Peter Normanton - The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies

Peter Normanton edited the Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics along with twenty-eight issues of the horror comics fan publication From the Tomb. He is currently writing a series of short biographies for PS Publications fifteen-volume Harvey Horrors.

The Mammoth Book of Fun Brain Training

The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards

The Mammoth Book of Dracula

The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8

The Mammoth Book of Tattoo Art

The Mammoth Book of Bob Dylan

The Mammoth Book of Mixed Martial Arts

The Mammoth Book of Codeword Puzzles

The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance

The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24

The Mammoth Book of Gorgeous Guys

The Mammoth Book of Really Silly Jokes

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22

The Mammoth Book of Undercover Cops

The Mammoth Book of Weird News

The Mammoth Book of The Best of Best New Erotica

The Mammoth Book of Antarctic Journeys

The Mammoth Book of Muhammad Ali

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

The Mammoth Book of Lost Symbols

The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

The Mammoth Book of Steampunk

The Mammoth Book of New CSI

The Mammoth Book of Gangs

The Mammoth Book of SF Wars

The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance

The Mammoth Book of Football Hooligans

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

Copyright Peter Normanton, 2012

The right of Peter Normanton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

Data is available from the British Library

UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-036-5 (paperback)

UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-041-9 (ebook)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First published in the United States in 2012 by Running Press Book Publishers, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher.

Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext.

5000, or e-mail

US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4596-7

US Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939125

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Running Press Book Publishers

2300 Chestnut Street

Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

Visit us on the web!

www.runningpress.com

Designed by www.basementpress.com

Printed and bound in the UK

W AY BACK THEN you could scream all you wanted, but it was never going to make them stop, as for an entire decade the doors to the madhouse were thrown open to a plethora of hack and slash killers who were free to slip into school dormitories, college campuses, the woods, shopping malls or for the very unlucky their local neighbourhood. Each was armed with a sharp knife, with bloody murder in mind. There never was a decade quite like the eighties. Whether it was food, drink, fashion, music or film, these years can only be described as unique. And we took it all in, thriving on an excess of cheese (the cheesier the better), no more so than in the insanity of the slasher and splatter cinema that suddenly became so popular. As the newfound video market began to expand, so did the excess and we just couldnt get enough of it.

When we first discussed putting together this compilation of slasher and splatter movies, memories of a Monday evening in the pub way back in that sweltering summer of 1984 came to mind. Quite a few of us were serving our time on Thatchers ever lengthening dole queues as recession continued to ravage an already declining British industry, so a night in the pub was something of a treat. As the miners fought pitched battles with the police in the grim hope of preserving their livelihood, we were hunting down the video nasties that back then were all the rage. If these films hadnt acquired such notoriety we probably would never have bothered with many of them; in fact more than a fair share of them were just plain boring. But did that stop us? No it certainly didnt. That evening the conversation had drifted from how good Van Halen had been at Castle Donnington and the prospect of a new Rush album to the grisly murders in our favourite slasher movies. Needless to say after a few pints of Burtonwoods finest ale our recollection of the gruesome episodes that had been the driving force behind these films had become a little distorted; who killed who and how was now confused. Ironically, given the content of the tome you now have in your hands, I was the one who started to ridicule this excess, delighting in deliberately muddling the butchery of Friday the 13 th Part II with The Boogeyman and Happy Birthday to Me. After four years of unrelenting blood and guts, we had completely overdosed on this gore-ridden pageant. It seems odd when I look back, but I never went to see the sensation that terrorised the cinema-going public in the latter months of that year, Wes Cravens A Nightmare on Elm Street. The poor dubbing, dodgy acting, along with the screaming scantily clad girls and the endless masked killers had finally numbed my senses, and at that moment I needed something different in life. While my interest in horror movies never entirely waned, the gore-mongering passion that had possessed me during those truculent years of my late teens and early twenties had begun to fade.

In the ensuing years, I was all too frequently found stalking the back streets of Manchester city centre rummaging through boxes of old comic books, in search of more horror. A lasting memory of these shops was the racks of videos, and what a lurid display they were! There were many films on show in these shops to which I had never before been privy, and they looked every bit as deranged as the terrors I had previously been watching. The real nasties of those years, however, were conspicuous by their absence; it would be years before I finally understood why I never had the chance to see a copy of Lucio Fulcis The New York Ripper, and later in these pages if you live in the UK you will discover exactly why. My interest in these kill crazy movies was revitalized soon after I got married, and no it wasnt the sight of my wife hacking into a tender loin of beef; rather, it was Bob Clarkes