Must-watch feminist horror: feminist werewolves and demonic pregnancies (1/3)
In the first of a series of three, we're selecting our favourite feminist horror films. We're going in chronological order, and our first three films are true horror classics: Rosemary's Baby, The Company of Wolves and Ginger Snaps.
Horror has a bad rep for being a male-dominated and sometimes outright sexist genre. In the laziest horror films, women are broadly present to run, scream and, if they're lucky, make it to the coveted position of Final Girl.
Yet horror also has the potential to be subversive, to build terrifying constructs out of very real societal evils. Many directors are sensitive to how problematic some horror tropes can be, and a number have figured cultural misogyny as the bogeyman in their movies.
Taking a broad definition of what "feminist horror" can mean, we've drilled down into this rich seam in horror to find a hugely varied selection of films that put women front and centre.
Whether they create terror from political injustices against women or simply feature complex, flawed female protagonists, these films suggest a way for horror to turn its back on its sexist past and become a truly inclusive genre.
For your delectation, we have toxic masculinity represented as a gigantic robotic monster, a psycopathic foetus and a toothed vagina still to come in the series. But first...
1) Rosemary's Baby (1968)
In a sentence: One of the most influential horror films of all time. You can detect strong traces of Rosemary's Baby in Hereditary, mother! and The House of the Devil.
What goes down: Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into an obviously-quite-creepy New York apartment. Guy's career is not going well, so the obvious solution is to make a deal with the Devil, with the help of the couple's new neighbours.
He gets his big break by blinding the man who beat him to a role, in exchange for his wife carrying the spawn of Satan. Seems like a fair bargain to us...
What goes down: Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) move into an obviously-quite-creepy New York apartment. Guy's career is not going well, so the obvious solution is to make a deal with the Devil, with the help of the couple's new neighbours.
He gets his big break by blinding the man who beat him to a role, in exchange for his wife carrying the spawn of Satan. Seems like a fair bargain to us...
Was there a female creative team? This one's very much a case of seperating art from the artist – director Roman Polanski is a convicted sex offender. It's based on a novel by another man, Ira Levin, who also wrote the book The Stepford Wives is based on.
Why it's feminist: It's a brutal portrait of a woman being totally robbed of agency. Through the combined activities of her evil husband and nutty neighbours, Farrow's Rosemary loses control over both her life and her body. It's portrayal of a nightmare pregnancy is also a likely influence for literary works like Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child and Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Why you should watch it: It's realist tone, unrelenting claustrophobia and masterful central performance from Farrow make Rosemary's Baby the high watermark for psychological horror.
Any drawbacks? Can you call a film written and directed by a sex offender feminist?
Where to watch it: Rosemary's Baby isn't available on any of the main subscription streaming services and is oddly pricey to rent online. You can stream it on either YouTube or Amazon Instant Video for £5.99.
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2) The Company of Wolves (1984)
In a sentence: A sort-of-anthology movie loosely based on Red Riding Hood, but with werewolves.
What goes down: Young Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) has clearly been going hard on the cheese, as when she falls asleep she dreams she lives in a medieval village beseiged by werewolves. This is obviously a metaphor for her nascent sexuality.
She's now Red Riding Hood for some reason, and just before she sets out for a wander through the woods her grandma (Angela Lansbury) gives her an important piece of advice: beware the monobrow!
What goes down: Young Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) has clearly been going hard on the cheese, as when she falls asleep she dreams she lives in a medieval village beseiged by werewolves. This is obviously a metaphor for her nascent sexuality.
She's now Red Riding Hood for some reason, and just before she sets out for a wander through the woods her grandma (Angela Lansbury) gives her an important piece of advice: beware the monobrow!
Was there a female creative team? It's based on a short story by Angela Carter (who also wrote the screenplay) from her acclaimed collection The Bloody Chamber, which is made up of dark reinventions of popular fairy tales. The director is male, but also bloody good – Neil Jordan of Interview with a Vampire and Byzantium fame.
Why it's feminist: It makes explicit the sexual threat in the Grimm brothers' story, and like in the original the women in this film are pretty badass and always take their fate in their own hands. It examines both the danger and the ecstatic release, of the werewolves' untamed sensuality.
Notice how Granny's stories within the narrative work like simple morality tales about giving into desire, but Rosaleen's are more morally ambiguous. Her wolfy stories deal with themes of revenge, power and displacement.
Why you should watch it: It features probably the second best werewolf transformation in cinema (American Werewolf being first, obvs), and is very strong on the practical effects front. It's narrative structure is crazy intense – it's all kind of / kind of not a dream, featuring four embedded stories within the dream narrative, which the characters tell each other.
Any drawbacks? Anyone hoping for a fancy werewolf design is likely to be disappointed – they're literally just wolves. Since it's based on a fairytale, it also deals much more with plot and archetypes than rounded characters.
Where to watch it: It's available on BFI's subscription service, and you can also get it for £2.49 on Amazon Instant Video.
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3) Ginger Snaps (2000)
In a sentence: It's between this and American Werewolf for best werewolf movie of all time. Fight me.
What goes down: More werewolves, and they're still a metaphor for teenage sexuality. 16-year-old Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is having a crap evening: not only is she gutted about getting her first period (she calls it "the curse"), but then she's attacked by a werewolf!
Noticing alarming changes in Ginger's body and personality, her sister Brigette (Emily Perkins) must race to find a cure as Ginger gives into her growing bloodlust.
Was there a female creative team: Karen Walten was on writing duties; she was also co-executive producer and sometime writer on the fantastic feminist sci-fi series Orphan Black. Her regular collaborator John Fawcett directs. Fun fact: Orphan Black's virtuoso leading lady Tatiana Maslany first appeared in Ginger Snaps's less-well-received sequel: Ginger Snaps: Unleashed.
Why it's feminist: Not only does it play with Ginger and Brigitte's understandable anxieties about growing up, particularly receiving unwelcome attention from boys, but it flips traditional gender dynamics. Boys think they're in a position of power over Ginger and that she's craving to have sex with them – actually she just wants to eat them.
It's also an excellent piece of body horror. Ginger's discomfort about puberty is reflected in a grisly slow change (she grows a tail and her face becomes distinctly wolfy), followed by an eventual transformation into a lumbering, fleshy beast.
Why you should watch it: There are characters you actually care about, plenty of blood and gore and icky body horror and a horribly tense final act made all the more effective by our investment in Ginger and Brigette.
Any drawbacks? It is slightly Noughties in its vibe, but that's a forgivable affliction. Also don't go near the sequels.
Where to watch it: You can stream the full movie here for free (don't tell anyone!).
Show me a clip!
The second and third installments in this series on feminist horror are coming soon!
Want to watch a brand new feminist horror? Read our essay on Ruin Me, which was recently added to Shudder. Warning: it does include spoilers!
Want to watch a brand new feminist horror? Read our essay on Ruin Me, which was recently added to Shudder. Warning: it does include spoilers!
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