Friday the 13th - the birth of the slasher movie as we know it?

C

Christopher M.

New member
I'm currently engrossed in a book about the making of the Friday the 13th films. In this book it says that Friday the
13th created the slasher movie as we know it today.

I always considered this to be Halloween. After all, it came first and its a far superior film.

But then, Halloween was a real piece of cinema. A work of art in a sense, while Friday the 13th was made for cheap thrills and entertainment: is this not the slasher film as we know it?

And if you want to go for the whole Halloween came first argument so it makes it the birth of the slasher film as we know it but then you'd have to take in the fact that Halloween as in fact inspired by Black Christmas - but how often do you hear people calling this the daddy of the slasher film? Excactly!
 
Yes but I meant a slasher horror film. That isn't the same. Its a suspenseful thriller.

Where as Friday the 13th gave birth to the slasher film as we know it, with the film being made for extremely cheap, being extremely gory and having a shit plot and a bunch of teenage characters having sex and getting killed for it.

Psycho inspired but it didn't create.
 
Yea. Sort of. But it didn't really contain the same elements that the slasher film as we know it today does. Thats quite a well made piece of cinema, while when I think of slasher films, I think of the formula I described above. ^
 
Black Christmas and Texas Chainsaw was the first two who I believe were relased within two years of each other.

Halloween and Friday the 13th were a lot later on, and Psycho doesn't really have enough deaths in it for me to class it as an actual slasher film.
 
Psycho had 2 deaths
TCM had 3, I think - is that right?

Contenders you could look at are:

M - 1931
Last House on the Left - 1972
Black Christmas - 1974
Texas Chain Saw Massacre - 1974
Frightmare - 1974
The Hills Have Eyes - 1977
Fun House 1977
Halloween - 1978
Friday 13th - 1980

There's another one I thought of, but I've forgotten what it was...
 
I've never seen Fun House but the others you listed are quite similar in some ways because they all involve teens or a group of young frienRAB with The Hills Have Eyes being an exception :)
 
I'm sort of with 'Thin Boy' here with 'Psycho'. Though I do understand the OP's question, and it's a good one.

'Black Christmas' is one of the creepiest films going IMO but never got the recognition it deserved. So then like the OP I would say 'Halloween' - classic as it always will be, but then, along came 'Jason' (sorry Mrs. Voorhees).

'Norman bates' did seem to create the profile of a psychopathic killer quite well and you could stretch his character to all lengths.
 
And don't forget Mario Bava's Bay of Blood/Twitch of the Death Nerve/Reazione a catena which certainly influenced Friday 13th and other slasher films with some of the death scenes being virtually copied.
 
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