So is Psycho a slasher? Is Peeping Tom a slasher? In theory, yes. It was a wise decision, and three months later Psycho hit the big screen, and the rest is what they call history. When Alfred Hitchcock was informed that Powell’s film was banned, he decided to cancel all press screenings for Psycho, in fear that it too would be blackballed from having a theatrical release. The film was immensely controversial critics called it misogynistic, and thus the film was never theatrically released. It also happens to be a major influence on the found footage genre and one of the best films ever made. The film’s plot centres around a man who kills women while using a portable movie camera to record their dying expressions. For my money, Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) is the mother of all slasher films. Some consider Thirteen Women to be the earliest slasher – released all the way back in 1932. So does one consider Scream a slasher film or a neo-slasher, or simply put, a modern slasher? When someone describes Brick, they don’t define it as a noir, but instead neo-noir.
In other words, she saw it as a movement.
Author Vera Dika rather strictly defines the sub-genre in her book Games of Terror by only including films made between 19. The definition of a slasher film varies depending on who you ask, but in general, it contains several specific traits that feed into the genre’s formula.
