The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies Part 1

The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies.

Normanton, Peter.

Introduction:.

A Born-Again Slasher.

WAY BACK THEN you could scream all you wanted, but it was never going to make them stop, as for an entire decade the doors to the madhouse were thrown open to a plethora of hack and slash killers who were free to slip into school dormitories, college campuses, the woods, shopping malls or for the very unlucky their local neighbourhood. Each was armed with a sharp knife, with b.l.o.o.d.y murder in mind. There never was a decade quite like the eighties. Whether it was food, drink, fashion, music or film, these years can only be described as unique. And we took it all in, thriving on an excess of cheese (the cheesier the better), no more so than in the insanity of the slasher and splatter cinema that suddenly became so popular. As the newfound video market began to expand, so did the excess and we just couldn't get enough of it.

When we first discussed putting together this compilation of slasher and splatter movies, memories of a Monday evening in the pub way back in that sweltering summer of 1984 came to mind. Quite a few of us were serving our time on Thatcher's ever lengthening dole queues as recession continued to ravage an already declining British industry, so a night in the pub was something of a treat. As the miners fought pitched battles with the police in the grim hope of preserving their livelihood, we were hunting down the video nasties that back then were all the rage. If these films hadn't acquired such notoriety we probably would never have bothered with many of them; in fact more than a fair share of them were just plain boring. But did that stop us? No it certainly didn't. That evening the conversation had drifted from how good Van Halen had been at Castle Donnington and the prospect of a new Rush alb.u.m to the grisly murders in our favourite slasher movies. Needless to say after a few pints of Burtonwood's finest ale our recollection of the gruesome episodes that had been the driving force behind these films had become a little distorted; who killed who and how was now confused. Ironically, given the content of the tome you now have in your hands, I was the one who started to ridicule this excess, delighting in deliberately muddling the butchery of Friday the 13th Part II with The Boogeyman and Happy Birthday to Me. After four years of unrelenting blood and guts, we had completely overdosed on this gore-ridden pageant. It seems odd when I look back, but I never went to see the sensation that terrorised the cinema-going public in the latter months of that year, Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street. The poor dubbing, dodgy acting, along with the screaming scantily clad girls and the endless masked killers had finally numbed my senses, and at that moment I needed something different in life. While my interest in horror movies never entirely waned, the gore-mongering pa.s.sion that had possessed me during those truculent years of my late teens and early twenties had begun to fade.

In the ensuing years, I was all too frequently found stalking the back streets of Manchester city centre rummaging through boxes of old comic books, in search of more horror. A lasting memory of these shops was the racks of videos, and what a lurid display they were! There were many films on show in these shops to which I had never before been privy, and they looked every bit as deranged as the terrors I had previously been watching. The real nasties of those years, however, were conspicuous by their absence; it would be years before I finally understood why I never had the chance to see a copy of Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper, and later in these pages if you live in the UK you will discover exactly why. My interest in these kill crazy movies was revitalized soon after I got married, and no it wasn't the sight of my wife hacking into a tender loin of beef; rather, it was Bob Clarke's Black Christmas, which was being given a late night showing on Channel 4. Why I had never seen this film escapes me, but it had me on the edge of my seat. I was hooked all over again and just couldn't get enough of this splatter-filled madness, especially if it was a dubbed Italian feature.

During the conversations that took place at the very beginning of compiling these films there were thoughts about presenting a section on the very worst of the slasher and splatter genre. Let's be honest, if you have watched enough of the films you will have seen plenty of howlers, and as I said earlier in this introduction there has been nothing in the history of film, music or fashion that has ever quite matched the cheese of the eighties. However, once I started to research these films, it became obvious this would have been a little unkind, because many of the people who were involved with these productions were doing it for very little pay and for the most part had neither the cash nor the experience to create another Halloween or Night of the Living Dead. It didn't stop them though and in their own way they have become every much a part of the genre as Messrs Carpenter, Raimi, Romero, Fulci and Argento.

