The Bloodiest Slasher Movies in the History of Cinema
Slasher films marked cinema in the 70s and 80s (although the genre began to gain strength in the 60s, with films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho), but they have not lost popularity and the genre has been renewed and reinvented over time. A Slasher has several elements that become the basis for building the story. The story usually takes place in small towns or isolated places, there is always a killer who seems to have superhuman strength and a great ability to survive, there are teenage victims (although they can also be adults), scenes of bloody murders, and some element of revenge, and you can’t miss the classic Final Girl, who becomes the only survivor of a massacre that leaves her traumatized. Throughout cinema history, the slasher genre has given us great, memorable characters, such as the duo Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, and films that become classics despite, or perhaps thanks to, their high content of blood and violence.
The Bloodiest Slasher Movies in the History of Cinema
Slashers are cathartic and exciting, and some even teach us important lessons, like not going into a lonely alley in the middle of the night or looking back in corners when we’re home alone. And yes, some great movies aren’t stingy with gore. Every generation has its monsters (and its great horror movies), and while some believe the first slasher films came much earlier (there are a few films from the 1940s that fall into the genre), the 1970s and 1980s saw a boom in gory films in which a small town, just beginning to heal from a past tragedy, is terrorized by a mysterious killer who won’t let them forget and move on. In the middle of the case, there is always a Final Girl (which is part of what made the genre criticized for using sexuality as the main element to define women), a heroine who, against all odds, manages to defeat the psychopath and come out alive, although very traumatized and emotionally and physically damaged.
6 Classic Slasher Movies
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The first movie featuring the killer Leatherface was released in 1974 and was a horror sensation (with very gore elements). The legendary Tobe Hooper‘s film follows 5 friends who take a road trip to visit one of their grandparents’ gravesites, but along the way, they meet a hitchhiker and end up arriving at an old house that seems abandoned but is actually home to a family of cannibals and a savage killer who begins to chase them and kills them using a chainsaw.
Nightmare on Elm Street
Johnny Depp and Heather Langenkamp star in the first film in Wes Craven‘s saga that introduces us to Nancy Thompson, a teenager who lives on Elm Street and leads a normal, quiet life, until local teenagers start dying in terrible ways. Nancy begins to have nightmares about a scarred man in a striped sweater, but she soon realizes that she is not the only one and that this is not exactly a dream. That character is called Freddy, and he is the culprit of the deaths that have been happening, although it all seems like a dream, if you die in it, you die in real life too, which means that falling asleep is the greatest danger they face.
Candyman
This 1992 film stars Virginia Madsen and Tony Todd, who play Candyman. Madsen is a student who sets out to investigate the urban legend of a killer they call Candyman, but she accidentally ends up freeing the killer and a series of murders begin to happen around her. The worst thing is that the evidence points to her, so she has to find a way to defeat him before he kills everyone around him or drives her crazy.
Black Christmas
Olivia Hussey stars in this Christmas slasher that follows a group of college students who have been receiving strange and disturbing calls for a while and things get worse when a student goes missing and a girl is found dead. When they are left alone in their school dorms during the break, they begin to be stalked by a stranger who begins killing them one by one, forcing them to fight for their lives while waiting for the police to come to rescue them.
Alice, Sweet Alice
Brooke Shields had one of her first film roles in this 1960s-set film that follows a family devastated after their youngest daughter (Karen, played by Shields) is murdered, and things get more complicated when their teenage daughter becomes the prime suspect in the brutal crime and a series of violent incidents, so they must investigate the girl and decide what to do to stop her.
6 Current Slasher Movies
Scream
The first Scream movie came out in the 90s, but we’re still getting sequels featuring Ghostface still on the scene. The first movie starred Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell, and Courteney Cox and followed a teenage girl who, a year after her mother’s death, begins to be hunted by a killer, who first targets her friends and then slowly gets closer to her, using horror movie references throughout his “hunt.” To survive, they must figure out who the killer is and why he’s hunting them.
Happy Death Day
This film starring Jessica Rothe follows a student who is trapped in a time loop where she relives the same day over and over again. On her way to a birthday party, Tree is murdered by a masked killer, but instead of dying, she replays the same day and finds that she has to figure out who the killer is and why he wants to kill her to break the cycle and stop dying bloody deaths over and over again.
Fear Street Trilogy
This horror trilogy starring Sadie Sink is based on the horror books by RL Stine. The trilogy is made up of 3 stories that take place in 3 different years, in the 90s, 70s, and 1600s, where the inhabitants of a small American town are harassed by the curse of a witch who was murdered, which causes a series of murders and violent deaths. In the 90s, a teenage girl and her brother discover the connection between the deaths and what happened to the witch, and when a friend falls victim to the same curse, they must find a way to break it and reveal the truth, before it kills them too.
Freaky
This is a body-swap movie but with a macabre twist. Kathryn Newton stars in this film as a student who accidentally switches bodies with a serial killer. The killer takes advantage of her new, innocent image to take more victims, while she discovers that if she doesn’t return to her body soon, the switch will be permanent and she will be the one who will have to pay the consequences for the killer’s crimes.
X – Pearl – MaXXXine
Ti West’s trilogy managed to surprise Martin Scorsese. Mia Goth is one of the protagonists of this story that begins with X when a film crew of adult films arrives in Texas to make their latest movie, but there they are attacked by a brutal killer who kills almost all of them. Pearl was the second, but it is a prequel that tells the story of that killer when she was young, and MaXXXine is the last, where it follows an adult film actress who, when she receives her first opportunity to be part of a serial film, finds herself caught in the center of the case of a serial killer who is attacking women and people who seem to have a connection to her.
All Fun and Games
Set in the modern-day town of Salem, this story features a brutal curse. Asa Butterfield plays one of three brothers who discover an ancient knife that forces them to play a macabre game. It turns out the knife was cursed by a witch, and the curse forces whoever finds it to kill their own friends to exact revenge that ties into the witch hunt and an ancient town legend. To survive, the brothers must uncover the source of the curse and find a way to calm the witch’s fury.
