Retro Slashers

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Jim Harper has written a book about the slasher genre entitled LEGACY OF BLOOD: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO SLASHER MOVIES, released in the UK in 2004. The blurb reads: The “slasher” movie is the bloodiest incarnation of the modern horror film, tainted by criticisms of misogyny, yet remaining-on and off-a box-office draw for 30 years. [...]

A notch above most Young Adult thrillers thanks to its author’s dryly humorous tone, Deadly Detention is a playful riff on school-set slasher movies that whistles along swiftly and keeps up the suspense to the end. Think back to the 1985 John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll remember [...]

Charles Winecoff’s biography on the late, great slasher icon Anthony Perkins reveals the actor was much more complex, more troubled, and sometimes more crazed than any of the characters he portrayed. Now, out of respect to Perkins, I’m not going into all of the lurid details of his private life, but I will mention his [...]

There comes a point in every slasher fan’s life when they arrive at the horrible realisation that they’ve seen every decent slasher movie from the genre’s eighties heyday. Sure, newer slashers may promise a retro style but they, like Hatchet and Monster Man, usually turn out to be a mixed bag at best, with far [...]

Well, it’s about damned time. I’ve been waiting for a book like this my whole life. Coming soon (it’s available for pre-order, but a release date hasn’t been set in stone) from Fantagraphics is Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of he VHS Box Vol.1, a lavishly illustrated tome dedicated to seedy VHS box art from [...]