Slasher movies: where the genre came from, in 8 films

A slasher is a horror film built around a killer who hunts a group of people, usually with a knife or another sharp tool. The victims are picked off one at a time, and the audience spends the film waiting to learn who the killer is, why they are doing it, and who is left.

The formula did not appear overnight. Critics have traced it to a country house mystery, Italian crime thrillers and a drive-in gore picture. The eight films below follow that route in release order, from a film critics trace the genre back to, to a clown whose first film found its audience years later.

What makes a slasher

• A killer who stays hidden. A mask, a costume, or a face the film keeps off screen until the end.
• A group in one place. An island, a funhouse, a church, a house in the woods.
• A reason from the past. Something happened earlier, and the killing is the answer to it.
• Deaths as set pieces. Each murder is staged as the scene the film is built around.

8 slasher movies to watch, in release order

And Then There Were None (1945)

Ten strangers are invited to a house on an island by a host who never appears, and they begin to die one by one. The idea of a group trapped with a killer who must be one of them is the skeleton of the slasher, and critics have traced the genre back to this story. It is not gory, and the deaths are not played for horror.

The film started as Ten Little Indians, and the title caused trouble: Agatha Christie, whose mystery it adapts, threatened to sue over it, so it was released as And Then There Were None. René Clair, the French director behind silent comedies and Under the Roofs of Paris, made it as his last Hollywood studio film, and it follows Christie's stage ending, in which survivors live, rather than the book's.

Crime

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The Bat (1959)

A killer known only as The Bat is loose in a mansion full of people. The story began as a novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart, the mystery novelist, which she and the Broadway playwright Avery Hopwood turned into a Broadway play that ran 867 performances. This was the fourth time it reached the screen.

Vincent Price, not yet the horror icon he became after The House of Usher, plays the villain Dr Malcolm Wells. The director, Crane Wilbur, an actor turned screenwriter, had also written House of Wax. Critics have traced Batman to this story: accounts of Bob Kane, the cartoonist behind Batman, say he credited the sound version of The Bat from 1930 among his influences.

Horror

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Blood Feast (1963)

Herschell Gordon Lewis was an advertising man, not a film man. He had degrees in journalism, had taught high school English and ran an ad-film agency in Chicago before he and his partner David F. Friedman, a producer, made Blood Feast. Friedman told Variety they had moved from sex films to graphic horror because censors accepted horror more readily than nudity.

It debuted at a drive-in in Peoria, Illinois, where patrons were given plastic cups in case they were sick. Critics widely call it the first splatter film. Its budget is disputed: the BFI says about $24,000 and the AFI Catalog, citing trade reports, says about $40,000.

Crime

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Cat O' Nine Tails (1971)

Dario Argento, the Italian filmmaker later known for Suspiria, made this as his second film, after a hit. His producer father wanted a fast follow-up. The result is a giallo, the Italian style of murder mystery that stages its killings as set pieces, and critics have called it an ancestor of the slasher.

Karl Malden, the Oscar-winning American actor, plays a blind former journalist who makes crossword puzzles. Argento later called the film too American, practically an action movie, and has named it the film he is least satisfied with. Arrow Video restored it in 4K in 2018.

Thriller

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Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

A girl is murdered on her First Communion day, and suspicion falls on her older sister. Alfred Sole, an architect and Paterson, New Jersey native, shot it in his hometown in 1975, and the story is set in 1961. Brooke Shields, later famous for Pretty Baby, made her feature film debut in it at nine, as the girl who is killed.

It first played as Communion at the Chicago International Film Festival, then came out as Alice, Sweet Alice in 1977. Sole said the budget was $350,000, while studio publicity claimed $1 million. In 1981 it was reissued as Holy Terror with Shields' name and photo prominent, until she and her advisers threatened legal action and the campaign was changed.

Horror

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The Scarehouse (2015)

Sorority sisters are lured into a funhouse on Devil's Night by former friends who want revenge for an old wrong. That makes it a close match to the slasher formula, with the reason from the past at the centre.

It was shot in Windsor, Ontario, inside a real, operating haunted attraction. Sarah Booth, the director's wife, co-wrote it, produced it and plays the female lead, and it won Best Feature at the New York City Horror Film Festival in 2014. Reports of the budget range from $200,000 to C$273,000.

Horror

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Terrifier (2018)

Damien Leone, a special makeup effects artist, first put Art the Clown in a short film, then made a 20 minute version called Terrifier. To fund a feature he asked for $15,000 on Indiegogo and raised $4,360. The budget is given as about $35,000 by The Numbers and about $55,000 by JoBlo.

It played a limited run in 2018 and took only about $340,000 at the US box office, mostly from a wide re-release in about 700 theaters five years later. By then it had turned into a franchise: Leone says he refused an offer of about $700,000 to make the sequel because the company wanted the rights to Art. Terrifier 2 cost about $250,000 and grossed about $15.7 million worldwide.

Horror

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Butchers (2021)

A family of killers keeps four young people who are stranded after a car breakdown tied up in a wooden outhouse. Critics have traced it to backwoods horror, naming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Wrong Turn. It is a Canadian independent film with a largely British and Irish cast, made by Adrian Langley, an Ottawa-born director and cinematographer.

Its UK release was timed to National Butchers Week, and Langley followed it with two more films in 2024, Butchers Book Two: Raghorn and Butchers Book Three: Bonesaw.

Horror

Where to go next

• For more horror made on small budgets, see 80s Horror Movies.
• For the cheap, shocking pictures that sold the first gore films, start with Grindhouse Movies.