow makes the film pretty terrifying.

When Uncle Luther's (Michael Swan) experiment goes wrong, donuts go on a rampage through a small, sleepy American town in "Attack of the Killer Donuts." Johnny (Justin Ray) and Michelle (Kayla Compton) just happen to work at a donut shop, which becomes ground zero for the outbreak. No one believes that donuts have turned savage until it's too late. Even Johnny and Michele don't quite believe it at first, but upon finding Mrs. Scolari's (Alison England) lifeless body, chomped full of holes, it becomes clear they're not dealing with any ordinary monster." 

Attack of the Killer Donuts" is like if you tossed "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," Gremlins," and "Critters" into a blender and set it on hyperspeed. It's a comical premise, yet you can't possibly be ready for fang-toothed donuts bouncing down the street. This film is a guaranteed chuckle machine. Director Scott Wheeler perhaps relies too much on CGI, but don't fret. There are plenty of practical donut puppets (if you can call them that) flying through the air and gnashing their teeth. Wheeler nods to several other films, including lifting a microwave kill from "Gremlins," while making sure the movie does its own thing. With solid production values, the film is a cult classic in the making. It's the very definition of camp.

Fashion comes at a heavy price in Elza Kephart's "Slaxx." In the film, the latest trendy pair of jeans (called Super Shapers) molds to any body type. During a storewide launch, an employee steals a pair of jeans and dashes to the bathroom to try them on. The jeans constrict around her waist and cut her in half. A new employee named Libby (Romane Denis) discovers her bloody corpse. And it's off to the skin-tight races from there. The film perfectly blends horror and comedy with clearly defined themes about consumerism in much the same way as "In Fabric."

Social media influencer Peyton Jewels (Erica Anderson) arrives later that evening to help with the launch. But she doesn't last too long when a pair of jeans strangles her, causing utter bedlam in the store. There's more strangulation, blood gulping, and general chaos. The killer jeans have a vendetta, as it's revealed that the spirit of a 13-year-old child laborer has possessed them and seeks revenge for his death and the exploitation of workers. "Slaxx" is campy fun with a sharp socio-political bite. While making you squirm in your own jeans, it may also provoke you to rethink how jeans are made in the first place. As the saying goes, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Director George Barry somehow makes a flesh-eating bed artful. In "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats," a lavish poster bed consumes not only the skin of unsuspecting visitors but food as well. When an estate is being liquidated, Diane (Demene Hall), Sharon (Rosa Luxemburg), and Suzan (Julie Ritter) drive out to the countryside to escape the big city. When they arrive, the mansion cannot be found. Instead, the group settles into a perceived guest home, now housing the haunted bed.

Oddly enough, there's also a dead painter trapped behind a painting of the bed. The tortured artist (played by Dave Marsh and voiced by Patrick Spence-Thomas) laments his decades of imprisonment, as his punishment is watching countless others die by the bed's bloodlust. The group dwindles to Sharon and her brother (William Russ), who helps in destroying the bed. You see, the bed is possessed by a man-turned-demon and eats people as a way to satiate his carnal hunger.

"Death Bed: The Bed That Eats" contains minimal dialogue, relying largely on inner monologues. The story is interspersed with artistic shots of the bed's belly and its vat of what appears to be stomach acid. The film, chopped into parts (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Just Desserts), comments on sex, love, and insatiable desires. Its quality is questionable, but you'll at least get a kick out of the graphic slurping of bodies.

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," directed by John De Bello, riffs on such classic films as "Jaws" and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." The film opens with scrolling text explaining how audiences laughed at "The Birds," but after seven million birds invaded Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1975, "no one is laughing now." It immediately sets itself up as a parody of outlandish sci-fi and horror, so you get what is promised.

The first sequence depicts a tomato emerging from a woman's garbage disposal and attacking her. Later, investigators discover her body covered in tomato juice. The vegetables go on a rampage, killing everyone in their way. Did we mention that tomatoes come in all shapes and sizes? They roll through the streets, savagely steamrolling and eating people. They can't be stopped. But a recurring song, "Puberty Love," a satirical reference to popular music of the '70s, shrinks the tomatoes. A specialist tasked with destroying the tomatoes, Mason Dixon (David Miller), lures the tomatoes to a stadium and plays the song over the loudspeaker. That seems to do the trick.

"Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" satirizes consumerism, political rhetoric, and popular film trends. Don't take it too seriously. You're just expected to laugh — and laugh you most certainly will.

You've never seen a bulldozer quite like this one. Jerry London's "Killdozer!" is based on a 1944 novella by Theodore Sturgeon, and it's as wild and wonderful as the title suggests. In the film, a meteorite crashes into an island off the coast of Africa. When construction worker Lloyd Kelly (Clint Walker) scrapes his bulldozer's blade into the metallic space rock, part of its power transfers into the machine. As a result, another worker, Mack (Robert Urich), is electrocuted and burned. He later dies from his injuries. Lloyd has the bulldozer inspected, believing its malfunction to be a technical issue. However, except for a slight buzzing sound emanating from the blade, nothing seems to be wrong. Lloyd shrugs it off as unimportant.

That's only the beginning of the bulldozer's rampage. In grisly setpieces, it picks off the construction workers and even manages to destroy supplies and crush their only radio. With its blips and bloops, the bulldozer is essentially a murderous robot ala "Chopping Mall." A series of well-planned schemes, including an ambush, fail, as the bulldozer possesses human cognition. "You can't kill a machine," says Dutch (James Wainwright), another worker. His matter-of-fact statement becomes a refrain sprinkled throughout the film. Made for TV, "Killdozer!" does much with its meager means. The effects, like the operating levers moving on their own, are wholly effective. Even as characters make dumb decision after dumb decision, there's still great fun to be had.