Women Make Horror

Winner of the the 2021 Best Edited Collection Award from BAFTSS Winner of the 2021 British Fantasy Award in Best Non-Fiction​ ​Finalist for the 2020 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction Runner-Up for Book of the Year in the 19th Annual Rondo Halton Classic Horror Awards​ “But women were never out there making horror films, that’s why they are not written about – you can’t include what doesn’t exist.” “Women are just not that interested in making horror films.” This is what you get when you are a woman working in horror, whether as a writer, academic, festival programmer, or filmmaker. These assumptions are based on decades of flawed scholarly, critical, and industrial thinking about the genre. Women Make Horror sets right these misconceptions. Women have always made horror. They have always been an audience for the genre, and today, as this book reveals, women academics, critics, and filmmakers alike remain committed to a film genre that offers almost unlimited opportunities for exploring and deconstructing social and cultural constructions of gender, femininity, sexuality, and the body. Women Make Horror explores narrative and experimental cinema; short, anthology, and feature filmmaking; and offers case studies of North American, Latin American, European, East Asian, and Australian filmmakers, films, and festivals. With this book we can transform how we think about women filmmakers and genre.

"Women Make Horror is the first book-length study of women filmmakers in horror film, the first all-women edited book on horror film, and the first book to call out the male-bias in written histories of horror and then to illuminate precisely how, and where, these histories are lacking. It re-evaluates existing literature on the history of horror film, on women practitioners in the film industry and approaches to undertaking film industries research. It establishes new approaches for studying women practitioners and illuminates their unexamined contribution to the formation and evolution of the horror genre. The book focuses on women directors and screenwriters but also acknowledges the importance of women producers, editors and cinematographers. It explores narrative and experimental cinema, short, anthology and feature-filmmaking, and offers case studies of North American, Latin American, European, East Asian and Australian filmmakers, films and festivals. With this book we can transform how we think about women filmmakers and genre"--

Women occupy a privileged place in horror film. Horror is a space of entertainment and excitement, of terror and dread, and one that relishes the complexities that arise when boundaries – of taste, of bodies, of reason – are blurred and dismantled. It is also a site of expression and exploration that leverages the narrative and aesthetic horrors of the reproductive, the maternal and the sexual to expose the underpinnings of the social, political and philosophical othering of women. This book offers an in-depth analysis of women in horror films through an exploration of ‘gynaehorror’: films concerned with all aspects of female reproductive horror, from reproductive and sexual organs, to virginity, pregnancy, birth, motherhood and finally to menopause. Some of the themes explored include: the intersection of horror, monstrosity and sexual difference; the relationships between normative female (hetero)sexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; embodiment and subjectivity in horror films about pregnancy and abortion; reproductive technologies, monstrosity and ‘mad science’; the discursive construction and interrogation of monstrous motherhood; and the relationships between menopause, menstruation, hagsploitation and ‘abject barren’ bodies in horror. The book not only offers a feminist interrogation of gynaehorror, but also a counter-reading of the gynaehorrific, that both accounts for and opens up new spaces of productive, radical and subversive monstrosity within a mode of representation and expression that has often been accused of being misogynistic. It therefore makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film specifically, while also providing new insights in the broader area of popular culture, gender and film philosophy.

Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - ‘the eccentric’ - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play. HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an examination of these characters through a daringly personal autobiographical lens. Anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a celebration of female madness, both onscreen and off. This critically-acclaimed publication is packed with rare images that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, Paranormal Activity, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more. Prior to this ebook edition, Kier-La's highly acclaimed book has already been issued twice in hardcover and twice in paperback, garnering extensive press coverage. Endorsement including the following: “God, this woman can write, with a voice and intellect that’s so new. The truth in the most deadly unique way I’ve ever read.” – Ralph Bakshi, director of ‘Fritz the Cat’, ‘Heavy Traffic’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, etc. “Fascinating, engaging and lucidly written: an extraordinary blend of deeply researched academic analysis and revealing memoir.” – Iain Banks, author of ‘The Wasp Factory’

From scream queens to femmes fatale, horror isn’t just for the boys. Gothic media moguls Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence, authors of The Science of Monsters, and co-hosts of the Horror Rewind podcast called “the best horror film podcast out there” by Film Daddy, present a guide to the feminist horror movies, TV shows, and characters we all know and love. Through interviews, film analysis, and bone-chilling discoveries, The Science of Women in Horror uncovers the theories behind women’s most iconic roles of the genre. Explore age-old tropes such as “The Innocent” like Lydia in Beetlejuice, “The Gorgon” like Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th, and “The Mother” like Norma Bates in Pyscho and Bates Motel, and delve deeper into female-forward film and TV including: The Haunting of Hill House Teeth Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Buffy the Vampire Slayer And so much more! Join Kelly and Meg in The Science of Women in Horror as they flip the script and prove that every girl is a “final girl.”

Examining the popularity of low-budget cinema, particularly slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films, the author argues that, while such films have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasure to their mostly male audiences, in actuality they align spectators not with the male tormentor but with the females being tormented--particularly the slasher movie's "final girls"--Who endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves.--Adapted from publisher description.

A showcase of poetry from some of the darkest and most lyrical voices of women in horror. Under Her Skin features the best in never-before-published dark verse and lyrical prose from the voices of Women in Horror. Centered on the innate relationship between body horror and the female experience, this collection features work from Bram-Stoker Award&® winning and nominated authors, as well as dozens of poems from women (cis and trans) and non-binary femmes. Edited by Lindy Ryan and Toni Miller, Under Her Skin celebrates women in horror from cover to cover. In addition to poems contributed by seventy poets, the collection also features a foreword penned by Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) Grand Master and recipient of the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, Linda D. Addison; interior illustrations by Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association Grand Master and recipient of the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award Marge Simon; and cover art by noted horror artist Lynne Hansen. "Not for the faint of heart...Each word and phrase has been structured in such a way that the reader will experience an intense depth of emotion and feelings." —EGuide Magazine "...varied themes, approaches, and poetic structures create a diverse series of horror inspections. Under Her Skin is unparalleled in scope, creativity, and literary strength." —Midwest Book Review

Bloody Women: Women Directors of Horror is the first book-length exploration of female creators at the cutting edge of contemporary horror, turning out some of its most inspired and twisted offerings.