Before I let you tuck into these blood-strewn pages I have to confess this is far from being a comprehensive list of these films. I have managed to squeeze in just over 250 entries into the AZ reference section, which focus mainly on the golden years of the slasher and splatter excess from the late seventies through until the mid-eighties, with over 500 films included in the accompanying index at the end of this book. At the end of my research, there were well over a thousand movies that were deserving of a mention. If you can't find your own personal favourite, or the film you worked on isn't here, I sincerely apologize. As my research continued, it became obvious there was no way I was going to be able to fit every single film into these pages. With that in mind, I prefer to think of this selection as the good, the bad and the ugly of the slasher and splatter genre.

Finally, I would like to thank all of my family and friends along with my colleagues at work for putting up with all of this gory madness for the past nine months. A special thanks goes to my mate of many years who was in the pub that night (what's new?), Glenn Royds, who took the time to read over and correct so many of these entries, and also to Raoul for alerting me to so many of these amazing movies. Last of all, a big thank you to the love of my life, my wife Mary, who has put up with all of this madness for almost twenty-seven years. I couldn't have written this book without her.

Enough of all that, it's time to sharpen the blades again.

Peter Normanton.

September 26, 2011.

Blood on the Walls:.

An Overview of Sixty Years of Blood and Guts.

In the beginning . . .

At around the same time as the first horror movies were being made in France at the very end of the nineteenth century, Le Theatre du Grand-Guignol opened in Pigalle, not far from the centre of Paris in a building that had once been a chapel. When it opened its doors in 1897, it shocked its audience with a series of presentations of what it termed naturalistic horror shows. Of the theatre's entire programme, the horror stories proved the most popular with their effusion of cleverly conceived gory effects and bloodthirsty finales. This stage show excess would eventually be returned to life in such films as The Ghastly Ones (1968), The Wizard of Gore (1970) and the inflammatory The Incredible Torture Show (1976), but never quite with the theatre's dramatic panache. Much of Hammer's garish portrayal from the late fifties through until the mid-seventies was also attributed to the years of Grand Guignol and countless gorefests in their wake would often be referenced alongside this almost forgotten form of entertainment.

The term splatter was first coined by George A. Romero when he attempted to describe his new film Dawn of the Dead (1978). Visceral movies had been shocking their audiences for more than twenty years following Hammer's discovery of the lurid premise that came with Eastmancolor, which proved invaluable as they brought life to their adaptations of some of the cla.s.sic tales of horror from the distant past. Although these films appear tame when compared to the excess of the current crop, their grisly display was something very new and caused considerable concern for the censors on both sides of the Atlantic. By the mid-sixties, Hersch.e.l.l G. Lewis and William Castle embarked on the work pioneered by Hammer as they streched the boundaries of acceptability even further. Lewis's low-budget films rarely went to mainstream cinemas; their destination was the drive-in theatres of the more rural locales of the United States. Drive-in theatres had started life in New Jersey back in 1932 and by the time Lewis was producing his low-budget exploitation features, they had reached their nadir in popularity. Many of the youngsters who turned up at these outdoor shows couldn't have cared less about the content of the features laid before them they had other things on their mind leading to these theatres being labelled pa.s.sion pits. By the 1970s, many of these drive-in theatres had become a.s.sociated with the growing market for exploitation films, which were a precursor to the excess of the splatter and slasher movies that began to proliferate horror cinema towards the end of the decade. Sadly, the rise of the video recorder would see the demise of the drive-in cinema. While splatter's evil twin the slasher observed a much slower evolution, Romero's film had already turned splatter into a veritable art form with a plethora of directors soon eager to follow suit.

The slashers, splatter and b.l.o.o.d.y exploitation of the past fifty years are in cinematic terms relatively new developments. Horror movies have been with us since the dawn of film, but not until Hammer in 1957 did anyone dare venture into the domain of blood and guts. The reasons for this rest to a degree with the limitations of black and white film stock, although Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k would overcome this with Psycho in 1960 as would many of his low-budget successors. Public sensitivity and film censorship, however, were of far greater significance in restraining the development of the more gory aspects of the horror movie and, as we shall now see, the censors eventually came to exert a tight control over the studios and their directors.

