What Was the First Slasher Movie? Why Black Christmas Gets Our Vote

The first slasher movie depends on what you count. Psycho (1960) is the genre's ancestor, Black Christmas (1974) is the first film with the whole formula, and Halloween (1978) is the first slasher hit. Nearly every film on HorroRated's shelf of curated slasher movies grows out of that run, so here's the test we used to settle the argument, how each contender scores and the film that gets HorroRated's vote.

What Makes a Film Count as the First Slasher?

The films people call the first slasher are each first at something different, so the only fair way to settle it is to put every one of them through the same test. Some had the killer, some had the body count, and only one had all of it.

HorroRated's slasher shelf describes the genre as one where "a killer, usually masked or anonymous, stalks and murders a group of people." That's a good definition, but it's too loose to crown the first slasher film. So this post uses a four-part test:

1. A human killer, or one who seems human. No ghosts, curses or creatures.
2. A group picked off one at a time, not a single victim.
3. The stalking and the kills drive the story, not the police work.
4. Someone fights back, usually the young woman fans call the final girl.

A film that passes all four is a full slasher. A film that passes two or three is an ancestor or a blueprint, and in this genre that's no insult: the best slashers borrowed from both.

The Contenders for the First Slasher Movie, 1932 to 1974

Eight films get named as the first slasher before Halloween arrived, from an RKO picture in 1932 to two very different films in 1974. Each one passes part of the test. Here's what each brought, and where it falls short.

The Ancestors, 1932 to 1960

The earliest film anyone makes a serious case for is Thirteen Women (1932), an RKO picture directed by George Archainbaud (source). A University of Kentucky research guide calls it "perhaps the earliest example of what would become a slasher film": a group of women are harassed and murdered after a swami mails them horoscopes predicting their doom (source). That's only 36 years after how horror itself began, and it plays more like a murder mystery than anything with a masked man in it.

Then came 1960, and two films that changed the rules within months of each other. Michael Powell's Peeping Tom reached British cinemas in March 1960, and it puts you behind the lens of a killer who films his victims as he murders them (source). Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho followed later that year. Both are studies of one killer rather than hunts through a group, which makes them ancestors rather than the real thing.

The Italian Blueprint, 1964 to 1973

Before Hollywood caught on, Italian directors were building the machine. Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1964) shaped the Italian murder thrillers that followed it, and his A Bay of Blood (1971), which the Queensland Art Gallery calls "a violent gorefest," "would eventually prove to be deeply influential on future generations of slasher films" (source). Sergio Martino's Torso (1973) comes closer still. Arrow Video, the label that restored it, describes it as "laying the groundwork for the modern slasher movie" (source).

All three are gialli, the stylish Italian murder thrillers that HorroRated's slasher shelf credits with shaping the American slasher. They're whodunits at heart, more interested in who the killer is than in the hunt itself, and that's where they fall short of the test. None of the three is in HorroRated's archive yet.

1974: Two Contenders in One Year

1974 is where the argument gets serious, because two films arrived that pass most of the test. Black Christmas gets its own section below. The other is Tobe Hooper's sun-baked nightmare, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): a masked killer, a chainsaw and a heroine running for her life. The Museum of Modern Art added it to its permanent collection the year it came out and celebrated that half-century in 2024 (source). HorroRated rates it Legendary and a HorroRated Pick.

Its killers are a whole family rather than one stalker, though, which is why many fans file it as a proto-slasher: a film that has most of the parts before the formula set. Fair warning if you haven't seen it: it's relentless from the first minute to the last.

Was Psycho the First Slasher Movie?

Not quite. Psycho (1960) is the slasher's ancestor rather than its first example, and film scholars agree: Carol J. Clover wrote in Men, Women, and Chain Saws (1992) that "the appointed ancestor of the slasher film is Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)" (source).

It's easy to see why people call it the first. The lonely motel, the knife and a killer who strikes without warning are all in the slasher's DNA, and HorroRated files Hitchcock's motel classic on its slasher shelf, rated Legendary and a HorroRated Pick.

