96 Fun Facts About Slasher Movies

Bob Clark, director of the 1974 sorority-house slasher, made which 1983 family comedy?

A Christmas Story (1983), the Ralphie-and-the-BB-gun comedy, was directed by Bob Clark, who had made the sorority slasher Black Christmas in 1974 and the raunchy hit Porky's in between.

Who wrote, directed and composed the score for Halloween (1978), the film that kicked off the slasher's golden age?

John Carpenter co-wrote the script with producer Debra Hill, directed, and composed the 5/4 piano theme himself; he cited the mask in Eyes Without a Face and Westworld's relentless android as influences.

What do critics call the lone woman left standing to face the killer, a term coined by scholar Carol J. Clover?

Final girl, usually the most chaste and watchful of the group, while her friends are picked off for their sins. Clover's 1992 book Men, Women, and Chain Saws made the term standard.

Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) takes place at which summer camp, where a boy drowned in 1957?

Camp Crystal Lake, which the locals call 'Camp Blood'; the backstory has young Jason drowning there in 1957, and the film was shot at a real working summer camp in Blairstown, New Jersey.

Which future star made his film debut in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), as a teenager sucked into his own bed?

Johnny Depp, whose death scene ends in a geyser of blood from the mattress, shot on a rotating set. He was cast after tagging along to the audition with a friend.

Which director created Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and then skewered the whole genre with Scream (1996)?

Wes Craven, a former humanities professor who had made The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes before Freddy. He cameos in Scream as a school janitor dressed exactly like Freddy.

Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) was partly inspired by which real murderer?

Ed Gein, the Wisconsin killer arrested in 1957 whose farmhouse held masks and furniture made of human skin; Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel borrowed the skin-wearing idea, while the plot itself is invented.

Sidney Prescott and her friends are stalked by a costumed killer in which fictional California town?

Woodsboro, a fictional Northern California town; Scream (1996) opens there with Drew Barrymore's Casey Becker killed a year after the murder of Sidney's mother, Maureen Prescott.

Alfred Hitchcock shot Psycho (1960) in black and white partly so which sequence would not look too gory?

The shower murder of Marion Crane: Hitchcock felt its blood (chocolate syrup on screen) would be too gruesome in colour, and monochrome helped keep the budget near $800,000 after Paramount refused to finance the film.

Bernard Herrmann's shrieking score for Psycho (1960) was written for what kind of ensemble?

Herrmann turned the reduced music budget into a stylistic choice, and the all-string sound became one of the most imitated in horror.

In the British proto-slasher Peeping Tom (1960), killer Mark Lewis hides a blade in what?

A leg of his camera tripod conceals the spike; Mark Lewis films each victim as she dies, and a mirror on the rig makes her watch her own death, an early meditation on the audience's voyeurism.

Peeping Tom (1960) was so savaged by critics that it nearly ended the British career of which director?

Powell had made The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death; the film was later rehabilitated, with Martin Scorsese among its champions.

In the original Friday the 13th (1980), who turns out to be the killer?

Pamela Voorhees, the camp cook, is avenging her son Jason's drowning at the camp in 1957; Jason himself does not pick up a weapon until Part 2.

In which Friday the 13th film does Jason first put on his hockey mask?

Part III (1982): Jason wore a burlap sack over his head in Part 2, then takes the goalie mask from prankster Shelly in the third film, and it became the franchise's logo.

Jason X (2001) wakes Jason Voorhees from cryogenic freezing aboard what?

A spaceship, the Grendel, in the year 2455: students on a field trip to an abandoned Earth find Jason frozen, and a nanite rebuild later turns him into the cyborg fans call Uber Jason.

Sleepaway Camp (1983) is notorious for its final-shot twist revealing what about camper Angela?

She is really her brother Peter: the real Angela died in the boating accident that opens the film, and the surviving boy was raised as a girl by his Aunt Martha, revealed in the final freeze-frame.

The killer in My Bloody Valentine (1981) stalks the mining town of Valentine Bluffs dressed as what?

