Girls on Film: How Women Shaped Horror Genre

All you female horror fans, you have a soul-mate in Monica Bartyzel:

There’s this strange, prevalent notion that horror belongs to men … that it’s the guys who like to watch the blood pour and the screams curdle while the women want nothing more than epic romances that rip out their insides in a much more figurative, gut-wrenching manner. It’s an attitude that always seemed not only reductive, but downright silly. No matter how many women flock to ‘Sex and the City’ or lather themselves in cinematic bosom-heaving, there are many others who not only thrive on the thrills of horror, but who helped sculpt the genre into what it is today.

In the early days, I felt no gender divide in the horror world. A move from fairy tales to young adult horror seemed just as natural as diving into floofy princesses. Those tales were, after all, set in horrific and gruesome worlds of cannibalism and murder, thanks to those creepy Grimm folks. I, therefore, stormed straight from fairy tales to Fear Street.

Lois Duncan offered summers of fear [made into a TV movie by Wes Craven] and strangers with the same face, Richie Tankersley Cusick sought eerie ‘April Fools’ and L.J. Smith wrote of vampires, witches and psychic teens just as much as Christopher Pike sliced and diced the innocent while R. L. Stine cornered the horror market from ‘Goosebumps’ to ‘Horror High.’ Women were all over the creepy book world, and teen girls were obsessed with the supernatural well before Stephenie Meyer immortalized the Cullens. I devoured these books, so much so that my parental units forced me to read many boring, blood-free teen classics, lest I become a deranged and dangerous fiend.

With time, the divide revealed itself. The girls would leave the room when a horror movie was put into the VCR. Boys would blather on about the genre being a man’s man sort of fare. No matter how much horror sped away from real life, or replicated it supernaturally, consensus stated that it was a only masculine interest, ignoring the long tradition that made the genre what it is today.

When it comes to reigning royalty in the horror world — the stories that started it all — there are two names that always come up. One is Bram Stoker and his story of ‘Dracula,’ the novel that created an insatiable sea of vampire fiends and supernatural sensuality. The other is Mary Shelley and the “first great modern horror novel,” ‘Frankenstein.’ These worlds set up the horror genre, and defined the monsters who would rule it. They offered up competing notions of menace and sadness, both exploring the worlds of loneliness and despair. And it’s quite lovely that with these two grandparents of the form, the man created the world of sensuous blood-sucking, while the woman created a world of body parts and human monstrosities … but let’s not get caught up in antiquated gender stereotypes.

One of the more interesting shifts in movie culture has been with the horror audience. As recently as two decades ago, it was 75% male. Now it’s 50–50% with some movies even more heavily skewed toward women. What’s your theory why?

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