Deirdre Crimmins – Bitch Flicks

‘Antibirth’ Continues the Cinematic Tradition of Pregnancy Being Icky

…Horror has a strong tradition of using pregnancy to creep-out audiences too. From ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ to ‘Inside’ we can see that this notion is pervasive. (Don’t even get me started on the horror after the child arrives, but I digress.) ‘Antibirth’ is an interesting new slant on the horror of pregnancy.

This guest post written by Deirdre Crimmins originally appeared at Film Thrills and appears here as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. It is cross-posted with permission.

Pregnancy is weird. Outside of my cat obsession, I consider myself an entirely non-maternal woman, so the thought of having another parasitic organism living inside of me for a full 40 week freaks me out. But beyond my own hang-ups, horror has a strong tradition of using pregnancy to creep-out audiences too. From Rosemary’s Baby to Inside we can see that this notion is pervasive. (Don’t even get me started on the horror after the child arrives, but I digress.)

Antibirth is an interesting new slant on the horror of pregnancy. Lou (Natasha Lyonne) is a hard-partying loser who has little aim in life. She lives on the edges of her crummy town in her deceased father’s nearly abandoned trailer. Hey, it’s free! She has a few glimmers of wanting to make more of herself, or make more money at least, but as soon as she realizes those aspirations involve setting an alarm clock, she rips on her bong and lets the impulse pass. Lou cleans the rooms at the local motels — when she feels like showing up to work — and spends her nights stoned, drunk, or both. After a doozy of a party one night, Lou wakes up bloated and blacked-out. She can’t remember anything after a certain point the night before, but this does not seem particularly alarming or irregular to her. When her health takes a turn for the worse and her belly grows to nearly full-term pregnant overnight, she knows that something is up.

Always nearby Lou and helping her keep the party going is her best friend Sadie (Chloë Sevigny). To the casual observer Sadie has it together slightly more than Lou. She drinks and smokes less, and even owns a car. But Sadie’s involvement with their local drug trafficker, who may be involved in more nefarious ventures too, makes Lou look like the level-headed half of the duo.

Just as Lou is coming to terms with the fact that something may seriously be wrong with her a mysterious stranger shows up. Lorna (Meg Tilly) seeks out Lou and inexplicably knows more about Lou’s condition than Lou herself. What on Earth could be causing Lou’s rapidly swelling belly and bleeding nipples? Perhaps the cause is not of this Earth…

The first two thirds of Antibirth are excellent. The indulgent party scenes are richly shot and are reminiscent of the lush visuals from Spring Breakers and #Horror (which coincidentally features both Lyonne and Sevigny). Brilliantly, Lou’s character is far more complex than she seems on the surface. Though she is a partier, she is also smarter than she appears. It is clear, through Lyonne’s nuanced performance, that her self-medication is to cover familial issues and that she is well-aware of the repercussions of her actions. The body horror that takes place within Lou’s womb adds depth to her already multifaceted character.

The plot boogies along at a fairly good pace, that is, until Lou meets Lorna. At this point the film transitions from being a mix of partying and physical transformation to an overly articulated, plot-preoccupied conspiracy film. While I do appreciate the filmmaker’s intention behind creating an inventive and clearly explained plot, a little ambiguity and some heavy visuals could have taken Antibirth much further.

Not a flawless film, Antibirth is still an interesting look at unwanted and unintentional pregnancy through the eyes of horror. The practical effects, subtle performances and interesting characters keep the film afloat, despite the plot’s best efforts to weigh it down.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Inside: French Pregnant Body Horror at Its Finest

Rosemary’s Baby, Prevenge, and the Evils of the Trump Administration

Deirdre Crimmins is a Cleveland-based film critic who lives with two black cats, and her eternal optimism that the next film she watches might be her new favorite. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and still loves a good musical.

‘The Lure’ Fills the Mermaid Shaped Hole in My Heart

Closer to sirens than friendly flounders these creatures lure men to their deaths and feast on their flesh. … Deadly mermaids, Eastern European pop music, and crushing dreams may not initially seem like a wonderful combination, but The Lure mixes these elements together beautifully.

This guest post written by Deirdre Crimmins originally appeared at Film Thrills and appears here as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. It is cross-posted with permission.

This will be no surprise to readers who know my taste in film, but I like it weird. I like violence intersecting art. I like burlesque mashing-up with David Bowie. And now, thanks to the opening film of the Boston Underground Film Festival, I now know that I like fantastical creatures breaking out into song. Mermaids and musicals: Where have you been all of my life?

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczynska, The Lure is a film that can be easily summarized, but not easily understood because it is far greater than the sum of its parts. The Polish film is a mermaid tale (or tail — get it?) wherein two mermaid sisters wander onto land to become nightclub singers. Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszanska) are minding their own business in the ocean when they happen upon a trio of drunken swimmers, and rather than eating them right away, they agree to follow them to their discothèque.

The Lure builds comfortably upon the classic and violent roots of fairy tales. Like Disney, mermaids are great singers and impossibly beautiful, but unlike Disney traditional mer-people are deadly creatures. Closer to sirens than friendly flounders these creatures lure men to their deaths and feast on their flesh. When on land Golden and Silver are beautiful and playful young women, resembling eunuchs with great breasts. But splash a little water on them and their tails and vaginas emerge. The eel-like tails are not particularly sexy, but that does not stop them from being the object of desire from nearly every man they see.

While on land Silver falls in love, which causes a rift between her and Golden. Golden then turns to rebel against her fading relationship with her sister and seeks the company of another fantastical creature she happens upon one night. The story, and Silver’s blind love of a total loser, is heart breaking, but is overshadowed by the musical numbers in the film.

The musical trio who adopt the mermaid siblings are the featured act at their local dance club. Though there are women dancing, and stripping, during many of their numbers, often the music is enough to keep the crowds happy and drinking. Adding the mermaids and their siren’s songs to the act makes for mesmerizing interruptions to the film in high-concept musical numbers. We see them first singing back-up, before moving forward on stage and dominating the club. During one frenzied punk number the entire audience is gripped by their music and thrown into a manic state of debauchery. Strobing lights, pumping music, and outlandish costumes teeter this scene on the edge of celebratory and frightening chaos, and signal the shifting tide in the film from cute fairy tale to a much darker timeline.

Deadly mermaids, Eastern European pop music, and crushing dreams may not initially seem like a wonderful combination, but The Lure mixes these elements together beautifully. The film is outstandingly odd, and for that I love it.

The Female Gaze in ‘The Guest’: What a View!

Pinning down what makes the camera use a female gaze can be a little tricky, as we have all lived within the male gaze for so long. It is commonplace to see women on display disproportionately while male characters go fully clothed. The gaze’s assumption of heterosexuality also carries over to the infrequently used female gaze, making it slightly more visible. It is this consumption of the male body in ‘The Guest’ which initially establishes the film’s gaze as female.

