End Credits
This analysis provided an overview of the slasher film from 1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the birth of the mid 1980s Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. By investigating interpretations of what constituted a slasher film, the site has hopefully presented slashers as a remarkably consistent subgroup of the horror film genre. Siskel and Ebert introduced objections to these films to a wider American audience, and in turn plunged slasher films into ongoing national debates about pornography and female representation in the media. But their objections have been fiercely debated between feminist activists, scholars, and historians.
This is by no means an exhaustive account of the scholarship on slasher films or, for that matter, even specifically feminist inquires of the genre. This site has omitted brilliant analyses on economic motivations of the slasher studios, in-depth psychoanalytical interpretations from feminist scholars, and even the mere mention of all but the most popular slasher films of the period. Furthermore, though scholars have done tremendous analytical work on what Ebert calls "complete trash," there is still plenty of work ahead. Authors have only minimally attempted to explain the rise of the slasher, nodding to the disillusionment of the 1970s politics and culture (Carter's unpopularity, the Me-Decade). Similarly, as briefly discussed, the films were produced in the heyday of conservatism's national coming out party with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Since President Reagan's election sweeping victory was secured in large part not just by economic conservatives but also by the religious right, scholars would do well to investigate whether slasher films reflect the growing political attitudes of the religious right's morality campaigns, especially in a prelude to Patrick Buchannan's declaration of a "culture war" in America at the 1992 Republican National Convention. For example, how do slasher films depict LGBT citizens? Hopefully a future historian with pages to fill in a dissertation will one day answer some of these additional questions.
In another one of those cards left by that apparently prolific writer/killer in My Bloody Valentine is inscribed the message "Roses are red, violets are blue, one is dead, and so are you." It is easy to become frustrated with the slasher, be it if you think them dangerous or misunderstood, not researched enough or overly examined, feminist or misogynistic etc. But as cultural scholar Isabel Cristina Pinedo reminded us, though "delving through the dense thick of intertwining and contradictory impulses that comprise the [horror] genre may be a hazardous journey, . . . it is well worth taking." It is a hazardous journey indeed, though at least we come out alive.