The slice-n-dice boom of the early
80’s certainly didn’t come from nowhere, though many armchair internet writers
like this one sometimes act like it did. Rather, it was the culmination in many
ways of decades of refinement by exploitation filmmakers from all over the world.
Alfred Hitchcock is often credited with making the granddaddy of them all with Psycho
(1960). The film definitely bears many hallmarks, from a mysterious origin
of evil, to a big bad using a butcher knife to hack up apparently random
victims. And it doesn’t hurt that star Janet Leigh’s daughter is one Jamie Lee
Curtis, providing an inextricable connection to Halloween.
Shortly thereafter, Italian director
Mario Bava launched the giallo genre beginning with The Girl Who Knew Too
Much (1963) and cementing it his masterpiece Blood and Black Lace (1964).
The tropes of giallo may seem familiar to slasher fans: Scantily clad ladies,
operatically staged, graphic murders, and usually a deranged mass murderer. The
1960’s got the ball rolling, with filmmakers slowly turning away from the “kid
friendly” approach to horror involving vampires, witches, werewolves, and Charlie
Brown in favor of more adult-centric content and themes.
Now we come to the 1970’s. An era of
cinema that, thanks to the relaxing of content guidelines and collective
disillusionment of the post-Vietnam era, is often considered something of a
wild west. Serial killers entered the public consciousness for the first time.
Crime and inflation pounded on the international economy. People were angry,
and the movies got meaner. Over the course of about a decade leading up to Halloween,
the approach to horror got slimmed down until the slasher emerged – a lean,
mean, teen-killing machine. Today, we count down some of the greats that led to
the genre’s final form. The prototypes, if you will, of a craze that defined a
generation.
As the great Bob Marley told us, “If
you know your history, then you know where you are coming from…” So without
further ado, here we have…
10
Great 70’s Proto-Slashers!
10)
Tourist Trap (1979) dir. David Schmoeller
Charles Band is better known today
as the owner of the much-maligned home video company Full Moon Features, and as
the director of such dubious gems as Evil Bong (2006). But in the 70’s
he helped to produce a number of cult favorites, including this title from
Compass International Pictures, concurrently made around the same time as their
breakout success with Halloween. Tourist Trap revolves around a group of
friends stranded at a roadside museum of curiosities. Incidentally, the museum
is home to a maniac who can control dolls with his mind. Good luck sleeping
tonight! The film is surprisingly creepy, but of course has more in common with
the likes of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977) than it does Friday
the 13th (1980). The body-count nature of it, however, is
squarely in slasher territory.
9)
The Toolbox Murders (1977) dir. Dennis Donnelly
Hammers, screwdrivers, nail guns…
good ol’ fashioned knives! A killer in a ski mask is stalking through an
apartment complex and using his toolbox for some truly devious inspiration! Recognizable
as slasher but pumped to the gills with blood, nudity, and scuzzy atmosphere,
this exploitation flick earned itself a spot as a Section 2 video nasty thanks
to the UK’s Video Recordings Act of 1984. One of the common features of 80’s
slashers is their relative tameness in regard to the T’n’A. Sure, there were
kills and boobs, but the appeal to teenagers lay in the innocent attitude of it
all. The meaner attitude of the previous decade tosses innocence out the window
in favor of sleaze, and here we have a prime example!
8)
Drive-In Massacre (1976) dir. Stu Segall
Here’s one that often shows up in
discussions of “so bad it’s good” movies. And… it’s true! The gimmick this time
out is a killer is randomly slaughtering people at a drive-in movie theater,
and a couple “smart” cops are hot on his trail! It shouldn’t be this hard for
them to catch a guy hacking at people with a huge-ass sword, but it is what it
is. The gore is pretty great though, and we start to see some of the fat-trimming
that streamlined these killer-on-the-loose offerings into the template we’re
used to today. I, for one, still love going to the drive-in…
7)
Don’t Answer the Phone (1979) dir. Robert Hammer
Don’t Go in the Woods (1981),
Don’t Go in the House (1980), Don’t Look in the Basement (1973), Don’t
Go Near the Park (1979)… Scary flicks love telling us to not do things! I
have a secret head canon that all the Don’t movies all share the same cinematic
universe. It’s like Marvel, but with blood and generally not propping up the
entire military industrial complex with ticket sales! Don’t Answer the Phone
is one such installment that owes its existence directly to the 70’s hysteria
about serial killers. The fascination with horrid crimes committed by the likes
of Ted Bundy and Kenneth Bianchi is grippingly translated to the screen in the
form of Kirk, who has an obsession with attacking and murdering women while
wearing pantyhose as a mask. It’s a gritty, affecting work of grindhouse
shlock, and one of the first of its kind to show us the events through the
perspective of the villain. The first truly scary installment on this list.
6)
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976) dir. Charles B.
