100 Best Slasher Movies Ranked

Slashers — that gloriously grubby, stabby subsection of horror — were first unsheathed in the early 1970s, when Mario Bava stalked his cavorting, frequently disrobed victims around in A Bay of Blood . You can even look to Texas Chain Saw Massacre from the same time period, or even go back and pay Alfred Hitchcock a visit as he’s filling up the bathtub in Psycho .

But the Bava Blood bash set up mood of the slasher: Sexually charged, with a degree of mystery, where the ample cast of characters one-by-one take a sharp turn into doom. Slashers can be stylish ( Opera , Dressed to Kill ), carnal ( Torso , Friday the 13th ), grimly violent ( The Prowler , The Burning ), trashy ( Pieces , The Slumber Party Massacre

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