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

Whether you consider it an homage to 1980s thrillers, or a throwback to action films of the 1990s, it is clear that The Guest has much more meat in it than your typical fast-moving fun flick. Watching the film unfold before you—with both literal and metaphorical guns blazing—it feels intentionally crafted to simultaneously occupy the same space as action films and to also coyly toy with the audience’s expectations of those films. One of the ways that The Guest intentionally subverts audience expectations is its assumption of the female gaze.

Pinning down what makes the camera use a female gaze can be a little tricky, as we have all lived within the male gaze for so long. It is commonplace to see women on display disproportionately while male characters go fully clothed. The gaze’s assumption of heterosexuality also carries over to the infrequently used female gaze, making it slightly more visible. It is this consumption of the male body in The Guest which initially establishes the film’s gaze as female.

Dan Stevens plays the main character, David. Stevens was most well-known to audiences as the romantic and strong cousin Matthew in Downtown Abbey. Matthew made many women in the television show swoon with his soft blond hair and blue eyes. Stevens’s role in the program was decidedly British. From the accent to the tuxedos to living in an honest castle there was a level of exoticness to him. His casting in The Guest adds a level of this “otherness” to a firmly American character.

Just your average American psycho coming home from war.

David is a good old boy. Returning home from Afghanistan he first visits the family of a fallen soldier to pay his respects and carry out the dying man’s wishes. While staying with the Peterson family David quickly establishes himself as their protector, whether they want the help or not. The daughter, Anna (Maika Monroe) seems uncertain at first, but one thing wins her over to David’s good graces: his body.

A quick encounter in the hallway before heading out to a friend’s birthday party put Anna face to pecs with David’s patriotic and glistening muscles. He was just getting out of the shower before dressing for the party, though his timing seems more intentional than fortuitous. David’s towel is slung low, below his hips, and the hot shower has left his body shining in the hallway lights. Anna stutters and can barely get a few words out before recoiling to her bedroom.

With David in his towel the camera’s gaze is firmly female. Not only does it linger across his body, slicing him up into distinct regions of rippling muscle rather than showing him as a whole person, but the entire experience is filmed with sympathy to Anna’s experience. It is in Anna’s reaction we see to the hunk in the hallway. The editing and music in this scene are clearly geared toward aligning with Anna’s pleasure in the sight. She is delighting in seeing this beautiful man in her own home. Though she is slightly embarrassed by her inability to concentrate when faced with such a specimen, she is not ashamed by her desire. Anna’s sexual longing for David’s ripped abs, paired with the audience’s similar want, is presented as a certainty.

This is the most striking visual representation of the female gaze in The Guest, but there are elements in the story that also align the audience with the female characters, rather than the male characters.

When we first meet David he is running. Running down an empty road, toward the Peterson’s house. The mother, Laura (Sheila Kelley), is the only one home to meet him for the first time. As David is an outsider coming in to their town and home, the film establishes itself as coming from the perspective of Laura. The first shot we see of David is from her view of opening the door to meet him. The film’s frame is the same as Laura’s gaze. During their first conversation we follow Laura in and out of her kitchen and we too are initially suspicious of this handsome stranger. As David wins over Laura with his charm and stories from her dead son, we too are won over.

Near the end of The Guest, the film’s tone shifts from that of a thriller with escalating tension to something that resembles a slasher film. It never fully mutates into the horror genre, but the final stand-off between Anna and David is very similar to a cat-and-mouse chase that you would find between serial killer and final victim. Shifting Anna from an actively sexual female gaze to being a near final girl works especially well here because she was never the one being objectified in the film. The audience has always associated its gaze with that of Anna. The typical final girl story first associates itself with the killer, but then pivots to identifying with the last living character. This final girl then bests the killer, with the support of the audience. But in The Guest we have never associated with the killer. We have always kept an emotional distance from David and seen the story from the female perspective.

It is not surprise that The Guest takes on a female gaze, given the history of the filmmakers. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have collaborated on many films over the last five years. They first worked together on A Horrible Way to Die and more recently on You’re Next. You’re Next has been widely discussed as not only one the best horror films of the last decade, but also one of the most feminist.

Wingard and Barrett’s creation of these feminist films (that are still damn good and fun too) can be read as refreshed vision of films made by filmmakers with the female gaze. The female gaze in The Guest makes for a more natural story than the converse. (Objectifying and being seduced by David, the exotic “other,” in the secluded hometown has more likely narrative flow than gazing on Anna or Laura.) And in the end, that should be the goal for any filmmaker. Have enough respect for the story and belief in both your characters and the audience to tell the story as it should be told, from the appropriate perspective, regardless of the gendered gaze.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for All Things Horror. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.

Patterns in Poor Parenting: ‘The Babadook’ and ‘Mommy’

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Last year, two completely different films presented two very similar mothers. Though the lead characters from The Babadook and Mommy do not look alike, their parenting styles, and subsequently their sons, are uncanny. This representation of poor parenting by ill-equipped mothers deserves a closer look.

The Babadook is getting showered with praise as one of the best horror films in decades. It is the story of a widow raising an overactive, imaginative son. Samuel is a well-meaning 7-year-old who misbehaves more than not. He throws tantrums. He builds contraptions like backpack-mounted catapults. He has frequent meltdowns. Samuel is not an easy child and mother Amelia is at the end of her rope when a strange book appears on his bookshelf. The story in the book is that of Mr. Babadook, a modern and all too familiar boogeyman. From here the film dives into Amelia’s coping with this monster and her eventual possession by the Babadook.

Mommy is not a horror film at all, though it does have a few moments that are shocking. The film follows Diana, Die, as she tries to deal with her delinquent son, Steve. Fifteen-year-old Steve has just gotten kicked out of the boarding school for problem children and Die must choose between surrendering him to the government or taking him back to her home. She chooses the latter and tries her best to parent Steve as much as he will tolerate. To say that both Steve and Die have unusual boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate is a criminal understatement, as neither of them seems capable of acting like an adult. Even with such rich characters, curiously the most interesting character in the film turns out to be their neighbor, Kyla. For the purposes of this article I won’t have time to explore her further, but it should be mentioned that there is much more subtext in the film that merely the mother-son relationship.

Before diving into the similarities between Die and Amelia, and Mommy and The Babadook, first I will point out one major discrepancy: the two women look completely different. This is not to say that the actresses have different physical attributes, but instead the conscious costuming of each woman is a polar opposite of the other. Die is a flamboyant dresser who styles herself much younger than she is. Everything she wears is tight, embellished, low-cut, and over accessorized. Her hair has chunky highlights that have grown out. Amelia dresses very simply. When she is not in her plain nurse’s uniform she is wearing either a modest sleeping gown (much of the film takes place over night) or an equally unadorned house dress. She wears no real jewelry, and her hair is always pulled back into a bun. Based on costuming alone Die and Amelia would appear to have nothing in common. But as we begin to look at their histories and character flaws, we see that Mommy and The Babadook in fact have a lot in common.

