We need a concrete “slasher movie” definition. So, then: Before we embark on listing the 50 best slasher movies of all time, our task is clear.
In an extended investigation of this question, we eventually landed on a little-known Italian horror film from 1973 as the first genuine “slasher movie.” From the time of Universal’s The Old Dark House in 1932, Hollywood has been producing films about groups of people being stalked by mysterious killers in a confined setting, and yet we don’t necessarily reevaluate that film as “the first slasher.” Films of the ’40s and ’50s such as And Then There Were None, House of Wax and The Bad Seed incorporated many of the same themes, but it might be fair to say that they lacked the lurid quality that truly makes for a “slasher”-the exploitative edge and shock factor mined by true slashers such as Black Christmas and Halloween in the ’70s and beyond. What’s more complicated is properly defining “slasher,” and deciding when exactly the genre began. But more than anything, slasher movies are an exploration of intimacy-the intimacy and invasiveness of physical violence in our lives, and “the morbid intimacy in the act of killing,” as one Paste staffer recently put it in a discussion of the genre. Gallons and gallons of red tempera paint or corn syrup-that’s almost a given. A group of horny, not-so-bright teens in a secluded setting, sure. What do you think of, when you read the words “slasher movie”?Ī killer in a mask, perhaps.
0 kommentar(er)
