I figured it was appropriate to save my next horror sub-genre for Halloween. After all, one of the best-loved Slasher Movies is named after the holiday. And this is the category that probably first leaps to mind when you think of big-screen horror.

Slasher films have given us some of the most enduring villains in film history: Norman Bates, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Ghostface. They usually prey on the young and the sexually active, before being bested (at least temporarily) by a virginal “final girl.” They might not win, but they never seem to die.

Slasher films are also known for an absurd degree of serialization. To date we have had 12 Friday the 13th movies (how they’ve avoided making a 13th for 15 years is beyond me), nine Nightmare on Elm Streets (including one where Jason and Freddy face each other), 13 Halloweens, and nine Texas Chainsaw Massacres.

I didn’t bother with all those sequels, and I’m honestly not a big fan of the Big Three slasher franchises in general. I know it’s sacrilege to say so, but I find John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) a little boring. Yes, it has a great final third, but the first hour is rather clunky. The original Friday the 13th (1980) is comically bad from start to finish. The best of them is A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), but its goofy Home Alone climax doesn’t work.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on the other hand, is a masterpiece of dread. Director Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic serves up sun-baked depravity and delivers cinema’s most excruciating dinner scene.

Film historians consider 1960’s Peeping Tom the first slasher film. I haven’t caught up with that one yet, but I did rewatch the other film that often gets credit for starting the genre: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, released two months later. It’s still a marvel, despite ending with an extended monologue by a deadpan psychiatrist.

One of my most bizarre discoveries was cult classic Sleepaway Camp (1983), a rickety B movie that delivers one of the most unexpected, gonzo final moments I’ve ever seen in a movie. The film’s closing frame is seared into my memory.

I wrote at length about Ti West’s brilliant X (2022) earlier this year. Suffice it to say that watching a bunch of classic horror movies only made me appreciate what he’s doing there even more.

One slasher series I did watch in full is Scream. Director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson delivered the original film in 1996 and breathed new life into a genre dulled by more than a decade of Jasons and Freddys. I like some of the six Scream films better than others, but they all share a meta cleverness that elevates them above almost everything in this category.

Craven and Williamson invest a ton of time in character work, making us care about the films’ central trio of Syndey Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), and Dewey Riley (David Arquette). And they turn each film into a gripping whodunit, with twists you never see coming. This is horror franchise filmmaking at its best.

But my favorite of all the slasher films I watched is 1974’s Black Christmas. Directed by Bob Clark (who would make A Christmas Story nine years later), the film is set in a sorority house where the sisters are hosting a party unaware of the creepy killer in the attic. This was the first film to serve up that classic line, “the call is coming from inside the house.”

Black Christmas is so good not because of its scares, but because it dedicates ample time to its characters. Olivia Hussey (of Romeo and Juliet fame) plays “final girl” Jess, a woman who has recently learned she is pregnant and spends much of the film telling her angry boyfriend she plans to get an abortion. The conflict is handled so well you kinda forget about the killer in the closet.

Margot Kidder is also wonderful as another sorority sister. I knew her only from the Superman movies, but between Black Christmas and The Amityville Horror, she has emerged as a new favorite.

Black Christmas inspired John Carpenter to make Halloween, and therefore deserves credit as the movie that birthed the modern slasher film. Fifty years later, it’s still the best of them.

Next up: Giallo