10 Best Slasher Films Of All Time

Released in the same year as Black Christmas, Tobe Hooper’s film is if anything even more economical and effective than Bob Clark’s movie, eschewing cheap jokes and focusing on its teenage leads without cutting away to uninteresting supporting characters. It’s also the more suspenseful of the pair, and when British censors failed to reduce its air of claustrophobic dread with cuts, they resorted to banning the film until 1999.

Not only does Hooper proved a virtual textbook on how to ratchet up tension, he also has a nice line in black humour, and his family of cannibals are a grimly amusing parody of a soap opera family. There’s the long-suffering man of the house, whose attempts to keep the family business running are undermined by his two idiot sons, most notably Leatherface, who despite his astonishing build and strength (and mask made from human skin) isn’t smart enough to figure out where all these teenagers keep coming from.

Despite the perfect title for a trashy Drive-in movie and a tagline (“Who will survive and what will be left of them?”) that promises gore galore, Hooper shows very little in the way of blood, something his detractors and his imitators alike often forget. His film is less interested in an endless succession of lopped-off limbs than in studying how his characters hold up in these extreme situations, making the movie the ultimate endurance test.