Fans of slasher movies may be interested in the announcement that Starz Entertainment Group and indie film distributor THINKFilm have begun production of a new documentary called Going To Pieces: The Rise And Fall Of The Slasher Film.
In a previous post, I mentioned that the Italian giallo genre led to the American slasher film. Back in high school and college, I saw ‘em all: Fridays and Jasons and Slumber Camps and Ski-Masked Axe Murderers and whatnot. Pretty much all crap, but what can you do?
Slasher movies are very ritualistic, almost kabuki-like. Very similar to the way I described Ju-on, there’s an established pattern, that’s repeated over and over during the course of the film; the creativity comes in the variance utilized.
There’s a killer, perhaps of known origin (Halloween) or perhaps not (Friday the 13th). A group enters an environment, hopefully a closed one (Terror Train), and then are picked off one by one. In the end, the killer is unmasked and then stopped.
Peeping Tom and Psycho are forerunners of the genre (both from 1960), but not really of it. For that matter, I wouldn’t classify The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) as a slasher movie, for reasons that make it all the more effective as a film. It followed no formula; events spill out like a true nightmare. Although Black Christmas (1974) was a Canadian production, it established all the hallmarks of the American slasher film.
Although Scream (1996) is credited as the movie that simultaneous satirized and paid homage to the genre, I would like to point your attention to The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) as the first film to do so. Directed by Amy Holden Jones and written by Rita Mae Brown (!), its satire is so subtle it might be easily missed. But it’s there alright and it’s hilarious.
Starz previously funded the documentary Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, which focused on the six key films released between 1970 and 1977 that defined the “midnight movie” phenomenon of the Seventies.