He warned you not to go out tonight... From meat cleavers and machetes to summer camp carnage and sorority house massacres, from final girls and scream queens to demented deviants and dead teenagers, slasher films have turned body counts into box office gold. It s the oft-maligned but surprisingly durable sub-genre of horror films that uses a Freudian rulebook and bases the survival rates of its characters on vice and virtue.
From the earliest black-and-white forerunners of the slasher to the low-budget aesthetics of the 70s, from the 80s golden age to the self-referential gloss of the 90s and beyond, Butcher Knives & Body Counts brings together over 70 filmmakers, editors, actors, and writers to explore the archetype of the slasher film and trace its evolution from formula to franchise.
From the inventive kills and the gory intestine spills right down to the last tagline and toe tag, Butcher Knives & Body Counts celebrates the enduring formula, frights, and fun of slasher movies.
Vince Liaguno is the Stoker Award-winning editor of
Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press 2008), an anthology of queer horror fiction, which he co-edited with Chad Helder. His debut novel, 2006 s
The Literary Six, was a tribute to the slasher films of the 80 s and won an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Horror and was named a finalist in ForeWord Magazine s Book of the Year Awards in the Gay/Lesbian Fiction category.
He is currently at work on his second novel, FINAL GIRL, and editing a second volume in the Unspeakable Horror series. .
He currently divides his time between Manhattan and the eastern end of Long Island, New York. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC).