To purists (BTW, I’m not one of them), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a horror movie. However, slasher flicks that feature a killer who’s almost indestructable (e.g., the Friday the 13th movies after the first one) or who has come back from the dead (e.g., the Nightmare on Elm Street series) would qualify.
As a horror fan (not sure what a ‘purist’ is, other than the above deifnition), I must disagree. If a horror movie has a big budget and a couple of Oscars, it automatically becomes a thriller. Plenty of actors still turn their noses up at the entire genre, and plenty of moviegoers refuse to see any movie classified as such.
That’s what I was going to say. It’s not horror movie snobs who don’t want common serial killers in their genre, it’s movie snobs who don’t want any genre in their High Art. If you start with the assumption that all horror movies are crap, and you see a movie that is undeniably excellent, then obviously it wasn’t a horror movie. Same sort of thinking that keeps 1984 and Brave New World from being shelved in the science fiction section.
