Female Villains in Horror: Carrie White

Poor Cassie..

Whoops! I mean Carrie...

That darn telekinesis will get you in trouble every time.

Carrie White was a meek, socially apprehensive misfit who unfortunately had some special powers. And nothing to do with radioactive spiders or mutated genes. Moving things with your mind isn't exactly cool unless you're cool too. And Carrie White...not so much.

Her mom is a religious nut job who locks her away in a closet when she thinks she needs some Jesus-time and says she's cursed because she got her period (yeah, aren't we all?).



Carrie is relentlessly ridiculed by her peers at school and so she's pretty confused when one of the best looking, most popular guys in school asks her to the senior prom.
[I was pretty baffled as well - in my opinion William Katt (Tommy) isn't exactly anything to write home about.]

Her mother warns her "They're all gonna laugh at you!" about a hundred times, and pretty much forbids her to go to prom, but Carrie, with a new found confidence, ignores her and sets out anyway. And at first, everything is simply dreamy!! Little does she know all her new "friends" rigged the prom queen contest so she would win. For obvious reasons.

I think everyone knows how Carrie wigged out at the prom after the pig's blood was dumped all over her. And at that point in the film, we wanted Carrie to take her revenge. We couldn't wait to see those assholes pay. The burning of the school (and everyone inside) and subsequent murders of her other tormenters gives anybody who's ever been teased, humiliated, laughed at or made a fool of some hope that fate will indeed intervene.



Sadly, after everything that happens, Carrie decides taking her own life is the optimal solution, so when her telekinesis causes her house to crumble around her, she makes the ultimate choice.

But damn if she didn't look terrifying on that stage, dripping in blood and working her magic.

And the joy of that final scene....priceless.



*Buy it here.

Female Villains in Horror: Mommie Dearest

"NO WIRE HANGERS!"



Critically bashed, Mommie Dearest (1981) was a thorn in actress Faye Dunaway's side. She not only received a Razzie for Worst Actress that year, but she has been known to say it ruined her career as a leading lady.

Lord, it's really no wonder. As a kid, after I saw this movie it stuck with me for months. Every time I would close my eyes I would see Dunaway's wicked sneer and hear her screaming about those wire hangers. This is what makes her a villain in what is not considered a horror film but was more frightening to me than Samara and Asami put together. Because your mother is supposed to love you.

The movie is based on the book of the same title by the adopted daughter of Joan Crawford. In her memoirs, Christina Crawford contends her mother had a greater love for her movie career than her, that she was a victim of child abuse, and that Joan was a raging alcoholic.

During the film, we see Christina (Mara Hobel as the youngster and Diana Scarwid as an adult) dealing with the pressure of having such a monster for a mother, and they really did it up well. Dunaway's scary visage was all it took for me to practically run from the room.
If we are to believe all the hype of the story as truth, then Crawford really was a bona fide nut-job.

Apparently she had a furious case of OCD, as she scrubbed her face each morning using boiling water and followed with an ice bath. She bullied and harrassed her household staff, and then moved on to doing the same with her children. Having a string of lovers, she always made Christina refer to them as "uncles" (that's just creepy). She bought her loads of gifts and then gave all but one away. Joan has a ridiculous shit-fit the day she finds Christina in her bedroom playing with her makeup and acting like her mother in front of a mirror. She grabs scissors and hacks off all Christina's hair. No, really.

Joan is - by this point in the film - a rabid, fantastically cruel megalomaniac.
Everything must be exactly as she wants it in life or she flies off the handle. When a movie studio director tells her she's basically washed up, she ends up in her rose garden - in an evening gown no less - hacking up her shrubbery with an ax. Shades of Jack Torrance.



In the most disturbing (and infamous) scene - the one that sticks in my head like flypaper - she storms into Christina's room and goes ape-shit about the use of wire hangers. I mean, she has a major, violent outburst about her daughter's wardrobe. O---kay. What makes it even more frightening is the look of Crawford - hair all pulled back off her face, white night cream smeared all over her face, eyes practically bugging out of her head. (*shudder*)



She also beats the young girl with said hanger, and I don't care who you are that is abominable. Joan then launches into a tirade concerning the condition of Christina's bedroom, believing it to be messy when it actually looks fine. Joan trashes the attached bathroom as well, throwing scouring powder everywhere and making an even bigger wreck of the room, leaving Christina to clean it up amidst fear of severe punishment if things don't end up perfect.

