The Problem with Women in Horror Films

The Problem With Women In Horror Films

The portrayal of women in horror films is a source of continual disappointment to female fans of the genre. Although a large percentage of horror films are heroine led there relatively few of these who actively participate in their own survival. Despite the rise of women’s lib and equal opportunities horror heroines seem to have changed little since the days when Faye Wray was known as the best scream in the business. Most of them still rely on men to save the day having put themselves in danger in the first place. Nowhere in the movies is the fairytale idea of women more evident than in horror.

Roughly speaking there are four types of women in the horror genre

• í The Frigid Level Headed Girl
• í The Career Minded Woman
• í Sluts
• í Ripley

The Frigid Level Headed Girl

The frigid level headed girl will be the last to be picked off. She will be the one who decides to investigate the strange disappearances and will put herself in harm’s way as a result. She will appear plain compared with the other girls and because of this will have a lot of free time to dwell on things. Although she will be seen to be good in a crisis she will make several elementary mistakes and although she will probably survive she will undoubtedly have to be rescued at least once.

The archetypal frigid level headed girl is Laurie (Jaime Lee Curtis) in John Carpenter’s Halloween. Not only is Laurie is the only babysitter in the film who takes her responsibilities seriously she is the only one who believes in the threat posed by the masked killer. Laurie however is not necessarily a good role model for the little girl she ends up looking after. Although she is supposed to be sensible she goes into buildings possessed by the killer and the only reason that she survives at all is that she is rescued by Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance).

The problem with this type of heroine is that they never seem to survive on their own merits. They are rescued like Sally (Marilyn Burns) at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a wisp of a girl who couldn’t outrun an overweight Gunnar Hansen waving an unwieldy chainsaw. If truck drivers or other strong men do not rescue them they survive by contrived and unrealistic means. Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) survives Freddy Krueger by telling him that she isn’t afraid.

Even when these girls do live they are not allowed to get on with their lives. Instead they become like Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) so introspective that they become unlikeable. By Scream 4 Sidney has become such a survival cliché that the audience is disappointed when fate conspires to keep her alive.

The problem with the frigid level headed girl is that she is never allowed to fulfil her potential. This girl should be allowed to work out the problem of survival on her own but that almost never happens. Instead she is rescued like a helpless child or something incredibly unbelievable happens. The result is that no female fan wants to be Laurie or Sidney. They would rather have self-respect.

The Career Minded Woman

These are usually journalists who are willing to put themselves in the line of fire in order to get a good story. There is nothing to recommend these women. They greatly underestimate the threat level and manage to get other people killed even if they themselves survive.

Again the archetype is from Scream franchise. Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) keeps crowbarring her way into the killers’ path even though it gets her assistants and cameramen murdered. In Scream 4 she even enlists local teenagers because she is sure that they can get her back to height of her fame. She continually puts herself in danger and keeps having to be saved by her husband.

The career minded women in horror films are a liability. In this genre careerism is a bad thing. The women who follow this path are usually punished for it. Their professionalism clouds their judgement and results in death. This is a bad message to give to young women.

Sluts

Sluts are self-explanatory. Quite often they will spend the whole movie in a bikini. They will put themselves at risk by having sex in isolated locations abandoning their responsibilities and will be killed as a result. Normally their deaths will be protracted.

There have been a number of feminist tracts that focus on the fact that the slutty girl dies in a long and painful manner while her sexual partner is usually dispatched very quickly. This is most evident in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Jerry (Allan Danziger) and Pam (Teri McMinn) head out for a romantic tryst at the swimming hole. Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) interrupts. Jerry is killed with a single blow while Pam ends up impaled on a meat hook and then stuffed in a freezer.  

The sluts in horror movies are nymphomaniacs who too busy satisfying their libidos to keep themselves safe. The message seems to be that women who have sex deserve to die. However given that the virgins usually require rescuing there is very little manoeuvrability in this area.

Ripley

Arguably the only woman in a horror film who deserves to live Ripley has spawned a few clones, notably in the cross over Alien verses Predator films. There is a theory that the Ripley role in Alien is that of a man played by a woman. Those who put forward this theory are not basing it on the director’s cut of the film, which clearly hints at a relationship between Ripley and Captain Dallas. Also if Ripley were a man then contempt shown to her by Parker and Brett (Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton) would be less understandable.

By putting forward this theory critics seek to take away the archetypal strong female lead. Women need Ripley because she doesn’t wait to be rescued. She doesn’t reply on men to save her. Ripley doesn’t spend the film running around screaming in her underwear. When Ripley is trapped in the escape pod with the alien she doesn’t utter a shriek. Instead she calmly sings and deals with the situation.

Even when Ripley finally does die she does so on her terms. Ripley chooses death rather than become an alien-spawning puppet.

Female horror fans need Ripley and the women that followed her. They prove that sisters can do it for themselves. Ripley makes many mistakes but she takes the consequences as well. Ripley fights back and she wins. There are not enough women like Ripley.

Arrested Development

There will be other examples of women in horror films. There are the antagonists. There are the matronly types and there is the arm candy. These are women who make up the background and are generally not remembered.

