MaXXXine and Longlegs are hitting theaters and—don’t mind the jump scare— The Blair Witch Project is turning 25. To celebrate, The Ringer presents to you Shriek Week, our celebration of everything that makes the horror movie genre fun, fascinating, and downright terrifying. The first kill in movie history happens, naturally, with an ax.
The 1895 film The Execution of Mary Stuart isn’t particularly impressive by today’s standards. It’s a grainy, 18-second movie (produced by Thomas Edison, of all people) that recreates the death of Mary, Queen of Scots. There’s not much in the way of plot—just a Mary stand-in being placed on a chopping block before an executioner lowers the blade—and there’s an obvious edit when the human is swapped out for a dummy.
But despite the limitations of the infant medium, The Execution of Mary Stuart ’s kill is cold and brutal. Enough so that if you squint as you watch it, you may very well see the first horror movie ever made. Even if you don’t consider The Execution the ur-text of horror, kill scenes like it have been the bedrock of the genre since its inception.
At their best, movies are supposed to tap into something primal within us—and what’s more primal than a fear of death? But movie deaths have evolved many times over in the 130 years since that black-and-white short. Directors like Wes Craven and Sam Raimi have shown us that kills can be provocative or even funny, while some like Eli Roth have found ways to push g.