A miner in a gas mask and helmet, the guise of legendary killer Harry Warden; director George Mihalka said the MPAA 'cut to ribbons' the Canadian film's gore, and a 2009 special edition restored the cut footage.

Chucky's name Charles Lee Ray draws on Manson, James Earl Ray and which third killer?

Lee Harvey Oswald supplies Charles Lee Ray's middle name; creator Don Mancini combined three killers' names, and his original script was a darker satire of the 1980s talking-doll toy craze.

Who has voiced Chucky since the original Child's Play (1988)?

Dourif also plays the human Charles Lee Ray on screen; Mark Hamill voiced the doll only in the 2019 remake.

Which minimalist composer wrote the score for Candyman (1992)?

Philip Glass wrote the organ-and-choir score; he was unhappy that the finished film was more commercial than he expected, but later called the soundtrack a classic that kept paying him royalties.

Candyman (1992) is set largely in which Chicago public housing project?

Clive Barker's source story "The Forbidden" was set on a Liverpool council estate; the film moved it to Chicago and made the ghost the son of a slave.

Who has voiced Ghostface on the phone in every Scream film?

Jackson was kept off set so the actors never saw him, and he really phoned them during their scenes to get genuine reactions.

The Ghostface mask began as a Halloween novelty mask sold by which company?

Fun World sold it as 'The Peanut-Eyed Ghost' in its Fantastic Faces novelty line; producer Marianne Maddalena found one in a house while location scouting, and the studio licensed the design from the company.

What colours are the stripes on Freddy Krueger's sweater?

The director reportedly picked the pair after reading that red and green are the hardest colours for the human eye to see side by side.

Michael Myers' mask in Halloween (1978) was a two-dollar Captain Kirk mask, painted white, cast from which actor's face?

William Shatner, who said he was flattered once he found out, and has reportedly gone trick-or-treating in the mask himself. The crew widened the eye holes and teased out the hair.

Which Eastbound & Down actor co-wrote the 2018 Michael Myers sequel directed by David Gordon Green?

Danny McBride co-wrote Halloween (2018) with David Gordon Green and Jeff Fradley; the film ignores every sequel after 1978 and, on release, became the highest-grossing slasher ever in unadjusted dollars.

Art the Clown of the Terrifier films has been played since the 2016 feature by which actor?

David Howard Thornton took over the silent role for Terrifier (2016) after Mike Giannelli, who played Art in the early shorts and All Hallows' Eve (2013), left acting; creator Damien Leone directs the films.

In the 2017 time-loop slasher starring Jessica Rothe, Tree Gelbman keeps being murdered on which day?

Her birthday, the joke in the title Happy Death Day: Tree relives the same Monday at fictional Bayfield University, dying each night at the hands of a killer in the Bayfield Babies' baby-faced mascot mask.

The home invaders in You're Next (2011) wear masks of which three animals?

Lamb, fox and tiger masks hide the three hired attackers in Adam Wingard's film, which premiered at Toronto in 2011 but did not reach cinemas until 2013 after distribution delays.

The Cabin in the Woods, shot in 2009, was delayed until 2012 by trouble at which studio?

MGM's 2010 bankruptcy shelved the finished film; Lionsgate bought it and released it in April 2012, by which time co-star Chris Hemsworth had already become Thor.

In The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), the escaped killer wields what?

A power drill, wielded by escaped killer Russ Thorn; the screenplay was written as a parody of slasher conventions, but director Amy Holden Jones shot it straight, which is why the film is funnier than most of the genre.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) was written by which feminist novelist?

Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle, intended a satire; producers filmed it as a straight horror movie against her wishes.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) had its ads pulled because its killer dressed as whom?

Santa Claus: TV spots of an axe-wielding Santa drew parents' protests, TriStar pulled the ads and then the film itself within weeks of its November 1984 release, and Siskel and Ebert condemned it on air.

The score of The Burning (1981) was composed by the keyboardist of which progressive rock band?

Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman wrote the synth score; the summer-camp film about burned caretaker Cropsy was an early Miramax production, with Harvey Weinstein among its writers and producers.

