The Slasher Movie Book chronicles the glory days of the horror subgenre that brought murder, mayhem and corn-syrup blood to the big screen. In The Slasher Movie Book (Chicago Review Press, June 2012), author J.A. Kerswell gives an affectionate yet critical overview of the stalk ‘n’ slash film genre—from its roots in Hitchcock movies, grindhouse and violent French theatre to the Golden Age of the Slasher (1978-1984) launched by John Carpenter’s Halloween.
Sidney Prescott, the Final Girl in Scream, may have put it best when she described slasher movies as “some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act, who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door.” Yet it’s just that mix of cheesiness and cheap thrill—the unstoppable maniac, the cat-and-mouse action, the undeniable sense of schadenfreude—that makes the slasher one of the most timeless and successful of horror’s subgenres. Packed with information about the best – and worst – of the genre that brought a new high in violence and suspense to mainstream cinema, The Slasher Movie Book provides an unmatched exploration of the early foreign influences of the slasher, to its 21st century descendants and everything in between. This guide to grisly includes not only slasher classics like cult hits Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, but several more obscure flicks such as Savage Water and Bloodbeat.
Combining Kerswell’s critical essays with distinctive and often graphic retro poster art, The Slasher Movie Book is a fun and fascinating overview of a film genre that, like its villains, just won’t die.
About the Author:
J. A. Kerswell is perhaps the only vegan gorehound in existence. He fell in love with the slasher movie after watching Halloween II (1981) at an impressionable age way back in 1982. It’s a love he’s been unable to shake, through the best and the very, very worst the subgenre has to offer. Founder of the slasher movie website Hysteria Lives! www.hysteria-lives.co.uk which has been reporting on “slasher trash with panache” for over a decade, he knows more about the subgenre than anyone should.
