The term "slasher film" was common parlance by the mid-1980s but the horror subgenre it describes was at least a decade old by then—formerly referred to as "stalker," "psycho" or "slice-'em-up." Examining 74 movies—from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)—the author identifies the characteristic elements of the subgenre while tracing changes in narrative patterns over the decades. The slasher canon is divided into three eras: the classical (1974-1993), the self-referential (1994-2000) and the neoslasher cycle (2000-2013).