The nights have drawn in, there’s a chill in the air and it’s that time of year where I like to do what I, admittedly, like to do pretty much the rest of the year: gather the family around a nice cosy horror film and scare the bejeezus out of ourselves.

I’m especially fortunate, living in Brighton, that there’s a thriving scene of horror fanatics, including the founders of the Classic Horror Campaign, whose raison d’etre is to bring back British horror to our TV screens and who run a brilliant occasional horror film festival called Frighten Brighton.

Last year they ran a day of screenings that traversed the decades from the Thirties to the Seventies. It was fascinating to watch an intricate snapshot of women in horror unfolding before me, reflective of Hollywood’s complex relationship with sexuality, equality, objectification and empowerment.

In just the five films screened – Mad Love, The Cat People, Them, Plague of the Zombies and Phantasm – a gamut of femininity was presented, from virginal innocent to sexual seductress, strident powerful woman to flailing damsel in distress, repressed lesbian to swooning romantic.

In almost all these films there is a notable slide towards objectification; the woman’s body as a object of desire for the monster or mad scientist, the virginal sacrificial lamb, or the slutty cannon fodder helpless to avert her fate. This is reflective of the wider problems within a genre that still churns out women’s bodies to be fondled, fucked, kidnapped and sliced up.

The brilliant, feminist-principled Women in Horror Recognition Month campaign¹ recognises this difficult relationship with horror. Their campaign illustrates that it can be one of the most objectifying genres, but is also an important genre for exploring a vast array of issues – power, psyche, politics, social constructs, war, violence, gender – and therefore that it’s important that women’s roles are recognised and supported.

They provide a platform for women directors, writers, actors and aficionados to get their work seen and to address issues within the industry, as well as misogyny in the genre. They’ve also used social media, blogging and film festivals to explore what horror has to contribute to the female narrative.

It’s a massive area to dig into. There’s been a swathe of material written about women as survivors in horror films – they occupy a myriad of roles: the Final Girl, the matriarch (all hail Ellen Ripley!), the victim who finds her nerve and the avenging angel survivor – frequently a victim of sexual violence.

It’s a rich seam to explore, and there’s a whole other vein to mine exploring the ones who live and the ones who die in horror movies, and what this represents metaphorically, culturally and politically. Equally, there’s a huge area to address when it comes to representations of race in horror – for example, why the last one to live is often a white woman (think Night of the Living Dead). But what about when women themselves are the stuff of nightmares?

Women aren’t always the victims in horror, and whilst there have been significant problems in the history of the genre, it has also been willing to explore areas of female experience that other genres just weren’t ready for, often at times when it would have been deeply contentious to make a film that discussed, say, sexuality or sexual violence, let alone the fact that you’d still be hard pushed to find a film about what a nightmare getting your period can be! There are numerous examples of fantastic writing and performances in horror that explore the feminine diabolique whilst also touching on real world issues underneath.

1936’s Dracula’s Daughter is a fine example of how horror can reflect both the cultural perception of women and the abiding social currents, as well as exploring key issues for women through the figure of a female monster. It was produced as part of the Universal stable of horror films, following directly on the heels of Tod Browning’s Dracula.

Gloria Holden plays the troubled and lonely Countess Zaleska, desperate to cure herself of vampirism. She tries both the occult and psychiatry before giving in to her bloodlust. The film is a Gothic delight, and Holden is dark and intense, quietly terrifying and tragic at the same time.

The film barely contains its sapphic undertones. Zaleska lingers over her female victims, covets their bodies and beauty, and prowls the streets at night in search of blood. The countess is very much a creature of her time in cinematic history, reflecting both the notion that homosexuality was considered a psychiatric malaise, and the censorship movements of the 1930s, with the Hays Code being introduced just a few years before. This was the first regulation code for cinema, reflecting religious and conservative views that any deviant behaviour had to be hidden, including sexual acts, prostitution, white slavery and homosexuality. The film is also a shining example of the demonisation of homosexuality, the portrayal of lesbians as predatory and dangerous and this is reflected in the scene where Zaleska attacks a young model, Lili.

1942’s Cat People likewise has a female monster at its heart. Irena moves to New York from Serbia, falling in love with the charming Oliver and marrying him. Underneath the surface, however, is the secret that she is descended from a wild people who can turn themselves into cats. Irena seems convinced that if she gives in to her passions she will lose control and turn into a cat herself – and her marriage becomes strained by a lack of intimacy.

