This essay was composed in May 2022 and uses MLA documentation.

IN THE 1960s AND ‘70s, the American people watched real-life horrors unfold on their television sets. The broadcasting of the Vietnam War allowed ordinary citizens to see the brutal realities of war in real time (Krancer). This awareness resulted in one of the largest sustained protest movements in U.S. history (Miller). As “hippie” culture began to rise in the 60s, many Americans feared the sexual liberation movement, the breakdown of the heterosexual nuclear family, and the leaving behind of Christian values. In 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned from office following the Watergate scandal (Krancer). The American people could no longer trust their president. Young adults were running away to partake in counterculture. Women were leaving the home to join the workforce. There was no more faith in “the man,” and many people genuinely thought the world was ending. The country was traumatized, and anxieties soared (Krancer). How did the Americans deal with this time of crisis? They flocked to movie theatres to watch attractive young people get naked and stabbed on screen. Despite real life being so scary, people wanted to be scared for fun. Despite real life being so scary, people wanted to be scared for fun. In the decades following the Vietnam War, horror movies became gorier and more depraved than ever before (Krancer). And with the huge success of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978, audiences had picked their poison: slasher flicks. What followed was the “Golden Age of Slashers” which saw the release of over 100 new slasher films, many with the formula popularized by Halloween (Kerswell). In the ‘70s and ‘80s, slasher films were truly as inescapable as a madman wielding a chainsaw.

Everyone recognizes the sharp, piercing shrieks of the violin that accompany, arguably, the most famous scene in cinema history: the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Released in 1960, Psycho is considered by many to be the first slasher film, and its success opened the door for all the films that would follow in its bloody footsteps (Mikulec). A maniac wielding a kitchen knife, a beautiful female victim, and shocking twists and turns would become commonplace features in horror movies for decades, all done by Hitchcock. Without Psycho, there would be no slasher subgenre (Mikulec).

Horror movies continued to become more popular through the ‘60s and ‘70s, some of the most tumultuous times in American history. The Civil Rights Movement, the 1970s Energy Crisis, rising crime rates, Watergate, and the rise of the “hippie” culture that brought with it feminism, sexual liberation, and progression away from traditional Christian values rocked the nation. But nothing affected the psyche of the American people like the Vietnam War (Krancer). For those who had not served in the military, war had been just a concept, something happening in a far-off place. However, during the Vietnam War, it was in the homes of the American people—and for the first time, it was real for the average American. News coverage of the conflict was broadcast for all to see, and faced with the brutal reality of war, many Americans no longer believed their cause was just. Protests erupted nationwide calling for an end to the U.S.’s involvement (Miller), trust in the government was at an all-time low, and the American people lost faith in things ever improving (Krancer). It is during this period that The Exorcist (1973) and Jaws (1975) dominated box offices (Bowles). People wanted to see horror, and as American fears shifted, horror movies moved to emulate them.

In the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, horror movies leaned toward the fantastical, featuring inhuman creatures inhabiting shadowy crypts, giant bugs from outer space, and colossal nuclear monsters (Underwood), but in the ‘70s and ‘80s, people feared each other. Citizens who’d never stepped onto a battlefield had witnessed the atrocities humans could commit through their television screens, and it unsettled them. There was clear profit to be made from slashers, and the genre was just getting started. So, films moved away from supernatural beings in foreign lands to strangers stalking teenagers in suburbia. Horror movies became more grounded, explicit, and realistic (Krancer). In 1974, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shocked and horrified audiences across the nation, and they loved it. The film featured a large, mute killer wearing a mask of human skin, a backwoods cannibal family, and household items like hammers and chainsaws being used as weapons. It all hit very close to home; these were realistic murders taking place on American soil. Add in the false marketing of the film being based on a true story (Sager), and the film was as grounded and gritty as it could get. Working with a measly estimated budget of $140,000, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre pulled in around 30 million in ticket sales (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) – Financial Information”). There was clear profit to be made from slashers, and the genre was just getting started.

