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Murders and Masks and Zombies! Oh My!
Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho.
Somewhere after F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and the 1950s’ monster mash-up movies featuring mummies and werewolves, the horror genre took a slight detour, trading monster-centric and supernatural premises for more psychological, socially apt and, ultimately, more human antagonists. In the process, two new sub-genres were formed within horror cinema: The slasher flick and the zombie movie.
A staple of every teenager’s movie collection, the slasher flick is known for pitting parent-free adolescents against psychopathic killers. From the hockey-masked Jason in Friday the 13th to Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, the genre spurned more teenage bloodshed and girl versus psychopath endings than any previous genre. The zombie movie, in all its apocalyptic glory and over-the-top gore, presents a vision of a world becoming worse and worse; a social critique with enough cannibalism, gut-eating and foot-dragging to be considered a new form of horror movie.
While both sub-genres may be derivative in many ways, it’s clear that without the slasher flick and the zombie movie, the horror genre would still be caught in the world of mummies and vampires, without a base in the most basic of human fears: Ourselves.
Here, MM counts down the top five landmark slasher flicks and the top five genre-defining zombie movies of all time.
Slasher Flicks
Psycho (1960)
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Though Hitchcock’s infamous shower scene lasts only three minutes, it’s been the focus of countless books, essays and film courses, as well as the center of imitation and parody in almost every form of popular culture. The father (or mother) of all slasher flicks, Psycho defined the basic guidelines for the sub-genre. A defenseless female character all on her own? Check! A seemingly abandoned motel? Check! An unstable psychopath with a penchant for ladies’ clothes and butcher knives? Check, check, check! While some debate its credibility as a slasher movie, it’s clear that without Psycho, the sub-genre would never have become as popular.
Black Christmas (1974)
directed by Bob Clark
Knives, pick axes, hooks—these are all fair game in the world of slasher flicks. But Black Christmas shows true originality with its murder delivered by plastic bag. Considered by some to be the first true slasher movie, it not only paved the way for Halloween by giving the murderer’s point of view, but in its holiday-theme as well; when else can a crowd of carolers block out the screams coming from the attic? The movie follows a group of sorority girls in the days before leaving campus for Christmas break as they unknowingly house a murderer in their attic. Gratuitous phone calls ensue, girls begin to disappear and a twist ending has you looking at rocking chairs in a whole new way. The film’s biggest twist? Nine years after Black Christmas, director Clark revisted the holiday film with the ultimate December classic, A Christmas Story.
Halloween (1978)
directed by John Carpenter
The slow paced walk; the butcher knife; the uncomfortable breath forced from behind the empty, lifeless mask; characteristics that made Michael Myers the poster child for slasher flicks, lurking behind bushes and following you home from school. With director John Carpenter’s use of P.O.V. shots—shooting scenes through the eyeholes in Myers’ mask, the movie marked a horrifying achievement in voyeurism as the antagonist escapes from a sanitarium, stalks a group of teenagers and goes head to head with Jamie Lee Curtis, who, no matter the sharp object, just can’t seem to kill him. Grossing more than $50 million, Halloween also established the high profit possibilities of the sub-genre.
directed by Wes Craven
You can thank Wes Craven for the late-1990s’ Halloween craze of “Ghostface” costumes and the always creepy “Do you like scary movies?” greeting on the telephone. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the movie theater, Craven re-energized the slasher flick and spearheaded a resurgence of similar movies with this one about a group of teenagers plagued by a murderer’s movie-bantered phone calls and killing spree. With its constant horror movie references—specifically to slasher movies—Scream marked two especially big steps in the sub-genre: The first being the characters awareness of their own demise; the second being genre references, which allowed for a more satirical look at the sub-genre and made the movie all the more realistic.
Death Proof (2007)
directed by Quentin Tarantino
Leave it to Tarantino to bring back the slasher flick in one of its funniest forms: As one half of Grindhouse, the double bill he shared with director Robert Rodriguez. The features were meant to evoke the exploitation movies of the 1970s and exploited we were as psychopathic stunt car driver Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) targets beautiful woman after beautiful woman in his supposedly “death proof” Chevy Nova.
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by boating holidays on 10/07/08 at 11:25 pm
Such interesting read and information, thanks for sharing this post, I’ve already bookmarked your blog.
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