One of the most obvious correlations between the films is that that neither film is American. The Babadook has seen great success in the US, but it is an Australian production. Mommy is Canadian and is in Quebecoise with English subtitles. This is not to say that Hollywood is not capable of portraying poor mothering on screen, but it is interesting that the most striking examples of bad mothers have not come from America. We often see the evil stepmother in fairy tales, but these women are not responsible for raising the children. Also, in fairy tales these children are shown as good children who have overcome their lack of a caring mother. Here we are looking at children that are kind of jerks, perhaps due to the fact that their mothers are not good parents.

The fact that both Amelia and Die are raising sons is also of note. Casually I have heard films about sons and mothers described as horror films and films about mothers and daughters described as melodramas. Psycho and Friday The 13^th certainly support the theory; however Carrie and Mommy Dearest swiftly disprove it. Not a solid approach to examining films, but it does bring into question the unique relationship between mothers and sons. Amelia never truly understands Samuel’s obsession with building projectile devices. She supports his creativity as much as she can, but cannot relate to his mechanical talents or even his interest in war and destruction. Die herself has issues relating to Steve. She walks in on him masturbating and brushes it off with a laugh though he is clearly humiliated. Her lack of understanding how valued privacy is, especially for teenagers, is disturbing to the audience and frustrating for Steve.

To further the gender politics of their households and their similarities, both Die and Amelia are widows. Amelia’s husband was killed while she was pregnant with Samuel, a fact that he brings up to complete strangers which makes them quite uncomfortable. Die’s husband died many years earlier, however her predicament is more heartbreaking in that Steve remembers his father. He romanticizes their life together when his father was alive. What is clear about both Die and Amelia is that neither has ever moved on or accepted the deaths. Amelia is still in mourning for her husband and allows her inability to mature to impact her relationship with Samuel and everyone around her. Die is also still in love with her husband and has not moved on romantically, but she has accepted her loss as a part of her life. She is not as paralyzed emotionally as Amelia, but she is still in desperate need of therapy to deal with the loss.

Outside of their family dynamics both mothers rely on caring female neighbors to help them with their problem sons. I briefly mentioned Die’s secretive neighbor Kyla, and symmetrically Amelia also receives help from her neighbor Mrs. Roach. These women are not very good mothers, but they are both good at recognizing that they need help with their sons. Kyla helps Steve pass his exams for his GED, and Mrs. Roach takes Samuel to give Amelia a desperately needed break. These women are not capable of handling their sons on their own.

This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting. Too often women are shown as having an innate ability to be amazing mothers with little training or support from others. Rather, Mommy and The Babadook show that women are capable of being bad parents. Their maternal instinct is not strong, and their lack of connection to their sons has in turn created sons with disciplinary and behavioral issues. Women on film are frequently shown in terms of extremes: they are either sluts or saints. There is rarely a gray area for representations of women. By showing women who want to do well, but do not have the skills to parent well, it is a step in the right direction for showing women who are imperfect but fully formed characters. Neither Die nor Amelia fit into the mold of the typical mother we see in films, and the developing variety in portrayals of women is quite welcome.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for http://www.allthingshorror.com/. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.

‘Martyrs’: Female Friendships Can Be Bloody Complex

Often in feminist criticism female friendships are discussed as a great barometer for the authenticity of the female characters. Strong bonds and healthy interactions serve the dual purpose of highlighting positive female roles and for showing the many dimensions of women as whole persons. I propose that in order to continue the push to show women as well-developed characters we also need representations of flawed female friendships.

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Examining the female friendship featured prominently in 2008’s French horror film Martyrs can bring about different conclusions depending on the perspective of the inquest. On one hand, the relationship is the heart of the film and was the force that pulled two young girls through their childhoods at an orphanage. On the other hand, each woman clearly has a different sense of what the basis of their bond is and their friendship is what ultimately leads to their demise. Rather than acting as opposing appreciations of the female friendship in the film, the varied consequences of this friendship function as a testament to the varied consequences of real world friendships.

Martyrs is one of the new wave of French horror films referred to as New French Extremity. These films often feature women as the central characters – Inside and High Tension are two notable examples – though they are ultimately united by their extreme violence. Martyrs is no exception and is quite brutal in its unflinching assaults and deaths.

The story begins briefly in the aforementioned orphanage. Young Anna and Lucie are bunkmates who are both spooked by the dark. Though flashback we see a small glimpse of what horrors Lucie had to endure before the orphanage. Given her state of arrival, it makes sense that she is completely aloof, and that Anna codependently tries to bond with her.

The bulk of the film takes place in present day. Without giving too much away, it is safe to say that Lucie is still haunted by her early life and has not given up her quest to find the couple that tortured her as a small child. She does all that she can to hunt these monsters down, and is unable to function due to this burden of craving vengeance. Anna has been by her side all this time, and sees herself as Lucie’s caretaker. Anna cleans up Lucie’s messes (which can be impressively bloody) and tries to get Lucie to let go of her demons.

When we catch up with the pair, Lucie has just located what she believes is the house of her captors. Given her unstable nature along with the horrors that she believes these people have done to her, the massacre that follows is not surprising. This does not make the assaults any easier to watch, but to see what pain Lucie is in is helps the audience have a bit of compassion for her. With Lucie’s job done, she awaits her cathartic release.

This relief does not come. Anna’s arrival to the house serves as a cool-headed contrast to Lucie’s paranoia. Lucie is self-mutilating, hallucinates, and refutes all of Anna’s attempts to calm her.

Here is where we get to clearly see the dynamics of Lucie and Anna’s friendship. Lucie is not well. She needs someone to watch after her, but is such a danger to herself and others that the task of keeping her intact mentally and physically is impossible. Anna tries as hard as she can to keep Lucie moving towards healing but falls into the Florence Nightingale Effect: Anna is in love with Lucie. Lucie can barely see past the end of her own nose she is so consumed with rage, and Anna cannot see past her romantic feelings for Lucie.

It is this lack of symmetry in their relationship that causes so many issues. Anna must know on some level that she is not trained to help Lucie get better. She is not a nurse or a psychologist, and given Lucie’s far-along psychosis a warm bedside manner is not going to have a significant impact. This nurturing is squarely attributed to Anna’s attraction to Lucie and not to a motherly nature or platonic love. As Anna is trying to comfort Lucie after a fit, Anna takes the opportunity to try to kiss her. A kiss would not benefit Lucie at this moment and is a selfish move by Anna. It exposes her denial of Lucie’s demented state.

