Slasher Films

The bane of non-internet film critics everywhere. And of the weak-stomached. Sometimes. Unless you're watching something dry like Halloween.

Slasher films are my weakness. I am infamous amongst my friends because of my liking for them.

Also, they get remade a lot.

Cinematic junk food, I tells ya.

Do you have a slasher film you particularly like or hate? Maybe one that's Ax 'Em-awful?

Zombie Nightmare. You can't go wrong with voodoo and metal.

I never realized it, but that can count.

I can't watch anything with Jon Mikl Thor without Mike/Joel and the bots helping. So that pretty much knocks off the majority of his filmography getting repeat viewings.

I love Freddy Krueger.

Pretty much the only type of film I watch too. Currently trying to make pages for some of the ones listed on Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday (they're occasionally difficult to track down, but worth it... sometimes).

Favorite of mine would have to be Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

edited 16th Mar '11 3:31:54 PM by LordCrayak

Slasher films can be fun. I've always like the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. I must have rented part 5 dozens of times back when I was 12 or so.

I like some slashers. Of course, being a de facto film snob, I don't really talk about it much, but hey, a good slasher is still a pretty good film, thinks I. It's really a Love It or Hate It thing, but I personally liked The Strangers a lot, and if you're looking for deconstruction, pretty much nothing can beat Behind The Mask, which I will maintain is also a competently constructed flick, although yes, there are flaws, and I notice a couple of them

Also, the first Nightmare On Elm Street is pretty awesome, not so crazy about the sequels, though.

edited 16th Mar '11 5:34:40 PM by slowzombie

Behind the Mask is awesome. My only problem is that when it switches from documentary to actual slasher, it just doesn't have that same...zazz. Here's hoping they can make another that skewers slasher sequels, too.

Speaking of which, there's a phenomenon I've noticed with slasher movies that just doesn't carry over with other genres; that is, the sequels. The big slashers have all spawned huge franchises, and even the smaller ones usually have a sequel or two. Why is that? Are they so formulaic as to be easy to follow up? Low-budget enough to make sequels that are always profitable?

edited 16th Mar '11 6:56:41 PM by Seamus

Horror movies tend to be pretty cheap to make, slashers especially. The most expensive of the slasher flicks back then was probably A Nightmare on Elm St. and if I remember, that wasn't too expensive to make.

I think it was around a million dollars, maybe a little over.

I've actually toyed with how a Behind The Mask sequel would work. Of course, I don't have the quads to write a sequel to a movie I hold this highly just yet, but who knows, one day?

Yeah, the fact that the slasher is dirt cheap probably has something to do with it. I noticed that while the Norwegian horror movie was starting up, they produced a lot of Slashers, so one could say it's a fairly safe bet, especially if you manage to drum up some controversy. Either that, or it's a conspiracy by the Foley crews of the world, which is also a possible explanation.

$1.8 million if Wikipedia is to be believed.

the average film budget was over $18 million.

Source

So yeah, I think that may be a really good reason to make a slasher flick. Plus the obvious formula, which made a script pretty easy to dish out.

edited 16th Mar '11 7:47:00 PM by NULLcHiLD27

I heard that the sequel to Behind The Mask is written. I hope it gets filmed. The original was pretty good.

I also want to see Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2. The first film had a weak script, idiot characters, and a crappy lead, but I heard they intend to address all of those problems with the sequel. Plus, Laid To Rest had some insane death scenes. I will never look at tire sealant the same way again...not since the basketball kill in Deadly Friend have I seen something so absurd, yet so gruesome.

I'm writing a slasher of my very own. Or, trying to.

edited 16th Mar '11 8:31:03 PM by Prowler

I happen to like the first few Friday The13th's. Back before they made Jason keep coming back.

I am one of the few people who liked A New Beginning. I think it has all the slasher ingredients in it.

A New Beginning is one of my favorites. The only, and I mean only, reason that people bash it is because it doesn't have Jason.

I like them up to Part 6. Aside from Jason's look in Part 7, none of them after that are really worth watching to me.

I like all the Halloween films except Ressurection, I think H20 was the best note they could go out on by that point. I even love the remakes, but I'm a Rob Zombie fan

How can you hate a Friday the 13th movie ingenious enough to kill a guy with a belt?

Plus, it totally had the road flare kill stolen from it by Sorority Row(a slasher film that I hate).

I liked Rob Zombie's Halloween films too.

edited 17th Mar '11 6:12:25 PM by Prowler

Zombie's Halloween 2 is actually my favorite because it's so wierd and diffrent from the rest.

Plus I consider Halloween III in continuity.

edited 17th Mar '11 10:12:24 PM by NULLcHiLD27

I found the scene where Annie gets brutalized to be very unsettling...for some reason.

I enjoy 4 but there's some dumb things about it...like the great scene where Brady shoots the doorknob, and then grabs it saying, "It's metal, goddamn it! It's metal!"

What? O_o

It boggles my mind to think Scream 4 is coming. Not just coming, but less than one month from release.

That's one of the things I like about H2 aswell, I cared more about Annie in that movie than I have for most characters in horror films and I felt the scene where her father finds her was a really sad scene. Plus there's so many shots in that film that you could make a photo of and hang on a wall.

Halloween 4 had it's moment of goofiness, but it also had some fairly creepy parts aswell. Probably one of the best opening credits sequences I've seen.

I never watched any of the Scream films

It didn't help me that I find Danielle Harris to be totally adorable(also very sweet in person but that's another story). Brr...

It's strange...I think I like the Halloween series the most out of the big three, but a few of them are really bad and/or convoluted. In terms of overall quality, I think A Nightmare On Elm Street might be the better series.

I'd say you owe it to yourself to check out Scream, and then the sequels if you find it to your liking. I love the original, though I understand why some genre fans don't like it.

I just happened to make a Danielle Harris page the other day because I was bored. Could use some looking over, maybe.

For me, of the "Big Six" it roughly goes Friday, Nightmare, Halloween, Chainsaw Massacre, Hellraiser (yeah, I'm counting it) and Child's Play.

Rob Zombie's Halloween movies...I dunno. I want to like them. The first is fairly serviceable, though it gets ridiculous at times. I hated the second one, but I could see what he was trying to do, and it's much more than any Halloween movie has attempted previously. It's like he was trying to get a genuine artistic vision across, but was afraid that if he didn't Zombify it no one would care.

The only problems I have with H2 are that he didn't fully flesh out the ghost mom (I just assumed she was like some sort of Grim Reaper character) and that the ending confused people into thinking Laurie lived, when she actually died.