The sad thing is that the eighty years since the horror film was defined the roles for women have barely developed. Women are still punished for being promiscuous or career minded and they mostly rely on men to survive.

This is nowhere more evident that in the film Shark Night. Sara (Sara Paxton) the heroine is pointedly chaste having disfigured her former boyfriend. Her sexually active friends are both killed. The one in a stable relationship gets to die quickly. While the one who has tattoos and is more of a party girl is torn apart by sharks live on the Internet. Sara herself ends up in a cage being fought over by her psycho ex and the good-looking hero. She is completely unable to defend herself and survives as a kind of trophy for the victor. This is not progress.

How to Survive A Final Destination Film

How to Survive a Final Destination Film

If you think about it logically it is not possible to survive a Final Destination film. In the Final Destination series the antagonist is not a machete wielding psychopath or a deranged child killer. In these films the villain is Death himself and everyone knows that the two things that cannot be avoided are death and taxes. Unless of course you are Mitt Romney, who can avoid one of them.

Final Destination 2

At the end of Final Destination 2 there are survivors. Kimberly (A.J. Cook) survives to the end of the film by failing to drown herself in an ambulance. As a method of survival this is not recommended. As she has to be revived by the doctor it can be argued that the only way that she manages to be alive at the end is by dying and coming back again. As all those who have died trying autoerotic asphyxiation are unable to testify, this is a tricky thing to get right. 

The lesson that can be learned from Final Destination 2 is that surviving one film does not guarantee that you will survive the next. Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) is still alive at the end of Final Destination. Her continued existence in the sequel derives from complete isolation. In Final Destination 2 she is seen voluntarily living in the padded cell of a mental institution where no sharp implements or hazardous substances can get at her. Of course she then decides to leave her sanctuary in order to help her friends and as a result dies in an explosion of oxygen.

What Clear’s demise ultimately proves is that Death can be postponed but never avoided. Having made it safely to the end credits Kimberly’s death is announced in a newspaper clipping in a later film.  She is killed alongside fellow survivor Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) thus proving that Death doesn’t like loose ends.

Words of Advice From The Candyman

There is one minor character that manages continual existence throughout that Final Destination franchise. This is of course Mr. Bludworth the creepy coroner played by Tony Todd. His role is unclear. There are those who view him as the manifestation of Death himself. Others see him as a wise man and prophesier. While yet another group think that he is just a creepy weirdo who gets a little more camp as the films go on.

What ever he is he is not to be trusted. In Final Destination 5 he tells the survivors that the way to cheat Death is to give him another victim. The logic says that Death was due a life and he doesn’t care which one he gets as long as his figures balance. This is not the case.

The result of Bludworth’s advice is that one of the characters turns homicidal and the remaining protagonists are so busy basking in their newly won life that they never stop to review the vision in any great detail. If they had they would have remembered that they both survived the bridge falling and that Death wasn’t after them because of that. This may have caused the hero to react a little quicker when he heard the strains of Dust in the Wind and they may have survived the plane.

Therefore when finding yourself in a Final Destination movie Mr Bludworth should be viewed as nothing more than an interesting plot device. He is there to move the story along and not as a cheat key for survival.

Death Always Wins

The only way to survive a Final Destination film is for it to be ordained. If you were meant to survive the initial accident then you will still be alive when the credits roll. As seen at the end of both the fourth and the fifth films this will not save you from being the victim of a later accident but considering that all of your friends have already died in a variety of horrible ways you may see this as form of reunion.

If Death has marked your card then you will die. Death cannot be bargained with. There are no games of chess in the Final Destination films. If you were meant to die in the accident then you will die. There is no cheating Death.

However when finding yourself in one of these films you may take comfort from the fact that everyone is going to die eventually. Even the minor ancillary characters are going to come up against the reaper in the end. You at least know that your death will be quick and it will be soon. Enjoy the life you have because it is precious and will shortly be at an end.

How to Survive A Human Centipede Film

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How to Survive A Human Centipede Film

The Human Centipede crawled into our conciseness in 2009 and shows no signs of going away. Staring life as joke about punishing paedophiles the Human Centipede franchise has mushroomed in a rather sick global phenomenon. There are now Human Centipede cat toys, dolls, necklaces, foot tattoos and even a musical. The film has been parodied by South Park and used as a cultural reference on Radio 4. There have even been Human Centipede live events. So should you find you in one of Tom Six’s happy little films how will you survive?

The simple answer is that you probably won’t.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) has seven characters of any note. Of these only Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) is still breathing at the end. However, as Lindsay has been rendered unable to do anything but crawl and is surgically attached to two corpses in a house full of dead people her fate is pretty much sealed.

Earlier in the film Lindsay did have the chance to escape. Having broken free from her bonds and convinced Dr Heiter (Dieter Laser) that she preferred to drown rather than be part of his experiment Lindsay could have run into the night to summon help. As she was in a theatre gown with no shoes and a cannula in her arm there is a good chance that she would have been believed and the cavalry would have descended. There remains a chance that she would have either been taken for a mental patient or raped by red necks but these are the risks that you have to take when fleeing from a horror movie.

