Slasher

Overview

A fairly popular slasher franchise.

The Slasher is a sub-genre of horror defined by a few key elements, namely: a psychotic killer, a ridiculous plot, a high body count, copious amounts of blood. Although easily confused with other sub-genres like torture porn and splatter fests, the Slasher genre sets itself apart with certain characteristics.

Many people credit Halloween, and Friday the 13th, as the creators of the Slasher genre, and while they are certainly some of the most popular examples, it's not quite as simple as that.

Ancestors

Perhaps the first Slasher killing of all time.

Before the slasher officially earned it's name, a number of films were released that acted as the roots for the genre . Peeping Tom, released in 1960 in Britain, was about a psychotic killer who stalks women and kills them on camera, to capture their dying expressions. It earned an X rating upon release due to the, at the time, graphic nature of the film.

A few months after that Alfred Hitchcock released Psycho. Generally considered to be the first slasher film (but not really), it established a number of elements that would be featured in slashers to come: psychotic killer murdering victims one at a time, a whodunit plot, and a twist ending. Dementia 13 directed by Francis Ford Coppola, released in 1963, could also be considered a "light" slasher. The film featured victims being killed off one by one in various ways by an unknown killer, but no blood was seen.

The Blood Factor

Fuad Ramses brought gore to the party with Blood Feast.

Blood and gore were barely seen on film until Herschell Gordon Lewis released Blood Feast in 1963, first in his "Blood Trilogy" (that's a lot of blood). Blood Feast was by far the goriest movie to be released at the time, featuring dismemberment and disembowelment never seen on film before. Bashed by critics for being abhorrent, pointless, and an insult to viewers, it of course gained a cult following. It was played primarily at drive-ins, which became the home of many similar exploitation films.

Exploitation Influence

The cheaply made exploitation pictures that flooded drive-ins and grindhouses in the '70s featured a lot of content that would later become staples of the slasher genre. Nudity, sex, drug use, weirdos, torture, creative killing methods, were all at the time taboo, which of course drew a new generation of curious viewers.

The revenge motif made popular by Wes Craven's Last House on the Left, would become a common theme in future Slasher film. Many of the killers in slashers are fueled by anger over some past event.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was another film important for the genre. Not only did it feature many Slasher style killings, but more importantly the concept of "The Final Girl".

The Giallo Influence

Meanwhile in Italy...

The Giallo films of the '60s and '70s would have an enormous impact on later American slasher films. Blood and Black Lace and Torso featured some of the first masked killers. Dario Argento "Animal Trilogy" (Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Cat O' Nine Tails) all contained mysterious psychopaths murdering victims with sharp implements. But there were a few things missing from these movies that we have come to associate with the Slasher: a high body count, and stupid teens as victims.

Legendary.

Those missing elements were addressed in Mario Bava's film: Twitch of the Death Nerve. Bava's most controversial film, it featured copious amounts of blood and guts tied together with a near nonsensical story line. The first half of the movie is basically just teens getting slaughtered in various ways. And it was that basic structure which has been imitated countless times by movies like Scream and Sleepaway Camp. Most influenced by it was Friday the 13th Part 2, which lifted two murders from the film, machete to the face and teen lovers impaled, nearly shot for shot.

Twitch of the Death Nerve had kick started the American Slasher phenomenon of the late '70s.

Rise of the American Slasher

The first of it's kind, Black Christmas released in 1974 and created the Slasher genre that still remains popular to this day. The film took place in a college sorority house, where an unknown psychotic killer stalks and kills his prey in various ways.