Lucie conversely sees Anna as an assistant. She calls her to drive to and from her massacres. Lucie has Anna clean up blood and pushes her to affirm her paranoid notions even when Anna resists placating her.

This is not to say that their relationship is completely negative. Each woman gets a bit of something that they need from the other. More importantly, however, is the fact that they are the only constant family that the other has ever known. From the orphanage to today neither has had another friend or family. The shared history has made then dependent on one another and they would both be completely alone without each other.

Women have complex relationships that develop and change over time. At the very center of Martyrs we have a sordid and multifaceted female friendship that is equally functional and dysfunctional. The filmmakers have gone out of their way to craft a representation of a friendship that cannot be quickly summarized. While these women are both horribly flawed, their corresponding flawed relationship reflects the complexity that women everywhere experience with their own friends. Though I do hope your own friendships have a lower body count.

Deirdre Crimmins is a staff writer for AllThingsHorror.com and wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romeo. She lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats.

‘Night of the Living Dead’: Early Reception and Gender Performances

In terms of gender representations, both men and women are shown as the worst possible version of themselves. Barbra swings back and forth from being near catatonic and unable to communicate, to wild and hysterical. Ben even slaps her at one point to get her to snap out of her state. She is weak and unable to deal with the emotions of seeing her brother attacked. Barbra would have already been killed and reanimated were it not for the über masculine Ben to save her from the perils that lie outside.

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

George Romero’s 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead is a film that needs to be put into its proper context to truly appreciate it. With this week’s focus on cult films, which are defined by their reception rather than standing alone as artists’ endeavors, it makes sense to first look at the film’s early history of release before diving into its mainly problematic gender representations.

Night of the Living Dead was a micro budgeted independent film, made by a group of filmmakers who had most of their filming experiences with advertising. Romero had a life-long love of horror films (shooting one as a child on Super 8 led to a mishap that ended with him getting sent to boarding school), and he knew horror had potential for great profits. After all, the ghouls (the modern zombie was essentially invented in this film, but Romero only referred to his reanimated dead as “ghouls” because the term zombie referred specifically to Haitian voodoo victims) in his film required very little makeup and were a cheap monster to create.

The film famously had two major setbacks early on. First, Romero decided last minute to change the film’s title from Night of the Flesh Eaters. Unfortunately, the copyright declaration on the original title card was not reinstated on the new one, and Night of the Living Dead has been in public domain ever since its initial release. The second setback was a scathing review by Roger Ebert. He had gone to see the film when it was playing as a matinée. In the pre-multiplex era the earlier screening times were typically reserved for young children, and Night of the Living Dead was mistakenly programmed to be shown to a very young crowd. Ebert lamented:

The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.

After this review, other critics began discussing how to handle ultra-violence in film. The expected suggestions of censorship, and comparisons to pornography were thrown around as the film suffered at the box office. It wasn’t until Night of the Living Dead gained popularity in European film festivals that critics began to see the film as something truly groundbreaking.

It is tough to see the film today as you would have 45 years ago, but the film itself really was something special. To compare it to a contemporary horror film is one way to highlight its distinctiveness. Rosemary’s Baby was released in 1968 as well, and is an equally worshipped horror classic. That film, however, is in color, had recognizable actors starring in it, was beautifully scored, and was clearly a big budget production. With this comparison, Night of the Living Dead was essentially the Blair Witch of its time. It was set in a farm house and actually filmed at a farm house rather than an ersatz farm house in a studio lot somewhere in Hollywood. The camera work is imperfect, and the sound is not polished. The performances are raw and from unknown actors. The ending of the film is frequently compared to Vietnam War footage, and that is exactly the frame of reference that audiences at the time were bringing to the film. It felt more real than anything else they could see in the theater, and the effect is brutal.

The film is at its core an outbreak film. Some sort of other worldly satellite debris is causing the dead in to come back to life and to feast upon the living. This is very unfortunate for Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner), as they are on their way to a cemetery to lay a wreath. Very quickly they are attacked, Johnny is killed, and Barbra is left to hysterically seek shelter. She finds a farmhouse which is presumptively safer than the outside, but she is not alone. Ben (Duane Jones) is a determined, organized, and armed man, who is on the house’s first floor. In the basement a young couple, Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley) hide from the ghouls along with the Cooper family (Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, and Kyra Schon). As soon as Harry Cooper emerges from the basement, he and Ben fight about the best way to get out of the house and travel to one of the safe zones that the emergency broadcasters keep urging survivors to evacuate to.

Despite Barbra’s shortcomings, she is not the most negative character in Night of the Living Dead. Both Ben and Harry’s overly masculine performances are what ultimately lead to the group’s downfall. They are completely unwilling to compromise or even band together to save all of their lives. Instead they bicker and insult one another, looking like a pair of Galapagos albatrosses in the middle of mating dance. It is their pig-headed defiance, which means that they each resort to death before compromising their gender performances. Had either one of them been more intent in survival over ego, they all may have survived.

None of the characters in Night of the Living Dead are the sort of folks that you would want to grab a cup of coffee with. Though this was long before the introduction of the slasher sub-genre, Romero was on to something with maintaining characters that you don’t mind seeing killed. No one in the audience was mourning Harry or Barbra when each of them was eaten by the undead. Ben’s death is tragic, but more due to the timing of it than his good nature. In the end the most interesting characters are the ones that are encircling the house, waiting to feast. And isn’t that a wonderful prediction of the zombie film as we know it today?

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and a non-spooky black cat. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for http://www.allthingshorroronline.net/.

‘Inside’: French Pregnant Body Horror At Its Finest

Guest post written by Deirdre Crimmins for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Content note: Discussion of violence directed at women and violent images ahead. Spoiler alert.

Horror films have a unique way of showcasing exactly what we fear, but they often do so in a subtle way. While is it goes without saying that ax-wielding maniacs are to be feared, these films often slyly expose the issues that our society is too shy to deal with head on. In the 2007 French horror film Inside (directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury), fertility, reproduction, and infant loss are dealt with in a refreshingly direct and uncompromisingly bloody outcome, with no room for subtlety.

The film takes place during the course of Sarah’s last night alone before having her child’s delivery induced the next morning. Sarah (Alysson Paradis) lost her husband in a terrible car accident just a few weeks earlier. The crash is shown multiple times through the film, which illustrates the haunting presence of the loss in every moment of her day-to-day life. We see the crash from the perspective of her child in utero as well, which also frames this unborn child as a character in the film.

