alt title(s): Slasher Flick
Near-indestructible serial killers stalking attractive young girls, a combination that allows for buckets of gore and enough flesh to titillate.
The killers, mostly driven by
revenge, are
Made Of Iron, at a minimum, and usually
Implacable. Many are explicitly supernatural. All of them can appear and disappear
as if by magic, and the corpses of their victims are equally elusive. A slasher killer can whisk away a full grown adult's corpse in seconds, leaving not a single drop of blood behind, or swiftly arrange all its victims in an elaborate tableau,
without ever being seen lugging the dead bodies around. The more explicitly supernatural killers will have powers ranging from
Super Strength (all the better to
pull victims through walls), the ability to
appear in dreams and attack the dreamers, or other
ghostly abilities.
The victims are usually teenagers or young adults, all
guilty of some minor vice. Once the audience has had a convincing demonstration of their (usually
sexual) misdemeanours, they are
spectacularly slaughtered. If there's more than one sin or minority to pick from then the
Sorting Algorithm Of Mortality comes into play.
Eventually, there will be only one girl left standing, the
Final Girl, normally the only "morally pure" member of the main cast. With considerable help from her
death battle exemption, she will kill the killer.
Come the next sequel, it will be revealed that the killer was actually
Not Quite Dead.
A subset of the
Horror genre, although the schlockier examples replace suspense almost entirely with gore. They are often considered
B-movies. Early examples of the genre were heavily influenced by the
giallo films of Italian directors like
Dario Argento,
Lucio Fulci, and Mario Bava. The genre first became popular in the late '70s and early '80s, with the release of the three most iconic slasher flicks:
Halloween,
Friday the 13th, and
Nightmare On Elm Street. The genre would burn itself out in the late '80s, as the established franchises grew stale and the ripoffs grew more desperate. The slasher genre was revived in the mid-late '90s, when Wes Craven's
Scream satirized the genre and became a hit. Once again, studios sought to
cash in on the film's success, releasing their own
post-modern, teen-focused slasher flicks. Today, the slasher genre may be entering a third wave, with the remakes of
Halloween,
My Bloody Valentine, and
Friday the 13th all being hits, a remake of
Nightmare on Elm Street on the way, and the backlash against the
gore-driven "torture porn" that dominated horror in
this decade.
Tropes applicable to the genre:
- Psycho (1960): Arguably the Ur Example, though it has very few of the associated tropes and is more akin to a typical serial killer movie.
- Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970): Influential film by famed Italian horror director Dario Argento, who made his debut here. By this film, most of the tropes were in place, although the term "slasher flick" didn't exist yet, and the plot and characters were more akin to those in a usual whodunit.
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): One of the first well-known ones to use a Final Girl (though not the first, that would be the 1972 Italian slasher Torso), possibly the first to "monsterize" the killer by portraying him as more beast than man. Also responsible for the stereotype of slasher villains wielding chainsaws. One of the two Trope Makers for the genre, the other being...
- Black Christmas (1974): Like TCM, this is a Trope Maker for the genre. Also started the tradition of holiday-themed horror movies.
- Halloween (1978): The original movie popularized the genre in the US. Created one of the Big Three slasher icons: Michael Myers (no, not the guy who played Austin Powers).
- Friday the 13th (1980): The Trope Codifier. The first movie had more in common with the Italian giallos, with the identity of the killer kept a secret until the end, then later installments took the genre into straight-out fantasy. Created the second of the big slasher icons: Jason Voorhees.
- Nightmare On Elm Street (1984): Put a supernatural twist on the genre by introducing a killer who stalked his victims through their dreams. The killer in question, Freddy Krueger, was the last of the great slasher icons to come about.
- Scream (1996): Started a '90s revival of the genre, with an increased sense of self-awareness.
- Final Destination (2000): Just as Nightmare On Elm Street did back in The Eighties, this movie put a supernatural twist on the genre, having Death itself killing people in ways that would make Rube Goldberg proud. Often referred to as a "slasher film without the slasher," and later installments would focus more on gore than plot.
- Death Proof (2008): Quentin Tarantino's take on the genre, featuring a professional stunt driver who uses a souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger as his weapon.
- The Alien series: While Science Fiction, they are very, very slasher in spirit, the first one in particular. The Fan Service is pared down, and the difficulty of killing an Alien varies depending on how many Aliens there are, but still slasher.
- While we're at it, The Terminator and Predator both feature killers that are made of iron (or at least a human-skin exoskeleton) and each do a lot of killing in their movies. The Terminator in particular was even lampshaded by the police of the first movie to be a serial killer that stalked his young female victims with phone book addresses. The Predator, in a bit of a twist, does not target the only female in the cast.
- The comic book Hack/Slash stars a former Final Girl who hunts down slashers.
- Cry_Wolf (no, that's not a typo, the underscore is in the title) is worthy of mention here for being a "faux-slasher". Only two people die in the entire movie. I'm not saying who.
- And neither of them really dies in a particularly brutal fashion as has become accustom to the genre.
- Hunter The Vigil has... Slashers, who are people influenced by the supernatural into becoming perfect Serial Killers, although not necessarily The Juggernaut as we usually see in movies (there is such a thing as a Diabolical Mastermind). They don't begin as indestructible, but if their exploits become the stuff of myth, they become Scourges, who can resurrect themselves through the power of the public's fear of them as a frequent power.. Curiously, it's possible to play as one, since they develop their own morality, which allows them to be Affably Evil. This, combined with the fact that their targets often are worthy of The Scourge Of God, makes them ideal Hunters... although the others don't really like them.
