This Is the Mount Rushmore of Slasher Movies

Horror splits into many subgenres, but slashers stand out for how close they sit to everyday reality: a human killer stalking unsuspecting prey. Their heyday came in the 1980s and again in the late 1990s, and the classics that follow helped shape the form. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) became a pop culture sensation by making terror feel plausible.

Based on Robert Bloch's novel, it opens with Marion Crane (Jennifer Leigh) spending the night at the Bates Motel run by the seemingly harmless Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins); the film relies on slow-building tension, a masterful shower scene and a chilling unraveling of the mystery around Norman's mother rather than a high body count.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre arrived on October 11, 1974, alongside Bob Clark's Black Christmas and changed expectations for on-screen violence.

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