With the circumstances of Sarah’s pregnancy she is denied the typical rituals of birthing. She has no partner to help her pick out the child’s name. The birth date is decided by her doctor in a cold and clinical office, removing the excitement and surprise of delivery. Rather than spending the night before the birth readying the nursery and enjoying their last night together as a childless couple, Sarah is all alone.

That is, Sarah is alone until she is stalked by a mysterious stranger who appears at her door. The stranger is a woman (played by Béatrice Dalle) dressed all in black who tries everything she can to get Sarah to open the door. After an initial creepy stand-off, the woman forces her way in to the home, and the horror begins. This nameless woman wants Sarah’s child, and she is not waiting around for the birth.

The next hour of the film is a bloody cat and mouse chase between Sarah and this woman. The film is smart, and incredibly gory. Neither of these women hold back on violent acts to get, or keep, what they want.

Sarah

To begin to examine a horror film, there are several questions that can aid in the dissection of its purpose. When looking at Inside it can be helpful to pose this question: Where is the horror? By looking at the source of horror in the film, we can better understand what we are to fear.

Clearly the first level of horror in Inside is in the intruder. Her bloodlust for Sarah’s unborn child drives her violence. Initially, it is this desire for the child that is problematic. We find out later in the film that not only was this woman pregnant recently, but that she lost her child in the same car accident that killed Sarah’s husband. This unveiling in the plot is what shows the complicated relationship that Inside has with infant loss.

With this we see that another dimension of the horror in the film lies in the intruder’s loss of her pregnancy. She was nearly full term, and we see the car accident from inside her womb. The well-developed, though unborn, child is distressed by the jolt the crash delivered, and reacts as the amniotic fluid clouds up with blood. One can only imagine the pain suffered by the loss of a pregnancy at this stage, however the emotional havoc she sustains cannot justify her attack on Sarah, can it? Sarah was driving the car, after all. Is it too much of a stretch to demand from Sarah what Sarah took from her? It obviously is too much to ask, however the logical leap is not a far one to make.

Outside of the blame for the lost child lies a classic example of body horror. Films that contain plenty of gore are often, though not exclusively, “body horror” films. Here it is the body itself that is the source of the horror. The pain, blood, dismemberment, and other organic fluids in the film are definite sources of horror in Inside. The fact that the intruder is treating Sarah like merely a vessel that holds a child, and treats Sarah’s body with so little respect that this is clear, is horrific. Sarah is chased, tortured, and ultimately given a non-consensual cesarean, all to the horror of the audience. This treatment of Sarah and the fact that her body, and in particular her pregnant body, is the source of much of the horror in the film, that makes this a body horror film.

Despite the horror of two women battling one another for an unborn child, the film is quite feminist. Both of these women are smart (deranged and depressed respectively, but both make choices to further their own agendas in constructive ways). Sarah does have men who show up to attempt to rescue her, but with each effort these rescuers are outsmarted and brutally killed by the woman in black. Also, neither Sarah nor the intruder are ever shown as weak due to their womanhood. Both are shown as strong, self-sufficient people who just so happen to disagree over who should get to keep Sarah’s child.

Woman in Black

Though Inside deals with the horrors of the body, and the emotional response to losing a child, it does not treat pregnancy with romanticism or nostalgia. Sarah and the intruder are treated as believable characters that are each reacting to the extreme situations that they have found themselves in. It is this even-handed treatment of pregnant women as still functioning members of society, and not dainty figurines that have no autonomy, which makes the film a horror that you can empathize with. By putting well rounded, relatable characters in (hopefully) unrelatable situations you can just sit back and watch the blood flow.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.

Horror Week 2012: ‘Absentia’ Showcases Terror, Strong Female Characters and Sisterhood

Guest post written by Deirdre Crimmins.

Though I like explosions and interesting methods of execution as much as any other horror fan, it is always great characterization and relationships that make a horror film great. Actually, great characters and their relationships are what help make any film great, but often they are an afterthought in horror films. Too often we see a group of teenagers getting hunted by a maniac, and we never know any of their names or why they were poking around that abandoned cabin in the first place. And while I do like those sorts of films — I would even argue that torture porn films should have a place in horror’s canon — it is the films that have characters I care for that haunt me for years. And should that not be the goal for any horror film?

Last year’s Absentia is just such a film. I first saw it when it was making its lauded tour of the film festival circuit, and to this day certain scenes and concepts in it still disturb me. These images grab me in the middle of my day-to-day life and make me uneasy to continue on. Absentia terrified me, which is not an easy thing to do.

In addition to actually being scary (something that an unfortunate number of current horror films avoid) Absentia also features two lead female characters, and the bedrock of the film’s plot is their relationship. These two characters, sisters Callie (Katie Parker) and Tricia (Courney Bell) are not there simply to be eye candy, or to function as the lustful objects of affection for a killer, but rather they are there because they are both strong, flawed, and painfully relatable. It does not necessarily matter that they are women, but it matters more that they are family and that writer/director Mike Flanagan has created two fully formed characters, rather than all too common caricatures.

L-R: Callie (Katie Parker) and Tricia (Courtney Bell) in Absentia

The film starts with the reunion of Callie and Tricia. Callie is the younger, free-spirited and troubled sister, who has wandered in and out of her sister’s life since they were young. She has come to be with Tricia at a time when Tricia needs her most. Seven years ago Tricia’s husband, Daniel (Morgan Peter Brown) disappeared without a trace. No note, no body — just gone. Tricia needs Callie there for strength as she mourns. She is no longer mourning the loss of Daniel, but now is struggling with the loss of hope. Tricia has decided to finally declare Daniel as dead in absentia. Callie is eager to be at Tricia’s side as she too is trying desperately to get her life back on track.

Tricia’s decision to legally acknowledge Daniel’s death has reignited a host of emotions that she has little to no control over. She has clearly moved on in some ways, as she is nearly 8 months pregnant with the lead detective’s child, but that does not stop her from the dread and guilt of finally letting go. Tricia has taken up Buddhist meditation as a way to calm and center herself, which is a mystery to the Catholic Callie.

Though the initial circumstances of the sister’s reunion seem more like a melodrama than a horror film, the film’s plot quickly twists and turns from there with each sister confronting their own demons (possibly literally) and negotiating their levels of trust in one another.

Tricia (Courtney Bell) in Absentia

For Tricia, her biggest battle initially is that she keeps seeing Daniel. His image jumps out at her in the middle of the street, or at the back of her closet. And the Daniel she keeps seeing is not the Daniel she lost. He is gaunt, and in pain, and seems to be stalking her so that she cannot move on with her life. Each time Daniel pops up on screen, it makes you jump in fear. It is both startling, and the image itself of this disheveled, whimper of a man is disturbing. However these instances are not just the cheap jumps that would scare you in a haunted house. When Daniel is there, the camera does not flinch. Rather you get to see how painful it is for Tricia to be living in fear of these moments. She cannot escape the horror of her husband’s mysterious disappearance, and the prospect of never being able to live without him terrifies her. By watching her fright and seeing this woman who has been through so much continue to get emotionally berated that the real horror of her situation becomes clear. The horror is in Daniel’s lingering, and not in his sudden appearance.