Censorship in the United States.

Censorship has plagued both filmmakers and cinemagoers since the dawn of the twentieth century. Before the censors began to scrutinize the film industry there were very few horror films on show, the most notable of which were Le Manoir du Diable (1896), possibly the first horror film, and La Caverne Maudite (1898). j.a.panese filmmakers had also demonstrated an interest in creating horror movies with Bake Jizo (1898) and Shinin no Sosei (1898). It wasn't until 1910 that the Edison Studios terrified their audiences with a cinematic version of Frankenstein.

While these were early days for the motion picture industry, by 1907 censorship had already become a serious issue in Chicago, although the pressure to introduce local by-laws had nothing to do with the few horror movies that were being made at this time. Their misgivings focused on the nickelodeons that were appearing over the length and breadth of the city. With children slipping away from their parents to frequent these establishments, there was mounting concern as to the suitability of many of the films on show. The city issued an ordinance declaring that all films had to be screened before senior police officers to ensure the appropriateness of their content.

In New York, the newspapers sensationalized an arrest that was made when it was discovered children were shown a film depicting a Chinese opium den, leading to the city's police commissioner withdrawing the licences of over 550 film venues on the Christmas Eve of 1908. A few months later the film industry, which was then based in New York, funded a Board of Censorship to legislate for residents of the city. Other cities and states followed suit, most notably the Los Angeles-based organization The Motion Picture Producers a.s.sociation, which in its remit looked to defend the industry from attacks on its own morality; this precipitated the industry forming its own national regulatory body in 1916, which became known as the National a.s.sociation of the Motion Picture Industry. They prescribed a set of thirteen points covering the subjects to be avoided in forthcoming storylines, with no reference to any form of visceral carnage; their design was to prohibit the s.e.xual content in these films. Unfortunately, these early guidelines proved powerless in controlling the subject matter presented in the films of the period. As early as 1916, s.e.x was already a great seller, while any sanguiney excess was appreciably conspicuous by its absence.

At the beginning of the 1920s, it was obvious Hollywood wasn't quite as glossy as its publicists tried to paint it. These were the Roaring Twenties and gossip surrounding certain actors, directors and producers was rife, the most notorious of which was the Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle rape and murder scandal, which led to further allegations of Hollywood orgies. The studios had also produced a number of risque films, with the stag movie A Free Ride dating back to 1915, which I hasten to add was never considered for major theatrical release. Twelve months later D. W. Griffith's epic masterpiece Intolerance was released, resplendent in the allure of a gathering of delightful young ladies bearing their b.r.e.a.s.t.s in the opulent surrounds of an ancient Babylonian temple. Griffith's film also contains the first decapitations and a spear being forcibly driven up through a soldier. Although the Fox Film Corporation's The Queen of Sheba directed by J. Gordon Edwards was lost during the 1930s, a few ageing photographs remain of the provocatively dressed lead actress Betty Blythe. Her attire was somewhat salacious, exposing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to emphasize the film's tagline "The Love Romance of the World's Most Beautiful Woman". Such was the country's unease at the nature of these features, over 100 bills were introduced across the states of America during 1921, each designed to censor an entire range of films. Something had to be done, so the Hollywood studios enlisted Will Harrison Hays Sr., the recent chairman of the Republican National Committee and Postmaster General to improve their tarnished image. During his time as Postmaster General, Hays had overseen the stipulations of the Comstock Act of 1873 barring obscene material from being sent through the post. In 1922, he became the president of Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and embarked on the monumental task of trying to clean up his country's film industry.

