Top Ten Lesser Known Slasher Movies
This is the inaugural Top Ten list. For the first one I couldn’t think of a better subgenre to start with than my all time favorite, the slasher movie. The 1970s saw a change in horror filmmaking. The Last House on the Left turned up the violence in 1972 while The Texas Chainsaw Massacre made a great impact in low budget horror films. It wasn’t until 1978 when John Carpenter’s Halloween took the world by storm. The movie was extremely low budget but was wonderfully acted and directed. Halloween went on to make millions of dollars on a small budget around $300,000. Obviously other directors saw dollar signs by the huge profit of the film and decided to make their own. In 1980 the slasher film took off with Friday the 13th. Sean S. Cunningham the director of Friday the 13th, wanted to make his own Halloween, and that’s basically what he did. The movie was a monstrous success. Making $37Million in the US from a budget of $550,000, Friday the 13th created a craze.
As the 80s went on, more and more slasher movies hit the theaters to overwhelming success. Most of the early 80s slashers were for the most part Halloween clones, with a few standouts. The genre became stale and 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street added a paranormal twist to the game. Freddy Krueger was born and a slew of sequels followed. At the same time Friday the 13th and Halloween unloaded numerous sequels as well. Again the slasher genre was slowly falling towards an abyss. Towards the end of the 80s, the slasher genre hit the direct to video market and so many terribly awful movies were released. Slasher movies were all but dead until a short revival in the mid to late 90s with Wes Craven’s Scream, which basically was a parody of what the slasher movie became in the years after the early 80s heyday.
With so many slasher movies in existence, its hard to find a decent film to watch. Buried deep in the piles of all the holiday slashers and the Freddy and Jason ripoffs are a few shining gems. I consider myself somewhat of a aficionado of the slasher film, I think I’ve seen over 150 just from the 1980s alone. Here is a list of movies that I suggest you check out. Some of these you may have heard of, others you may have not.
10 Tourist Trap (1979)
9 The House on Sorority Row (1983)
8 Curtains (1983)
7 Popcorn (1991)
6 Sleepaway Camp (1983)
5 The Prowler (1981)
4 Stage Fright (1987)
3 Black Christmas (1974)
2 My Bloody Valentine (1981)
1 The Burning (1981)
