Teenage Wasteland: The Slasher Movie Uncut

In the run-up to every Halloween there’s always a generous helping of horror movie books released from reference guides to coffee table glossies, horror star autobiographies and everything in between.

In truth, many of these are somewhat underwhelming in particular those that pertain to cover the history of horror or a particular subsection of it. They usually feel incomplete, sometimes poorly researched and frankly leave you wondering just how much of a fan of the source material the writer actually is. However, there are no such misgivings about JA Kerswell’s excellent book on the history and progression of the slasher movie, ‘Teenage Wasteland: The Slasher Movie Uncut’. Kerswell’s weighty paperback tome has managed the almost impossible task of including every conceivable slasher flick of note and, indeed, many more that are not.

In terms of completeness, research and knowledge, Teenage Wasteland is the definitive book on the slasher genre yet released. Taking us from the very birth of the genre in the Grand Guignol theatre through the Edgar Wallace mysteries to blood-soaked Italian Giallos and the golden age of the slasher film (1978-1984) and beyond, this is essential stuff.

Kerswell (who runs the excellent slasher movie website hysteria-lives.co.uk) demonstrates a knowledgeable, breezy style of writing throughout and presents his review section in engaging punchy style. But perhaps best of all is the tremendous amount of rare poster and video cover artwork that is displayed generously throughout the book, making it a real visual treat. And this is important because any horror fan will tell you that garish posters and video covers have always been a key part of the fascination with genre (indeed Arrow Video has recently recommissioned retro-style covers for its DVD and blu-ray horror releases).

Any horror freak of the ’80s can remember trolling through woodlice friendly flea-pit video stores thick with the smell of polish in the air making your choice of viewing based almost solely on how promising of blood, gore and sex the cover was. Now those were the days.

Teenage Wasteland is a must-buy for horror fans.

Teenage Wasteland: The Slasher Movie Uncut (text) by Bruce Ackland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.