Slasher flicks can be traced back to the unnervingly intimate killers of Psycho and Peeping Tom, but the modern template snapped into place with Halloween, which transformed murder into a kind of ritualized stalking game. The late 1970s and early ’80s were the genre’s glory days, thanks partly to simple economics—low budgets, high returns—and perhaps young moviegoers wanting their onscreen violence and sexuality more explicit, if only to jolt them out of Reagan era optimism.
The slasher quickly codified its own rules: the masked, near-mythic killer; the “final girl” who endures; the prowling POV shot that implicates the viewer; and the isolated setting that turns suburbia or summer camp into a very gory place. These are my picks for the 15 best slashers.
15. Sleepaway Camp (1983, dir. Robert Hiltzik)
Angela (Felissa Rose), the sole survivor of a horrible boating accident from years earlier, is sent by her weirdo aunt (Desiree Gould) to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) for a summer of campfires, canoeing and canoodling. They didn’t count on the painfully shy Angela being sexually assaulted by a cook—its troubling treatment reflects a less-enlightened time—or being bullied by the requisite mean girls. Then the body count begins and things get decidedly less idyllic. Sleepaway Camp is probably best known for its twist ending (I’m keeping mum), but writer-director Robert Hiltzik also deserves props for gruesome, inventive kills. Perhaps the creepiest aspect is the setting itself. Nothing dredges up feelings of ambivalence like summer camp.
14. Maniac (1980, dir. William Lustig)
If Jerry Stiller and Ron Jeremy had a love-child, it would be Joe Spinell. He rules in this seamy grindhouse classic about—you guessed it—a maniac terrorizing a city. In this case, it’s New York City in the grip of fear thanks to this lug who falls into women-hating spells in which he stabs and scalps his victims. The titular maniac, whose rat’s nest of a bedroom is overstuffed with blood-smeared mannequins, rails against “fancy girls in fancy dresses with their lipstick.” Special effects wizard Tom Savini (who briefly appears as a guy who gets his head blown off) has a field day with the gore. In Flick Attack: Movie Arsenal Book One, Rod Lott writes that Lustig “seems to capture every grain of dirt, every bead of sweat, every smear or grease, and every puddle of God-knows-what.” Much of Maniac is laughable, but Spinell’s particular brand of sweaty menace is more disturbing than any amount of blood and guts.
13. Pieces (1982, dir. Juan Piquer Simón)
Any grindhouse fan knows that sometimes a flick really can be so bad, it’s good. Pieces is so stupefyingly ludicrous as to be irresistible. A prologue set in 1942 has a 10-year-old boy (Alejandro Hernandez) feverishly putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman—did the Greatest Generation’s pornography come packaged as parlor games?— when his mother puts a stop to it. Hormones being hormones, the boy naturally grabs a handsaw and cuts mom down to size. Despite being covered in blood, he somehow is not suspected by police. Forty years later, someone is slashing the young women of a fictional Boston college. On the case is a not-so-bright homicide detective (Christopher George) and the campus lothario (Ian Serra) whose major appears to be laying the female student body. Speaking of bodies, the killer is amassing body parts for—brace yourself—a human jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. Director Juan Piquer Simón dishes out some genuinely gory kills for the genre faithful, but Pieces’ amateurish production, inept performances and bonkers script (assuming there really was one) make the WTF proceedings more hilarious than harrowing.
12. Alice Sweet Alice (1976, dir. Alfred Sole)
This low-budget indie is often remembered for the blink-and-you’ll-miss-her movie debut of Brooke Shields, but Alice Sweet Alice deserves mad respect on its own merits. Set in the early 1960s, the American giallo (the Italian-influenced horror subgenre) concerns a series of murders terrorizing a Catholic parish in Paterson, New Jersey. First to go is little Brooke, whose character is dispatched at her first communion. Indications are that the perpetrator is her 12-year-old sister, Alice, played with combustible energy by Paula Sheppard. Writer-director Alfred Sole is no slouch in creating dread. There are some wicked set pieces involving the slasher, whose unsettling wardrobe of choice is a yellow raincoat and a cheap mask. Fortunately for the killer, the movie has characters so obnoxious that you wouldn’t mind seeing them sliced to shreds.