Who directed the 2003 crossover Freddy vs. Jason?

Yu wanted a taller Jason to loom over Robert Englund, so the part went to stuntman Ken Kirzinger; it was Englund's last outing as Freddy.

Two kills in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) copy scenes from which 1971 Mario Bava film?

A Bay of Blood (also released as Twitch of the Death Nerve) supplied the machete to the face and the couple speared together mid-embrace; Bava's film is often called the blueprint for the body-count movie.

Netflix's Fear Street trilogy (2021) jumps from Shadyside in 1994 to 1978 and then to which year, for a witch-hunt origin story?

1666, with the number of the beast in it, rather than 1692, the Salem year most people would guess. The three films, based on R. L. Stine's books, were released a week apart in July 2021.

Which four-time Jason actor plays Victor Crowley in Hatchet (2006)?

Kane Hodder, Jason in Parts VII through X, plays the deformed swamp killer Victor Crowley; Hatchet turns a New Orleans swamp tour into a bloodbath, and writer-director Adam Green pitched it as old-school American horror.

Which 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis drive-in hit is often called the first splatter film?

Blood Feast, shot in Miami for under $25,000, has a caterer butchering women for an Egyptian feast; Lewis followed it with a run of gore titles through 1972's The Gore Gore Girls.

Post-war Germany's 'Krimi' films, a slasher influence, adapted the crime novels of which British writer?

Edgar Wallace: Rialto Film's series of 32 Wallace adaptations, starting with Der Frosch mit der Maske in 1959, mixed costumed villains, jazz scores and a young Klaus Kinski, and its masked killers fed into giallo and the slasher.

Italy's stylish murder-mystery thrillers that heavily influenced slashers are known by what name?

Giallo, Italian for 'yellow', after the yellow covers of Mondadori's pulp crime paperbacks; Mario Bava and Dario Argento put black-gloved killers and stylish set-piece murders on screen a decade before Halloween.

Black Christmas (1974) used which gimmick that foreshadowed later slashers?

The killer calling from inside the house: the obscene calls are traced to the sorority house's own line, a twist later borrowed by When a Stranger Calls (1979); the film made about $4 million on a $620,000 budget.

Who wrote the screenplay for Scream (1996)?

Kevin Williamson, a self-confessed slasher fan, wrote characters who knew every cliché; his spec script sold to Miramax's Dimension Films in 1995, and the film grossed more than $100 million domestically.

Gene Siskel spoiled the killer's identity in his review of which 1980 film, hoping to hurt its box office?

Friday the 13th: Siskel named the killer in the Chicago Tribune and urged readers to complain to Charles Bluhdorn, chairman of Paramount's parent Gulf+Western; the film went on to gross nearly $40 million in North America.

Which 1980 William Lustig film did Vincent Canby liken to 'watching someone else throw up'?

Maniac, co-written by and starring Joe Spinell as scalp-collecting killer Frank Zito, with gore effects by Tom Savini; Lustig released it unrated to sidestep the MPAA.

Prom Night, Terror Train and The Fog, all released in 1980, earned Jamie Lee Curtis what two-word title?

Scream queen, a title she then walked away from with comedies such as Trading Places (1983) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988); Prom Night alone grossed nearly $15 million in North America.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977) modernised the legend of which cannibal clan leader?

Sawney Bean, the legendary Scottish clan head said to have eaten travellers near Galloway; Craven transplanted the story to a Nevada desert family, and the film's success revived a career damaged by The Last House on the Left's controversy.

Haddonfield's street names were borrowed from the 1978 director's hometown in which state?

Haddonfield itself came from co-writer Debra Hill's New Jersey hometown, while the streets were lifted from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Who played Dr. Sam Loomis, Michael Myers' pursuing psychiatrist, in the 1978 original?

Donald Pleasence took the part after Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee turned it down; Lee later called refusing it the biggest mistake of his career, and Pleasence played Loomis in four more sequels.

