Daily Archives: October 20, 2025

Top Tens – Film: Top 10 Slasher Horror Films

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2010 film poster

 

“Here, we can see a slasher movie killer in their natural habitat, stalking the final girl.”

I tend to prefer other sub-genres of horror to slasher horror but the latter is so iconic of the horror film genre in general that I have to rank it in my S-tier or god-tier special mentions, particularly with the iconic visual design of their slashers.

They have become so prolific as to define their own film genre, one worthy of their own top ten list many times over just for their themes, tropes and types, as well as by iconic slasher.

Anyway, here’s my Top 10 Slasher Films (and their iconic slashers) on the spot.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

1 – WES CRAVEN – NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (FREDDY KRUEGER)

 

My favorite slasher film franchise – the combination of slasher horror with supernatural dream-haunting demon is hard to beat. Wes Craven has also proved one of the more capable directors as creator of slasher horror (and horror in general).

While iconic, Freddy is not the most iconic slasher – that title has to go to the duo of my next two entries

 

2 – JOHN CARPENTER – HALLOWEEN (MICHAEL MYERS)

 

That iconic William Shatner mask. And hello again, Mr Carpenter.

 

3 – FRIDAY THE 13TH (JASON VORHEES)

 

That iconic hockey mask

 

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4 – WES CRAVEN – SCREAM (GHOSTFACE)

 

Hello again, Mr Craven. Yeah – we’re very much in the self-referential phase of slasher canon here, with Scream as its definitive franchise.

 

5 – SAW (JIGSAW)

 

Yes – less slasher and more torture p0rn but I’m still ranking it here as close enough. And yes – it’s not so much the killer that’s iconic as that damn puppet. “You want to play a game?”

 

6 – TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (LEATHERFACE)

 

Title says it all really – as does the slasher’s nom de slash.

 

7 – CHILD’S PLAY (CHUCKY)

 

If a dream-demon like Freddy Kreuger can be a slasher, why not a possessed doll? Well, apart from the size thing, which makes Chucky a little hard to take seriously – hence why he’s not in the top iconic slashers.

 

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8 – WES CRAVEN – THE HILLS HAVE EYES

 

Hello again, Mr Craven. I’ll rank this here – namely because of the lack of a similarly iconic slasher among its hillbilly mutant cannibal tribe (and also because said tribe strays somewhat from the archetypal slasher film).

 

9 – I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

 

A distant second to the Scream franchise as representative of the self-referential phase of slasher canon – also that hook guy just doesn’t have the same iconic status or visual design as the top slashers.

 

10 – WOLF CREEK

 

Australian slasher horror!

Although again John Jarratt’s Mick Taylor isn’t as iconic a slasher.

 

SPECIAL MENTION

 

1 – CLASSICAL SLASHER HORROR (1974-1993)

 

According to Wikipedia “the slasher canon can be divided into three eras: the classical (1974–1993), the self-referential (1994–2000) and the neoslasher cycle (2000–2013)”.

Within the classical era, there’s the Golden Age of slasher films from 1978 to 1984 – which would include the first Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street films.

Prior to the Golden Age, there was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, while after it the classical era included Chucky – hence the classical era included seven of my top ten entries.

 

2 – SELF-REFERENTIAL SLASHER HORROR (1994-2000)

 

Scream is the archetypal self-referential slasher horror. I Know What You Did Last Summer was also from this era.

 

3 – NEO-SLASHER HORROR / POSTMODERN SLASHER HORROR (2000-2013)

 

Wolf Creek is my top ten entry from this era

 

4 – EVIL DEAD

 

Yeah, my top horror film doesn’t really fall into slasher horror but I include it in special mention because of Ash’s nickname Ashy Slashy. Also the Deadites are somewhat similar to slashers – and the iconic cabin in the woods is similar to your archetypal slasher setting (of Camp Crystal Lake).

Speaking of which

 

5 – THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

 

As a metafictional horror, slashers feature among the monsters used by the Organization – arguably including the zombie redneck torture family (the Buckner family) picked in the film.

 

6 – ALIEN & TERMINATOR

 

I mean, they’re not slashers but they essentially operate by slasher tropes…although you could say that of most horror film antagonists.

 

7 – PSYCHO

 

Precursor and inspiration for slasher horror – it also gives us an iconic horror figure with Norman Bates

 

8 – THE HITCHER

 

As I rank it in my Top 10 Horror Films and it definitely overlaps with slasher horror, I have to give it a shout out here.

 

9 – SILENCE OF THE LAMBS & AMERICAN PSYCHO

Two of the most (in)famous serial killers in cinema – Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Bateman – influenced and an influence on slasher horror films, although they obviously depart from the slasher archetype in a number of ways.

 

 

Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 Fantasy Books (Special Mention: Classic) (9) Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan

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Cover art of Tarzan Alive by Philip Jose Farmer published in 2006 by Bison

 

 

(9) EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS –

TARZAN (1912 – 1966)

 

Tarzan is the most iconic hero of fantasy and science fiction – the archetypal jungle hero (or perhaps modern barbarian hero), in a series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The start of the series is easy to date to “Tarzan of the Apes” in 1912 – the end of the series less so but I’ve dated it to “Tarzan and the Valley of Gold” in 1966, authorized as the 25th official Tarzan novel by the Burroughs estate.

Born John Clayton and heir to English aristocracy as Lord Greystoke (or more precisely Viscount Greystoke), Tarzan was marooned with his aristocrat parents and ‘adopted’ after their deaths by a maternal female ape within a ‘tribe’ of great apes – indeed, Tarzan is his name in the ape language.

Philip Jose Farmer condensed Tarzan’s fictional ‘biography’ from the series by Edgar Rice Burroughs into his book Tarzan Alive, which is essentially my central reference to Tarzan (and exclusively so after the first two books). Farmer was an enduring fan of the character and wrote of Tarzan (or his world) in a number of books – most infamously in A Feast Unknown, featuring a thinly veiled pastiche of Tarzan and Doc Savage, or most famously, in his so-called Wold Newton Universe, where he linked together a number of fictional superheroes to the effect of a meteorite.

And I say superheroes as Tarzan has virtually superhuman abilities. After all, we’re talking someone who has wrestled virtually every animal, including full grown bull apes and gorillas. In short, he easily out-Batmans Batman and is the Superman of the jungle.

He is also of superhuman intelligence – a feature not readily discerned from the unfortunate monosyllabic and broken English of his screen adaptations. In the books – indeed, the first book – he could read English before he could speak it, having taught himself to read from the children’s picture books left in his parents’ log cabin and deducing the symbols as a language, in complete isolation from humans. He also spoke French before he spoke English, learning it from the first European he encountered. He readily learns to speak English – as well as thirty or so languages after that. So much for “Me Tarzan, you Jane”.

Despite a certain lack of plausibility, he remains an enduring hero – a “daydream figure” who obviously appeals to our continuing fascination for an animal or nature hero (and perhaps less fortunately to a ‘white god’ figure)

 

RATING:

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