|
The slasher film (sometimes referred to as bodycount films and dead teenager movies) is a sub-genre of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer (sometimes wearing a mask) who stalks and graphically murders a series of adolescent victims in a typically random, unprovoked fashion, killing many within a single night.
The victims are usually photogenic teenagers or young adults who are away from mainstream civilization or far away from help and often involved in sexual activities, illegal-drug use, or both. These films typically begin with the murder of a young woman and typically end with a lone female survivor who manages to subdue the killer, only to discover that the problem has not been completely solved. Although Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho provided early inspiration, the first authentic slasher film was Black Christmas, though the success of Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street helped popularize and revolutionize the genre in the 1980s.
In a slasher film, the killer almost always uses unconventional weapons, such as blades, chainsaws, cleavers, and blunt objects; rarely, if ever, does the killer use guns. There is often a backstory that explains how the killer developed his (the killer is usually, though not always, male) violent mental state, and why he focuses primarily on a particular type of victim or a particular location.
Often, the killer is able to withstand most or all of his victims' attempts to defend themselves, sometimes because of either explicit or implied supernatural abilities. Thus, even after being shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, electrocuted, burned, or drowned, he is not only alive, but able to continue stalking his victims. Typically, in sequels the killer returns from the dead and is defined more as an undead, inhuman "pure evil" rather than as a psychopathic killer.
Director Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-nominated shocker has been terrifying viewers for decades. When exhausted, larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane (Janet Leigh)
goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life,
she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where twitchy manager Norman
Bates (Anthony Perkins) cares for his housebound mother. The place seems quirky but fine -- until Marion decides to take a shower.
All
work and no play make Jack a bloodthirsty boy. On the wagon after his
alcoholism created family troubles, aspiring novelist Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson)
accepts a position as off-season custodian at an elegant but eerie
hotel so he can write undisturbed. No sooner have Jack, his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny settled in than the ominous hotel starts to wield its sinister power over father and son.
The first flick in the trilogy from director John Carpenter,
Halloween almost single-handedly invented the 1980s slasher genre.
Escaped lunatic Michael Myers (no, not the Austin Powers actor) goes on
a murderous baby-sitter-slaying rampage on Halloween. Only baby sitter Jamie Lee Curtis (the quintessential scream queen) and psychiatrist Donald Pleasence can stop him.
Three creepy tales are brought to life -- or, more appropriately, death
-- in this frightening collection featuring the genius of Bela Lugosi.
In Murders in the Rue Morgue, an evil scientist (Lugosi) conducts a
horrific experiment. The Black Cat has two shadowy characters battling
for supremacy in a haunted castle in the Balkans. And Edgar Allan Poe's
macabre tale serves as inspiration for The Raven, which has Lugosi
playing a murderous surgeon.
Darren McGavin
stars as hard-nosed reporter Carl Kolchak in this creepy double
feature. Set in Las Vegas, The Night Stalker has Kolchak tracking a
string of murders where all the victims are showgirls and all were
completely drained of their blood. In The Night Strangler, Kolchak
uncovers an underground city in Seattle as he investigates another
blood-sucking murderer. The success of these films launched McGavin's
TV show "The Night Stalker."
Would you die to live? That's what two men, Adam (Leigh Whannell) and Gordon (Cary Elwes),
have to ask themselves when they're paired up in a deadly situation.
Abducted by a serial killer, they're both holed up in a prison
constructed with such ingenuity that they may not be able to escape
before their captor decides it's time to dismantle their bodies in his
signature way. Attempting to break free may kill them too, but staying
definitely will.
The crazed serial killer returns from the dead in this splatter-fest
sequel. After Michael Myers' niece gives birth, she turns the baby over
to Tommy Doyle (Paul Rudd)
to save the child from Michael. Living in the Myers' former home with
the Strodes, Tommy suspects that the evil force that drove Michael to
murder now curses young Danny Strode (Devin Gardner). Can Tommy -- with
help from Michael's nemesis (Donald Pleasence) -- end the madness?
A group of high school friends are being slaughtered in their sleep by
the hideous fiend of their shared dreams. When the police ignore her
explanation, one girl must confront the killer in his shadowy realm.
In the 1960s, a demonic creature dressed in a clown suit (Tim Curry)
terrorizes seven youngsters in Derry, Maine. The evil clown has been
killing the town's children, but the seven kids fight back and defeat
it. Thirty years later, however, when the seven pals learn of another
string of child murders, they must battle "It" once again. A Stephen
King novel serves as the basis for this Emmy-winning TV miniseries that
co-stars John Ritter.
Director Tobe Hooper's horror classic is a gruesome reminder that a movie need not be complicated to scare the daylights out of viewers. Sally (Marilyn Burns), her wheelchair-bound brother (Paul A. Partain)
and their friends travel to a vandalized graveyard to see if their
grandfather's remains are intact. En route, they come upon
chainsaw-wielding maniac Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), and it's a fight to the bloody death between good and evil.
|