Who played the masked Michael Myers, billed as 'The Shape', in the 1978 original?

Castle earned $25 a day and went on to direct The Last Starfighter; Tony Moran played the briefly unmasked Michael at the film's end.

Which 1982 sequel drops Michael Myers entirely for a plot about Silver Shamrock masks?

Halloween III: Season of the Witch: the Silver Shamrock masks hide microchips containing fragments of Stonehenge, primed to kill children during a TV commercial; Michael was brought back for the fourth film after it flopped.

Which future Pearl Harbor star made his film debut in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)?

Josh Hartnett, in his first film, plays Laurie Strode's son John at the Northern California boarding school where she hides as headmistress Keri Tate; LL Cool J and Michelle Williams also appear.

Halloween II (1981) introduced what twist about Laurie Strode's connection to Michael Myers?

She is his younger sister, adopted by the Strodes as a small child; the twist drove the series for decades until the 2018 sequel dismissed it as something people made up, and Carpenter later called the idea silly.

Which future star played Jack, killed by an arrow through the throat, in the 1980 Crystal Lake film?

The effect used a prosthetic neck with Bacon's real head pushed up through the mattress from below; the blood pump failed mid-take and a crew member blew into the tube.

Who played Mrs. Voorhees in 1980, reportedly taking the part only to pay for a new car?

Betsy Palmer, a 1950s TV panelist, thought the script was awful but needed $10,000 for a new Volkswagen; she reappears briefly in Part 2, whose killer keeps her character's severed head in a shrine.

The 1980 Crystal Lake original was shot at a working summer camp run by which organisation?

The Boy Scouts: Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Hardwick, New Jersey, a Boy Scouts of America camp, carried on as a working scout camp after filming and has hosted ticketed fan tours.

In The New Blood (1988), Jason is freed from Crystal Lake by Tina, a teen with what power?

She wishes her drowned father back and raises Jason instead. The film was the first of four with Kane Hodder under the hockey mask.

Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) was filmed mainly in which city?

Vancouver stood in for the cruise ship and most of the city; little of the $5 million production reached Times Square, and a poster of Jason slashing the I Love New York logo was pulled after the tourism board complained.

Articles in which newspaper about refugees dying in their sleep inspired the 1984 Elm Street film?

The Los Angeles Times ran stories about Hmong men who fled Southeast Asia, refused to sleep after nightmares and then died; Craven said Gary Wright's song Dream Weaver also shaped the idea.

A Nightmare on Elm Street's success earned New Line Cinema what nickname?

The House that Freddy Built: New Line had mostly distributed films until A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), whose financing collapsed mid-shoot and left the cast and crew unpaid for two weeks before it became a hit.

Which heavy metal band recorded the theme song for Dream Warriors (1987)?

Dokken's 'Dream Warriors' plays over the closing credits; in its video Freddy torments Patricia Arquette's Kristen until the band's playing drives him off, and he wakes muttering 'What a nightmare'.

How many times must you say 'Candyman' into a mirror to summon him in Candyman (1992)?

Five: saying 'Candyman' five times into a mirror summons him; graduate student Helen Lyle does it half as a joke while researching urban legends at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Who replaced Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger in the 2010 remake?

Jackie Earle Haley, fresh from an Oscar nomination for Little Children, took the role; the remake made Freddy a preschool groundskeeper accused of abuse, the darker backstory Craven had dropped in 1984, and Englund publicly backed the casting.

Under what working title was the 1996 Ghostface screenplay written and sold to Dimension Films?

Scary Movie: written in three days, it sparked a bidding war won by Miramax's Dimension; the Weinsteins renamed it Scream after the Michael and Janet Jackson song, and the old title went to the Wayans brothers' 2000 parody.

A TV documentary on which serial killer pushed the writer to draft the 1996 Ghostface film?

Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper, murdered five students in Florida in 1990. The writer found an open window that night, armed himself with a knife and called a friend.

Scream 2 (1997) moves Sidney to which fictional Ohio campus?

