Michael Myers. Leatherface. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Candyman. Chucky. Ghostface. Their names are iconic. These denizens of darkness have scared audiences for decades. They are the pillars of an entire subgenre of horror: the slasher movie. While there had been horror icons before them, most famously the Universal Monsters, following the massive sociopolitical upheaval of the 1960s and 70s, audiences were in need of new boogeymen to scare them. Gothic castle and the slow creek of a door handle moving were not enough for an audience who could see the horror of war broadcast into their homes every night.

These slasher movie icons came at just the right moment to scare a new generation, and have been passed down to subsequent generations to scare them either through rewatches of the originals, remakes, or sequels. The legacy of these slasher villains still endures like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman before them. These nightmarish killers were not the terrors of the old world, but of the new.

They were the monsters needed for the modern age, and while they are simple Halloween staples, they also represent a uniquely American type of folklore. Europe in the late 1800s had penny dreadfuls filled with the stories of Sweeney Todd and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and American Audiences in the 1980s had Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger to fear. This is how the slasher is the horror folklore of America.

The Slasher is America's Monster

Michael Myers in original Halloween
Compass International Pictures

America is a relatively new country compared to most nations, and much of the country's culture is a melting pot of ideas with immigrants from all over the world bringing their different cultures and heritages to give America a unique identity all its own. This means that many of the early movie monsters, such as Dracula and Frankenstein, were sourced from other countries. While the Mummy hails from Ancient Egypt and the Creature from the Black Lagoon stalks the Amazon, the slasher villains are mostly monsters unique to America and ones that spoke to the fears of the country, terrors that could be found in one's own backyard. This is obvious with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a movie with an American state in its name.

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When Halloween premiered in 1978, the most revolutionary idea was that it brought scares to the suburbs. Michael Myers did not haunt an old castle in the countryside but instead could be around any corner in a neighborhood many Americans knew all too well. The suburbs in American media are typically imagined as safe from the dangers of city life, but Michael Myers usurped that idea and implanted the notion that nowhere was truly free from violence. Later slashers played off that convention, perverting the safety of concepts like summer camp, one's own toys, or even our dreams. Nowhere is safe.

Slashers Put the Fear Back tn Monsters

Leatherface in Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Bryanston Distributing Company

While the classic Universal Monsters scared audiences in the 1930s and 40s, over time it was the monsters that audiences identified with as opposed to the average citizens. The Universal Monsters were the outsiders, they were different and there was a hint of tragedy to them that allowed audiences to emphasize and identify with turning them into more tragic figures.

The slashers, on the other hand, were monsters through and through. Even as their sequels made the slasher the star of the films, audiences were clearly aware these characters were the bad guys. There was no sympathy or humanity, only terror for them. Many of the monsters are creatures meant to represent pure evil, a bloodlust that can never be satisfied. These monsters might be vanquished at the end of their films, but they always come back because fear of evil never truly dies.

The Slasher Laid Out Morality Like Old Folklore

Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th mask
Paramount Pictures

Many classic folk tales and monster stories are designed to scare children in an attempt to impart morals on them, to behave in fear of being attacked by nightmarish creatures who hide in the shadows. They were reminders to fear the dark. Characters like Pinhead and Freddy Krueger may be meant to draw from the ideas of classic boogeymen from the past, ancient spirits come to wreak havoc, even if there seems to be an inherent lack of allegory to them and other American slasher villains. Many believe that there's a hollowness and a nihilism to the violence in slasher movies, and the idea that they don't intrinsically mean anything seems indicative of post-1970s America. There is, however, a conservative ideology to be interpolated from them.

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Slasher movies were defined by excessive gore, sex, and nudity. While these were clearly marketing material to draw young audiences in, oftentimes the filmmakers behind the camera were older from a generation prior. These were characters born out of fear and paranoia from a generation seeing a booming youth culture come into its own, grappling with the sexual revolution and civil rights that led to a transitionary period between the old and new.

These new slasher monsters were extensions of a moral panic, meant to deal out punishment for the transgressions that youths commit, hence why their victims are almost always teenagers (and why the virgin often survives). Their moral judgment is even laid out in the rules of the Scream franchise, of how to survive a horror movie.

What Makes a Slasher Movie

Ghostface in Scream
Miramax

The original movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man are all cinematic icons, but they are adaptations of popular literature. They have been reworked and reinterpreted in so many ways, but they will always be literary characters first and foremost. Even characters like The Wolfman and The Mummy who are not drawn from one single literary source are still inspired by ancient folklore.

The iconic movie slashers though are all original to the film as a medium itself. They are not based on any pre-existing source material or even established folklore, but rather creations of Hollywood productions. While movies are made all over the world, Hollywood and therefore American cinema is often the first image that comes to mind for many. American films are one of the few great imports to the rest of the world, which allow franchises like Child's Play and Hellraiser to transcend abroad the same way great horror novels did.

This relationship between slashers and cinema is most obvious in the Scream movies, which grapple with horror and particularly the slasher genre. These are meta movies all about horror films' legacies, and the impact they have on the audience that views them as guides, warnings, and morality tales. Scream breathed new life into the slasher genre in the 1990s and the release of the latest entry shows these characters still have the ability to haunt us. These slashers were creations of the culture and now are so embedded into it that no matter how long they are gone from cinema screens they will still endure in the collective nightmares for years to come.