Again, there is subtext around psychology, sexual repression and the power in a woman unleashing her sexuality. There is also a queer subtext as Irena stalks her husband’s mistress, Alice, and her inner cat is unleashed, suggesting that the repression she felt was her sexuality rather than her lack of ardour for her husband. All this is neatly tucked away from the heavy-handed censors, but easily readable.

Horror provided a way to express and explore female sexuality as complex and powerful – although again, it’s a sign of the times that it was also dangerous and deadly. Both films provided bold representations of female sex and sexuality at a time when it just wouldn’t have been possible to do so in a straightforward feature film. Although the subtext was ultimately tragic and fatal, it was a fair reflection of both the turmoil of coming to terms with being queer and the risk of society’s response if the fact was made public. Horror was the perfect cypher.

Moving forward, horror has continued to provide the perfect medium to explore these themes. The female monster has been a great platform for exploring puberty and all its commensurate delights: it’s all blood, mayhem and rage, after all. Think Carrie at the prom, exploding with fear, confusion and violence at her tormentors, triggered by her menstruation. Think Ginger in Ginger Snaps (2000) – first period, first full moon, morphing to discover her sense of identity, her confidence and her sexual liberation.

Both Carrie and Ginger Snaps are reflective of the fact that we are also still culturally trained to view periods and puberty with a sense of revulsion. There are several key moments in Ginger Snaps where adult characters view menstruation with disgust, implying that the girls should be ashamed of even speaking about it. Our bodies are the centre of the change in puberty, and this is interpreted into a kind of body horror, where the confusion, pain, hormones of puberty are projected outwards.

Carrie acquires powers to impact on the world around her to be able to make herself visible, powerful and a force to be reckoned with for the first time. Ginger starts to pay attention to and receive attention from her peers – she becomes a sexual being as well as a creature of rage. Bianca Nielson’s fascinating article Something’s Wrong, Like More Than You Being Female delves even further into Ginger Snaps’ representation of puberty and is well worth a read.

What is great about the film is the way that Brigitte and Ginger deconstruct their experiences together, sharing their views of their society, their bodies, and of their relationships. It’s notable how isolated Brigitte becomes when she can no longer share Ginger’s experiences. Although these conversations revolve around the fantastical, trying to deal with Ginger’s ‘wolfing out’, they’re also painfully familiar.

The female monster also allows us opportunity to address expectations of the female body. Hammer has a lot to answer for when it comes to heaving bosoms and frail victims in flimsy nighties, but in Countess Dracula (1971) it also addressed ageing. In particular, it addressed the fear of no longer meeting the expectation that women should be beautiful, and the anxiety that to age means to no longer be desirable.

The countess, fearing the loss of her young lovers, takes to bathing in the blood of virgins to retain her youth. Played by horror queen Ingrid Pitt, she was also rooted in the real life Elizabeth Bathory, who was imprisoned for murdering over 80 women and allegedly bathing in their blood. Countess Dracula is a silly, campy horror film, but it also manages to contain moments of poignancy, especially as the countess is forced to face her fate – old, hated and done for. It’s not a cheery message, but it’s a fair reflection of the cultural obsession with youth and beauty.

The girl monster also allows us to explore the idea that what’s outside doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s inside – ideas around appearances that fall outside the norms of society, the idea that ‘the other’ isn’t necessarily horrific, and the idea that monsters, conversely, can come in appealing packages. This is especially powerful when it challenges perceived notions of womanhood and beauty.

In Return of the Living Dead 3, reluctant zombie Julie bodily punishes herself because she’s no longer wholesome and good. She uses pain and piercing to control herself and to make her outside appearance reflect the badness she feels within, self-harming, cutting, modifying and piercing until she loses control. Again, on the surface it’s a silly film, but it’s a powerful scene when we begin to unpick the body as an object of aberration for young women. When Julie modifies herself she appears dangerous and sinister, but ultimately she’s still Julie underneath – she’s still a young woman mortified by herself.

This issue is also brilliantly addressed in last year’s breakthrough horror American Mary. Filmed by twins Jen and Sylvia Soska, and from their point of view explicitly feminist, it deals with the world of extreme body modification – carried out by trainee doctor Mary.

The modified women are deeply challenging representations of femininity and beauty. Their appearances are shocking and extreme, although underneath, they are caring and gentle despite seeming monstrous. This is exemplified by the character Ruby Realdoll, who desires to become sexless and doll-like. Her body has been cut and sliced to become featureless – monstrous to the accepted notion of beauty, but beautiful to her and vital to her self acceptance. The modification has dire consequences and accurately reflects how society rejects the other, often violently.

