History Main / StockSlasher

* ''Film/AxeMurderingWithHackley'': Obviously, Hackley is one, being an {{Expy}} of Jason Voorhees and all. There's also the other employees at [=RKS=], like Rival, who's an {{Expy}} of Ghostface.

* While the below-mentioned ''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' established this trope, ''Film/Halloween1978'' is the one that made it a pattern. Its villain Michael Myers sports a twisted Captain Kirk mask, never speaks, has superhuman endurance and resistance to pain, and wields a carving knife as a weapon. The only attribute he lacked was size, being played in the first two films by normal-sized stuntmen[[note]]The 5' 10" Nick Castle in the first film and the 5' 8½" Dick Warlock in [[Film/HalloweenII1981 the second]][[/note]] who were paired with the fairly tall Creator/JamieLeeCurtis as the FinalGirl -- and even then, later films cast taller stuntmen in the part, likely due to the influence of other films on this list, especially the aforementioned ''Friday the 13th''.

* ''TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil'': "Masks" are preternatural {{Serial Killer}}s in the vein of [[Franchise/{{Halloween}} Michael Myers]] and [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]]. All attacks on them are reduced to ScratchDamage; they can [[ImplacableMan fight on past incapacitating injuries]]; and they [[TheSpeechless can't communicate]] or even understand much speech. Most wear masks of some sort, and the rest have {{Frozen Face}}s.

* The Blissfield Butcher in ''Film/{{Freaky}}'' starts the film as this, played by the 6' 5" Creator/VinceVaughn wearing a blank off-white mask and murdering teenagers until he gets a hold of a mystical dagger known as La Dola which he can use to [[FreakyFridayFlip swap bodies]] with a person he stabs. He does so with petite blonde teenager Millie Kessler (played by the 5' 5" Creator/KathrynNewton) and then goes on a rampage in her body around her school murdering students and teachers alike, choosing to go for a LadyInRed aesthetic for her by dressing in a [[HellBentForLeather red leather jacket]], skinny jeans, and matching red lipstick. All the while, Millie is trapped in the body of the hulking Butcher, which she occasionally uses to her advantage to harmlessly intimidate bullies.

** The protagonist James Earl Cash is what happens when you combine this with the ActionGenreHeroGuy. He's a big, buff, and {{bald|OfEvil}} man with the FaceOfAThug who did ''[[MysteriousPast something]]'' to get himself sentenced to death, and was spared lethal injection only so that [[BigBad Lionel Starkweather]] could use him as a killer in his SnuffFilm operation. While he is a NobleDemon who only kills the bad guys and tries to protect the good, he's still a brutal and unflinching murderer who [[TheQuietOne speaks very few lines]] and prefers to fight using {{stealth|BasedGame}}, which allows him to perform gratuitously violent execution moves that kill enemies in one blow. Certain levels do have him getting into shootouts, but otherwise, guns and ammo are very rare to come by, meaning that melee combat is the name of the game. While he doesn't wear a mask, many of the people he kills do.

* ''VideoGame/UntilDawn'' features "the Psycho," a tall, bulky man in coveralls who wears a clown (or zombie) mask and occasionally wields a machete. Despite his appearance, he prefers complex traps with {{Sadistic Choice}}s over mindless brute force, which puts him closer to [[Franchise/{{Saw}} Jigsaw]]. He's implied to be a disgruntled employee of the Washington family. [[spoiler: Turns out, however, that he's actually Josh Washington playing an elaborate, and exceptionally cruel, prank on his friends as revenge for them indirectly causing the deaths of his sisters. The slasher elements are a deliberate homage InUniverse.]]

* Being an {{Expy}} of Jason Voorhees, The Creep from the ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012'' episode "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012S3E1WithinTheWoods Within The Woods]]" fits all of the tropes associated with the typical slasher villain; he's a [[TheHeavy large]], {{implacable|Man}}, monstrously-deformed SwampMonster with a [[MonstrousHumanoid humanoid-physique]] dressed in a pair of men's overalls, lurking in the woods to pick off the cast one-by-one so that he could suck out the mutagen in the Turtle's DNA, devolving them into [[AllAnimalsAreDogs dog-like]] plant mutant lumps on the ground. He even wears a {{sack|headSlasher}} over his head before replacing it with Casey's hockey-mask.

* The Blissfield Butcher in ''Film/{{Freaky}}'' starts the film as this, played by the 6' 5" Creator/VinceVaughn wearing a blank off-white mask and murdering teenagers until he gets a hold of a mystical dagger known as La Dola which he can use to swap bodies with a person he stabs. He does so with petite blonde teenager Millie Kessler (Creator/KathrynNewton) then goes on a rampage in her body around her school murdering students and teachers alike, choosing to go for a LadyInRed aesthetic for her by dressing in a [[HellBentForLeather red leather jacket]], skinny jeans, and matching red lipstick.

