You would be wrong.
In fact, by the time Carpenter's Halloween was released theatrically, a better slasher film had already been released in North America. Director Bob Clark, he of Porky's fame, in 1974 released Black Christmas to Canadian audiences. Black Christmas is a wonderful horror film, one of my favorites, and you should stick with the original, not the inane American remake (2006). Black Christmas is about an escaped lunatic who hides in a sorority house. Through a series of phone calls made to the girls in the house, we slowly understand the killer's enigmatic story. What I love is that there are no flashbacks, nor is anything explained. This killer just is. Black Christmas also features some funny bits and a wonderful performance by Margot Kidder as a mouthy sorority sister. John Saxon is strong as a frustrated police Lieutenant dealing with a doofus of a uniformed officer. This doofus of an officer may very well be related to the posters on the IMDB message board for Black Christmas, continuously saying they don't understand the film. I imagine these doofuses wouldn't deal particularly well with an Atom Egoyan film. In this blogger's modest opinion, Carpenter's Halloween gets way too much credit for its poignancy in the slasher genre, Clark's Black Christmas not nearly enough.
If you move further back in American horror film history, you encounter Hitchcock's brilliant Psycho (1960), based on the Robert Bloch novel of the same name. Norman Bates, the antagonist in both the print and film version of Psycho is based loosely--and I mean oh so loosely--on infamous Wisconsin serial killer, Ed Gein. If you want to read more about the ghoulish Ed Gein, check out his story on crimelibrary.com. In truth, Norman Bates is about as close to Gein as President Obama is to Ronald Reagan. About the only similarity is that both were serial killers with mother attachments. Bates, if he were truly a chip off the old block, would have had a house full of bones and body parts. That notwithstanding, Psycho is a masterpiece, and certainly influential in the genre. You can see Hitchcock's style and deft camera work bleeding into the material of Italian horror maestro, Dario Argento.
It was the Italians, after all, who carved the deepest incisions in the slasher genre.
The Giallo
The term has become synonymous with slasher films originating in Italy. The word literally means yellow, and it signifies the source of the giallo film--the pulp comics printed in the 1920's and 30's literally on yellow paper. It took some decades before the giallo came to the screen.
Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) is regarded as the first true giallo film. In 1964, Bava directed Blood and Black Lace, about a killing preying on lovely, young models (shame, shame). Many of Bava's films, in fact, featured beautiful women and lush colors. Bava's violent film, Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971), aka Bay of Blood, has a direct influence on many modern American slasher films, most notably Friday the 13th. If you've seen both films but don't recognize the similarities, you're flat out in denial.
Here are some other notable films by Mario Bava. I don't detail them here because they're not slasher films, but I have to mention them because they are absolutely brilliant.
- Black Sunday (1960) - great dual performance by sexy horror scream queen, Barbara Steele
- Black Sabbath (1963) - great anthology, and the first story, about the revenge taken on a thieving nurse by a dead woman, is alone worth the price of admission. Also starring Boris Karloff, he of Frankenstein's Monster fame
By the 1970's, Dario Argento, Mario Bava's understudy, came to the forefront of the giallo. While the 1970's was a dry period for Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and other horror legends, it was a golden period of the giallo. If you consider yourself a fan of the horror film, but aren't familiar with these Italian films of the 1970's, I regret to inform you, darling, but you have some catching up to do.
There is just something different about the films of Dario Argento. Few of his films, if any, follow a linear, logical storyline. Experiencing his films is like a wakeful nightmare, the characters odd, the violence visceral and unflinching. In 1970, Argento directed his first film, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. This is a nice, traditional giallo, and still holds up well today. The hard-working Argento released two more features in 1971, with The Cat o' Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet. Neither film is a masterpiece, both both show glimpses of Argento's potential as a filmmaker. In 1975, he directed Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso), considered by many of his fans to be his greatest achievement as a director. I'm undecided whether Deep Red is my favorite, but it's a brilliant horror film with some creative death scenes and a twisting, turning plot.
Starting with Deep Red, Argento would direct four consecutive films often considered to be the highest achievements on his resume. In 1977, Suspiria, Argento's most famous film, was released. Suspiria is not a giallo in the truest sense, but it has enough giallo elements to make it worth mentioning. Suspiria, the story of an American who attends a Swiss dance academy run by witches, is an intriguing, surreal film with one of the best opening murder scenes in cinematic history. Suspiria was the first of Argento's Three Mother's Trilogy, a trilogy which wouldn't see completion until 2007. In 1980, three years after Suspiria, Inferno was released. Inferno is the second film in the Three Mother's Trilogy, and is about a force of evil spanning from Rome to New York. Inferno is even less of a giallo than Suspiria, but it's a brilliant supernatural film, and perhaps my favorite Dario Argento film. Inferno is truly a nightmare caught on film.
In 1980, Argento returned to his giallo roots with Tenebrae. This is easily one of the best Argento films, features insane camera angles, a pulsating soundtrack and stunning violence. The final murder scene is certainly one of the most violent ever put on film and must have enraged critics in 1980. Tenebrae was released in the U.S. in butchered format under the title of Unsane, but it's since been restored to uncut glory under its original name.
It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that Argento's career started to bottom out at that point, but I think Phenomena (1985) and Opera (1987) are both fine horror films. I also adore The Mother of Tears (2007), the last Three Mother's film, despite some criticism by both fans and critics.
Lucio Fulci, the grand poobah of gore, has made films in a variety of genres, most notably horror. A more experimental filmmaker has probably not existed. Fulci has made spaghetti westerns, zombie flicks (including his wonderful Zombie, aka Zombi 2, aka Zombie Flesheaters), and he also made some fine giallos. His most notable film in the subgenre, at least in my opinion, is Una lucertola con la pelle di donna, aka Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1972). This is a fast-moving film with a twisting, turning plot, and although not as gory as some his other work, as satisfying a film as Fulci has ever made. The following year, Fulci, getting into the act like Dario Argento, directed Don't Torture a Duckling, another fine effort. From there, Fulci really ventured into the supernatural. Ten years after Duckling, he would return to the giallo with New York Ripper, and extremely gory and sadistic film.
Fulci has made too many noteworthy films to mention here, and they really run the gamut from pure slasher films to zombie and supernatural films--and even a few spaghetti westerns. Fulci's material was typically extreme, both in terms of violence and sex, and the faint of heart would probably not "get him."
The Others
Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino, Ruggero Deodato, Lamberto Bava (Mario's son), Pupi Avati and other Italian directors got into the giallo business. Pupi Avati's House With Laughing Windows (1976) is one of my all-time favorite giallos, about an artist, hired to restore some ancient paintings and stumbling into a towns ancient secrets.
The Americans Rush to the Show
They did ... eventually. But, you see, there were already dozens and dozens and dozens of slasher films already made when Carpeter was credited with pioneering the genre with Halloween (1978). Carpenter, to be honest, didn't pioneer much of anything at all; he took the ideas of Hitchcock and the Italian directors and, to his credit, introduced this style of filmmaking to American audiences. Halloween was a really good film, but unfortunately, it probably did more harm to the genre than good; in the years that followed, filmmakers would ignore Halloween's clever techniques, including its filming and its soundtrack. What lesser directors took away from Halloween, unfortunately, was its killer, a fellow who didn't want to die. And nor did Jason of Friday the 13th fame want to die, and nor would Freddie Krueger want to die. This style of film--the American slasher--would become a staple in the genre. Sex-crazed teenagers were murdered one of a time in creative ways--and sometimes not-so-creative ways.
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