Movies: Proto slasher

When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother....

A New York sculptor who opens a wax museum to showcase the likenesses of famous historical figures runs into trouble with his business partner, who demands that the exhibits become more extreme in order to increase profits....

Loner Mark Lewis works at a film studio during the day and, at night, takes racy photographs of women. Also he's making a documentary on fear, which involves recording the reactions of victims as he murders them. He befriends Helen, the daughter of t...

An elderly heiress is killed by her husband who wants control of her fortunes. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to reduce the inheritance playing field, complicated by some teenagers who decide to camp out in a ...

An English pianist living in Rome witnesses the brutal murder of his neighbor, a psychic. With the help of a tenacious young reporter he tries to discover the killer using very unconventional methods, and the two are soon drawn into a shocking web of...

Alice is a withdrawn 12-year-old who lives with her mother and her younger sister, Karen, who gets most of the attention from her mother, leaving Alice out of the spotlight. When Karen is found brutally murdered in a church, suspicions start to turn ...

After a twenty-year stay at an asylum for a double murder, a mother returns to her estranged daughter where suspicions arise about her behavior....

When two young lovers are savagely beaten and tortured on a back country road in Texarkana, local police are baffled and must find "the Phantom Killer" before he can kill again....

A widow deceives her late husband's mother and brothers into thinking he's still alive when she attends the yearly memorial to his drowned sister, hoping to secure his inheritance, but her cunning is no match for the demented, axe-wielding thing roam...

On a stormy night, the mute servant to an ailing matriarch is stalked by a serial killer....

Trapped in a cave, five men cut the arm off of another companion in order to ward off starvation. After they are saved, their victim seeks revenge on them one by one....

Nerdy Walter Paisley, a maladroit busboy at a beatnik café who doesn't fit in with the cool scene around him, attempts to woo his beautiful co-worker, Carla, by making a bust of her. When his klutziness results in the death of his landlady's cat, he ...

When a leopard escapes during a publicity stunt, it triggers a series of murders....

A disturbed boy kills his father with his farm tractor and his arm is mangled in the process. He's taken to a mental hospital where he's outfitted with a hook to replace his lost hand and, years later, he's eventually released from the asylum. He ret...

A singer holes up at a sinister estate to write new songs for his act. His ex-wife is brutally murdered, and the killer may be stalking him next....

A woman named Emily checks into a hotel and offers the bellboy $2000 to temporarily marry her. We soon find out Emily is the caretaker of a wheelchair-bound mute named Helga, who was the childhood guardian of a pair of siblings: Miriam Webster and he...

In 1957, Dorothy and Edmund Yates were committed to an institution for the criminally insane, she for acts of murder and cannibalism and he for covering up her crimes. Fifteen years later, they are pronounced fit for society and released. However, in...

Actors rehearsing a show at a mysterious seaside theater are being killed off by an unknown maniac....

A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders....

A surgeon discovers that he can restore the beauty to his girlfriend's scarred face by murdering other women and extracting fluids from their pituitary gland. However, the effects only last for a short time, so he has to kill more and more women. It ...