Atlanta's Agnes Scott College and UCLA stood in for the campus. The opening murder happens at a preview of Stab, a film about the Woodsboro killings.

Scream (2022) was the first in the series directed by which filmmaking collective?

Radio Silence, the trio of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett and producer Chad Villella, came to Scream after Ready or Not (2019); the film ends with a dedication to Wes Craven, who died in 2015.

A pay dispute kept which star out of Scream VI (2023), her only absence from the series?

Neve Campbell turned down an offer she said did not reflect her value to the franchise; Sidney Prescott is said to be safely away from the New York killings, and the film was shot in Montreal.

Who narrated the 1974 Chain Saw film's opening crawl, reportedly being paid in marijuana?

John Larroquette, later of Night Court, read the crawl for his friend Tobe Hooper and said his only payment was a bit of marijuana; he returned to narrate the 2003 remake and 2022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Which Icelandic-American actor played Leatherface in the 1974 original?

Gunnar Hansen, born in Reykjavik and raised in Maine and Texas, wore the same unwashed costume for a month in 100-degree heat, and once cut Marilyn Burns's finger for real when the stage-blood tube failed.

Which Easy Rider actor tops the cast of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)?

Dennis Hopper plays Lieutenant 'Lefty' Enright, a vengeful Texas lawman who arms himself with chainsaws; the sequel turned the family into black comedy and gave them the surname Sawyer.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995) stars which two future A-listers?

Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey were near-unknowns when it premiered at South by Southwest in 1995; Columbia TriStar shelved it, then gave it a small release in 1997 after Jerry Maguire and A Time to Kill made them stars.

The 2022 Leatherface legacy sequel, set fifty years after the original, debuted on which service?

Netflix, which picked it up from Legendary and streamed it in February 2022; shot in Bulgaria, it brings back survivor Sally Hardesty, now a Texas Ranger, to face Leatherface in the ghost town of Harlow.

How much cash does Marion Crane embezzle from her Phoenix employer in Psycho (1960)?

Her name was changed from the novel's Mary because a real Mary Crane lived in Phoenix. Anthony Perkins' fee for the film was also $40,000.

Psycho (1960) was the first US film sold to audiences under what theatre policy?

No late admission: Hitchcock's 'no one will be admitted after the start' rule was meant to stop latecomers feeling cheated at never seeing Janet Leigh; theatre owners resisted until the first day's queues changed their minds.

Who played Norman Bates in Gus Van Sant's near shot-for-shot 1998 remake?

Vince Vaughn played Norman opposite Anne Heche's Marion Crane; Van Sant shot in colour but copied Hitchcock's camera moves, reused Joseph Stefano's script and had Danny Elfman rearrange Bernard Herrmann's score in stereo.

Bates Motel (2013–17) starred Vera Farmiga and which actor as young Norman?

Freddie Highmore, the boy from Finding Neverland grown up, played Norman for five seasons; the A&E prequel relocated the motel from Fairvale, California to White Pine Bay, Oregon.

Chucky was nearly called 'Buddy' until the name risked a lawsuit from which toymaker?

Hasbro's My Buddy doll, launched in 1985, was the obvious target: director Tom Holland said it shaped Chucky's look, and writer Don Mancini was also thinking of the 1983 Cabbage Patch Kids riots.

Which actress has played Chucky's bride Tiffany since Bride of Chucky (1998)?

Jennifer Tilly, whom creator Don Mancini wanted after seeing Bound and Bullets Over Broadway, voices the doll and plays the human Tiffany; she also plays a version of herself in Seed of Chucky and the TV series.

Who voices the high-tech Buddi doll Chucky in the 2019 Child's Play remake?

Mark Hamill, the voice of the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, voiced the doll; the remake ditches voodoo for a sabotaged AI doll from the Kaslan Corporation, and Aubrey Plaza plays Andy's mother Karen.

The Chucky TV series (2021–24) is set in which New Jersey city?

Hackensack: Bride of Chucky had already sent the dolls there to dig up Charles Lee Ray's buried body, and in the series teenager Jake Wheeler buys the doll at a yard sale for an art project.

