The history of slasher movies
The slasher subgenre has terrified casual cinema-goers and horror fans alike for decades, typically utilising a fairly straightforward structure involving a masked killer. Most of the time, this mysterious murderer will kill for no good reason, opportunistically massacring anyone who treads their path.
The early days of horror were defined by supernatural themes and villains who posed little threat to audiences’ real lives. Creatures like Dracula and Frankenstein were scary, sure, but they were hardly realistic. Yet, a trend soon emerged in the 1960s that saw many horror movies begin to incorporate genuinely terrifying human killers. works such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (both released in 1960) were turning points for the horror genre, often labelled as proto-slashers due to their graphic violence, all stemming from the repeated acts of one gruesome killer.
Over in Italy, filmmakers like Mario Bava and Dario Argento were making giallo flicks like Black Sunday and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. These movies blended violence and sexuality, with a gloved or masked killer often responsible for killing a string of characters. By the 1970s, with the easing of censorship in American cinema underway, many directors were thinking more ambitiously when it came to horror. The decade allowed some of the first real slashers to emerge, including Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both made in 1974.
These movies were unforgiving, situating audiences in a world that felt like just real life. They were not highly stylised or unrelatable; rather, these were films that contained familiar settings, like suburbia or the countryside. The unwilling victims were ordinary members of society, selected at random by the killer. Horror was entering a new era, and it wasn’t long before one work would come along that would develop the slasher sub-genre even further: Halloween.
Directed by John Carpenter, the movie was released to unexpected acclaim in 1978, with audiences unable to get enough of the horrifying tale, which saw Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode only just emerge unscathed after being terrorised by Michael Myers. As popularised by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the film helped continue the final girl trope, a common feature of slashers.
The sheer financial and critical success of Halloween, which became one of the most profitable independent movies ever made, led to a rise in slashers over the coming years. We now enter the Golden Age of Slashers, with works like Friday the 13th, The Driller Killer, Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine and A Nightmare on Elm Street, among others, receiving a strong audience response.
The latter, directed by Wes Craven, was particularly successful, spawning several sequels which helped to establish the concept of the horror franchise. However, it was inevitable that the subgenre would start to take a downturn at some point, and as franchises became more common and filmmakers attempted to cash in on the success of other popular slashers, it wasn’t long before slashers became stale.
As a result, most of the slashers made during the latter half of the ‘80s were lacking in originality, over-sexualised and repetitive. There were certainly exceptions, such as Child’s Play, but overall, the slasher genre seemed to have reached its sell-by date.
Yet, in the mid-1990s, Craven and writer Kevin Williamson worked on an idea which would end up completely transforming horror. Taking the slasher genre and putting a humorous, meta spin on it, Scream was born. The film was self-aware, making reference to the rules and clichés of other slashers, and the result was a fun and refreshing take on the genre. Scream spawned several sequels, with the most recent being 2023’s Scream VI, and it remains one of horror’s most beloved franchises.
After Scream, there seemed to be a real spark of originality lighting up the horror genre again, with movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer also emerging to significant success. Yet, this trend only lasted so long, and soon, slashers were struggling, with a mixed bag of titles emerging. For example, several instalments to franchises like Halloween appeared, most of which were received fairly poorly, while Freddy vs. Jason was actually a massive hit.
Although many horror movies made in the 2000s borrowed from elements of classic slashers, new trends also emerged, like torture horrors and New French Extremity. In the meantime, lots of remakes of classic slashers were made, with production companies hoping to add a modern spin to classic tales, but most failed to leave a lasting impression on audiences.
Still, the 2010s onwards have given us some surprisingly beloved new slashers, from Ready Or Not and Happy Death Day to Ti West’s ‘70s homage, X. It seems as though to find success with a slasher in the current age of scary movies – which is experiencing the dominance of ‘elevated horrors’ – filmmakers must put a fresh perspective on the subgenre and do all they can to avoid clichés. The horror genre is constantly evolving, and who knows, perhaps we’ll enter a triumphant period for the slasher genre in the near future.