Joan evidentally didn't stop there. When Christina was a bit older she was sent to boarding school - which would have been a blessing in my book. When she gets thrown out of a private acting school due to a chaste encounter with a boy that was perceived as something more, Joan lies to the press about the incident. Christina challenges her mother to the truth and in turn, humiliates Joan to the point of near-insanity. She physically attacks Christina and tries to strangle her! The incident is covered up and Christina is sent to a strict religious academy.

But no! It doesn't end there. Joan marries the head of Pepsi, manipulates him into keeping her in the lavish way she has become accustomed to, then after his death, threatens the powers-that-be at Pepsi to let her remain on the board or she will publicly denounce and ruin Pepsi.



Naturally Joan's reputation continues to deteriorate at a rapid pace, as does, for all intents and purposes, her mental status.

Christina becomes a soap opera actress, and when she is suddenly ill, her studio surprisingly hires her mother as her temporary replacement, until it is blatantly obvious that she is too drunk all the time to continue.

The final kicker is when Joan dies. Christina and her brother are astonished to be told their mother had cut them out of her will and left them nothing. The lawyer tells them simply that Joan had said "they knew the reasons why". Nice.
I think most would have to agree that this is very likely the reason that the memoir by Christina was written. To ostracize and condemn her mother's memory. Whether it is actual truth or not we will never know.

Mommie Dearest is more than deserving of it's schlocky reputation, and it's really a ridiculous piece of filmmaking that seems to be more of a kiss-off from Christina Crawford to her (at that point) dead mother more than anything else.
But I really have to stress that if Joan Crawford was indeed that horrific and detestable, she is probably the most entitiled of our entire group to the female villain designation. For she wasn't just the figment of some random screenwriter's imagination - she was a living, breathing nightmare.

Buy it here.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Alien (1979)



Friday the 13th (1980)



The Hills Run Red (2009)



House of 1000 Corpses (2003)



Mother of Tears (2007)

Female Villains in Horror: Angela Baker

Boasting one of the all-time shock endings in horror, Sleepaway Camp has a great villain in one Angela Baker.
Poor, misunderstood, ridiculed Angela.

A confession: I'm not crazy about this movie. I know, I suppose I should be bound and tossed over a high bridge somewhere for the mere notion, but so be it - it's not my favorite way to spend an hour and a half. To me, it's a formulaic rip-off in a sea of 80's slasher prolificacy.

I do love Felissa Rose in the Angela role though- she does a great job. But let's face it - she spent more time throwing us that same look, with increasing amounts of tension and menace.
See?


--innocent...




--getting perturbed...




--advancing into a menacing mental state...




--and finally... off the deep end.



Right. Yeah, okay.

And certainly the concept of kids getting killed at a summer camp wasn't exactly a fresh idea.
Perhaps that's what pissed me off the most, the fact that Friday the 13th had been released three years prior to this. Seems like these guys took that film, threw in a homo-erotic bent and a surprise ending and voilà! Instant sleeper hit.
But a knock-off just the same.

So why was she a classic villain?

Well, her Dad and her brother were killed in a speed-boat accident (not entirely original, though having Dad be gay was a bright spot of nonconformity) and Angela was sent to live with a kooky aunt and the aunt's son Ricky. As if that wasn't reason enough to be somewhat peculiar, she is sent to a whack summer camp where all everyone is thinking about is getting laid. Even the pedophile cook.

Angela is bullied continually by fellow campers (and even a counselor!) due to her shy nature, nearly accosted sexually by said cook, and teased and eventually wronged by the boy she takes an interest in.

Soon, people start to die off and we as viewers wonder if it is Ricky defending Angela, or perhaps Angela herself getting back at those who continually humiliated her.

While I will admit that some of the deaths were inventive as well as unconvential - curling irons and bees, to name a few -I just really never felt the love for the film in general.

What's extra amusing here is the fact that the camp owner, despite the bodies stacking up, keeps the camp open and at first writes the deaths off as accidents. Whaaa?
Typical mindless slasher flick.

