Retro Slashers

Makes its audience feel dirty for watching a woman being brutalized, and then for cheering her (or her surrogates) on as she seeks revenge.

Since its initial release in 1983, Sleepaway Camp has developed a cult reputation, in part due to the film’s final reel twist, and in part due to its lead, Felissa Rose.

During the heyday of slashers in the early 1980’s, countries around the world were eager to cash in on the boom. International production companies did everything within their power (and budget) to disguise their film’s country of origin, sometimes actually doing the extra paperwork, hopping on a plane, and shooting on location in the good [...]

With their potential high return on low investment, slasher movies became the must-make sub-genre on every studio’s production slate in the early 80’s. It was only a matter of time before studios began hedging their bets, injecting slasher tropes into other film styles. In 1983, The Canon Group released its slasher-infused 10 to Midnight, a Charles [...]

What do you get when you disguise a Canadian movie as an American slasher flick when it’s really more like an Italian giallo? You get American Nightmare, a 1983 stripper-stalker directed by Don (The Haunting of Lisa, Mrs. Ashboro’s Cat) McBrearty. A concert pianist searches for his missing sister. His search leads him first to [...]

Slasher fanatics everywhere, rejoice – new boutique DVD company Hoa-X is releasing Deacon Natterling’s unseen 1980 Canadian slasher Blood Test on April 1. It’s final exam time at Hillcrest College, and someone is killing the students one-by-one using the most bizarre methods imaginable. It seems the victims were all part of a treehouse club when [...]

My Bloody Valentine was released on February 13, 1981, just as the slasher sub-genre was gaining substantial momentum. Halloween had started the trend proper, and Friday the 13th had solidified it as a moneymaker. Every studio wanted a slasher flick on its release schedule, and special interest groups were beginning to protest them everywhere.

If you’ve ever wondered why an actress who wanted to escape her Scream Queen persona would do six horror flicks in a row, or why Curtis’ hair looked so bad in Halloween II, the answers are all here, folks!

Teenage Wasteland is a welcome addition to the list of essential books about horror movies that includes Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, John McCarty’s Official Splatter Movie Guide and Stephen Thrower’s Nightmare U.S.A.

The Centerfold Girls is a grimy and grim precursor to 80’s slashers like Maniac and Don’t Answer the Phone; it’s also a prime example of 70’s Grindhouse filmmaking. With its dark take on that 70’s standard, the Battle of the Sexes, an argument can easily be made for this as a feminist horror film.