Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror

Abstract

Horror films as a genre typically have been excluded from discussions of film, often “dismissed with contempt by the majority of reviewercritics, or simply ignored” (Wood 173). Slashers, those horror movies that consist of a monster or maniac stalking and/or killing a succession of people, usually teenagers, are considered even less deserving of study. They are “at the bottom of the horror heap” (Clover 20) critically, “the most disreputable form of the horror film” (Pinedo 71), and although a few slashers from the 1970s, such as Halloween or The Texas Chain-saw Massacre, have been examined for cultural significance, these are rare examples. The 1970s are considered a brief “renaissance” (Williams 164) in horror, where progressive films challenged societal norms and traditional depictions of female subjectivity, yet the late 1980s as an era are denied that status.

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