Setting this film apart from others though, is Angela herself. You can almost relate to her character. You actually find yourself feeling bad for her. Hasn't everyone been teased and badgered by someone in their life? And haven't you ever just wanted to take matters into your own hands?
Angela has had a tough going so far in life, and so when the flabbergasting end comes about, you almost feel a sense of sympathy. While watching a wide-eyed, crazed Angela admit not only to being the killer, but then pulling a complete gender 180 was no less than a staggering jolt to any film-goer. One of the most memorable movie endings ever.



But I still don't like it.

Buy it here.

Female Villains in Horror: The Woman in Black

The Woman in Black is seriously one of the most frightening ghost stories I have ever seen.



From the classic ghost story of the same name by Susan Hill, it made an indelible impression on me many years ago the first time I saw it. The book was equally unnerving, and I vividly remember lying in my bed late one night, unable to put it down.

For many years I was content to watch my VHS copy of the film, but then I started getting anxious. What if it broke? So I about killed myself trying to find a copy of it on DVD. It's just not available, people.
But I do own it. I'll just say one word. Bootleg.
My bad.

It is so hard to just pick out certain scary parts because the whole thing is one big study in quiet terror. A chilling sense of dread encompasses nearly every moment of this 1989 UK made-for-tv (surprised?) movie.

This post is a flat-out review, as it's hard for me to just pick a few things.

Arthur Kidd is a young lawyer trying to advance his position within his firm when he is called upon by a superior to close an estate after the death of an elderly recluse who lives far out in a marsh on the outskirts of a tiny town in coastal Britain. Not thrilled with his duty but unable to refuse, he heads out.

He first meets up with Mr. Toovey, the well-to-do owner of a local inn, while on the train into town. The kind man offers to set him up with a room at the inn and then is quite unsettled to learn what Mr. Kidd is there to do. Apparently the decedent had a reputation for being rather eccentric.

When Kidd attends the woman's funeral with the town's local solicitor, they are the only two people there. But he then sees a woman, dressed all in black, in the back of the church. After the service he attempts to locate her to ask if she was related to the deceased, but doesn't see her....until he is in the graveyard while Mrs. Drablow's coffin is being put in the ground.



The vision of her standing in the cemetery is burned on my brain.

When Kidd mentions seeing the woman to the solicitor, the man becomes instantly uneasy and loses all color in his face, immediately changing the subject.

Eventually, Mr. Kidd makes his way out to the Eel Marsh House, convincing a local man to take him there and drop him off, with the intention of returning before the tides change. The home is situated at the end of a causeway through the marsh, and when it is high tide, the water covers any possible route in and out.

After a quick check of the house, Kidd is walking the grounds when he discovers a small cemetery. He is shocked to see the woman in black there again, and this time sees her much closer. The woman is ghostly white (go figure) and has such a look of hatred on her face that he practically runs back to the house.



Rummaging through Mrs. Drablows personal effects and papers, he comes across a death certificate of two people who died on the same day, one of them a child. He listens to some disturbing recordings made by Mrs. Drablow and becomes too ill at ease to wait for the driver. He walks back out the causeway alone to intercept the driver, but instead hears what can only be described as a horrific accident involving a horse and carriage. But the mist is so thick he cannot see. Anxious to help whomever has been hurt, he hurries along only to become lost. He makes it back to the house, and when his driver takes him back into town, he voices his concerns to Mr. Toovey, who in turn recommends he not go back to the house.

Realizing he needs to finish his job at the marsh house or risk his career, he reluctantly decides to return. Mr. Toovey lends Kidd his dog, Spider, to keep him company.

Back at the house and deep into papers involving the estate, Kidd hears noises upstairs and upon investigation, finds the noise coming from behind a locked door. He panics and goes off to get an ax (in a moment of sheer craziness) but when he comes back the door is open. It's a nursery. He hears a child's voice calling out in a greeting, but then the generator begins to fail and he runs to fix it because being in the dark there would be unbearable.

Once the lights are on, he continues his search of Mrs. Drablow's papers, only to discover she had taken a child away from her sister Jennet who was unable to raise it. The child was never to know about his mother's true identity, but one day Jennet steals the child away and attempts to leave by horse and carriage.

As you can surmise by now, they got lost on the causeway and fell into the marsh to their deaths. Hence the "accident" noises Kidd heard. Jennet is now a ghost haunting the Eel Marsh House and the entire town of Crythin Gifford. It is said that when someone sees the woman in black that it forewarns the death of a child.