''[[Film/TheTexasChainSawMassacre1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre]]'' was [[TropeMaker one of the first]] true [[SlasherMovie Slasher Movies]], and its most prominent monster with villainous traits -- Leatherface, the hulking, voiceless, chainsaw-wielding cannibal in a mask made of human skin -- became an instant pop-culture icon. It wouldn't be until the end of the decade that the character's true influence would begin to be seen, however -- first with the blank white face of [[Franchise/{{Halloween}} Michael Myers]] in [[Film/Halloween1978 1978]], [[FollowTheLeader and then]] the machete-wielding [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]] in [[Film/FridayThe13thPart2 1981]].

* They are usually [[EvilIsBigger tall]], towering over their victims. They are also [[MadeOfIron very robust]], able to return from or outright shrug off injuries that would likely mortally wound an ordinary person, and [[ImplacableMan apparently cannot be stopped once they begin pursuing someone]]. This is sometimes justified by [[NighInvulnerable paranormal abilities]], but just as often they [[BadassNormal appear to be human]]. [[MenAreTough Because of this]], they are [[AlwaysMale almost always male.]]

* Ghostface from ''Film/{{Scream}}'' deconstructs the trope. When first appearing in ''Film/Scream1996'', initially, it's played straight: a single, presumably male figure in a black costume with a screaming mask who implacably hunts, stalks, and carves up his prey. However, when unmasked, it's revealed that [[spoiler:part of the reason for Ghostface's ubiquity is that there are actually two killers, switching out when time allows, and that both are actually covered in bruises and cuts from where their victims fought back]]. Later films twist the NighInvulnerable immortal nature that many iconic killers have by turning Ghostface into a LegacyCharacter, being a symbol that numerous people don, granting a degree of pseudo-immortality to the killer.
* ''Film/TheTexasChainSawMassacre1974'' is the {{Trope Maker|s}} thanks to Leatherface, a hulking, [[ImAHumanitarian cannibalistic]] attack dog brute of a man with [[PsychopathicManchild the mental capacity of a child]] who wields a [[DropTheHammer sledgehammer]] and a {{chainsaw|Good}} as his weapons of choice and wears [[GenuineHumanHide a mask made of human skin]]. Uniquely, though, he's only TheHeavy to the rest of the Sawyer family rather than operating alone.

See also HockeyMaskAndChainsaw, which is the result of this trope getting a ShallowParody, and SackheadSlasher, which frequently (but not always) overlaps with this trope. Compare and contrast with OurSlashersAreDifferent, which details a bigger variety of monsters that technically fall within the moniker of "slasher".

[[caption-width-right:350:[[VideoGame/TeamFortress2 "One shudders to imagine what inhuman thoughts lie behind that mask... what dreams of chronic and sustained cruelty."]] [[note]]From left to right: [[Franchise/{{Halloween}} Michael Myers]], [[Film/TheTexasChainsawMassacre "Leatherface" Sawyer]], [[Franchise/FridayThe13th Jason Voorhees]].[[/note]]]]

* ''Film/TheTexasChainSawMassacre1974'' is the TropeMaker thanks to Leatherface, a hulking, [[ToServeMan cannibalistic attack dog]] brute of a man with [[{{Manchild}} the mental capacity of a child]] who wields a [[DropTheHammer sledgehammer]] and a {{chainsaw|Good}} as his weapons of choice and wears [[GenuineHumanHide a mask made of human skin]]. Uniquely, though, he's only TheHeavy to the rest of the Sawyer family rather than operating alone.

* The Blissfield Butcher in ''Film/{{Freaky}}'' starts the film as this, played by the 6' 5" Creator/VinceVaughn wearing a blank off-white mask and murdering teenagers until he gets a hold of a mystical dagger known as La Dola which he can use to swap bodies with a person he stabs. He does so with petite blonde teenager Millie Kessler (Creator/KathrynNewton) then goes on a rampage in her body around her school murdering students and teachers alike, choosing to go for a LadyInRed aesthetic for her by dressing a [[HellBentForLeather red leather jacket]] and matching lipstick.

* The Blissfield Butcher in ''Film/{{Freaky}}'' starts the film as this, played by the 6' 5" Creator/VinceVaughan wearing a blank off-white mask and murdering teenagers until he gets a hold of a mystical dagger known as La Dola which he can use to swap bodies with a person he stabs. He does so with petite blonde teenager Millie Kessler then goes on a rampage in her body around her school murdering students and teachers alike.