Just picked up a copy at my local movie dealer. Hoping I'll like it :)

Black Christmas? Gotta love it, hehe...

ChronoGrl, beware, you did a slight oversimplification of the concept of mimesis...

I was thinking... I agree when you say that horror movies in general have become more graphic... And, though I do think it opens up a huge variety of new ways to scare the audience, I also think more and more writers and directors focus too much on the... Well... Graphic parts, and the result are movies which have a lot of blood and guts, but fail to cause any lasting impression because they lack decent acting, well built mood and so on. Maybe that's something you could use on commenting modern movies, I don't know...

Too true but I was just explaining how milking a francise/concept is nothing new.

If you want to examine the birth of the slasher you also have to take in the influence of the Giallo film in particular Blood and Black Lace.

Robert Louis Stevenson. Before that, Hinduism. Although, in more modern horror, Urban horror basically began in the forties with stories like Smoke Ghost by Fritz Leiber that are about civilization bringing on madness and a heavy focus on the killer inside us. Examples of movies might include the Lodger and Hangover Square.

Quite accurate, Faustus...

I think it would be a nice approach... Even because, if one is willing to do the hard work, it allows some strong psychosocial and/or psychoanalytical theoretical analysis, usin stuff like Das Unglück in der Kultur, by Freud, and some other works that came after that...