The king is dead. All hail the king. Horror was king in the 80s and even into the early 90s. I grew up in the golden days of the slasher flicks that acted as morality plays. The best part of these movies was the evil antagonists they produced. Can you imagine horror today without the likes of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, or Michael Myers?

No, it wouldn’t seem right. It would feel like we’d awakened from a long slumber into an alternate reality. These characters, along with others such as Chucky, Pinhead, Candyman, or Leatherface, formed the horror of my generation. The 80s were the slasher Golden Age, but we got a few new ones in the 90s led by Ghostface in the Scream franchise.

However, who are the horror icons today? If you think back over the past ten to twenty years, the idea of the iconic maniac has diminished. The attempts to reboot the classic slasher franchises have also met with mixed reactions or failure. The Nightmare on Elm Street reboot turned Freddy into a pedophile, and it turned audiences and fans of the original movies off. The Friday the 13th didn’t fare much better, essentially making Jason a pissed-off pot farmer. Even the Texas Chainsaw Massacre attempts have fallen short (I did enjoy the remake, but the Netflix attempt was terrible). Halloween received two tries to get it right. Rob Zombie wrote and directed a duology, and Jamie Lee Curtis returned to the franchise in a trilogy that ignored everything that came after the first film. I enjoyed Zombie’s take, and I admit I liked what they attempted to do with Halloween in the latest trilogy. Both of these are highly argued about among fans.

I thought the days of a franchise anchored by one psychopathic killer were over. There have been signs of life in the horror icon realm in the past few years. First, I must begin with Art the Clown from the Terrifier series. He would make it a close fight with any of the other killers we’ve mentioned. Second, I’m going with Megan. The doll and dance have left a mark on our culture and in the horror genre. Next, I’m pushing for John Carver from Thanksgiving to be given more people to slash through. Lastly, I will go with The Grabber from The Black Phone. I know I’m stretching it with him, but it’s getting a sequel and featured prominently in the Blumhouse Scare Zone at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. The zone was at both Orlando and Hollywood, cementing Megan and the Grabber as some of the new faces of Horror.

Most of the new franchise-leading icons are coming from Blumhouse. They have become the modern takes on what William Castle achieved in horror in the 50s and 60s. I think of Jason Blum and his company also as a new Hammer Studios. The British company produced some fun Dracula and Frankenstein movies that rival the original Universal monster movies and introduced filmgoers to Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, to name a few of the esteemed actors who appeared in many Hammer films. Currently, it isn’t surprising that I see a new horror film with the Blumhouse logo in the opening.

After a lull, it appears horror is back to firing on all cylinders. It never left us, but the monsters changed. We saw a shift from the supernatural killer to more ‘normal’ human killers. You can find this more human take on slashers in the Strangers series and the Saw films. There is nothing supernatural about John Kramer, but you better hope you don’t wake up in one of his games.

I hope this swing back to the old-school type of psycho-killer is a trend we can ride for years to come. Well, that’s all I’ve got for you today on this subject. We need to keep watching for research and keep the horror coming. What are your favorite classic and new slashers? Drop a comment below, and we’ll discuss them.

Thanks for stopping in to talk about all things horror,

Brent