At 02:36 PM 6/12/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Yesterday I saw Michele Soavi's (as Michael Soavi) _StageFright:
>-Aquarius-_ and I get to wondering about the stereotypes of the slasher
>films.
>Scott
 
Since I haven't seen this, I can't judge how much a "slasher film" it is
but in general Italian horror films owe quite a bit to giallo films, a
genre for which there is no exact equivalent in Anglo-American cinema.  In
fact, quite a few gialli were marketed as either horror or mystery when
they were released to US exploitation & drive-in theatres, depending upon
elements in the story as well as dubbing (and often re-editing as well).
 
It seems to me that the recent commerical and critical success of "Scream"
can be partly attributed to an audience of mostly teens who were too young
for the initial batch of slasher films and critics who had probably only
seen two or three others if that many.  Slasher films were self-conscious
about their conventions almost from the beginning but from reading most
reviews, you'd get the idea that "Scream" was breaking into new territory.
(Not to mention the neat trick of making a slasher film and by adding a few
self-referential jokes being able to claim it's not really a slasher film.)
------------------------------------------------------
Lang Thompson
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/wlt4
 
Godzilla Bites! webpage
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/wlt4/godzilla.htm
 
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