Callie is having her own issues with the curious neighborhood she has moved to. It seems that people, and small animals, often go missing on Tricia’s street. There is a long dark tunnel just at their cul-de-sac that seems to keep calling Callie, though her instincts tell her to stay away. It is the lure of that tunnel, and what might be lurking beneath it, which is the true terror of the film.

Callie (Katie Parker) in Absentia

I cannot emphasize enough how astoundingly convincing the two lead characters are. Both actresses deliver nuanced and genuine performances as believable sisters. These two have a long and complicated history together, and their relationship cannot be summed up with a single line of dialogue. However they do communicate their relationship by how they act around one another, how they fight, and how they forgive. You feel deeply for each of them, and understand the longing they each feel to be forgiven by one another for all of the issues in their past.

While I could continue on about the remarkable characterization of Callie and Tricia, it saddens me a little bit that strong non-sexualized female characters in horror films are such a unique phenomenon. While there are plenty of ass-kicking final women in slasher films, and many smart lady doctors who help stop the spread of a zombie outbreak, it is rare to feature a realistic female friendship, or a complicated sibling rivalry, in a horror film. Both Callie and Tricia are attractive, but that is not why they are there. The purpose that they are serving goes so far beyond their gender and their bodies that the contrast to other horror vixens seems like night and day. And neither of them plays the victim, or the unnaturally stoic heroine. They are both complex, and with long histories that they carry with themselves, and impact their judgments.

Had Absentia featured the relationship between two brothers, rather than the sisters, it would still be an artfully crafted, ambitious, successful, and utterly terrifying horror film. The fact that is does feature two multi-dimensional female leads makes it that much more satisfying and original. It is one of the few recent horror films that I recommend to every horror fan, without a single reservation.

———-

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘Singin’ In the Rain’

This is a guest review by Deirdre Crimmins.

Singin’ In The Rain (dir. Stanley Donan & Gene Kelly)

Though my first love in cinema will always be horror films, I have such an affection for musicals. The glitzy costumes. The aggressively perky and optimistic characters. The song and dance that always seems spontaneous, and from the heart. This odd, and utterly fabricated world, is always both the complete antithesis, and the perfect compliment to the grimy underbelly of film in which I typically dwell. In fact, you will even find an umbrella just for Gene Kelly nestled in my tattoos amongst the zombies and vampires.

While the genre can whisk you away to foreign lands, and domestic bliss, it is also historically problematic when it comes it its representations of women, and gender in general. Though the men are singing and dancing, they are always men’s men, expressing their gender through ruggedness and emotional unavailability. The women are often window dressing, and pawns in the plot, rather than autonomous people who have actual emotions and ambitions. Singin’ In The Rain suffers from some of the same issues that many musicals have with their treatment of genders, but it does have a surprisingly progressive character as well.

First, we must cover the unfortunate representation of women in the film. Even within the context of a film released in 1952, but portraying the invention of the talking pictures in 1927, it has some nearly inexcusable moments. The worst of which is the “Beautiful Girls” number. The title of this song, crooned by a matinee idol, is just the beginning of my issues with it. The song follows a man describing all of the latest fashions for a modern woman as we see each of these outfits modeled by woman in dioramas to showcase the fashion as it would be worn in the world. Each of the women is frozen in place, to mimic a lifeless, soulless, mannequin, with varying degrees of success in not fidgeting. This transformation from people to objects is enough to put many people into a gender misrepresentation-spin, but my issues with the sequence does not stop there. The culmination of this sequence is when the modern “girl’s” life hits its highest point: the wedding dress. The music soars, and it is clear that all of her outfits and activities have built towards this final costume. When this gown is revealed all of the women come to life, and then surround the singer to frame him as he belts out those last lyrics. Clearly this sequence in particular is communicating the end all, be all of a woman’s life is her wedding. After that there is no more soaring musical numbers, and no more fancy outfits to be had. While this sequence does have major problems ideologically, it is unfortunately not too far from how women are portrayed today as well. If you browse any modern newsstand you will still see these framed female bodies, each frozen in their own dioramas of life with the perfectly corresponding outfit. You will also see the great white wedding dress being sold as the most important object a woman will ever buy. This is why I hesitate to be too critical of the film–we are not too far from these representations. It by no means validates these portrayals, but it does put them in perspective.

Somehow, in the sea of women (all of them far past the age of being called “girl), swaying next to the crooner is our heroine, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds). Kathy is by far one of my favorite, and the best characterized, women in musicals of this era.

We first meet Kathy when Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) jumps in to her car to escape a throng of overzealous fans. With Kathy driving herself we instantly associate her with independence. And unlike the pursing fans, Kathy can act logically and contain herself.

Inevitably Kathy and Don fall in love, and spend the rest of film ensuring that they are able to stay together while growing their careers.

The thing that I find unique about Kathy’s character is that she is so balanced. She is never a caricature. She is able to keep up with Don and his buddy Cosmo (Donald O’Connor), but she never veers into becoming “one of the guys” by sacrificing her femininity just to match them in comedic timing. She also dances and sings along with them, but never as a partner who is put there to make Don look better. And it seems no matter what else is thrown at her, she remains herself. Being so self aware and content is not always shown for characters in musicals. Frequently the women are shown as aggressive career women who sacrifice themselves for their careers (Majorie Reynolds in Holiday Inn) or women who are put there just to be romanced by the main character. Kathy is strong enough to not only know who she is, but also can be true to herself and pursue both her personal life and her career.

It is this intersection of career and love which makes the final scene in the film heart wrenching. At a film premier Kathy is called upon to continue providing the voice for the shrieking silent film star Lina (Jean Hagen), at the expense of her own burgeoning career. Singing for Lina again would mean giving up any hope for singing herself, but both the head of the studio and Don are threatening her with ending her career if she refuses. She begrudgingly agrees to help them, but tells Don that she can’t love him if he asks her to sacrifice her career for his. Though their love is so strong, Kathy knows that what Don is asking her to do is selfish, and goes against what her desires are. She is clearly pained by the decision, which is refreshing to see. She wants both love and career, and knows that she should not be forced to choose between the two. In the end, Don and Cosmo expose Lina for what she is, and Kathy’s career and love life are saved. I have no objections to the fact that Kathy is saved by the men of the film. Conversely, I celebrate that Don needed to find a way to save Kathy’s career in order to win her back. He could have just let her run away, and then attempt to woo her back after the fact, but in order to win her heart again he needed to prove to her that he took her career as seriously as his own. Had he not prioritized her career, their relationship would be ultimately doomed.

