![]() George Archainbaud's Thirteen Women (1932) tells the story of a sorority whose former members are set against one another by a vengeful peer who crosses out their yearbook photos, a device used in subsequent films Prom Night (1980) and Graduation Day (1981). ![]() Early film influencesĭorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase (1946) Along with the "madman on the loose" plotline, these films employed several influences upon the slasher genre, such as lengthy point of view shots and a "sins of the father" catalyst to propel the plot's mayhem. In both films, the town dwellers are pitted against strange country folk, a recurring theme in later horror films. Its success led to a series of "old dark house" films including The Cat and the Canary (1927), based on John Willard's 1922 stage play, and Universal Pictures' The Old Dark House (1932), based on the novel by J.B. Ĭrime writer Mary Roberts Rinehart influenced horror literature with her novel The Circular Staircase (1908), adapted into the silent film The Bat (1926), about guests in a remote mansion menaced by a killer in a grotesque mask. The Hays Code is one of the entertainment industry's earliest set of guidelines restricting sexuality and violence deemed unacceptable. In the United States, public outcry over films like this eventually led to the passage of the Hays Code in 1930. ![]() Maurice Tourneur's The Lunatics (1912) used visceral violence to attract the Guignol's audience. The appeal of watching people inflict violence upon each other dates back thousands of years to Ancient Rome, though fictionalized accounts became marketable with late 19th century horror plays produced at the Grand Guignol. OriginsĪ scene from the Grand Guignol, a format some critics have cited as an influence on the slasher film The Scream film series is a rarity that follows its heroine Sidney Prescott ( Neve Campbell) rather than masked killer Ghostface, whose identity changes from film to film, and is only revealed in each entry's finale. Several slasher film villains grew to take on villain protagonist characteristics, with the series following the continued efforts of a villain, rather than the killer's victims (for example, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Chucky, and Leatherface). Final girls are often, like Laurie Strode, virgins among sexually active teens. Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis), the heroine in Halloween, is an example of a typical final girl. The final girl trope is discussed in film studies as being a young woman (occasionally a young man) left alone to face the killer's advances in the movie's end. Built around stalk-and-murder sequences, the films draw upon the audience's feelings of catharsis, recreation, and displacement, as related to sexual pleasure. ![]() Slasher films typically adhere to a specific formula: a past wrongful action causes severe trauma that is reinforced by a commemoration or anniversary that reactivates or re-inspires the killer.
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