When Spider runs away in the darkness and back to Mr. Toovey, he becomes worried and goes to check on Mr. Kidd at the Eel Marsh House. He finds him in a state of panic, rambling on about the child calling out to him and about the nursery. But when he shows Mr. Toovey the room, it is a shambles, with everything broken and trashed. This is apparently too much for Kidd, who collapses.

He is taken back to Mr. Toovey's house and nursed back to health. However, is is plagued by terrifying dreams of the woman in black. There is a scene in which he envisions the ghost hovering over him, cackling at him maliciously, that is so distressingly scary that I can see it in my head just thinking about it.



Needless to say, Kidd finally does regain his composure and his health, but he hadn't heard the last from the haunting specter.



I wish everyone could see this film at least once, so you would know what a good old-fashioned ghost story actually looks like. But alas, the original 1989 version is out of print, unless you are savvy and know where to look.

Encouraging news though - apparently it is being remade by Hammer Films for a 2010 release, supposedly in 3D (which I think lends a hokey-ness to just about anything, sadly...) so I guess the tale will be told to new generations, so I'm somewhat anxious to see that. But I seriously doubt they can achieve the nostalgic feel of the simple original.

I realize I've digressed a bit from explaining the straightforward reasons The Woman in Black is a great villain, but let me be clear - this woman is a spine-tingling antagonist from the word go.

Okay, you can't buy the film - so try the book. Buy it here.

Female Villains in Horror: Hedy Carlson

After the deal with the puppy I'd have killed her myself.

Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) kicks her two-timing boyfriend Sam (Steven Weber) out of their apartment and in turn, seeks a roommate to help cover the cost of the rent and to make her boyfriend see that she can live without him.

Hedy Carlson shows up at the door and they get along famously at first.

Hedy is unemployed and rather pathetic, but she helps Allie through the rough patch without Sam and the two spend all their free time together and become close.

Hedy even brings an adorable puppy home for them to share.

What Allie doesn't know is that Hedy has been erasing phone calls from Sam, who wants them to get back together. About the same time, the puppy takes a tumble out the (rather high) apartment window. It does not end well.

Furthermore, Hedy starts dressing more like Allie, and when Hedy finds out Allie and Sam have reconciled, she begins to copy Allie's wardrobe almost stitch per stitch, and even goes as far as getting a haircut and dye job that matches Allie's firecrotch red exactly. They look so similar it's eerie....and completely disturbing to Allie, who confides her misgivings to her neighbor Graham, who is a good friend. He advises her to send Hedy packing.

Allie also searches through Hedy's room and discovers that some bad things happened in her past (a dead twin sister and alot of depression) that prove it would be prudent to get her out of the apartment as soon as possible.

As if all this isn't enough, Hedy (which actually isn't even her real name) brutally attacks Allie's neighbor, nearly killing him. Next she seduces Sam, pretending to be Allie and sneaking into his bed late at night to give him oral sex. Sam doesn't notice at first (naturally!), but after realizing it is Hedy he finds his senses and pushes her away. Rejected and pissed, Hedy stabs Sam in the eye with her stiletto, killing him. Nice one.

Soon after, she holds Allie hostage (to what end, I ask?) in Graham's apartment. When someone comes looking for Allie, Hedy shoots the visitor dead.

Eventually there is a big, extended showdown in which Hedy meets the bad end of a screwdriver.

But man, that scene in the movie where Hedy comes walking down the salon steps (with Allie watching) looking exactly like Allie... scary as hell.

Buy it here.

Female Villains in Horror: Santanico Pandemonium

What we have here is a walking, talking reason for my husband to actually sit through a horror movie, tongue wagging, wishing for more.



In 'From Dusk till Dawn', the beautiful Salma Hayek plays exotic dancer Santanico Pandemonium, who at first, seems content just to stick her foot in Quentin Tarentino's mouth and have a snake wrap around her crotch. Okey doke.

But as things get a little hotter and tempers flare in the club, she shows her true side by morphing into a nasty version of the undead. She's hungry, and George Clooney is on the menu. Can't say I blame her there.

In a movie that spent the first forty-five minutes seemingly as a crime-spree/hostage flick, to see the staff of strippers, bartenders, and even the band suddenly become vampires has to go down in my book as a real head-jerker. And apparently Salma was one of the head vamps.