This wasn't to happen overnight, but by 1924 his team had come up with a set of criteria they termed "The Formula" whereby the studios would have to submit their plots to Hay's public relations committee, which inevitably resulted in many films being rejected. However, not every producer forwarded their ideas to Hays' office. Among those that slipped through the net were: Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) with its scenes of bare breasted dancing girls tossing flowers into the onlooking crowd, the sensual Flesh and the Devil (1926) with its undercurrent of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, along with the highly successful World War I melodrama, What Price Glory (1926). Hays then took measures to create a stronger system of self-regulation by establishing a list of 37 "Don'ts and Be Carefuls", again mainly of a s.e.xual nature. Once more, there was little reference to the bloodthirsty, even though Hollywood was beginning to introduce a growing number of horror movies to theatres across the land, such as Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde (1920), The Phantom Carriage (1920), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Waxworks (1924), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Monster (1925) and London After Midnight (1927). Hays' way of thinking wasn't entirely successful as was attested by the eroticism of Clara Bow's display in It (1927) and the first male on male kissing scene in William A. Wellman's tale set in World War I, Wings (1927), which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Production. It has been estimated that during this period Hays' staff only managed to review about 20 per cent of the American film industry's total output.

When Hays met with Martin Quigley, the publisher of Motion Picture Herald who was also a devout Catholic with connections to the loftier echelons of the Catholic Church, he was presented with a set of principles put together by the influential publisher and a Jesuit priest, Father Daniel Lord. Their effect was to create a code of morality that would govern the whole of the American motion picture industry. With the United States thrown into turmoil in the wake of the stock market crash, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America accepted the stringent provisions of the Production Code in 1930. It would, however, take another four years before the mechanism was finally put into place to allow this legislation to bring an end to the lurid portrayals of the past twenty-five years. The filmmakers did all they could to avoid the Code between 1930 and 1934 as their starlets, among them Joan Crawford, Mae West and Barbara Stanwyck, luxuriated in some of their most enticing roles. The world of film, however, was about to change; from 1934, every feature submitted for cinematic release would require a seal of approval. The Code would remain in place until 1968 when its outdated precepts were superseded by the MPAA system of film rating.

Production Code of the Hays Office.

The stipulations of the Production Code have been summarized below to show the three General Principles, followed by the subsequent set of specific restrictions: 1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Thus, the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

The specific restrictions, itemized as "Particular Applications" of these principles, were: * Nudity and suggestive dances were prohibited.

* The ridicule of religion was forbidden, with ministers of religion not to be represented as comic characters or villains.

* The depiction of illegal drug use was specifically forbidden, along with the use of liquor "when not required by the plot or for proper characterization".

* Any explicit portrayal detailing methods of crime such as safe cracking, arson and smuggling was forbidden.

* References to alleged "s.e.x perversion" (such as h.o.m.os.e.xuality) and venereal disease were forbidden, as were depictions of childbirth.

* The language section prohibited various words and phrases that could be considered offensive.

* Murder scenes had to be filmed in a way that would discourage real life imitations, and the detail of a vicious killing could not be shown.

* "Revenge in modern times" was not to be justified.

* The sanct.i.ty of marriage and the home had to be upheld.

* "Pictures shall not infer that low forms of s.e.xual relationship are the accepted or common thing."

* Adultery and illicit s.e.x, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified and were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option.

* Portrayals of miscegenation were forbidden.

* "Scenes of Pa.s.sion" were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot.

* "Excessive and l.u.s.tful kissing" was to be avoided, along with any other treatment that might "stimulate the lower and baser element". A limit of thirty seconds was later insisted by the Hays Office.

* The flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, and the people and history of other nations were to be presented "fairly".

* "Vulgarity", defined as "low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects" must be "subject to the dictates of good taste".

* Capital punishment, "third-degree methods", cruelty to children and animals, prost.i.tution and surgical operations were to be handled with similar sensitivity.