Put it through the test, though, and it stalls at the second step. Psycho is a crime thriller first, and nobody is picking off a group one at a time. The same goes for Peeping Tom, which reached British cinemas a few months before Psycho came out. Its reception was so hostile that it all but destroyed Michael Powell's career in Britain, according to the film journal Senses of Cinema (source). Both films taught the slasher how to look at a killer. Neither one is a slasher yet.

Is Black Christmas the First Slasher?

Yes, by HorroRated's test. Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), made in Canada four years before Halloween, is the earliest film that passes all four steps: a killer you never see clearly, a college sorority whose residents are picked off one by one as the holidays approach, a story built around the stalking and the obscene phone calls, and a heroine who fights back (source).

A lot of the slasher tropes fans can recite start here: the threatening calls, the killer who stays in the shadows and a holiday turned into a countdown. The script riffed on an old urban legend about a babysitter and a man upstairs (source), and a University of Kentucky research guide calls the film "the first great slasher of its time" (source).

Then there's the Halloween connection. According to Turner Classic Movies, a rising filmmaker named John Carpenter approached Clark about a sequel. Clark imagined it on the same college campus the following autumn, and his proposed title was Halloween. The sequel never happened, but Carpenter's own 1978 film of the same name "effectively launched the cycle of slasher films to which Black Christmas is an undisputed patron saint" (source).

HorroRated rates Black Christmas Highly Recommended, and its entry calls that ringing phone "the scariest thing in the house." When you go looking for it, make sure it's Bob Clark's 1974 original, not the 2006 or 2019 remake.

Was Halloween the First Slasher Film?

No. Halloween (1978) arrived four years after Black Christmas, but it's the film that made the slasher a commercial force and set the template the 1980s copied. HorroRated's entry for John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) says it "codified the modern slasher," and rates it Legendary and a HorroRated Pick. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2006 (source).

What Halloween got right was discipline. Michael Myers drifts in and out of the edges of the frame long before anyone on screen notices him, and Carpenter's own score does half the work. Every slasher that followed tried to bottle that.

And plenty followed. Friday the 13th (1980) took the formula to summer camp, and HorroRated's entry puts it fairly: it "didn't invent the slasher but it helped define what the genre would look like for the next decade." A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) moved the killer into his victims' dreams. Both are rated Legendary and HorroRated Picks. Halloween kept going too, through enough sequels and restarts to fill every Halloween timeline HorroRated has mapped.

How to Watch the First Slashers in Order

Five films in HorroRated's archive tell the slasher's origin story in release order, and all five are rated Legendary. Watch them in this order and you can see the formula come together:

1. Psycho (1960), Legendary, HorroRated Pick: the ancestor. Go in knowing as little as possible.
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Legendary, HorroRated Pick: the rawest film of the bunch. If it hooks you, HorroRated's guide to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies in order sorts out the sequels and remakes.
3. Alice, Sweet Alice (1976), Legendary, HorroRated Pick: the one most fans haven't seen. HorroRated calls it "a key American proto-slasher" with "the stylish, bloody mystery of an Italian giallo," a bridge between the two traditions.
4. Halloween (1978), Legendary, HorroRated Pick: the template every later slasher worked from.
5. Friday the 13th (1980), Legendary, HorroRated Pick: the formula at summer camp, and the start of the boom.

Add Black Christmas (1974), rated Highly Recommended, between Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's the one film in the run that isn't Legendary, but no marathon on this subject is complete without it.

Related Resources

• All five Psycho films in order: Hitchcock's original and everything that came after it
• Every Friday the 13th film, from Crystal Lake on: all 12 films in release and story order
• Why a blank-faced killer scares us: what really makes a horror villain frightening

Where to Go Next

Whichever film you crown, its descendants are waiting on HorroRated's slasher shelf: 134 curated picks, from the 1970s originals to the masked killers still stalking theaters today.