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 t...