The slasher film was not created overnight. The full-blown birth of the genre, which occurred in the late 1970s, was actually the fruition of almost twenty years of growth.

It all began in 1960 with a little black-and-white film called Psycho. When Alfred Hitchcock made Psycho, little did he know that he was laying the groundwork for an entirely new kind of film.

Psycho's contribution to the birth of the slasher movies lies in its death scenes. Prior to 1960, no major motion picture dared to depict murder in such a blatant fashion as Psycho did. Though there is hardly any blood in the film and no shots of the actual "slashing" (the blade piercing the skin), Psycho's use of sudden, high-pitched musical strokes and brutal murder scenes were the first bold step in the creation of what would become the slasher movie genre.

It was fourteen years before the next phase of the slasher creation was complete, but when it did come, it came with a bang--or, more appropriately, a buzz.

The buzz of a chainsaw.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre took the stylish murder scenes of Psycho to a new level, and threw another essential slasher element into the mix: teenagers. Chainsaw also gave the screen its first true slasher icon: Leatherface. Though Norman Bates came earlier, he didn't strike quite the same kind of chord that Leatherface did. Leatherface was the first in a long series of mased men wielding sharp objects, murdering teens left and right with his trademark chainsaw. Jason, Freddy, the Scream killer, even Michael Meyers, all owe a great debt to Leatherface for starting the craze.

The other film form 1974 that deserves recognition for its role in the creation of the slasher genre is a true forgotten classic named Black Christmas. Black Christmas begins by showing the viewer the film's setting through the eyes of the killer. This POV technique was used later in the more popular film Halloween, but Black Christmas did it first. Black Christmas also introduced the notion of an annonymous sinister phone caller, an idea that was used and made famous in films like When A Stranger Calls and Scream.

By this point, almost all of the slasher elements had been introduced; the brutal, violent, stylish death scenes, sudden jolts of music, rampant teenage hormones, the masked killer, and "stalking" camera techniques were all present. Only one thing remained.

The final ingredient in the phenomena that became the slasher genre was introduced in 1976 in a film titled Carrie. Carrie is regarded as a modern horror classic for many reasons, but the most important--the one everyone remembers from the film--is the ending. The very final moments contain one of the most startling and unnerving sequences ever filmed, and the consequences of the ending paved the way for the true birth of the slasher genre.

Haddonfield, Illinois; October 31, 1978; Halloween.

John Carpenter's Halloween was the movie that took all of the elements mentioned above and piled them all together, creating the first true slasher movie. From the moment Halloween hit the theaters and became a world-wide success, there was nothing anyone could do to stop the birth of the slasher movie.

All of the films listed on this site, save for the few innovaters mentioned in the previous paragraphs, all exist thanks to Halloween. And, therefore, this existence of this site itself is due to Halloween. All have tried to top it, few, if any, have succeeded, but the attempts that were made have become what is now known as the slasher movie genre--the world I love.

Now, be my guest, and explore the world of the slasher movie...

Just don't do it alone!