Before people scream "Bullshit!" and cry foul, let's first clear the air—no, Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre aren't slasher movies. And, sorry, Norman Bates and Leatherface aren't slasher movie killers.
Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre belong to a different subset of scary movies, ones in which some unlucky characters go to the wrong places at the wrong times and find themselves trapped inside a kind of hornet's nest where the hornets have two legs and carve innocent folks up. Imagine if Jason Voorhees never left a ramshackle cabin in the woods, and all 12 (yes, 12!) Friday the 13th movies featured dumb kids tragically stumbling across his secluded domain. If that were the case, Voorhees wouldn't be the most widely recognized slasher movie villain of all time—he'd be Norman Bates in a hockey mask.
