Guest Author - Andy Boxall

This has been a subject that I have wanted to cover for a while. Horror is a genre that rarely features women in a non-exploitative way, but I was determined to find at least a few films that managed to break this rather unpleasant tradition. But the more I looked the more I found that even the popular ‘positive female character’ roles, had to try very hard to accomplish this.

Let’s take the example of Nancy in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. At first glance, Nancy is a resourceful young woman who defeats the nasty bad guy with clever ingenuity. Look a little closer and she is merely the facilitator for the male Freddy to push his way into her world, turning her into essentially a standard scream queen, and one that does guy stuff like rig traps. Freddy is the star and Nancy gets a scene in the bath. That’s Elm Street done then.

Ridley Scott’s Alien is much better; Ripley is the lead and fighting to do her job in a very male orientated world. She thinks with her head and ultimately wins the day, even if it does involve stripping down to her undies, a scene that stops her from getting top marks. James Cameron’s sequel Aliens also has her fighting against the odds in a testosterone filled group, and gave her a bit more character too. The difference between Ripley and Nancy is that Ripley could have been a male character, but there was no way Nancy could be interchanged this way without a heavy re-write.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (as I feel like I mention this film in every article), Dario Argento’s Suspiria is part way in between Alien and Elm Street. The main character, Suzy is following her career, uncovers nastiness in the dance academy and attempts to get to the bottom of the murders. She doesn’t run to men and nor is the killer a man. Not to bad then, just forget the other stereotypical female roles.

The list goes on with the negative Julia in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, a nasty bit of work using her sexuality to again, facilitate a male character’s entrance into her world. Nicole Kidman in The Others is a mess, but a positive one, as she rallies around holding everything together. Her husband, when he turns up, does nothing but whine and lay in bed. Wes Craven redeems himself slightly with Scream as both Sidney Prescott and Gale Weathers break the traditional slasher film female mould.

My final two choices are the Hollywood remakes of the Japanese movies The Ring and The Grudge. Both have female lead characters, with Naomi Watts being a mother too. They are positive, strong and portrayed as handling their situations realistically. Applying the Ripley test shows no reason why a man could not have played either of these characters. Interesting that the majority of Hollywood scripted movies keep a stereotypical woman on hand, whilst a Japanese film avoids this cliché. The same could also be said of the recent Dark Water remake too, however it is not on a par in film quality terms as the two mentioned above.

Obviously the winners noted above (Alien, The Others, The Ring and The Grudge) are but a drop in the Horror ocean. The genre is an exploitative one and will obviously remain that way, but if a balance could be achieved it would be better not only for the audience but for the genre too. For those who need the exploitation there is a massive back catalogue to look through, but for the modern and future generations it would be nice for them to see a change in the way women are portrayed in the horror film.