The continuance of the Production Code would have impeded the evolution of the more extreme forms of American horror cinema, with cinemagoers being denied the chance to experience the gratuitous splatter from overseas creators such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Mario Bava and Ruggero Deodato, along with the exploitation savoured by Jess Franco. When the Code was first introduced few foreign films were ever made available in the United States, although there was one notorious exception, Czech director Gustav Machat's Ecstasy (1933), which was scandalized by Hedy Lamarr's nude swim and ever-so-carefully veiled s.e.xual innuendo. The Hays Office hacked into Machat's film prior to its limited run in the US, although the unedited version is still believed to have made an appearance in certain art house cinemas of the day.

It soon became obvious that one of the many failings of the Code was its inability to differentiate between age groups. Either a film was granted the coveted seal of approval or it simply didn't see release. Further to this during the 1950s some distributors started to defy the code by bringing in foreign imports and by the 1960s with the appearance of Hammer's stock of horror, Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k's Psycho and the drive-in splatter of Hersch.e.l.l G. Lewis along with William Castle, many of the Code's restrictions needed to be relaxed. These films were now requested to carry an announcement recommending their content was intended for mature audiences.

The current system of Motion Picture a.s.sociation of America (MPAA) letter ratings was introduced in 1968 permitting filmmakers to determine the nature of their film and then place it for submission to receive an official rating based upon the levels of violence, s.e.xual activity, nudity and profanity. This rating system was based on age, but later clarified and then amended to overcome public confusion.

Censorship in the United Kingdom.

Legislation evolved in the United Kingdom in a similar way to its counterpart in the United States. Following The Cinematograph Act of 1909, which required cinemas to attain licences from their local authority on the grounds of both health and safety and the content of the films that were being shown, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) was established at the request of the film industry in 1912. This fledgeling industry was already reluctant to the idea of being overseen by either national or local government. Although there were links with the government, particularly during the inter-war period, which warned against articulating controversial political views in films made on these sh.o.r.es, these were for the most part very informal. As with the Hays Office, a system for inspecting potential scripts was introduced, inviting British studios to tender their screenplays prior to shooting. Surprisingly, American films were not treated quite as strictly, which allowed a flow of hard-boiled crime movies into the country, but such portrayals were out of bounds for British filmmakers.

During World War II, political censorship became the responsibility of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information; meaning the BBFC would never again be able to influence the more political aspects of film and television. Their role was now more concerned with on-screen depictions of s.e.x and violence with films being routinely censored seemingly as a means of social control. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) was cut to prevent the slightest possibility of teenage upheaval and Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) was edited to remove its openly s.e.xual overtures. As social att.i.tudes became more permissive during the 1960s, the BBFC began to devote their attention to those films that featured graphic s.e.x and violence, which led to the prohibition of Last House on the Left (1972) and The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre (1974). Recent years have seen a relaxation in the Board's approach to the guidelines to keep in line with society's ever-changing outlook, with many films that were banned during the 1970s now beginning to see release.

In 1984, the BBFC became the British Board of Film Cla.s.sification to reflect another change in its role, following the need to make cla.s.sification a more significant part of its work. Under the Video Recording Act of 1984, the Board was given the responsibility for the cla.s.sification of videos for both hire and purchase to view in the home as well as those films shown in cinemas across the country. Local authorities still had the final say over who was eligible to see a particular film in the cinemas in their locality, but this power did not extend to cover video recordings. The Video Recordings Act 1984 followed the moral panic created by the tabloid press between 1982 and 1983, which made the video nasty the scapegoat for so many of the country's ills.

The BBFC were now sanctioned to cla.s.sify films under an age-rated system making it an offence to supply videos to anyone under the designated age of a specified cla.s.sification. In the event that a film was refused cla.s.sification, it was made illegal to put it up for sale or supply anywhere in the country. The BBFC's role was also extended to their being empowered to demand cuts to films to enable a particular age rating, or in more extreme circ.u.mstances ensure actual cla.s.sification. The act did not consider possession to be an offence in itself, but "possession with intent to supply" would be punishable by law. The BBFC would continue to demand cuts to those features that contravened the provisions of the Obscene Publications Act or other such legislation, e.g. the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act 1937 and the Protection of Children Act 1978.

