History of slasher movies

The History of slasher movies

The genre horror has many different sub-genres, one of these is 'Slasher'. Slasher films stereotypically have a lot of violence and blood. Slasher has a lot of rules and conventions which are mostly followed for a successful film, one of the main conventions and rule followed is that sex leads to death. at the time that slasher films were first created (1930's) It set morals into the teenagers, this was that they shouldn't have sex due to the fact that it isn't good. 

 A few of the most well known slasher films were by Wes Craven who made the last house of the left, nightmare on elm street and scream (1-4), Tobe Hooper who made the Texas chainsaw massacre, John carpenter who made the ward and Halloween, and Sean Cunningham who made Friday the 13th. 

Halloween was made in 1978; directed by John carpenter. this starred Jamie lee Curtis and Michael Myers. It was seen that this film was the fuel for all films that were made during the 80's due to the massive fan base it created. It was surprising that it was such a huge hit due to the cheap exploitation used and the fact that there was no use of advertisement to make it seem special. There was a huge sense that Halloween made the audience feel scared, this may of been due to the way that it was made on the normal streets and normal neighbourhood. As well as this the audience were scared due to the way that they couldn't see the monsters/killers details which made it seem humanoid. Throughout this film there was a visual flair in the emphasis on the killings which made the other directors and writers intrigued as to how to make a slasher like this. 

Friday the 13th was produced by Sean Cunningham; it was released on the 13^th of February 2009. This film wasn’t expected to be very successful as people didn’t realise the large amount of money that it made. Friday the 13^th was full of classic idiot teenagers. And had no technical ideas for the film and therefore nobody expected it to be as successful as it was. This film turned out to be that much of a success that it infiltrated cinemas and theatres all over America. The special effects on the deaths were done by Tom Savini. There is a suggestion that the way in which he edited the deaths moved the genre onwards to the genre it is today. The film had many different stylistic effects within the narrative, this was through the way that the audience was tricked into thinking that everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about and then the girl got killed. There is also the use of the looton bus which Hitchcock started, which scares the audience with something that wasn’t anything to worry about and then after they got scared by that they then scare them with something that is generally threatening.

European folk law is the main production source for the monsters that are created for films. They are a mix of fact and fiction. All monsters come from somewhere else such as Egypt. After the 60’s there was a modernisation with the killers in the films, instead of making them out to be a type of animal or monster, film makers brought in humans as the killers. Psycho which was directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock changed the way that people wanted to watch films, it was called the ‘grandfather of all horror films’ due to the way it changed the viewer’s expectations.

Texas chainsaw massacre was a film that was described as a nightmare story. It was made as a film that is based on the serial killer Ed Gein who dug up woken from graves and dissected them to make ‘artistic’ items. Ed Gein was a butcher and a psycho all in one killer. He made soup bowls from skulls, chairs out of skin and butchered women in the smokehouse. It was the films aim to make the audience come face to face with death; it was a film that was made to make the audience feel like they were affected in a real way by them. At the start of the films release there wasn’t much expectancy for it to be such a huge hit, but after it was released it got a lot of people’s attention and made a lot of profit. The Texas chainsaw massacre was established as a franchise meaning that they become more successful without realising.

The nightmare on elms street is a stalker slasher with the monster Freddie crougar they it wanted to make the audience feel like somewhere Freddie crougar is someone out to get them, meaning that they would feel really effected by the film. Freddie Crougar came from one of Wes Cravens childhood memories of an old mad staring up at his window late at night. When the film was released it made the audience feel as if it was the real life due to the way that if you fall asleep then all danger will come to you, everyone knows how hard it is not to fall asleep when faced with the over hanging feeling of being tired, this impacted the audience massively. Unlike other slasher films where there were certain rules and conventions that would have to be applied to the film to make it a good slasher, this film didn’t follow them rules and still made a huge success of its self.

After a film becomes so successful such as scream and the Texas chainsaw massacre, the monster within the films become less of a fear factor, this is due to the way that they are constantly everywhere and therefore you are seeing them a lot on a day to day basis, therefore becoming more familiar. Freddie crougar is now seen as a dark comedian due to the way that he has been advertised due to becoming a franchise. A lot of slasher movies became mainstream and ended up with a main core audience meaning that it wasn’t growing as much as they would want it to. Although it has a core audience nowadays, it used to be just 30 ish olds that watched the slasher films, but it has now spread all over different ages down to young teens.

In the 1990’s slasher’s became more of a parody, by deconstructing the films. Due to this factor, Wes Craven didn’t show any body his scripts until he had completely finished.

Scream was one of the main slasher movies that established the genre. Due to the way that consists of five successful sequels, although this isn’t what they had planned to do in the first place; they planned to make a spoof off of the genre but instead fit in perfectly. This was mostly established due to the way that scream started off a new age of slasher where the film was originally aimed at teenagers. This was due to the way that this generation of teenager’s lives base around their phone, and through this film they are somehow pressured to think that a phone isn’t the best thing to have as it can be quite a scary factor. Like most other films in this genre only the final girl can have sex and survive and only the killer can say I’ll be right back, which in a way you can see how they try to make fun of the genre by when one of the killers says I’ll be right back. Instead of them making fun of the genre itself, the scary movie sequels make fun out of scream.

The slasher genre is slowly becoming obsolete, there seems to be less and less each year that are being released. There is a lot of sequels and prequels within the horror and slasher genre. The one key factor that has to be within the films is a fear factor, and something that will stick within the consumers head, for example the mask and phone calls within scream.