Mary herself – the ‘normal’ girl – is herself made monstrous, violent and increasingly amoral. In part, this is due to the societal pressures on her, including the fact that surgery is a boys’ club from which she is excluded as a young woman. It is also in part caused by an awful attack carried out by someone who presents themselves as the nice guy – nice job, caring profession, well respected, known to Mary. It’s a very challenging scene, mostly because the directors don’t allow you to look away, and because they refuse to fetishise it to make it more bearable. Horror reflects reality – as the directors themselves said, there are no cutaways in real life.

Importantly, though, Mary is also not a particularly nice person. She looks stunning, but she is not what we expect. She is sharp edged, cold, and self-absorbed; neither a fluffy air-headed beauty nor a bookish high achiever. Horror allows us to subvert some accepted tropes and often spits cultural expectations and stereotypes back in our faces. The fact that American Mary has generated so much discussion about what is and isn’t feminist cinema is fantastic.

Mainstream cinema is still deeply prescriptive about how women can act, talk and be – the girl monster refuses to be chained by these prescriptions. Horror is a brilliant, bloody palate for our real issues, and as a result it’s provided a forum for us to to talk about being a woman in a way that other genres could only dream of.

Of course we should enjoy the thrill of being scared. Of course we should immerse ourselves in the delight of a silly campy horror or a terrifying splatterfest – and no, I’m not suggesting that every horror fest should be an exercise in cinematic analytical criticism. But I love our sinister sisters. They’ve been reclaiming the night for decades.

• Ruth Sullivan is a children’s charity worker by day and avid gamer and consumer of pop culture by night. A former teacher and history nerd, she blogs in a personal capacity at i-conoclastic and is part of the reviews team for Close-Up Film. She tweets as @littlespy.

1. Ed’s Tiny Note: We were ambassadors for the 2013 WiHM campaign, and you can read the blogfest we curated for it here.

Here guest blogger Lydia continues yesterday’s interview about representations of women in horror, and what it’s been like resurrecting Grand Guignol for a modern audience…

So, we’ve just got done talking about the rise of the ‘saw a woman in half’ phenomenon – seems like there are both political  and practical reasons why horror can fall into misogyny. Is this stuff as common as people think?

Tom: There’s tons of it. Tons and tons. We choose not to put on plays like that as they don’t interest us, but in the 1940s and 50s when the Grand Guignol was trying to compete with Hammer, they wrote pure exploitation crap. It’s true of all kinds of horror: you can tell a form is dying when it spills out pure sexualised violence. It doesn’t take much money or skill to produce, but it sells, so the lower end of the horror market is flooded with this kind of thing.

Stew: The nadir of all creative horror genres, periods of productivity, and exciting works always end with women being hacked up. Bad horror tends towards unthinking misogyny and ultraviolence.

Tom: The Friday the 13th sequels, for example, are aimed at teenage boys who want to see tits and gore. It’s not that they’re interested in sexualised violence itself, or damaging women; in fact anything emotionally realistic would probably upset or disturb them – they just want as much sex and as much violence as possible within a given time span.

Stew: For those cynical sequel makers, women are just a convenient vessel for both tits and blood. A lot of the women being killed are topless or have recently been topless, or are even mid-coitus. We’re seeing it again now in the torture porn genre – a term people argue with, but I think it’s completely accurate. In Hostel for example, all we’re seeing is girls chosen for their looks being chopped up.

Tom: More than that – they’re being chopped up in such a way that it’s clear it’s supposed to be a turn-on. Because the films have decent production values, it’s harder to spot. The people producing this stuff are far more competent with a camera and effects than whatever clown the studios hired to make Friday the 13th part 8. So instead of being a sequence of disjointed tat, it lovingly focuses on the bodies, on the violence, in a style that is erotic in and of itself.

Stew: What we’re refuting here, and in our theatre, is that these stereotypes are intrinsic to horror. It’s a lot more interesting than that. Horror is what occurs at the negative extremity of human experience: the points at which we don’t understand something, can’t cope with something, or are driven to actions that are well outside the boundaries of normal behaviour. That covers everything from hauntings to murder and massacres, death, and losing your mind. Anything that we are not fit to cope with can produce horror. It can go as far as Lovecraft and involve gods from beyond time, or it can be a woman killing her child. Violence can be a part of it, but it’s not necessary.

Tom: You can have extreme violence without horror. There are places the two cross over. You could have a legitimate discussion about whether, say, Rambo is a horror film, because it is undoubtedly a film that sets out to be horrific.