In October of 1978, the slasher genre really took off when John Carpenter’s Halloween became one of the most profitable independent films of all time, making over 60 million on a budget of just $300,000 (Halloween (1978) – Financial Information). People flocked to cinemas to see Michael Myers stalk and murder babysitters with a kitchen knife. Respected film critic Roger Ebert called Halloween “a visceral experience—we aren’t seeing the movie, we’re having it happen to us. It’s frightening. Maybe you don’t like movies that are really scary: Then don’t see this one.” Halloween was just what the American people were afraid of: danger lurking in their own backyards and unsupervised teens doing un-Christian things like drinking, doing drugs, and having sex (Krancer). Why did audiences want to watch movies about the things that scared them most? In her article “Horror Cinema, Trauma, and the U.S. in Crisis in the 1970s,” author Brooke Krancer theorizes, “Horror movies of the era were an attempt for filmmakers and audiences to express the hopelessness that they felt living and growing up in an era defined by distrust, grim conditions, and seeming hopelessness for the future. In turn, this explains the horror genre’s newfound popularity, as young people turned to metaphors to make sense of their fears and the world around them” (Krancer). What followed the massive success of Halloween was a period referred to as the “Golden Age of Slashers,” spanning from 1978 to 1984 when over 100 slasher flicks were released (Kerswell).

After 1978, many films walked through the door Halloween left open. While Halloween was not the first film to feature the horror tropes we know today, it did cement them in the genre (Zinoman). Many slashers would go on to feature a group of sexually active teens, a faceless killer, and a lone survivor, usually a girl who did not engage in any debauchery throughout the film (Clover). This formula was endlessly used and reused by numerous copycats (Bailey), possibly because it required little creative thinking or writing talent to produce a script. Slashers didn’t need award-winning plots to fill seats in a theater—the promise of blood, female nudity, and over-the-top violence was enough for horror fans to have a good time. This is best exemplified by the most successful Halloween copycat, Friday the 13th. Released in 1981, Friday the 13th borrowed many elements from its predecessor, namely the slaughter of promiscuous young people with a lone final girl surviving the ordeal, while still managing to bring something new to the table. The blood and sex were ramped up, and the film contained an unexpected ending with a shocking jump scare (Bell). The film received mostly negative reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter staff writing: “Gruesome violence, in which throats are slashed, and heads are split open in realistic detail, is the sum content of Friday the 13th, a sick and sickening low budget feature that is being released by Paramount. It’s blatant exploitation of the lowest order.” Despite such harsh criticism, the film made almost 60 million on a budget of $550,000 (“Friday the 13th (1980) – Financial Information”). Friday the 13th was essentially bulletproof. Even more studios and directors jumped on the opportunity to make their own slashers to cash in on the low-risk genre. Notable films such as Halloween II (1981), My Bloody Valentine (1981), Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Alone in the Dark (1982), Friday the 13th Part III (1982), Sleepaway Camp (1983), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984), and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), as well as dozens of others were released by the end of the Golden Age of Slashers (Navarro).

Despite its dramatic high, the Golden Age couldn’t last forever, and the public’s interest in slashers was declining by 1984, with movies garnering lower and lower returns (Clayton). Moviegoers wanted something fresher than the rehashed remnants of Halloween, and they found it in A Nightmare on Elm Street. While many of the films released in the Golden Age of Slashers were considered smut in their own time, they are now seen as culturally significant. With its comparatively larger budget, numerous special effects, supernatural elements, and charismatic killer, A Nightmare on Elm Street began the shift for horror movies to move in a different direction. And with this shift, small-budget, grounded slashers were left behind in the early ‘80s (Clayton).

While many of the films released in the Golden Age of Slashers were considered smut in their own time, they are now seen as culturally significant. The horror tropes popularized by Halloween still reverberate through our movies today; even non-horror fans can describe some criteria of a final girl. Some of the most successful film franchises of all time spawned from the Golden Age, franchises that still continue to release movies. These films changed the face of cinema forever, and they couldn’t have done it without the social and political unrest of the ‘60s and ‘70s; the massive success of Halloween; the simple, easy-to-replicate formula; and the ability of slashers to remain profitable despite poor critical reception. The tastes of horror fans today seem to favor supernatural, art-centric films that don’t rely on gore, but every once in a while, someone makes a classic slasher for the fans who refuse to leave the Golden Age behind.