11. X (2022, dir. Ti West)
Nothing can spoil the mojo of an X-rated movie shoot like a killer thinning out cast and crew. Writer-director Ti West’s exceptional, slow-burn horror picture—the first of a trilogy that includes Pearl and Maxine—wisely builds an atmosphere of anxiety by letting his ragtag band of characters interact. Renting an old boardinghouse out in the country is Wade (Martin Henderson), a Houston strip-club owner hoping to venture into the budding pornographic home-video arena. To shoot The Farmer’s Daughters, he has assembled his younger girlfriend Maxine (Mia Goth), two porn performers (Brittany Snow and Scott Mescudi), a wannabe indie filmmaker, (Owen Campbell) and his deceptively mousy girlfriend (Jenna Ortega). Unfortunately for them, the elderly couple (Stephen Ure and Goth again) who own the place don’t cotton to all this fornicating. Even more provocative than X’s porn trappings is its disturbing exploration of the aging villains’ longing and resentments. Goth is terrific in the duo roles, which paid off later that year in West’s prequel, Pearl.
10. Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984, dir. Charles E. Sellier Jr.)
This nasty little exploitation flick earns its place solely for its cheerful commitment to grindhouse excess. Not only is its killer outfitted in Santa Claus garb, but director Charles E. Sellier Jr. barrels into the depravity with breathtaking glee. Trouble for 5-year-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) begins on Christmas Eve 1971 when his family visits his grandfather. The old man appears to have dementia until he’s alone with Billy, when he suddenly fills the boy with terrifying notions of what Santa is up to. On the drive home, Billy watches helplessly as a drunk in a Santa suit murders his dad and rapes his mom before slitting her throat. From there, Billy (Danny Wagner as an older child) is shipped off to an orphanage where he is beaten savagely by sadistic Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). At age 18, Billy (now Robert Brian Wilson) is a toy-store employee on Christmas Eve when he is directed to dress up like Santa. The directive ignites ho-ho-homicidal PTSD for Billy that commences in a bloody slayride. Silent Night, Deadly Night drew controversy at the time for its psychotic Santa. Film critic Gene Siskel even took to the airwaves of the TV show he co-hosted with Roger Ebert to read aloud the filmmakers’ names as a way to publicly shame them. Ironically, a murderous Santa is one of the picture’s tamer conceits.
9. Scream (1996, dir. Wes Craven)
Director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson have great fun tweaking the genre that Craven had a big part in establishing. The director had initially turned down the project, as had Sam Raimi and George Romero, but Craven reportedly reconsidered after a kid at a horror convention urged him to make something akin to his Last House on the Left glory days. Craven delivered one of his best with an ensemble cast—including Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich—and a distinctive look for the killer that quickly became iconic. The opening is diabolically clever, with Drew Barrymore as a teen who receives a taunting phone call from the killer. Not only does the movie’s biggest name star get offed (shades of #3’s Psycho), but her murderer-to-be references enough slasher flicks and their concomitant tropes to make it clear that what follows will be gore with a splash of meta. Gore-literacy is now weaponized. Scream knows what it is, knows the viewer knows, and knows that there are rules it is expected to follow—but its self-awareness of slasher-film conventions renders it enthralling.
8. Stagefright (1987, dir. Michael Soavi)
This Italian production has the feel of a giallo, but departs from that genre since there is no mystery as to who is terrorizing the rehearsal of a ridiculous-looking, avant-garde musical called The Night Owl. Lead actress Alicia (Barbara Cupisti) briefly skips out on the dictatorial director, Peter (David Brandon), so a doctor can look at her ankle. Oddly, costumer Betty (Ulrike Schwerk) drives Alicia to be seen by a doctor at a psychiatric hospital, where actor-turned-homicidal maniac Irving Wallace (Clain Parker) surreptitiously hitches a ride back to the theater where rehearsal continues while the night is battered by pouring rain. Irving first kills Betty before he puts on the giant owl head of the play’s titular character. While Peter muses that Betty’s death is sure to boost the play’s notoriety, that damned owl disguise allows Irving to bounce around the theater chopping, drilling, hatcheting and otherwise dispatching cast and crew. Soavi’s feature directorial debut has a visual flair that elevates it over many other ‘80s slashers. And how can a killer wearing a giant owl head be anything but a hoot?
7. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir. Wes Craven)
Freddy Krueger is one of the most iconic of mad slashers. His disfigured face and signature outfit—a striped red-and-green knit sweater and brown fedora—make a lasting impression. And then there’s that glove fitted with razor blades. A Nightmare on Elm Street finds the teenagers of Elm Street plagued by nightmares featuring Freddy (Robert Englund), a child murderer who was burned alive by a vigilante mob 20 years earlier. Dreams give Freddy a new lease on life—and murder. Wes Craven strikes a deft tonal balance. A solid cast includes Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon and, in his film debut, a 21-year-old Johnny Depp. Freddy is a wonderfully frightening slasher, all right, but he also has a wicked sense of humor and knows his way with a catchphrase. “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you!” This murderer has panache.
(See more in The 10 best movies about dreams.)
6. Black Christmas (1974, dir. Bob Clark)
Bob Clark’s versatility as a director is evident in two—count ‘em, two—Yuletide classics. While 1983’s A Christmas Story is the more generally crowd-pleasing option, I prefer his chilling Black Christmas, a milestone in the genre, about a sorority house in a small Canadian college town being terrorized by an unknown assailant. John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978 (see #1) launched a generation of slasher flicks that heavily employed the killer’s point of view, but Clark was making effective use of POV four years earlier. Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussey and Andrea Martin are among the sorority sisters preparing for Christmas break when their plans are interrupted by a killer in the Pi Kappa Sigma house. Clark and screenwriter Roy Moore take their time establishing the distinctive characters, and Clark, whose Porky’s (1981) later spurred an onslaught of horny boys-on-the-make movies, admirably resists the obvious exploitation possibilities. Black Christmas is moody, atmospheric and disciplined—traits that too often eluded its imitators.
5. Candyman (1992, dir. Bernard Rose)
Graduate student Helen Lyle’s (Virginia Madsen) thesis on urban legends naturally leads to her researching the folktale of the “Candyman.” If you repeat the name five times when looking into a mirror, you summon a murderous ghost, and we don’t mean Sammy Davis Jr. No, in this adaptation of a Clive Barker story, “Candyman” is a 19th-century Black painter who was tortured and killed by a mob for having an affair with a white woman. The mob sawed off his painting hand and replaced it with a hook that he now uses to gut his victims. Entwined with the legend is Cabrini-Green, Chicago’s infamous public housing projects where Helen believes the Candyman story is used to explain and cope with the violence and misery of tenants’ daily lives. Tony Todd is properly menacing as the titular apparition who really messes with Helen’s mind. The actor got as good as he gave, apparently. In a scene that called for bees to emerge from his mouth, his only protection was a dental dam. The filmmakers agreed to give Todd a $1,000 bonus for every bee sting endured; he earned $23,000. Propelled by an excellent Philip Glass score and Madsen’s game performance, Bernard Rose’s Candyman is a rare horror film that dares to explore issues of race and poverty without forgetting to scare the shit out of you.
4. Peeping Tom (1960, dir. Michael Powell)
British reviewers and moviegoers assailed Peeping Tom upon its release as grotesque trash, and it essentially ended the career of its director, Michael Powell. Critics couldn’t understand how such perverse rubbish could have come from Powell, whose collaboration with Emeric Pressburger yielded some of the UK’s greatest pictures, including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. As with so many great movies, Peeping Tom was simply ahead of its time. Its portrait of a psychologically damaged serial killer is disturbing stuff, but hardly scandalous. “It is a film in which you cannot tell disgust from exhilaration,” writes film scholar David Thomson, “because it is gripped by the real sadism of a serial killer.” Karlheinz Böhm is effectively creepy as Mark Lewis, a photographer with a compulsion to film women at the moment of their impalement on the sharpened leg of his tripod. Mark’s solicitous demeanor and awkwardness around women echoes that of Psycho’s Norman Bates (see #3), who was also scaring audiences that same year.
(See more in The 10 best films about voyeurism.)
3. Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
The mother of American slashers, Psycho forever changed the horror genre when Alfred Hitchcock unleashed it in the summer of 1960. Budgeted at less than $1 million and made with his television crew from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the movie showcases a level of violence, particularly a certain shower scene, new to mainstream Hollywood. Hitch also deploys a fiendish trick of killing off its star, Janet Leigh, after spending 45 minutes making us care about her character, Marion Crane. But the misdirection doesn’t end there. In a sharp departure from the Robert Bloch novel on which the film is based, Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates is the sweetest of psychopaths, a kindhearted bird enthusiast who loves his mother but just can’t help himself when a pretty blonde checks into his family’s secluded motel. With the exception of a labored, dated coda that spells out the movie’s pop psychology, Psycho is still a banger after all these years—and with only two on-screen murders, no less.
