Slasher films


Hack/Slash

Hack/Slash is not the same idea as the story I’m currently considering, but it comes from a similar place. I knew somebody had to have done something like this.

Hack/Slash is an ongoing comic books series, launched from several one shots of the same name, published by Devil’s Due Publishing that has also been adapted into a stage play and a feature film.

The series, starting as a series of one-shots, was created by writer and sometime penciller Tim Seeley.

The focus of the series is on a horror victim, Cassie, who strikes back at the monsters, known as “slashers”, with Vlad, a disfigured “gentle giant” who frequently wears a gas mask.

Buy Hack/Slash collections at Amazon


Cropsey

As research for a story idea (which, if written, I’ll probably be releasing under a pseudonym, though it may be as transparent as Gareth Pattinson) I’ve seen the legend of the Cropsey (or Kropsy) Maniac cited as inspiration for more than one story. Amongst these films, and one which I watched last night, is The Burning a by-the-numbers but entertaining summer camp slasher which actually calls its killer Cropsy.

The film Cropsey is a documentary about the legend and how it collided with reality in a bunch of child disappearances on Staten Island. The film’s website has more information. I can’t find any other mentions of the legend online except in relation to the film- here’s the Wikipedia article about it– which seems a little odd.


Final Girl

The final girl is a horror film (particularly slasher film) trope that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including Halloween[1], Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hellraiser, Alien, and Scream. The term was coined [2] by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.[3] Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.