Instead Lindsay makes the classic mistake of going back to rescue her friend Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie). Compassion for ones fellow man is an admirable ideal but in this case makes no logical sense. Dr Heiter already stated that his vision was for a Siamese triplet. Lindsay’s escape would have bought Jenny and Katsuro (Akihiro Kitamura) enough time for her to bring back help. The grim irony is that by returning for Jenny, Lindsay ensured that her friend would eventually die from blood poisoning.  

The moral of First Sequence is that relying on anyone is a bad idea. If the girls had not gone to Dr Heiter for assistance he would not have caught them in the first place. By being force to rely on Katsuro Lindsay is completely trapped when he has an attack of conscience and kills himself.

Then when aid eventually does arrive, it does so in the shape of two of the most inept policemen ever to grace the silver screen. These are so ineffectual that it can be argued that the centipede would have had a greater chance of survival if they hadn’t bothered. That the policemen manage to dispatch Dr Heiter as well as themselves can actually be viewed as the final nail in Lindsay’s coffin. Had Heiter lived he may have saved Lindsay to be reconnected to another pet. Instead it is not even certain whether anyone knew that they were at Heiter’s house and Lindsay is left to a slow uncomfortable death.

The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)

Ironically as the sadism increases so do the chances of survival. In the first film it can be argued that no one survives. In the second there are at least two survivors. Those who have seen the Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), and God bless you for abusing your eyeballs the way that you did, will know that the end is slightly ambiguous. It is possible that the events of the film were simply a twisted fantasy. Only Tom Six knows if this is the case but if it is Martin (Lawrence R. Harvey) must have a psyche not even Arnold Rimmer could have nightmares about. Consequently the rest of this post will be written as if the events of the movie actually took place.

That being the case there are two ways of surviving. The first is to be very nice to the antagonist. In Full Sequence the majority of the ten who made up the centipede had in some way abused Martin and his treatment of them can be seen as a form of revenge. This is not fool proof as some of the kidnapped where just in the wrong place at the wrong time but given that you cannot control fate this is as good a way as any to try to redress the balance.

The second way to survive is to feign death.  The pregnant lady who survives does so by being assumed dead and then unlike Lindsay, in the first film, seizing the opportunity to escape. Her survival is the complete antithesis to Lindsay’s argued death. Lindsay went back to save her friend and presumably dies as a result. The pregnant lady does not even save her own newborn child and gets to live with what she has done.

Fighting however back is not a means of survival. Ashlynn Yennie (playing herself) tries this and gets stabbed in the neck for her trouble. Whether she remains alive at the end of the film is open to debate but even if she is, her chances of survival are only marginally better than that of Lindsay in the first film. Indeed given her injuries they may actually be worse.

The Bad Guys

As for the antagonists the key for their survival appears to be forward planning. Dr Heiter takes his victims as fate delivers them. Martin carefully hunts for his. Although the good doctor is the more balanced of the two it is Martin who survives to the final credits.

The key to surviving if you are going to create a Human Centipede is therefore to ensure that you carefully plan ahead and kill anyone who might catch on to your evil plan. Dr Heiter’s biggest mistake is that he creates his pet in his own home. While his house is safely remote and contains all his equipment it does render deniability impossible. Martin on the other hand uses a warehouse rented by a man he kills. This means that when he gets tired of his creation, as the antagonists in these films seem to do, he can shut the doors and let the authorities chase a ghost.

Perhaps the best way to survive as a villain in a Human Centipede film is to be sympathetic. Dr Heiter never engages with the audience. He is a cold and authoritarian figure. The audience feels nothing for Dr Heiter except revulsion.

Martin is damaged goods. Having been abused by just about everybody it is possible to feel compassion for Martin despite the fact that his crimes are greater than Heiter’s. Given the sickness of the mind that would think that recreating a Human Centipede film was a good idea perhaps being allowed to live is the greatest punishment that Martin can suffer.

How to Survive?

As was stated in the introduction surviving a Human Centipede film is difficult but it is not entirely impossible.  The mortality rate goes from roughly 100% in the first film to approximately 87% in the second. This means that the odds of surviving a Human Centipede film increase with the number of sequels. This is good news for those in Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence). However if you accept the deaths of Lindsay and Ashlynn Yennie not a single person has survived the centipede.

If you do happen to find yourself in a Human Centipede film do anything you can to escape before surgery. This might mean leaving your friends behind or accidently killing your own child but that is the price you pay for survival. The alternative is a painful and unpleasant life followed at best by being shot it in the head.

In the case of Ashlynn Yennie there is no way to survive a Human Centipede film. Her best chance is to lock the doors and windows and hope that Tom Six doesn’t call.

Hey

This blog can about because of the #howtosurviveahorrorfilm trend on twitter. Being an aficionado of the horror genre and the kind of person that tend to over think things I realised that my tips for surviving horror films could not be condensed into 140 characters. So I decided to start a blog and share my tips for living through a horror film. 
If you choose to read this be aware that the following will include spoilers. I hope that the advice will prove useful. 


harleybess