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.