The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

Before Jim Van Bebber, the writer, director, and co-editor of The Manson Family , commenced production on his exploitation true-crime splatter flick, the infamous real-life horror story of the Charles Manson Family murders -- a series of murders that transpired in the summer of 1969 and claimed the lives of nine innocent human beings, ten if you include an unborn baby -- had been dramatized only as a single stuffy made-for-TV courtroom drama titled Helter Skelter . While it may have featured a legendary performance from Steve Railsback as Charles Manson, the focus of the narrative was the prosecution of Manson and his cult of deluded, white supremacist followers as told from the perspective of Vincent Bugliosi.  This tragic, stranger-than-fiction chapter in American history is the greatest and most earth-shaking horror story ever committed to the history books, and with its intoxicating cocktail of sex, carnage, emotional manipulation, and a bevy of colorful personalities, Van Bebb...

You're Next  subverts the home invasion slasher subgenre of horror in a number of ways: the protagonist turns out to be a smarter, better prepared, and more ferocious killer than the actual arrow-slinging antagonists targeting her; a couple of the supposed targets are complicit in the slaying of their own family; a few of the characters are unlikable to the degree of daring the viewer to actively root against them; the most obnoxious character is innocent of murder, while the most seemingly innocent and good-natured is a co-conspirator; and the masked, silent assailants eventually remove their masks and verbally interact with the people who enlisted their services.  The gold standard of the home invasion horror subgenre will forever remain Bryan Bertino's The Strangers . Emphasizing the power of intimation and slow-building suspense over graphic demonstrations of viscera, Bertino brought the American slasher back to its blissfully straightforward roots. The story -- a couple a...