Slasher Movies

A group of horror films known as slasher movies usually foreground a psychopathic, mass murderer who threatens, stalks, and finally kills his victims in a gruesome, terrifying way, using such weapons as knives, machetes, chainsaws, and razors, hence the term slasher.

With precursors including the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, the slasher escapes easy classification/definition, since it encompasses and incorporates elements from-as well as overlaps with and influences-numerous other film genres: rape-and-revenge; exploitation; Italian films of the 1960s and 1970s by Dario Argento and Mario Bava; pornography and “torture porn”; splatter; and supernatural horror, since slashers often feature a villain who resurrects, is immortal, and/or is undead.