Butcher Knives & Body Counts

Butcher Knives & Body Counts: Essays onthe Formula, Frights, & Fun of the Slasher Film includes my essay "The Exterminating Angle: Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, and the Long Shadow of Saucy Jacky". Edited by Vince A. Liaguno, the latest book from US publisher Dark Scribe Press explores the archetype of the slasher film and traces its evolution from formula to franchise.Using Michael Powell's Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as its touch-stones, and bracketing these productionswith Hitchcock's The Lodger and Frenzy,"The Exterminating Angle" traces the rootsof the slasher film in UK cinema. Although British pictures were subject to as much,if not more, censorship as their US counterparts (and the films were certainly produced under even greater budgetaryrestraints), several significant works overthe course of nearly fifty years fell underthe long shadow of Jack the Ripper and,perhaps inadvertently, defined the genre.