Unfortunately she isn't a good-looking-while-sporting-fangs-True-Blood kind of vampire, she's more of a Bram Stoker's Dracula-devilish-bat type of bloodsucker. And alas, she meets her end in a gruesome death that only the Evil Dead movies can rival as far as spurting gore goes.

But hey, her dance was something special, 'eh guys?



*Buy it here.

Female Villains in Horror: Samara

Could somebody cut this girl's ratty hair off, please?

Samara from The Ring is one nasty young lady.
For some reason, she has a bug up her ass about being pushed into a well to die by her depressed adoptive mother. 'Course not that Samara had all her chess pieces on the board anyway. It isn't just anyone who can cause an entire ranch of horses to actually go mad and commit suicide (this may very well be the first film I have seen in which animals take their own lives!).



As if the equine holocaust isn't distressing enough, it's also not just anyone who can cause their mother to not only kill the daughter she yearned for so badly, but hurl herself off a cliff to her death. And it is exceedingly rare to have a man become so afraid of the legacy of his daughter's curse that he electrocutes himself with about a hundred electronic devices in his bathtub.
Nice.

It is perplexing that Samara's main goal in life is to have people watch a thirty second videotape of doom just so they "know her story". What an interesting decision on her part - instead of a normal 'see me in the mirror or in the backseat of your car' haunting, she resorts to modern technology for her revenge. (I think it bears asking the question, would it be a DVD if the movie were made today?)

Anyway, Samara's backstory is never given much thought, it seems. We don't know exactly why she is so maliciously unstable - just that she is. And she makes others go off the deep end as well. Either that or you get seven days after watching a video to get your affairs in order - because you're soon to be riding the great Morgan horse in the sky, people.

Samara is nothing if not effective. The contorted looks on people's faces at their time of death is quite gruesome, and the strange stop-motion freaky-walking that these J-Horror films seem so fond of does get under your skin the first time you experience it. Unusual visions and strange occurrences plague the vicitms of viewing the videotape and increase in intensity as your week of impending doom continues.

And to be perfectly honest, the goddamned terrifying scenes of a water-logged Samara climbing out of the well and then the television are images that have stuck with me until this day, and if not for the horse running off the ferry (oh the horror!), those clips would be the worst (read: stupefying) moments in that movie.

Samara continues her wrath in The Ring Two, but the movie cannot bring about the same visceral reaction that the first one does upon seeing it, and is a disappointment. Trying to explain her past and the reason for her homicidal ways just doesn't pan out, and they should have left well enough alone.

But Samara is still one of horror's great villains, and the iconic vision of Samara emerging from the well will be scaring the shit out of new viewers for years to come.

(However, I still say she wouldn't have been as scary if they'd have buzzed off all that stringy black hair plastered to her face. Gah!)

Buy it here.

Yes, I saw The Wolfman...

As it seems everyone else is posting reviews about this one, I thought I'd just go the pro-con route by listing what I liked and disliked.
*Spoilers* follow, heed my warning.

PRO:
The atmosphere was really fantastic. Every bit as dark and ominous as a movie about werewolves should be. There was so much fog in this film it felt like a John Carpenter prop. While it might sound like I am complaining, I'm not. I'm all for the bleak period film that just screams gothic. I loved the look of Sleepy Hollow, Bram Stoker's Dracula, etc. Any film that has a sinister, near-hopeless feel to it is right up my alley.

CON:
Sometimes - and maybe this was just at my theater, I don't know - the film itself was literally too dark. Not in mood but in actual lighting. There are a few scenes, about mid-way through, where Lawrence is hiding out from his pursuers in a shoppe (?) with Gwen - and I couldn't see a blessed thing. Hardly even the outlines of their faces. I could hear the whispering dialogue but as far as seeing reactions upon their faces, ah.... no. Nothing. Too damn dark. Should translate better for me on the small screen at home when I can change my tv settings to "vivid"...

PRO:
The look of the (tremendously huge) Talbot estate had a real Jane Austen-esque feel to it - if Elizabeth Bennet was housing a lycanthrope, of course. The house was practically falling down around them on the outside, and embarrassingly shoddy housekeeping made the inside look like a prehistoric cave or something. Leaves crunching underfoot is not cool when you are inside a house. In other words, it looked great.

