Last week, LBOTL discussed the splatter film, and this week it's the kissing cousin, the slasher film that gets the treatment. Though there is definite overlap, it is important to define our terms, once again. Whereas the splatter film is centered around the effects, asserting "the gore the merrier", the slasher film may offer some shocking effects-laden kills, but it is first and foremost a subgenre defined by its antagonists and the morality tale it tells.

Some credit Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None as the first example of the slasher story. This mystery revolves around a killer dispatching victims one by one on an isolated island at the Soldier Island mansion. It was eventually turned into a play in 1943, and was frequently known as Ten Little Indians as well. It would be some time before the screen would see its first true slasher film, the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho, in 1960.

What Psycho did for horror cinema was to establish one of the familiar cliches of this subgenre, that of the psychotic killer, whose derangement led him to murder. Though it was missing many of the characteristics that would later become so familiar, it also managed to highlight the kill scene. The legendary shower scene is, of course, shocking, even now, with its multitude of cuts and shrieking music, but the latter kill, brilliantly shot as the victim falls backwards on the staircase, is perhaps the more grisly. A few films followed in Psycho's footsteps, most notably Peeping Tom. released the same year as Psycho but far more concerned with the mechanics of the kill, though it did not ignore the psychology of its  

Bob Clark's nasty little Black Christmas involves several slasher stereotypes: a holiday, young girls, and a killer with some inventive methods of dispatching his targets. The plastic over the head still gets me. In addition to that gem is Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released the same year, and providing the slasher with one of its oft-used antagonist models: the crazy-ass family. Throw a bunch of teenagers in the middle of nowhere with a clan of lunatics, cannibals, no less, who terrorize them for 90 minutes. TCM is an excellent film, and adds some Vietnam subtext, along with a number of images that affect the viewer on a nearly-subconscious level, but it is a slasher, make no mistake. It just happens to be a very good slasher. It also forwarded the idea of the terrorized, but surviving, female protagonist who survives the bloodbath to tell the tale. In the case of TCM, this was a random survival, not based on anything that was or was not done by the protagonist to save herself, beyond, of course, running like hell.

The 1980s were packed with these films, whether sequelized version of previous films or knock-offs. In fact, 1983 was the high-water mark for these films, generating 60% of all box office that year. But, the quality would decline and the slasher film would become a tired parody of itself. That is, until Scream. Wes Craven's Scream is both homage and re-invention, powered by a very clever Kevin Williamson-penned script, and turning the usual tropes upside-down while still adhering to the basic formula. This, of course, led to the inevitable imitators and inspirations, such as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. More direct throwbacks to the 1980s, they still brought a modern sensibility to the stories, while still maintaining an admirable body count.

There have also been some post-slasher revisions, particularly with the very smart Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, which combines the mockumentary with the slasher in a refreshing way. Now that Hollywood has gone all goofy for remakes, we can look forward to new versions of Friday the 13th and My Bloody Valentine in the coming months. Will these be homages or rip-offs. Time will tell. One thing that is certain, there will always be room for the slasher film's bloody morality tales.

murderer.

The 1970s were the decade of the slasher, however. It produced the best of them, though not the most. In 1971, the template for all slashers to follow was laid down by Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (or Twitch of the Death Nerve, if you're nasty). Bava had it all here... teenage campers, gruesome murders, a mysterious killer(s). It wasn't quite the format we know, now, but it was awfully damn close, and a must-see if you want to know where Halloween came from. So, the Italians and their giallo films were close, and Bava's work even more so, but the slasher is uniquely American, and it got served up to us the way we like it in 1974 with two films that would truly be the archetypes of the subgenre.

Four years later, the best slasher would arrive, John Carpenter's Halloween. With Halloween, the morality fable was introduced to the slasher film. You have sex, you die. You do drugs, you die. Only the purest girl will remain. Though not as gruesome as many remember, it is a tension-inducing, terribly frightening movie that followed the basic tenants: centering around a holiday, targeting teenagers, and lifting up the virginal "final girl" to do battle with the killer at the conclusion. It also included the reveal moments, when our heroine Laurie tours the house of horrors, discovering bodies at every step. This would spawn any sequels and imitators, including the Friday the 13th series, My Bloody Valentine, April Fools' Day, Happy Birthday to Me, and on and on.