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Rockoff, Adam. Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012 [2002], 223 pp. Softcover. ISBN 978-0-7864-6932-1. $39.95.
The mise-en'scène is all too familiar: a hidden character, represented by a point-of-view camera, gazes upon teenagers skinny-dipping under the moon's glow. As the young people emerge from the lake, the stalker withdraws into the shadows. Moments later, these unsuspecting adolescents will be stabbed, mutilated, hacked, and bludgeoned to death in ridiculously bizarre and gory ways. This is a typical scene from a slasher film, a unique brand of horror cinema that peaked in popularity during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Characterized by weapon-wielding madmen chasing nubile teens only to dispatch them through ghoulishly creative methods, the slasher film generated critical scorn, box office success, and forever changed the horror genre.
Adam Rockoff s Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 19781986 offers an intriguing critical genealogy of the slasher film. In addition, Rockoff constructs insightful analyses of selected films and includes excerpts from his various interviews with horror film maestros. Rockoff also draws attention to many overlooked films from the sub-genre, including American independents, as well as Canadian and Italian productions. Finally, Rockoff explains how the sub-genre met its demise-and like any good cinematic maniac-eventually rose from the dead.
The volume is organized chronologically, with ten chapters that trace the slasher film from its earliest incarnations to its heyday and eventual marginalization. As Rockoff explains,
These brutal and gory films which came of age during the late 1970s were the bastard children of the horror film, too gleefully violent and graphic to be embraced by the mainstream, but far too popular and successful to achieve true cult status. They hovered somewhere in a cinematic netherworld- between popular and counterculture-taunting critics who found them indicative of the decline of Westem civilization while enthralling millions of dedicated fans who flocked to every new release. (1)
This introduction nostalgically evokes the early 1980s when teenage "gorehounds" religiously read Fangoria magazine and slasher films could be found on neighborhood movie screens and in mom-and-pop video stores across the nation. The introduction also details Rockoffs approach and methodology. Importantly, Rockoff positions himself not solely as a scholar,...