With Kathy’s level-headed portrayal in Singin’ In The Rain it is easy for me to long for other women characters in modern film to be like her. It is her self-assuredness, and strength without stubbornness that make her believable and admirable. And any woman who can effortlessly keep up with Gene Kelly should be considered heroic.

———-

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.

Indie Spirit John Cassavetes Award Nominee Review: Bellflower

Bellflower (2011)

This is a guest post from Deirdre Crimmins.

On the surface Bellflower seems very much like a film made by men, for men. Staring director Evan Glodell, and shot on homemade cameras, the film begins by following Woodrow (Glodell) and his buddy Aiden as they build flame throwers from scratch to outfit their imaginary post-apocalyptic gang “Mother Medusa.” But while watching the film, the stereotypical “dude” exterior quickly wilts away and you are left watching an original, intimate portrayal of a love gone wrong; a love gone, horrifically, violently, and very engagingly wrong. The film ultimately defies gender constraints by showing complex characters that are developed much more than in a typical Hollywood film.

While the film starts by focusing its attention on Woodrow and Aiden’s weapon building, it is not actually about that. The film is actually about Woodrow and Milly. Woodrow first meets Milly at a local bar, where they are both casually hanging with their friends. When the bar introduces a cricket eating competition, both Woodrow and Milly flirt their way up on stage, chomp on those disgusting bugs, and end up in each other’s hearts. The next night they go on their first official date, which they spontaneously turn into a road trip from southern California to a Texas greasy spoon for barbeque. They seem like the perfect match. Both are young, impulsive, pretty hipsters, who are witty, sarcastic, and they enjoy completely launching themselves into the depths of an instant relationship with no reservations.

Milly and Woodrow

The problem comes when these two love birds attempt to settle down and turn their whirlwind romance into a stable, domestic relationship. Milly prophetically warns Woodrow that she is often the one who hurts the other person when in a relationship, but through his rose-colored glasses Woodrow doesn’t believe her. Woodrow becomes smothering, and Milly’s knee jerk reaction is cheating on him, and, ultimately choosing her previous free-spirited lifestyle over Woodrow’s stifling affection. After their heated break-up, an accident leaves Woodrow in the hospital with plenty of time to recover and wallow in his self-pity.

Here is where the ingenuity of Bellflower really begins to take shape. While a different film might follow Woodrow’s plotting to get back at Milly or, more optimistically, try to win her back, these scenarios do not happen here. Woodrow tries to pour himself back in to his work (after all, that car with built-in flamethrowers isn’t going to assemble itself), and even tries to date a friend, Courtney, who has been throwing herself at him. But none of it works, and he cannot get over Milly. He seems to snap suddenly, and wants revenge. Milly is ready for him, and after his attack, she engages with him in an ever-escalating sequence of vengeance. Both Milly and Woodward become monsters: they are unpredictable, and are hell-bent on permanently damaging each other. The film takes a decided turn from romance, to horror, along with buckets of blood, and bodies piling up.

A turn from romance to horror.

This sharp turn in tone is what makes Bellflower memorable. It is impulsive, and does not follow the typical conventions of narrative cinema. However, what makes the film successful in this execution is the extensive character development.

All of the characters in the film are complete, flawed, and at times vulnerable. We get a rare insight into the heart-to-hearts between Aiden and Woodrow. We also can see the internal conflict in Milly as she is torn between being tied down to a man she clearly loves, and the love of her independent life. Both the women and the men are portrayed as actual people, and not single-dimensional caricatures.

Additionally, the treatment of both women and men in respect to their gender portrayals is like a breath of fresh air. Though Aiden and Woodrow spend their time doing typically masculine activities in their workshop, they are doing it because they are unnaturally obsessed with Mad Max, and not because they are acting the part of manly men. And while in their shop, they are usually talking about the machines themselves, and occasionally Milly. As a woman in the audience who thinks flamethrowers are pretty bad-ass too, I am not alienated, or made to feel voyeuristic for peering into their world, because Glodell is not creating any reason for me to think that women would be unwelcome here. If you share their love for post-apocalyptic armament, then you are at home here too.

Milly herself is most decidedly a feminine woman, but the flaws in her character are just single elements that make up the larger web of her personality. When you know very little about a character aside from their flaws (think an evil Disney queen), it is easy for the audience to boil their negative aspects down to their demographics, rather than them as individuals. (For example, the evil queen in Snow White essentially communicates that all older women are evil and will punish people for being younger and more feminine than they are. That read of the queen’s character seems one dimensional, because the character of the queen is in fact one dimensional.) But when the audience is presented with multifaceted character, as Milly is presented, it is impossible to boil her down to an archetype. Milly is a woman scorned, but she is so much more than that. She is a fun loving free spirit, and a cricket eater, and a road trip enthusiast, too. If Hollywood made more of an effort to make these complex characters available for actresses, we would all benefit.

The one caveat to the glowing review of Bellflower’s equitable gender representation is the character of Courtney. She clings to Woodrow, is obviously jealous of Milly, and it is ultimately this obsession that leads to her demise. Courtney is one of the minor characters in the film, and I can only hope that were she given more screen time, she would have been additionally fleshed out and her character would have been more nuanced. Glodell has shown how well he can construct a character, but he needs to work on making even his minor characters avoid stereotypical gender pitfalls.

By showing the complexity of emotions, and human interaction, Glodell takes what could have been a simple revenge flick and makes it a film that sticks with you for some time.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.

Horror Week 2011: House of 1000 Corpses

Too often horror is criticized for being antifeminist. Yes, most often men are the aggressors in these films, and women are shown as the helpless, one dimensional victims. Unfortunately the problem of flat female characters and dominant male leads is not isolated to just the horror genre. In fact, that is a major issue for all of Hollywood. Every day we are bombarded with images of spineless women who need their men to help them fix the car, or assemble furniture, and this might go unnoticed by people because we are so accustomed to these characters. The side effect of the brutality and raw emotion in horror makes it a much more obvious venue for showing our society’s overall angst when it comes to gender issues. Shouldn’t we be equally concerned about the portrayal of all one dimensional characters, regardless of their state of distress? Why is horror the problem here?

When discussing horror as a genre it is helpful to boil it down to basics. Watching horror is a sadistic act. People go to horror films to watch other people be tortured, killed, or humiliated. And we, the audience, get a thrill out of those acts. Whether is it because we like to see those who deserve it be punished, or we just like to feel fear, or we enjoy the thrill of watching pure emotion pour out of the screen, we like it and we want more of it. When it comes to horror films, I think the most feminist act of all is equal opportunity sadism. When the aggressor of this violence (mental or physical) is a woman acting of her own twisted free will, enjoying tormenting her victims, only then do I feel satisfied as a feminist viewer. The character of Baby is why Rob Zombie’s 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses a solidly feminist horror film. More on that later.