CON:
CGI. I know there is a place for it. I realize how important it is to the film industry. But it can be soooo overused (i.e. Van Helsing - a travesty I'll never recover from). In The Wolfman, you knew it was coming. Though I was hoping with the talents of the great Rick Baker that we might be able to squeeze by without any seriously obvious CGI fx. Hmm.. Not so much.

Okay, what was up with the CGI bear? I've heard other reviewers mention this and I too, cannot let it pass without a little dig. Could they really have not hired a bear for like, one day? It didn't have much screen time for heaven's sake.

Add to that the Wolfman and all his leaping and jumping over buildings in a single bound. WTF?
You knew there'd be CGI in the transformation - that was a given. Bring hair in, take hair away...I get it. But I am a practical effects girl. No matter what, it's just more realistic. Sorry.

PRO:
Casting. I don't know about everyone else, but I loved Benecio del Toro in the role of Lawrence Talbot.

I felt he lent an authenticity to the role that might not have come across as well with a lesser actor. Besides being quite a good looking fellow sans wolf-garb, he really made you feel bad for him - he was so stricken after finding out just what he had become. He knew there was no cure, no out for him - and yet he still strived to stop his menacing patriarch.

Emily Blunt was well-cast in the role of Gwen - though believing that she had fallen so hard for her (very) recently deceased fiance's brother so fast was asking me to go a bit too far. I almost felt like I was reading a cheap romance novel.

I very much liked Hugo Weaving as Aberline. First of all, I've liked him since LOTR (and yes, I realize he was in The Matrix, but I'm not a genuine fan) and second, the whole Aberline role was well done, with a slight mention of his connection to the Ripper case. Loved it.

Anthony Hopkins, as the older Talbot, seemed almost a carbon copy of the Van Helsing character he portrayed in Bram Stoker's Dracula. He squints his eyes and smiles maliciously while spouting off warnings of gloom and doom regarding a creature of the night. Yep, Van Helsing all over again. Still, Hopkins always gives his all and this is no exception.

CON:

The fight at the end of the film. I mean, wow. Though the special effects were snazzy enough for Hopkins and del Toro to keep their general specific-to-them 'manly' looks while being taken over by the beast, I still found it rather ridiculous when the elder Talbot starting throwing chairs and ripping off his clothing in a wild fit of rage. Weird. Just weird.
However, the sight of the hulking Talbot mansion filled with flames was hauntingly beautiful.

All of that being said, I still enjoyed the film, and felt it was a worthy addition in the world of re-makes. At least they waited nearly seventy years to do it, instead of merely ten or twenty as seems to be the norm. Sometimes I think we horror fans are too hard on new releases. We rush to the theater on opening weekend and then pick the films apart piece by piece. In the end, the horror genre isn't out to win any Oscars most of the time...it's there to entertain us.
Are we not entertained??

Moreover, I appreciated that they kept the look of the wolfman himself as close to the original '41 version as they did. He didn't morph into a Dog Soldiers-type werewolf - or god forbid one of those New Moon doggies. He turned into a wolf-man. Literally.

There were some frightening elements to the film of course, but nothing that actually scared me.
Probably my favorite part was near the beginning - right before Lawrence is bitten - in the gypsy campsite. People getting violently attacked, snatched away by the roaming fangster. Everyone running away screaming while Lawrence tries to pinpoint just where the beast is. Until all is quiet on the foggy terrain. And you hear that howl.
Well done, that.

On a side note, just as the movie was to begin, a man came into the theater toting his young (like, 8 or 9 year old) daughter and they sat right next to me. I was taken aback, wondering what sense the man had bringing someone so young to a movie of this kind. It is rated R after all. And it's a hard R. There are endless moments of bloody gut-ripping violence....disembowelments, decapitations, limb removals. The poor girl shuddered at every turn and every last jump-scare plotted throughout the film certainly got her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hide her eyes in her father's chest multiple times and I wondered how long it would take for her nightmares to go away.

Later, a friend (you know who you are) mentioned to me that perhaps it would have a positive effect on her after all - maybe she'd become a life-long horror fan (like myself) from this experience, and she'd look back with fond memories of the movie her dad took her to that started her off on her crazy obsession.

I'd like to think that will be the case.