(See more in The 10 best bathroom scenes in film.)
2. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, dir. Tobe Hooper)
Texans appreciate their traditions. Psychopathic cannibals of the Lone Star State are no different, as evidenced by the Sawyer family of this horror classic and culture touchstone. The local slaughterhouse might have moved on from the old ways, but not the film’s three generations of Sawyer menfolk who still know the value of killing the old-fashioned way. Shot for $140,000 and inspired by real-life serial killer Ed Gein, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre succeeds because its aesthetic is so, um, bareboned. Director Tobe Hooper just wants to scare the bejesus out of you. A van full of friends runs into trouble when they visit an old abandoned house in the country. First, they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) who turns out to be a self-mutilating creep. Later, they meet the rest of the hitchhiker’s brood, including his chainsaw-wielding brother, the succinctly named “Leatherface” (Gunnar Hansen) on account of his mask made of human flesh. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is not a true story, despite the claims of its prologue—narrated by John Larroquette, later of television’s Night Court, whom Hooper paid in weed. There is little gore but abundant terror, and Marilyn Burns, as the last standing victim, can scream like nobody’s business.
1. Halloween (1978, dir. John Carpenter)
Indulge me briefly. I was 12 when I saw Halloween opening night at the Quail Twin in Oklahoma City (if you must know specifics) for what is still the most enjoyably scarring movie experience of my life. It was a theater packed with preteens and teens who, if my memory is telling me the truth, let out a near-constant stream of screams, shouts and howls of cathartic laughter—all in a sort of unified, stentorian wall of sound that would have made a pre-homicidal Phil Spector green with envy. At least that’s how I remember it. From its opening scene and surprising reveal of a 6-year-old killer, Halloween had us in its devious little palm. Countless rewatches over the years haven’t dimmed my admiration for John Carpenter’s minimalist artistry. It’s Halloween night, and Michael Myers, that murderous child from Scene One, is now grown, on the lam from a psychiatric hospital, and inexorably drawn back to hometown Haddonfield, Illinois. The screenplay by Carpenter and his then-girlfriend Debra Hill isn’t complicated. Their genius was in whittling down horror to its essential elements and then shooting that story with elegance and economy. There is a masked, knife-wielding killing machine; three teenage babysitters in peril, and Donald Pleasance as Michael’s somewhat unhinged doctor whose certainty that pure evil walks among us is itself unsettling. The film’s $300,000 budget forced creativity. For springtime in Los Angeles to double as Illinois during autumn, the crew emptied trashbags of fall leaves before shooting an outdoor scene. Afterwards, they dutifully raked the leaves and returned them to the bags for the next scene. Michael’s iconic mask came from a store on Hollywood Boulevard. To save money, Carpenter composed the score himself. Its stripped-down, synthesizer-heavy music became a sort of template for dozens of imitators. Sure, the film gave rise to some problematic tropes, particularly its dispatching of sexually active Annie and Lynda (Nancy Loomis and P.J. Soles) while virginal Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, kicking off one helluva career) is allowed to survive. Halloween isn’t perfect, but it is pretty damn close. And on one October night back in 1978, it was the very pinnacle of the moviegoing experience.
Honorable mention: The Burning (1981, dir. Tony Maylam), Child’s Play (1988, dir. Tom Holland), Friday the 13th (1980, dir. Sean S. Cunningham), The Funhouse (1981, dir. Tobe Hooper), Happy Birthday to Me (1981, dir. J. Lee Thompson), Happy Death Day (2017, dir. Christopher Landon), High Tension (2003, dir. Alexandre Aja), House of the Devil (2008, dir. Ti West), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, dir. Jim Gillespie), In a Violent Nature (2024, dir. Chris Nash), My Bloody Valentine (1981, dir. George Mihalka), The Slumber Party Massacre (1982, dir. Amy Holden Jones), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986, dir. Tobe Hooper), Tourist Trap (1979, dir. David Schmoeller), You’re Next (2011, dir. Adam Wingard)
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 