Halloween countdown: The best slasher movies

Welcome to week five of our Halloween countdown! In this feature, we’re listing the best slasher movies. Which one is your favorite?

A slasher film is a subgenre of horror movies that usually involve a psychopath stalking and murdering a group of people, and there’s only one female survivor. Hey, we don’t make the rules.

Interestingly enough, it’s believed that the origins of slasher movies came all the way from Ancient Rome where many of the customs used in modern society began. In Rome, the appeal of watching people inflict brutality on each other was put on display in the Colosseum games, showing our natural draw to violence.

Fictionalized accounts of these battles and competitions were turned into plays during the 19th Century catering to a horror-loving audience, which eventually bled into the film industry. Horror literally shaped our film industry.

Another influence for the slasher creation was crime writer Mary Roberts Reinhart, whose novel “The Circular Staircase” got adapted into the successfully 1926 film The Bat. Its popularity led to a series of “old dark house” films which included The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Old Dark House (1932), opening the door for darker films.

Slashers are possibly the most frightening kind of horror movie because the “monster” is a human, a person covered by a mask that sometimes kills for no understandable reason. Home invasions, stalking, a knife-wielding maniac are all things that have happened, and continue happening, in real life.

What are the best slasher movies to watch this Halloween?

5. Black Christmas

Originally titled Stop Me and initially released in the US under the name Silent Night, Evil Night, the 1974 film was inspired by both “The babysitter and the man upstairs” urban legend and a series of murders that took place in the Westmount section of Montreal, Quebec around Christmas time.

Set around a group of sorority girls led by Jess (Olivia Hussey), who receive threatening phone calls before a deranged man begins stalking and murdering them during the happiest time of year, Black Christmas is a standout film even to this day that was extremely graphic for its time. It’s still very gruesome in a quiet unsettling kind of way, but despite its aged gore, the ominous tone gently laid over the movie keeps it on our favorites list.

Aside from being an innovative cult classic, Black Christmas has the honor of being named one of the earliest slasher films ever made and an inspiration for the millions of slashers that followed, including John Carpenter’s Halloween.

4. Scream

Directed by the great Wes Craven, the creator of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, Scream is a satire on slashers.

Scream was incredibly innovative for its time. Released in 1996, the movie not only openly identified itself as a slasher, but also made fun of itself for being one. The story follows high-school student Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) who becomes the target of a masked killer in a small town.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre looks, sounds and feels too real for most people’s comfort levels. The whole movie is one unsettling image after another and really warns you against stopping for gas, going on road trips, picking up hitchhikers or doing anything else remotely related to leaving your house and venturing outside.

Although the plot is entirely fictional, the film was marketed as a true story that simultaneously acted as a commentary on American Capitalism. The character of Leatherface is loosely based on the serial killer Ed Gein who skinned his victims and made them into lamps shades and such. And to further the film’s realistic atmosphere, director Tobe Hopper used unknown actors found in central Texas and was forced to film it all with a budget of just $140,000.

2. Halloween

The king of slashers. The love child of Psycho and Black Christmas, John Carpenter’s Halloween brings to life Michael Myers, an unstoppable force comparable to the boogeyman who obsessively hunts down target victim Laurie Strode (scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis).

Many of the horror slasher movie tropes we see today came from Halloween. The only bad about Halloween is the horrible string of sequels that followed, creating a whacked-out timeline along with the issue of having three movies in the franchise sharing the same name.

1. Psycho

If Halloween is the king, Psycho is the All-Father. Based on the novel by Robert Bloch, this movie by Alfred Hitchcock needs no introduction. It’s the Godfather of slasher movies and showed everyone why see-through shower curtains are so important. Starring scream king Anthony Perkins as the infamous Norman Bates, Psycho is all about an awkward young man who runs a dying motel on an abandoned road.

What are your favorite slasher movies?