▶ watchobscureBoardinghouse
1982 · USA · 88m
The first shot-on-video horror feature, blown up to 35mm and just as ugly as that sounds.
Slasher
1974–1989 · 21 films catalogued
The giallo, relocated to America and put to work on a holiday calendar.
A masked or unseen killer, a group of young people, a body count, a survivor.
The lineage
Peeping Tom and Psycho (1960), then the Italian giallo through the 1970s, then Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), then Halloween (1978). Halloween made $70 million on a $325,000 budget and started a gold rush. Friday the 13th (1980) industrialised it. By 1982 every holiday on the calendar had a film attached.
The Final Girl
Carol Clover's Men, Women and Chain Saws (1992) named a structure everyone had already noticed. The survivor is female, sexually reticent, often androgynously named (Ripley, Stretch, Laurie), and picks up the killer's weapon in the last act. Clover's larger argument, that the slasher's cross-gender identification is stranger than its reputation allows, is still the most useful writing on the form.
The collapse
Self-parody by 1989, revival by Scream in 1996.
Where to start
Black Christmas. It predates Halloween and it is scarier.
Where to start
All 21 →▶ watchobscure
▶ watchobscureHuman Lanterns
1982 · Hong Kong · 99m
A Shaw wuxia that turns into a slasher, with lanterns made of human skin.
▶ watchobscureRituals
1977 · Canada/USA · 99m
The Canadian Deliverance, and grimmer than the nickname promises.
▶ watchcultPieces
1982 · Spain · 85m
Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'
▶ watchcultTourist Trap
1979 · USA · 89m
Mannequins that move, telekinesis, and a masked killer. Far stranger than a slasher should be.
▶ watchcultTales from the Crypt
1972 · UK/USA · 93m
The best Amicus omnibus, and Joan Collins versus a killer Santa two years before Black Christmas.
▶ watchknownThe Funhouse
1981 · USA · 95m
Tobe Hooper does a carnival slasher. A deformed killer, a hall of mirrors, and real dread.
▶ watchknownAlice, Sweet Alice
1976 · USA · 108m
American giallo in Catholic New Jersey. Genuinely disturbing and well acted.
▶ watchknownManiac
1980 · USA · 88m
Savini's effects, Spinell's performance, and a very bleak little film.
▶ watchknownTerror Train
1980 · Canada · 97m
A costume party on a moving train, a killer swapping disguises, and Jamie Lee Curtis again.
▶ watchknownSleepaway Camp
1983 · USA · 85m
Ninety minutes of nothing, then an ending nobody who has seen it forgets.
▶ watchknownThe Prowler
1981 · USA · 89m
A killer in WWII combat gear stalks a graduation dance. Savini's best gore work.