Editing Slasher film (section)

===1981===
Slasher films reached a saturation point in 1981, as heavily promoted movies like ''[[My Bloody Valentine (film)|My Bloody Valentine]]'' and ''[[The Burning (1981 film)|The Burning]]'' were box office failures.{{sfn|Kerswell|2012|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}<ref name="Vera Dika" />{{sfn|Nowell|2011|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} After the success of ''Friday the 13th'', [[Paramount Pictures]] picked up ''[[My Bloody Valentine (film)|My Bloody Valentine]]'' with hopes to achieve similar success. The film became the subject of intense scrutiny in the wake of [[murder of John Lennon|John Lennon's murder]], and was released heavily edited; lacking the draw of gore, ''My Bloody Valentine'' barely sold 2&nbsp;million tickets in North America, much less than the 15&nbsp;million sold by ''Friday the 13th'' the year beforehand.{{sfn|Nowell|2011|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Thematically similar to ''My Bloody Valentine'', ''[[The Prowler (1981 film)|The Prowler]]'' hoped to lure an audience with gore effects by ''Friday the 13th''<nowiki/>'s [[Tom Savini]] but large [[Motion Picture Association|MPAA]] edits contributed to its failure to find a nationwide distributor.{{sfn|Kerswell|2012|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Suffering similar censorship was ''The Burning'', which also employed Savini's special effects, though it does mark the feature film debuts of [[Brad Grey]], [[Holly Hunter]], [[Jason Alexander]], [[Fisher Stevens]], [[Bob Weinstein]] and [[Harvey Weinstein]].

Profits of ''Halloween'' and ''Friday the 13th'' drew studio interest, to varying success. [[Warner Bros.]]'s ''[[Eyes of a Stranger (1981 film)|Eyes of a Stranger]]'' (402,386 admissions)<ref>{{cite web |title=Eyes of a Stranger |url=https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0082352/?ref_=bo_se_r_1 |website=Box Office Mojo}}</ref> and ''[[Night School (1981 film)|Night School]]'' (420,818 admission),<ref>{{cite web |title=Night School |url=https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0082812/?ref_=bo_se_r_2 |website=Box Office Mojo}}</ref>[[Paramount Pictures]]' '' [[The Fan (1981 film)|The Fan]]'' (1.1 million admissions),<ref>{{cite web |title=The Fan |url=https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0082362/?ref_=bo_se_r_2 |website=Box Office Mojo}}</ref> [[Universal Pictures]] ''[[The Funhouse]]'' (2.8 million admissions),<ref>{{cite web |title=The Funhouse |url=https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0082427/?ref_=bo_se_r_1 |website=Box Office Mojo}}</ref> and [[Columbia Pictures]] ''[[Happy Birthday to Me (film)|Happy Birthday to Me]]'' (3.8 million admissions).{{sfn|Nowell|2011|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} [[CBS]]' TV movie, ''[[Dark Night of the Scarecrow]]'' brought the genre to the small screen.{{sfn|Kerswell|2012|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Two sequels had bigger body counts and more gore than their predecessors, but not higher box office intakes. ''[[Friday the 13th Part 2]]'' sold 7.8&nbsp;million tickets and ''[[Halloween II (1981 film)|Halloween II]]'' sold 9.2 million. Both sequels sold under half of their original film's tickets, though they were still very popular (''Halloween II'' was the second highest-grossing horror film of the year behind ''[[An American Werewolf in London]]'').{{sfn|Nowell|2011|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}

Independent companies churned out slasher films ''[[Final Exam (1981 film)|Final Exam]]'', ''[[Bloody Birthday]]'', ''[[Hell Night]]'', ''[[Don't Go in the Woods (1981 film)|Don't Go in the Woods... Alone!]]'', [[Wes Craven]]'s ''[[Deadly Blessing]]'' and ''[[Graduation Day (film)|Graduation Day]]''.{{sfn|Nowell|2011|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Fantasy and sci-fi genres continued to blend with the slasher film in ''[[Strange Behavior]]'', ''[[Ghostkeeper]]'' and ''[[Evilspeak]]''. The international market found Italy's ''[[Absurd (film)|Absurd]]'' and ''[[Madhouse (1981 film)|Madhouse]]'' and Germany's ''[[Bloody Moon]]''.