Retro Slashers

The Legend: After putting the children to bed for the night, a baby-sitter receives a strange phone call.  “Have you checked the children?,” the caller asks.  At first, the baby-sitter thinks the calls are from friends trying to scare her.  The stranger calls back later but now he asks,”Why haven’t you checked the children?”  Now [...]

Final Exam:  If you’ve ever seen the trailer for Halloween, then you may remember it ends with the line “The night HE came home.”  The trailer for Final Exam uses the phrase “HE’s come back!” twice in an attempt to trick movie audiences into thinking the two films are somehow linked.  No serious slasher fan is [...]

The Legend: A beautiful, young wife has an affair then taunts her impotent husband with details.  The husband becomes enraged, grabs a pair of scissors, and mutilates his wife.  After slitting his wife’s mouth from ear to ear, the husband asks “Who will find you beautiful now?”  Now, the woman roams Japan, a surgical mask over her face [...]

Rick Roessler’s Slaughterhouse (1987) told the tender tale of the Bacon family; the two man team of elderly father Lester, facing the loss of the land both his home and old slaughterhouse reside on, and his big, brainless son Buddy who is directed to kill those who cause them upset and opposition.

There’s a story circulating among slasher fans that goes a little something like this:  Bob Clark took this young guy named John Carpenter under his wing to help show him how to direct feature films.  While serving as an apprentice, Carpenter learned Clark was working on sequel to Black Christmas called Halloween.  A few years later, Carpenter stole [...]

It’s that time of year again. The weather outside is frightful and… well… you get the drill. It’s all chilly out there and since I just moved across the country, I am having my very first white Christmas. What can I say, it makes me all wistful and full of rage! Those horrible drivers only [...]

There’s a camp not far from here, just across the lake. It was called Camp Blackfoot. No one goes there anymore. Everything burnt down. This camp had a caretaker. His name was Cropsy. Now, this cropsy was a sadist, and he got real pleasure out of hurting people. Scaring them. And he had these… garden [...]

On Dec. 8, 1980, a crazed fan murdered the voice of a generation.  The outpouring of grief occurred on a global scale.  Thirty years later, it’s almost impossible for those of us not yet born or too young to understand what was going on to grasp the magnitude of John Lennon’s death.  In the weeks following [...]

Our Christmas present to you last year was Thomas Ellison’s investigation of the uncompleted early 80′s slasher Jack M. Sell’s Black Christmas (featured in skit movie Outtakes). We now have a present from Retro Slashers‘ reader Wesley Skelly who after reading the article, obtained the director’s cut and now pays forward the lengthy trailer to us.

The four women in this article have two things in common.  First, each one had an important role in a slasher.  Second, they have found careers outside of the acting profession.  There are plenty of horror stories about what happens to slasher stars after the cameras stop rolling, but this is a positive look at [...]