With the possible exception of the hardcore porn flick, no modern film genre has managed to achieve quite the level of commercial success in spite (or because) of its inherent controversiality as has the slasher movie. Otherwise known as the "stalker," "dead babysitter," or "teenie-kill" pic, the "slasher" label has been adopted by most fans and critics to designate the entries in a voluminous collection of remarkably similar post-1960 horror films. In these movies, isolated psychotic males, often masked or at least hidden from view, are pitted against one or more young men and women (especially the latter) whose looks, personalities, or promiscuities serve to trigger recollections of some past trauma in the killer's mind, thereby unleashing his seemingly boundless psychosexual fury.

Although the precise formula of the slasher movie varies depending on one's initial characterization, the genre's exploration (at times its exploitation) of some or...