Slasher film
A slasher film is a subgenre of horror films involving a killer or a group of killers stalking and murdering a group of people, often by use of bladed or sharp tools. Although the term "slasher" may occasionally be used informally as a generic term for any horror film involving murder, film analysts cite an established set of characteristics which set slasher films apart from other horror subgenres, such as monster movies, splatter films, supernatural and psychological horror films.
Critics cite psychological horror films such as Peeping Tom and Psycho and the Italian giallo films as early influences. The genre hit its peak between 1978 and 1984 in an era referred to as the "Golden Age" of slasher films. Notable slasher films include Black Christmas, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, Sleepaway Camp, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Candyman, Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend and Terrifier. Many slasher films released decades ago continue to attract cult followings. The slasher canon can be divided into three eras: the classical, the self-referential and the neoslasher cycle.
Definition
Slasher films typically adhere to a specific formula: a past wrongful action causes severe trauma that is reinforced by a commemoration or anniversary that reactivates or re-inspires the killer. Built around stalk-and-murder sequences, the films draw upon the audience's feelings of catharsis, recreation, and displacement, as related to sexual pleasure. Paste magazine's definition notes that, "slasher villains are human beings, or were human beings at some point... Slasher villains are human killers whose actions are objectively evil, because they’re meant to be bound by human morality. That’s part of the fear that the genre is meant to prey upon, the idea that killers walk among us." Films with similar structures that have non-human antagonists lacking a conscience, such as Alien or The Terminator, are not traditionally considered slasher films.Common tropes
The final girl trope is discussed in film studies as being a young woman left alone to face the killer's advances in the movie's end. Laurie Strode, the heroine in Halloween, is an example of a typical final girl. Final girls are often, like Laurie Strode, virgins among sexually active teens. Others have called the trope "self-mythologising" based on a handful of especially high-profile examples, asserting that its prominence has been overstated – particularly the innocent, virginal qualities ascribed to putative final girls – and that, in the 21st century, the trope has been filtered through the lens of parody, subversion, and self-aware humour rather than deployed sincerely.When slasher films become franchises, they typically take on villain protagonist characteristics, with the series following the continued efforts of their antagonists, rather than any of the killer's disposable victims, including any individual entry's heroes or final survivor. Examples of antiheroes around whom the respective series have become centered include Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Chucky and Leatherface. The antagonist is envisioned and embedded into the public psyche as the main and most marketable/recognisable character, even if his screentime is dwarfed in any specific film by the nominal protagonists. The Scream film series is a rarity that follows its heroine Sidney Prescott rather than masked killer Ghostface, whose identity changes from film to film, and is only revealed in each entry's finale.
Another alleged trope frequently associated with slasher discourse – and horror more broadly – is that of the "black character dying first". Actual analyses of the films, such as a 2013 investigative piece in Complex, have found that the trope is largely self-mythologising as opposed to being a statistical reality.
Origins
The appeal of watching people inflict violence upon each other dates back thousands of years to Ancient Rome. The seventeenth century fairy tale, Bluebeard, "can be seen as one of the slasher film’s progenitors." So too can the late 19th century horror plays produced at the Grand Guignol; Maurice Tourneur's The Lunatics used visceral violence to attract the Guignol's audience. In the United States, public outcry over films like this eventually led to the passage of the Hays Code in 1930. The Hays Code is one of the entertainment industry's earliest set of guidelines restricting sexuality and violence deemed unacceptable.Crime writer Mary Roberts Rinehart influenced horror literature with her novel The Circular Staircase, adapted into the silent film The Bat, about guests in a remote mansion menaced by a killer in a grotesque mask. Its success led to a series of "old dark house" films including The Cat and the Canary, based on John Willard's 1922 stage play, and Universal Pictures' The Old Dark House, based on the novel by J.B. Priestley. In both films, the town dwellers are pitted against strange country folk, a recurring theme in later horror films. Along with the "madman on the loose" plotline, these films employed several influences upon the slasher genre, such as lengthy point of view shots and a "sins of the father" catalyst to propel the plot's mayhem.
Early film influences
's Thirteen Women tells the story of a sorority whose former members are set against one another by a vengeful peer who crosses out their yearbook photos, a device used in subsequent films Prom Night and Graduation Day. Early examples include a maniac seeking revenge in The Terror, based on the play by Edgar Wallace.B-movie mogul Val Lewton produced The Leopard Man, about a murderer framing his crimes against women on an escaped show leopard. Basil Rathbone's The Scarlet Claw sees Sherlock Holmes investigate murders committed with a five-pronged garden weeder that the killer would raise in the air and bring down on the victim repeatedly, an editing technique that became familiar in the genre. Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase, based on Ethel White's novel Some Must Watch, stars Ethel Barrymore as a sympathetic woman trying to survive black-gloved killers. The Spiral Staircase also features an early use of jump scares.