Works Cited

Bailey, Jason. “Why the Slasher Movie Was the Quintessential ’80s Horror Subgenre.” Flavorwire, 29 Oct. 2013, www.flavorwire.com/422455/why-the-slasher-movie-was-the-quintessential-80s-horror-subgenre#:%7E:text=Slasher%20films%20reached%20an%20apex,more%2Dis%2Dbetter%20mindset.

Bell, Amanda. “The Evolution Of Slasher Films Explained.” Looper, 14 July 2021, www.looper.com/461144/the-evolution-of-slasher-films-explained.

Bowles, Stephen E. “The Exorcist and Jaws.” Literature-film Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 1976, pp. 196-214.

Clayton, Wickham. “Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film.” Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself.” Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, First Princeton Classics ed., Princeton University Press, 2015, pp. 21–64.

Ebert, Roger. “Halloween Movie Review and Film Summary (1979) | Roger Ebert.” Rogerebert.Com, 31 Oct. 1979, www.rogerebert.com/reviews/halloween-1979.

“Friday the 13th (1980) – Financial Information.” The Numbers, www.the-numbers.com/movie/Friday-the-13th-(1980)#tab=summary. Accessed 20 May 2022.

“Halloween (1978) – Financial Information.” The Numbers, www.the-numbers.com/movie/Halloween-(1978)#tab=summary. Accessed 20 May 2022.

Kerswell, J. The Slasher Movie Book. Chicago Review Press, 2012.

Krancer, Brooke. “Horror Cinema, Trauma, and the US in Crisis in the 1970s.” ArcGIS StoryMaps, 29 June 2021, storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/68defbc42de0437184087a4afd070ae3.

Mikulec, Sven. “‘Psycho’: The Proto-Slasher That Brought On a Revolution in Cinema.” Cinephilia & Beyond, 2020, cinephiliabeyond.org/psycho-proto-slasher-brought-revolution-cinema/#:%7E:text=Most%20importantly%20for%20filmmaking%20in,era%2C%20the%20extremely%20blood%20eighties.

Miller, Amanda. “Vietnam-Era Antiwar Protests – Mapping American Social Movements.” Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, depts.washington.edu/moves/antiwar_map_protests.shtml#:%7E:text=The%20Vietnam%2Dera%20antiwar%20movement,pushed%20combat%20troops%20into%20Vietnam. Accessed 20 May 2022.

Navarro, Meagan. “A Comprehensive Guide to the Golden Age of Slashers, Part 2: 1981–1984.” Bloody Disgusting!, 29 Apr. 2020, bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3614838/comprehensive-guide-golden-age-slashers-part-2-1981-1984.

Nowell, Richard. “Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle.” London, Bloomsbury, 2010.

The Hollywood Reporter Staff. “‘Friday the 13th’: THR’s 1980 Review.” Hollywood Reporter, 1 Nov. 2014, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/friday-13th-read-thrs-scathing-745573.

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Sager, Jessica. “Is ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ A True Story? Here’s Who Inspired Leatherface.” Parade: Entertainment, Recipes, Health, Life, Holidays, 18 Feb. 2022, parade.com/1335599/jessicasager/texas-chainsaw-massacre-true-story.

Underwood, Gray. “Editorial: Politics and the American Horror Film.” Daily Dead, 31 Dec. 2020, dailydead.com/editorial-politics-and-the-american-horror-film.

Zinoman, Jason. “Horror’s ‘Shock Value’ Redefined In The 1960s.” National Public Radio, 6 July 2011, choice.npr.org/index.html?origin=https://www.npr.org/2011/07/06/137470876/horrors-shock-value-redefined-in-the-1960s.