Customer Reviews

Slasher Movies (Pocket Essential series)

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This is a very good book about a type of movie that has received very little critical attention, and most of the attention has been mere condemnation.

Whitehead guides the reader to the best and most important of the slasher films. He provides plot summary and critique as to why the film is worth watching. He uses the idea of the "Final Girl," the last person left who confronts and overcomes the killer, to combat the charge of misogyny frequently leveled against slasher films.

Whitehead also admits that a lot of slasher films are junk. Some of the films he covers, like Nightmare on Elm Street, aren't really slashers (at least in my view). But he writes in an acessible and enjoyable style that makes this a very helpful short guide to horror films of the 80s and 90s.

An amazing amount of information packed into one slim tome. Whitehead covers slasher flicks from their late '70s / early '80s heyday up through the current millenium. There's a heavy emphasis on the Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street series, but plenty of other material as well. Not only does he touch on many of the lesser-known titles in this sub-category of horror, he also throws in a few non-American titles as well.

Besides synopses and discussions of individual films, Whitehead provides as well a general analysis of the slasher genre and its primary themes. There's also a small bibliography for further reading. The author is pretty fair to this field, because let's face it--most of it ranges from unwatchably bad to blandly predictable, even for the avid horror junky. A lot of these don't even offer much for your hardcore gorehounds. But he does single out a few quality efforts, and he's never dismissive of the genre just for the sake of seeming to be culturally superior.

This is an excellent resource to refresh your memory on slasher flicks and to help you discover some stuff you've overlooked, if these are the kinds of movies you enjoy. And really, who doesn't?