Sure, you may consider yourself a die-hard fan of slasher movies from Halloween to Friday the 13th, back to My Bloody Valentine and, what the hell, Student Bodies for good measure!
And yet, fan or no, you may find yourself wondering whether Freddy Krueger – though he has long occupied a space alongside the iconic villains of the slasher era – really shares the same genre roots? Wonder no more as two writers enter the ring to battle it out…
Is A Nightmare on Elm Street a Slasher Film?
In the first corner, author ADAM ROCKOFF argues Yes, stating that “by now the criteria for what defines a slasher film are fairly well-established, and Nightmare hews to the paradigm perfectly.”
In the opposite corner, RM columnist JOHN W. BOWEN, counters with No, arguing that “even the most casual horror fan would concede that Elm Street owes considerably more to Repulsion, Suspiria and Phantasm than to Friday the 13th, but perhaps even more telling is what came in its wake.”
Read both arguments in their entirety in the latest issue of RUE MORGUE #184, now available and cast your vote below!
The winner will be declared in the Halloween issue of RUE MORGUE (#185), on stands everywhere November 1, 2018!
CAST YOUR VOTE BELOW!
Winner declared in RUE MORGUE #185, on stands everywhere November 1, 2018!
Not slasher. While Rockoff makes a valid point about some slasher antagonists being supernatural and I certainly don’t agree with Bowen on everything (Argento!), I’ve got to side with the latter here. The threat Jason and Michael pose is exclusively physical. They can potentially be outrun or otherwise escaped; neither is emerging from a bathtub someone else is occupying, turning their fingers into drug-needles, or transforming someone into a cockroach. A slasher’s supernatural POWERS seem to be limited to indestructibility–and perhaps the ability to render young women incapable of running without tripping and falling!