When there is a discussion of what the first-ever slasher was, a lot of titles come up.
John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978 certainly changed everything and set off the subgenre, with Friday the 13th and its sequels leading the way through the 1980s.
Still, Halloween wasn’t the first slasher.
There had been others before it, like Bob Clark’s Black Christmas in 1974.
Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre came out the same year, though there’s a debate among some on if it’s a true slasher.
That debate comes up with many films.
Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood came out in 1971, but is it more of a Giallo with slasher tendencies? Then there was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho back in 1960, which many look at as the first slasher, but was it more of a psychological thriller with slasher-like elements.
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