The slasher flick was born on the night of November 17, 1957 in Plainfeld,Wisconsin, when a sheriff entered the farmhouse of Ed Gein. Gein had been picked up the night before, chief suspect in a murder hunt, but what the sheriff and his officers found inside that house told a grislier story. They found the body of a missing woman, headless and hung upside down "like a heifer or a dressed-out deer", along with assorted body parts that revealed Gein to be something of a collector. The case became a tabloid sensation, but perhaps more significantly, it inspired a pulp novelist named Robert Bloch to write Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock adapted the book for the screen in 1960, but never intended to inspire the cinematic killing spree that gave us Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dressed To Kill, Basic Instinct, and the bottomless Halloween, Friday The 13th, and A Nightmare On Elm Street franchises. Though Psycho still stands as the most graphic and terrifying of Hitchcock's vast filmography, it's not exactly the only one about a murderer and yet it fathered an entire sub-genre. Slasher flicks took horror to new heights of graphic violence while, in some cases, simultaneously plumbing new depths of camp. They have nonetheless had a lasting impact - from ‘respectable’ studio pictures such as The Silence of the Lambs and Single White Female, to the new breed of teen movies such as The Faculty and The Scream franchise, which play knowingly with the conventions of the slasher. Here you will find some uncut versions of films that you are already familiar as well as other rare and lesser known movies in the slasher genre. Beware though....while some might be campy, others are just plain violent, vicious and evil. You've been warned! |
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