British writer Agatha Christie's particularly influential 1939 novel Ten Little Indians, centers on a group of people with secret pasts who are killed one-by-one on an isolated island. Each of the murders mirrors a verse from a nursery rhyme, merging the themes of childhood innocence and vengeful murder. House of Wax, The Bad Seed, Screaming Mimi, Jack the Ripper, and Cover Girl Killer all incorporated Christie's literary themes.
1960s horror-thrillers
's Psycho used visuals that had been deemed unacceptable by movie studios, including scenes of violence, sexuality, and the shot of a toilet flushing. The film featured an iconic score by Bernard Herrmann that has been frequently imitated in slasher and horror films. That same year, Michael Powell released Peeping Tom, showing the killer's perspective as he murders women to photograph their dying expressions.Psycho was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins garnering universal acclaim for his role as Norman Bates. This notice drew bankable movie stars to horror films. Joan Crawford starred in William Castle's Strait-Jacket and in Jim O'Connolly's Berserk!, while Albert Finney starred in MGM's Night Must Fall and Peter Cushing starred in Corruption.
Hammer Studios, a London-based company, followed Psycho
Francis Ford Coppola's debut, Dementia 13, takes place in an Irish castle where relatives gather to commemorate a family death but are murdered one by one. William Castle's Homicidal features gore in its murder scenes, something both Psycho and Peeping ''Tom had edited out. Richard Hillard's Violent Midnight showed a black-gloved killer's point of view as they pull down a branch to watch a victim and also featured a skinny-dipping scene. Crown International's Terrified features a masked killer. Spain's The House That Screamed'' features violent murders and preempted later campus-based slashers.
Splatter, Krimi and giallo films
Subgenres that influenced slasher films include splatter films, Krimi films, and giallo films.Splatter films focus on gratuitous gore. Herschell Gordon Lewis's Blood Feast was a hit at drive-in theaters and is often considered the first splatter film. Lewis followed with gory films Two-Thousand Maniacs!, Color Me Blood Red, The Gruesome Twosome and The Wizard of Gore. This grotesque style translated to Andy Milligan's The Ghastly Ones, Twisted Nerve, Night After Night After Night as well as The Haunted House of Horror.
Post-World War II Germany adapted British writer Edgar Wallace's crime novels into a subgenre of their own called Krimi films. The Krimi films were released in the late 1950s through the early 1970s and featured villains in bold costumes accompanied by jazz scores from composers such as Martin Böttcher and Peter Thomas. Fellowship of the Frog, about a murderer terrorizing London, was successful in America, leading to similar adaptations like The Green Archer and Dead Eyes of London. The Rialto Studio produced 32 Krimi films between 1959 and 1970.
File:Torso screenshot.png|right|thumb|A scene from Sergio Martino's film, Torso
Italy's giallo thrillers are crime procedurals or murder mysteries interlaced with eroticism and psychological horror. Giallo films feature unidentified killers murdering in grand fashions. Unlike most American slasher films the protagonists of gialli are frequently jet-setting adults sporting the most stylish Milan fashions. These protagonists are often outsiders reluctantly brought into the mystery through extenuating circumstances, like witnessing a murder or being suspected of the crimes themselves. Much like Krimi films, gialli plots tended to be outlandish and improbable, occasionally employing supernatural elements. Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood is a whodunit featuring a subplot depicting creative death sequences on a secluded lakeside setting, which greatly inspired Friday the 13th, its 1981 sequel and subsequent slashers. Sergio Martino's Torso featured a masked killer preying upon beautiful and promiscuous young women in retribution for a past misdeed. Torso
The influence of Hitchcock's Psycho extended also to gialli, with films such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail and The Crimes of the Black Cat paying homage to Hitchcock's film. Gialli were popular in American cinemas and drive-in theaters. Thriller Assault and Spanish mystery A Dragonfly for Each Corpse share many traits with Italian gialli. Death Steps in the Dark spoofed the familiar conventions found in giallo films. Despite successes from Deep Red and The Blood-Stained Shadow, giallo films gradually fell out of fashion by the mid-1970s as diminishing returns forced budget cuts. Films such as Play Motel and Giallo a Venezia exploited their low-budgets with shocking hardcore pornography.