reelscum
a field guide to disreputable cinema
Random film····
← Glossary

Slasher

1974–1989 · 28 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 28 →
Poster for Pieces▶ watchcult

Pieces

1982 · Spain · 85m

Spanish, incoherent, and gleefully stupid. 'Bastard! Bastard!'

Poster for Tourist Trap▶ watchcult

Tourist Trap

1979 · USA · 89m

Mannequins that move, telekinesis, and a masked killer. Far stranger than a slasher should be.

Poster for Hell Night▶ watchcult

Hell Night

1981 · USA · 101m

Linda Blair, a frat hazing, an old dark house. Atmosphere over arterial spray, and better for it.