Stew: And then there are films which use the tropes of horror but are not horror. Shaun of the Dead is very gory, and terrible things happen, but really it’s not a horror film because it doesn’t exist to horrify.

Tom: There are a lot of horror comedies where horror provides a kind of desktop theme – the styles and shapes, but not the core. And then you have true horror comedies like Drag Me To Hell and almost all of Sam Raimi’s films: genuinely scary, genuinely unnerving and deeply funny.

Those cross-genre films are often the ones that freak me out the most – you get more involved and don’t know what to expect or what’s expected of you.

Tom: Grand Guignol scripts often work towards implicating an audience and making it disgusted with itself – it works you up so that you’re desperate for the payoff, so you want to see mayhem; you want to see everything destroyed. It reveals a lot about people and it’s fascinating, but you have to be careful not to be merely titillating – if they’re never revolted by it then they’ll never really face the facet of themselves that wanted it. When it’s successful, it exposes some fucked up inner feelings buried in the audience’s subconscious and assumptions.

So that old helpless innocent woman trope shows what people want in gender relations?

Tom: I think that’s actually become rather dated. It was never important that she was innocent, more that she was sympathetic. Back in 1890, even 1950, that meant virginal and naïve. That was the woman men wanted to be with and male writers thought women wanted to be. But those same cynical reasons are why in more modern stuff – not just horror – female characters are becoming more sophisticated, interesting and independent. It just reflects the kind of person the majority of men want to be with.

Cynical, but it rings true. What do these tropes say about men?

Tom: Men seem to be pretty blasé about male characters in horror. They just want them to die
interestingly. Unless it’s the killer, and even then, it’s just hoping for more killing.

Stew: There are very few strong male heroes in horror. Maybe Ash, but he’s a buffoon who happens to save the day. Shaun, in Shaun of the Dead, has toughness about him, but again is buffoonish. There aren’t a lot of great male characters running around in horror as a contrast for the problems with women.

Tom: A lot of men die too, it’s just that their deaths aren’t lingered over. In horror films where there’s a long series of victims being killed off sequentially, perhaps the numbers will be split equally male/female, but the last one is almost always a young woman.

Stew: She has survived to the end because she displayed a level of ingenuity that the others – male and female – were incapable of. It harks back to the resourceful gothic heroine.

Tom: So now we have a combination of factors: women are more likely to sympathise with a resourceful, interesting woman, and men are more likely to feel emotional involvement and protectiveness towards a young, attractive, likeable female character. It lacks subtlety, but for a form which doesn’t focus on character development it often turns out like that.

I see an interesting link to the politics of violence, and in particular sexual violence. There’s still a deeply entrenched assumption that male victims should somehow have been able to fight off their attacker; by being defeated you have been proved not to be a proper man, whatever that means. And the shame related to that can be felt to be worse than the crime itself.

Stew: Well, the killers in cheap slasher films, after hacking up topless women, will taunt male victims about their lack of manliness. Freddie and Chucky will always make wisecracks concerning the masculinity of their male victims. They bully and humiliate them before killing them. And then Jason, who has a hockey mask, massive weapon and is all muscles: he’s kind of an ur-male; masculinity pushed to a horrific extreme.

Tom: Of course, this is in slashers, one of the lowest forms of horror; it doesn’t really go anywhere interesting with those ideas.

It’s kind of interesting that even in it’s most simplistic form, people are so addicted to these ideas – the miseryporn biography stories about horrific child abuse that my elderly female relatives are addicted to have so many of the same tropes.

Tom: I think it’s an urge that is common, if not to everyone, then to the vast majority of people, to vicariously experience the negative extremes of human possibilities. To understand somehow what that feels like. The forms in which people enjoy or find it acceptable to explore that differ, but it’s not exclusive to 16-24 year old men.

Lydia: So in fact we have ended up with several distinct things which go by the name ‘horror’. There’s the inherited tropes and structures – the kind of desktop theme that you describe horror comedies playing with, all capes and bats and fainting virgins. Then there’s the market – primarily made up of teenage boys – for unsophisticated tits and violence served up as concentrated as possible, so they sometimes end up overlapping and confused. And then, finally, we have various approaches to the exploration of the negative extremes of human experience. Since the latter plays on the audience’s deeply help assumptions and fears, in its weaker forms it can slip into mere titillation and reinforce stereotypes, but when elevated to an art from, it can shake and move you, reveal yourself to yourself.

Stew: And be fucking scary, yeah.

• Theatre of the Damned official website
• London Horror Festival official website
• @theatreofdamned

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