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A Selective History of the Slasher Film

Only in the past decade has the slasher film directed towards innovative trends, violating, for the first time, conventions and mechanisms reused in an uncountable number of films. The slasher film is one of the most structured and concrete film genres.

Recently and particularly the genre has employed post-modernist detachment. This is a particularly laudable diversion, as it occurs in a genre of films known for their similarity. It is evident in two films: The Silence of the Lambs and Scream. The latter preyed on the popular trends of the slasher film genre that went unacknowledged in the entirety of its duration. (Though Scream is the most popular example of this, it was preceded by Wes Craven’s own New Nightmare.) The trick is this: Scream is a slasher film, though in drawing attention to its type it emerges, in some way, as innovative. It is self-aware and -referential, yet is purposefully derivative (and knowledge of the slasher genre will grant the inconsistencies of Scream: foremost, slasher killers have no identity).

The Silence of the Lambs offers one of the most detached perspectives of the slasher film. Firstly, the killer, Hannibal Lector, is not only known but he is studied (this is contrary to established notions of Lector as antihero). But notice the parts of the film that coalesce with slasher methodology: the female survivalist, the sexuality of the crimes; even Lector’s muzzle, only seen briefly in the film, has become a staple method of identifying him. He is not only a horror icon, like other slasher killers, but one of the most recognized.

The final and least laudable trait of the slasher film is its propensity to generate sequels (for measure, the five films mentioned in this article have spawned a combined 18 sequels). Because slasher killers are inhumanly durable, their deaths are never legitimately final.

Slasher films, however derivative and thematically impotent, are generated from a handful of critical successes. The cornerstones of the slasher genre are detailed below.

Psycho

Psycho opens with the caption “Phoenix, Arizona … Friday, December the Eleventh … Two Forty-Three PM.” In this — the first slasher film — the specificity of location lends the film a truth. This convention functions to make otherwise clichéd horror mechanisms seem real, as they are given a ridiculously specific context.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Everything about this film is made to enhance its troubling atmosphere, and this is a quality that is enhanced in its age. It is the product of guerilla filmmaking tactics, and is shot in a high-contrast, grainy film stock, resembling the footage of a home movie. These traits form a stark, realistic quality, and the characters’ fear is unmistakable.

Halloween

The final and most significant triumph Halloween achieves is measured by the bulk of films that follow and emulate it. Viewing it over twenty years following its release — after twenty years of frequent incarnations of the same theme — Halloween does not appear innovative or even that horrific — two details for which it has been critically and popularly lauded. Halloween is unfortunately dumbed by the legion of films it has inspired.

Rumsey Taylor | © 2004 notcoming.com

Comments / 6 total / Submit Comment

1. nick yale / 5 August 2005 / 9:40 PM / URL

   Mr. Taylor Your comments inspire me to want to snail mail you a free review copy of a new slasher/horror/exploitation indie called Killers in the Woods. It’s funnier than it looks at http://www.killersinthewoods.com

2. fishdog / 2 October 2005 / 8:09 PM

   I have to disagree with you on Scream. It is in my opinion the responsible for the sorry state of the horror genre today. Thank god Argento is still out there.

3. fishdog / 2 October 2005 / 8:16 PM

   Deep Red which came out before Halloween is in my opinion the definitive film of the slasher genre.Carpenter himself credits it as his inspiration for Halloween

4. Matt / 4 October 2005 / 9:08 PM / URL

   I’m not sure I’m with you on Psycho being the first slasher film, but I’m sure it depends on how you define the genre. I’d be more likely to go with Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase from 1946 if not Hitchcock’s The Lodger from 1927.

5. Benny / 8 July 2006 / 5:03 AM

   I think Halloween is overated (even though it has some scary moments), it has alot of cliches and the film even contradicts itself on them (when Dr. Sam Loomis is disgussing with a staff member at the mental institution that Michael Myers know’s how to drive after being locked away since he was 5 or 6). plus theres boring slow charector devolpment (with the exception of Donald Pleasense) even Jamie Lee Curtis’ charector is boring up until the climax of the movie. And its so stupid that Michael Myers is unmasked in the first film, especially since he had so much potential, altogether the movie is just a bit slow. But i must contradict myself on this, it is because of these factors that Halloween is the most original slasher movie ever and theres no denying its fame, i read somewhere that john Carpenter really didn’t care about the movie, which i doubt. But i do prefer The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original and remake) because of leatherfaces charector and theres more than one villain, i enjoy the charectors of the family who kind of replace the kids as the new main charectors, all of the actors did an ace job, and theres things in this movie that you don’t notice the first time round which makes you watch the movie again and again and the remake just improves on all of this, there both very deep movies plus there loosely based on a true story, its a sucessful marriage of the two horror sub-genres slasher and exploitation (and i love exploitation movies). And i’m suprised that theres a lack of mention of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, after all it is just about the most popular and innovative of all slasher movie (apart from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre but the sequels sucked) but instead you choose to mention the likes of Scream series which took horror for granted and poked fun at it and the movies evidence of horror movies being shallow is so un-substantiated.

6. Donovan / 25 March 2007 / 9:11 PM

   Perhaps you have forgotten the Canadian films in the horror genre – first off, Deranged, which predates the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, yet is the same story, even beginning in the same mock documentary style, both loosely based upon the exploits of Ed Gein, both about a psychopath wearing human flesh as clothes chasing young women through the woods (though in Deranged it is a human femur instead of a chainsaw). I am simplifying things of course.

   Also, i do believe that Halloween was meant originally to be a sequal to Canada’s Black Christmas, which is probably the best installment ever made into the slasher genre.

   I agree that psycho, among a few others, should take heavy credit towards pointing the way towards the modern slasher genre, however the genre itself should be credited to these two Canadian films, as well as Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve, later remade into Friday the 13th. Halloween and Texas Chainsaw may have been the popular installments, but they were inspired elsewhere.

   Just my opinion