Horror films have been around since the 1920’s when Frankenstein and Dracula were created, Horror is a good genre to analysis because there are many sub-genre’, Slasher is a popular genre , recent slasher films are popular amoungst a younger audience.

The American slasher film has its roots in an Italian genre called giallo which usually combines elements of the crime thriller with stalk and slash style scares. John Carpenter got the sub-genre off the ground with Halloween in 1978, and pretty soon films about teenagers being stalked by knife/axe/garden tool wielding psychopaths were popping up all over the place.The first Friday the 13th hit in 1980, launching one of the most prolific horror franchises of all time. Slasher films tend to connect with there audience through there characters, most of which are teenagers themselves, women have always played important roles in horror films, mostly playing helpless victim usually the last to be killed, women are portrayed as defenceless, weak and helpless, and the killer is usually always male, portraying men as dominate, powerful and also mad.Slasher films have the same plot format where people get killed off one after another.

Comedy Horror films are becoming more popular today with the recent success of Shaun of the Dead, Severance and the Scary Movie franchise, also the chucky films proved to be funny because of the idea of a child’s toy killing people.I will now analyse a clip from Black Christmas, which is a typical slasher film but is set at Christmas, but still sticks to horror elements for example a cabin in an abandoned area away from help of others, this clip sees are last remaining victims fighting for survival, and backs up my previous statement about women playing important roles in horror films, at this point in the film the characters are still unaware the fact there is a killer in there house, even though there friends have all been killed, they notice a noise in the attic.In horror films, to keep the suspense they always make there characters walk into danger, no matter how obvious the situation is, in this situation we see the two women climbing into the attic after they’ve heard a noise, only to walk straight towards their deaths by a knife carrying pschycopath