Hammer Films.

Among the foreign imports entering the United States during the 1950s would have been a sensationalistic series of luridly bloodthirsty films produced in Britain, made by an almost unknown company by the name of Hammer. Hammer Film Productions was founded in November 1934 by William Hinds, whose stage name in his heyday had been Will Hammer. After only three years, the company was declared bankrupt following a downturn in the British film industry. However, Exclusive, the distribution arm of the organization, survived the liquidation. This allowed Hammer to rebuild, and between 1947 and 1955 they gained a reputation for producing cheaply made B-grade movies, and then in 1955 released their first horror movie. The Quaterma.s.s Xperiment was an adaptation of the Nigel Kneale scripted BBC television serial The Quaterma.s.s Experiment. The film was a resounding success, which prompted a sequel, again adapted from the BBC series and now scripted by Neale, Quaterma.s.s 2 (1957).

That same year the company looked to producing an adaptation of Mary Sh.e.l.ley's Frankenstein from a script submitted by Milton Subotsky, but it proved a little too close to Universal's telling of the Son of Frankenstein (1939). Jimmy Sangster was brought in to redraft the original screenplay to avoid litigation with Universal and extend the running time to ninety minutes thus making it admissible for distribution across the UK. The gruesome nature of Sangster's script and Hammer's decision to shoot in full colour duly alarmed the BBFC, who were so concerned with the unseemly nature of this feature they felt they would not even be able to cla.s.sify the film with an "X" certificate. The script, however, remained almost unchanged and under Terence Fisher's direction Hammer's first Gothic horror went into production. The Eastmancolor elevated the level of gore to an intensity that had never before been experienced in film. The Curse of Frankenstein was unashamedly graphic in its b.l.o.o.d.y display and Fisher extracted every opportunity to allow the camera to linger on each of its gruesome scenes. The film proved to be a huge success both at home and in the US.

After a lengthy agreement with Universal, work began on Dracula, although the BBFC were once again far from happy with the excess of blood coursing through the script. Terence Fisher's direction helped to make Dracula another resounding success as it smashed box office records on both sides of the Atlantic, with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing excelling in their respective roles. These two films were to provide the formula for Hammer's productions for the next twenty years and forced the censors to re-evaluate their guidelines.

1960.

The year 1960 came out to be one of the most significant in the development of cinematic horror. That year five films were released in different parts of the world which would change the face of horror and, as many commentators had feared, open the floodgates for what would become an unwholesome tide of gore-ridden terror. The films in question were Psycho, Peeping Tom, Les Yeux Sans Visage, Black Sabbath and Jigoku. While many films had threatened to shock their audiences with their explicit t.i.tles such as Corridors of Blood (1958), these films challenged their audiences in quite different ways and caused immense problems for the censoring authorities across the western world. The audience reaction, however, was very positive and following the success of Psycho, Hollywood began to realize there was money to be made in such explicit violence.

After several years of making low-budget nudie films, the highly educated Hersch.e.l.l G. Lewis used his exploitative formula to make a series of bloodthirsty horror movies that were made specifically for the drive-in cinemas of the south-eastern states of the US. They proved to be immensely successful and very soon other directors began to follow suit. As with the B-movie terrors of the 1950s, these films were shot in a matter of days, quite often using only one take. Their intention was to generate a maximum return as quickly as they possibly could, and to h.e.l.l with the finer points of acting and production. Lewis would ascend to become the first G.o.dfather of Gore, and as ham-fisted as his films were, they would attract a procession of gore-loving teenagers by the carload. Lewis's Blood Feast (1963) is now considered to be the first true splatter movie and was very soon followed by so many more.

Grindhouse and Exploitation.