Pierce
A surprisingly effective mash-up of
grindhouse insanity and documentary format, The Town That Dreaded Sundown
follows the dramatization of the very real Texarkana Moonlight Murders of 1946.
Said murders – attributed to the so-called Phantom Killer – were never solved. Director
Charles B. Pierce made several regional southern exploitation films, including The
Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), a “documentary” all about the supposed deep
South bigfoot! The hybrid approach works well once more here, providing some
fairly shocking kills while feeling somewhat safe for more mainstream audiences
thanks to the inclusion of newspaper clips and a relaxing narrator. Of special
note: The killer here is depicted wearing a burlap sack for a mask, something
directly taken by Friday the 13th Part II (1981) as the look
of choice for the first outing of Jason Voorhees! As this list will show, it
wouldn’t be the first film that movie stole things from…
5)
Torso (1973) dir. Sergio Martino
The first giallo to make this list
is Sergio Martino’s grubby little shocker Torso, also known as I
corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale, translated: Bodies Bear
Traces of Carnal Violence! Yet another ski-masked killer is making his way
through a group of university students, with yet another motive entrenched in
fragile masculinity, so… that checks. Many of the future tropes are here in
spades, including the college campus setting, a final girl, and even a secluded
house for the finale. It’s also genuinely suspenseful, almost unbearably so in
the third act where our heroine has to hide from the villain while he dismembers
the bodies of his victims!
4)
Massacre at Central High (1976) dir. Renée Daalder
The first legitimately great film on
this list combines future slasher themes with juvenile delinquency to create a
biting political commentary about human nature and the drive for cultural
revolution. David is a blue-collar transfer student to an upper-class prep
school that seems to be run by a group of sadistic bullies. After standing up
to them, David finds himself the recipient of their wrath and in the hospital
with a shattered leg. Soon thereafter, the bullies expire in a series of
apparent accidents, but the liberated student body then descends into chaos as
they vie for a newfound social supremacy. It’s an excellent study of what can
happen when the status quo is justly overthrown without a structure to take its
place; and a subversively socialist call for not only the dismantling of
capitalism, but also the creation of an equitable system that benefits all
instead of a power vacuum to be filled by a new oppressor.
3)
A Bay of Blood (1971) dir. Mario Bava
Our second video nasty, and one of
the best body-count flicks ever, Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood is also known
as Twitch of the Death Nerve, and Reazione a catena – Chain Reaction!
The plotline is typical giallo, wherein a group of ne’er-do-wells all stand to
inherit a lot of money as well as a massive lakeside estate from a recently
deceased (read: murdered) countess. They then expire in a variety of creative
ways. Who could the killer be? This was Bava’s second take on Agatha Christie’s
Ten Little Indians – the first being Five Dolls for an August Moon
(1970) – and is the most direct blueprint there is for the future slasher
genre as a whole. The kills are downright garish for the time and hold up well.
Friday the 13th Part II steals wholesale again by aping the
centerpiece kill where two lovers are shish-kabob-ed together in the sack! Italian
horror aficionados will recognize a number of faces, especially Laura Betti who
couldn’t wait to work with Bava again after her excellent turn in Hatchet
for the Honeymoon (1970). Anyone looking for an entry point to eurocult
exploitation should definitely start here.
2)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) dir. Tobe Hooper
Next to Psycho, The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre is the most common title to pop up when talking about
the beginnings of the slasher film. Everyone and their mama know that it’s about
some vacationing teens getting lost in the Texas wilderness and getting
subsequently sliced, diced, and uh… seasoned by a bunch of cannibalistic, BBQ-obsessed
hicks. Oh, and Leatherface. Not much to say except that the film is a
masterpiece of tension and a veritable assault on the senses. Unlike the genre
to come, and even its own sequels, there is an extreme lack of humor, or indeed
levity at all, to lighten the mood. Chainsaw plays everything straight
and deadly serious, making for one white-knuckle ride. Consider this: Director
Tobe Hooper was aiming for a PG rating, and so didn’t include much of in the
way of onscreen blood and guts, but the film is so intense it got an R anyway…
1)
Black Christmas (1974) dir. Bob Clark
Finally, we have the top spot, and
my favorite movie ever next to Halloween! Black Christmas is an
instant classic no matter how you… uh… slice it. A crazed, POV killer makes his
way into a sorority house on Christmas Eve and makes a series of obscene phone
calls before killing off the students. Bob Clark directs masterfully, and the
film remains as scary and effective today as it did over forty years ago.
Olivia Hussey, John Saxon, Keir Dullea, and the great Margot Kidder all turn in
incredible performances. Everything about the flick works impeccably, and it
deserves to be seen by anyone who likes movies, but especially those who love
horror. Oh, and it’s quite possibly the most direct inspiration for a certain,
oft-mentioned John Carpenter film.