Clive Barker's story The Forbidden, the basis for Candyman (1992), was set in which British city?

Liverpool: Barker's tale, set on a run-down council estate in his home city, was about class in British housing; director Bernard Rose moved it to a Chicago project to tackle race in America.

Who played the hook-handed Candyman in 1992 and reprised the role in the 2021 sequel?

Todd took real bee stings for the role and invented the character's backstory as the painter Daniel Robitaille. The 2021 film was his last turn as the original Candyman.

Black Christmas (1974) was briefly released in the US under what alternative title?

Silent Night, Evil Night: Warner Bros. used it for the 1974 US release, retracted it within months and reissued the film under its original name; Roy Moore's script had been called Stop Me.

Which Romeo and Juliet (1968) star leads Black Christmas (1974)?

Olivia Hussey, Zeffirelli's Juliet, plays Jess Bradford, the sorority sister who takes the killer's calls; she has said she signed on after a psychic told her she would make a lucrative film in Canada.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) adapts a 1973 young-adult novel by which author?

Duncan's book has no hook-wielding fisherman; the screenplay reworked it into a straight 1980s-style slasher after the satire of the previous year's hit.

Urban Legend (1998) stages its folklore-themed murders at which fictional New England school?

Pendleton University, a fictional New England campus; the parka-clad killer microwaves a dog, hides in a back seat and hangs a victim from a tree, and Robert Englund plays folklore professor William Wexler.

Which illusionist plays the magician hired to entertain the costume party in Terror Train (1980)?

David Copperfield plays the party's hired magician, Ken; the killer keeps swapping costumes with victims aboard the New Year's Eve excursion train, and singer Vanity appears under the name D.D. Winters.

The Burning (1981) was the debut of Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens and which Seinfeld star?

Jason Alexander, with a full head of hair, plays wisecracking camper Dave; the Cropsy-legend film was Miramax's first production, with a story credit for Harvey Weinstein and a script co-written by Bob Weinstein.

Which two-time Oscar winner made his film debut in the 1980 slasher He Knows You're Alone?

Tom Hanks, in his first film, plays psychology student Elliot; his character was scripted to die, but the filmmakers liked him so much they never shot the death scene.

Which future star debuted in Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) as a girl murdered at her First Communion?

Brooke Shields, about ten, plays Karen Spages, strangled before her First Communion; the Paterson, New Jersey film was reissued in 1981 as Holy Terror to cash in on her fame and later fell into the public domain.

In The Strangers (2008), what reason does Dollface give when asked why they are doing this?

'Because you were home': Dollface's answer to Kristen's 'Why are you doing this?' is the film's chilling thesis; Bryan Bertino drew on the Manson family's Tate murders and on strangers knocking at doors in his own childhood neighbourhood.

MaXXXine (2024) unfolds in 1985 Los Angeles against the backdrop of which real murder spree?

The Night Stalker murders: Richard Ramirez's 1985 killings fill the news while Mia Goth's Maxine, the lone survivor of X, auditions for a horror sequel and a leather-gloved stalker watches her; it out-grossed the trilogy's earlier films.

Eli Roth's Thanksgiving (2023) grew out of a fake trailer made for which 2007 film?

Grindhouse, the Tarantino-Rodriguez double feature, ran Roth's fake Thanksgiving trailer between its halves; the 2023 film's killer wears a mask of Pilgrim governor John Carver and targets those blamed for a deadly Black Friday stampede in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Which 1981 parody, the first to spoof slashers, flashes a running body count on screen?

Student Bodies keeps a running on-screen body count; its killer, the Breather, wields weapons like a paperclip and an eggplant, and the ending reveals everything was a fever dream, a nod to The Wizard of Oz.

Intruder (1989) is praised for staging its night-shift slashings inside what kind of business?

A supermarket, the Walnut Lake Market, on its closing night; director Scott Spiegel drew on his own job at a Michigan grocery store, Sam Raimi plays a supporting role and Bruce Campbell cameos in the final scene.