“…In 1974, the release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) and Black Christmas (Bob Clark, 1974) marked the advent of slasher films, one of the most prolific subgenres of the horror film genre. Four years on, John Carpenter's Halloween would define its characteristics once and for all: a serial or mass killer dedicated to stalking and massacring youngsters, mostly middle-class girls, employing to this end primarily blunt or sharp weapons like knives, axes, saws or harpoons (Hernández-Santaolalla, 2019;Keisner, 2008;Molitor & Sapolsky, 1993;Pérez Ochando, 2016;Petridis, 2014). Although the Italian giallo and films like Thirteen Women (George Archainbaud, 1932), Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960), Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) and The Last House on the Left (Wes Craven, 1972) could be understood as its precursors, it was the three aforementioned films that would establish the subgenre in its own right.…”