Games of Terror: Halloween, Friday the 13th and the Films of the Stalker Cycle

This is a historical and structural study of the Stalker Film. As a subcategory of the more general Slasher Film, the Stalker Film is often characterised by an off-screen presence that dominates the visual field, and by a recuring combination of character and plot functions. The Stalker Film responds to an ongoing cultural conflict narrativised as the fight to protect self and community, and does so within a specific 1978–81 historical period. As a postmodern work, the surface material of the Stalker Film alludes to past and ongoing cultural forms, to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, for example, to the theories of Sigmund Freud, or even to Laura Mulvey on the male gaze. These forms are not used to enlighten but are exploited to maximum visceral effect. Positioned at the rise of the Reagan era, the Stalker Film questions the Horror Film genre and engages a mass audience response.