The film starts with a set of four college kids as they pull into a gas station and get more than they bargained for. Sounds horribly cliché, right? This is where the genius of Zombie’s film begins to shape up . You see, the film can essentially be broken in to two parts. The first half is essentially a love letter from Zombie to all of the great horror movies of the past. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and even The Munsters gets a reference or two. Zombie spends the first half of the film showing you that he has the knowledge of horror to be able to pull off the second half of the film. From there he takes us down the rabbit hole (literally) to a horrific, indulgent world of his own making.

The college kids’ predicament starts after a brief stop at a roadside attraction run by a local character Captain Spaulding (played by genre favorite Sid Haig). The good Captain has just killed two bumbling robbers, but the kids arrive just after that mess was cleaned up. While filling up on gas, kids tour the Captain’s haunted house that rehashes the local legend of a murderer and torturer, Dr Satan.

Stereotypically, the two college guys, Bill and Jerry (The Office’s Rainn Wilson and Chris Hardwick), love the haunted house and the two women, Denise and Mary (Erin Daniels and Jennifer Jostyn), are bored by it. While I do take fault with Zombie for following the general premise that women don’t like that sort of thing, it reads more like an homage to all of the uninterested and nagging girlfriends in past horror films. These four are mostly uninteresting and uncharismatic. But crucially they are equally so. Both the women and the men in this (let’s face it) doomed group are superficially and poorly developed characters. Even Denise’s call home to her ex-cop father doesn’t do much for her. Zombie is saving all of his interesting characterization for the sadistic Firefly family.

Inevitably the college kids pick up a hitchhiker, which is where the plot starts to get interesting. This hitchhiker, Baby Firefly (played by Zombie’s wife Sheri Moon), seems odd and off in her own world. She messes with the radio and giggles at the college kids. Both Denise and Mary instantly despise her and are obviously threatened by her sexuality, and as expected both Bill and Jerry like her. While this little battle starts to play out, and Baby is loudly drumming on the car’s dashboard, the car gets a flat tire. Of course the sexy female hitchhiker is a local and her brother can help fix the car. It is when Baby insists that the whole gang come over to dinner that this story finally becomes interesting.

Baby’s house, and presumably her brother’s tools, isn’t far, so the gang is whisked away to the house for shelter and a quick meal with the Firefly family. If the group of college students had any doubts about whether or not they were in a horror film, all of these doubts were erased at dinner. The whole family shows up to nosh and it reads like a casting call for characters out of horror film history. There is the terrifying and unhinged older brother Otis (Bill Mosley in a career rescuing role), the younger but gargantuan and deformed brother Tiny (Matthew McGrory), the elderly Eddie Munster looking Grandpa (Dennis Fimple’s penultimate role), and the aloof and spineless mother (played by Karen Black). Throw in the required Halloween masks to be worn at the table, and we have a truly motley dinner party.

After dinner the college kids are all but forced to attend the Firefly’s Halloween eve floor show in the barn next the house. The vaudevillian show starts with Grandpa yoking it up on stage. Grandpa’s jokes are sexual, astoundingly offensive, and old fashioned. Both Denise and Mary are obviously disgusted by the whole thing. Jerry loves it. He is eating the provided popcorn and having a great time while he is there. After Grandpa finishes his act Mary and Denise try to talk to Bill and Jerry about leaving. They want to head out on foot to find someone else who can help them. Bill and Jerry quickly dismiss their request because they are in the middle of nowhere and the odds of them getting somewhere safely are nil.

It is a good thing that they stayed. Good for us, the audience who is waiting for the torturing to begin, but not good for our sitting duck college kids.

The next, and final, act in the Firefly show belong to Baby. She starts of stage looking like the type of woman that is created specifically for the male gaze. Her hair is teased up to nearly an afro. She is wearing a skin tight, floor length beaded dress. Her makeup is so extreme it looks like an almost kabuki costume: drawn on lips, exaggerated eye lashes and rosy cheeks. Baby then proceeds to lip sync to “I Want To Be Loved By You” and flit with the male members of the audience.

While Baby does seem to be enjoying herself while performing, it seems more like she is putting on a show for the available young men there. Both Bill and Jerry are enjoying the show very much (to the annoyance for Mary and Denise) but they are not about to act of these impulses. They like to watch Baby dance, but only from as an object and have no real desire to interact with that object. Baby seems to be going through the motions of the show, but ultimately it is an awkward performance. We have seen the real Baby, and this is not her. The real Baby likes to listen to loud rock music and torture cheerleaders. Her empowered version of sexy is wearing ass-less pants and buying cases of alcohol. By performing just for the men, and playing up to the expected male gaze, Zombie is making a comment on the problematic representation of the feminine in film. Here Baby is doing everything right to act the part of a typical Hollywood woman, but it isn’t successful in wooing anyone, and is making more enemies than friends. This antiquated representation of the female is no longer attractive to an audience.

As the performance is going along, and Baby is approaching Bill to sit on his lap while lip syncing, Mary’s jealousy gets the better of her and she tosses Baby from Bill’s lap. Mary shouts at Baby, calling her a slut and a redneck whore. This is totally uncalled for. Yes, Baby was heavily flirting with Mary’s beau, but calling her those names was a bit harsh. Interestingly this is where the film goes rapidly downhill. Baby pulls a straight razor from out of her dress and threatens to cut off Mary’s tits. Here is where Baby really hits her stride and becomes the proactive, violence loving woman that she is meant to be. When Mary insults her misguided attempt at performing the assumed male concept of femininity Baby’s first reaction is to remove one of the most obvious objects of Mary’s femaleness. Insulting another woman with those sexualized names should then make the insulter less of a woman. And by bringing down another woman, she should be punished accordingly.

At this very second the mechanic brother Rufus shows up and declares that the car is fixed and they can leave. We all know that the group can’t leave and that they will be eradicated one by one in very interesting ways. At that moment, though, they all scurry off to the car in hopes of escape.

Throughout the rest of the film Baby and the Firefly bunch torture and terrify each of the college kids, and even Denise’s dad and a sheriff killed after a botched rescue attempt. Each kill is more interesting and inventively than the last, and Zombie has fun showing the audience how sick and creative he can make a modern horror film. Firmly throughout the film Zombie balances the female characters and the male characters equally. There are uninteresting flat college kids of both genders, and both men and women as tormentors. Baby seems to get just as much satisfaction in maiming Jerry as Otis gets in turning Bill into a taxidermy display. It is this even handed approach to the horror of the Fireflys that ultimately makes House of 1000 Corpses a feminist entry into this classic genre.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and works too much.