With the relaxation of censorships rules in the US, exploitation cinema began to attract a greater following during the 1960s. These suggestive films had been in existence since the 1920s, but the drive-ins and the former b.u.mp 'n' grind striptease theatres that had become the grindhouse cinemas of 42nd Street provided a ready market for these low-budget features. They picked upon the more seamy aspects of cinema and attracted a quite unique following. The films on show in these tawdry picture houses covered a wide range of sub-genres, such as biker movies, drug-related features, blaxploitation, nunsploitation, spaghetti westerns, extremes of violence, an abundance of large b.o.o.bs and more than a smattering of lurid s.e.x. European movies also began to appear in these cinemas coming in from Italy, France and Spain. Eurosleaze attracted yet another audience and soon followed the gialli and cannibal movies. If the celluloid merchandise was cheap enough, then these cinemas were interested and men such as Jess Franco showed themselves quite capable of delivering the goods, time and time again. The quality of many of these films may have been very poor, but the audiences in these rundown establishments were privy to several films that planted the seeds for a generation of filmmakers when they prepared to let the slasher run amok in mainstream cinemas across America. Two of these films in particular were of immense significance; both directed by Mario Bava, the first of which was Blood and Black Lace (1964) followed seven years later by A Bay of Blood (1971). Although their European counterparts were so often badly dubbed, these gialli, with their penchant for imaginative murder and enticing femmes, soon garnered an appreciative audience.

Away from the world of cinema, a series of murders committed by the Manson Family in 1969 would have considerable repercussions for the whole of the US. The country was shocked by their vicious disregard for human life and there were serious questions asked about family values, many of which were to remain unanswered. Those films that thrived upon an excess of violence once again fell under public scrutiny, but these features also generated considerable amounts of money as evidenced by the work of the prominent Sam Peckinpah. Former college professor Wes Craven had taken a career change, entering the world of low-budget exploitation and realized that a film unreserved in its level of brutality would indeed shock its audience, but would make a highly lucrative return. The evidence was there in the newspaper headlines; the press thrived on excess and the tabloids sold on the back of it. The Last House on the Left (1972) was an audacious venture, but its controversial success inspired films of a similar ilk such as Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Ma.s.sacre (1974), which in turn inspired even greater excess, some of which again came from Craven in The Hills Have Eyes (1977).

1978.

The year 1978 proved to be the next landmark for the horror movie. In its day Bob Clark's giallo-styled shocker Black Christmas (1974) failed to set the world of film alight, but its point-of-view camera shots caught the attention of many young filmmakers, one of whom was John Carpenter. Carpenter was already carving a reputation as a low-budget director capable of tapping into audience expectation. His film Halloween changed the public's perception of the horror movie and became the catalyst for the decade to come. The terror that emanated from the blade of Michael Myers, followed by the carnage of Friday the 13th (1980), was to have an unprecedented impact, and for the next few years these two films inspired an onslaught of knife-wielding maniacal killers. Halloween redefined the principles of hack and slash that had emerged in the gialli and acquired an intensity of structure with Black Christmas, and then Friday the 13th went that one step further making the ruthless slaughter even more imaginative.

In this same year, for the second time in his career, George A. Romero unleashed a horde of rampaging zombies, this time in a shopping mall in Monroeville. This film was Dawn of the Dead. The scenes, along with the work of the inventive Tom Savini seen in this film, would send the kids across North America and the UK into a zombie frenzy. They also caught the eye of the Italians, in particular one Lucio Fulci, who in the year that followed moved into making horror movies and let loose his own breed of mindless excess in Zombie Flesh Eaters, which has also a.s.sumed the name Zombi 2, and in his boundless enthusiasm he enlivened the craze for Italian splatter. Did these creatures really represent our societal fears, or were they a reflection of Cold War paranoia, or was it something more sinister? It didn't really matter because the kids came out en ma.s.se to view some of the most extreme films ever to see release to the silver screen, and they loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, this gory excess didn't come without problems, for not everyone was quite ready for such a graphic onslaught.

The Golden Age of the Slasher.