First Horror slasher film? - And Then There Were None (1945) Discussion

[–] sflowers539 10 years ago

Slasher films usually entail having lots of killing and gore on scene, I can't remember one violent death on camera in this one, it was great but not a slasher.

reply

[–] ChorusGirl 10 years ago

It is generally regarded that those 2 films are starting point for the genre as we know to today. There are elements in earlier films, certainly.

See the British film Green For Danger (1946)…which has a sequence that feels a bit like a slasher film, and the plot features a murderer "stalking" the victims. It's done with British humor but definitely has at least one very creepy sequence.

I would definitely count The Spiral Staircase (1946) as an early slasher film…a woman meets a very Dario Argento-esque death in it.

Slasher films don't necessarily need gore (as the other commenter stated)…as Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween have little to no actual gore, and are classics of the genre.

In terms of people being trapped and stalked and murdered on by one…I'd say Agatha Christie's story could be a great grandfather of the slasher genre….the killer is certainly a madman, and the deaths are violent (though not explicit). Someone takes a hatchet to the head…which is definitely not the usual method of death in films of the 40s.

Have a look at the recent horror film You're Next (2011), about a family picked off one by one as they gather for a weekend in the country. It has some interesting similarity to this story.

reply

[–] Ponies_in_Jumpers 10 years ago

There's also 'The Rogues Tavern' which might have come out even before Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None' or at least was probably filmed before the release of that book.

reply

[–] potsi-1 9 years ago

In terms of people being trapped and stalked and murdered on by one…I'd say Agatha Christie's story could be a great grandfather of the slasher genre….the killer is certainly a madman, and the deaths are violent (though not explicit). Someone takes a hatchet to the head…which is definitely not the usual method of death in films of the 40s.

Completely agree with this. The deaths were quite violent (not torture porn but still violent: Choking, hanging, cracked open heads etc...). Violence, trapped in a space, ensemble that dies one by one, psychological terror and a whodunnit element. All these are elements heavily featured in slasher movies.

reply

[–] PillowRock 9 years ago

I'd say Agatha Christie's story could be a great grandfather of the slasher genre

Violence, trapped in a space, ensemble that dies one by one, psychological terror and a whodunnit element. All these are elements heavily featured in slasher movies.

Christie's genius in the story for And Then There Were None was in plotting out the details that allowed her to take things all the way down to having no suspects left (and possibly having all of the victims responsible for previous deaths), not inventing that basic setup. The basic setup that was described in the previous post was already *very* old when this book was written.

When talking about movies, I have occasionally seen that seen movies with that setup referred to as "old dark house movies". The first well known, English language, talking picture (and, yes, using that many modifiers is necessary) was The Old Dark House in 1932 (in that one a couple different sets of travelers are forced to spend the night in an isolated house in the mountains because a heavy storm had washed out the road). However, that setup wasn't new then, either.

The play "The Cat and the Canary" was a spoof of plays that setup. It was produced in 1922 (the silent movie adaptation from 1927 is pretty good, but personally I think that Bob Hope / Paulette Goddard version from 1939 is funnier). That should tell you something about how old and commonly used that setup was by the early 20s.

reply

[–] Mysteriously_Eerie 8 years ago

While AND THEN THERE WERE NONE definitely contains several tropes that would become common place in the slasher (a final girl, a secluded setting set apart from the availability of help, and a sense of the macabre), I would not consider it an early slasher.

Here the focus is on the mystery, where as in a slasher, the focus is on the kills (as well as the thrill of the kill) and on being stalked. I know that's a small difference, especially since a few slashers do revolve around mystery, but that difference in focus changes the tone of the film enough to not be a slasher.

I do think this play/movie could easily be turned into a slasher, though. That play would be fun to see.

For another proto-slasher, check out Thirteen Women (1932).

reply