Ghoulish Girls: Part 1

The horror genre has brought to the screen some of the most disturbing, sexy, hairy, psychotic, demonic and vengeful females that have made a lasting impression on me to the extent that I feel I should write a post dedicated to their ability to shake up my world. After running through lists of horror films and trying to remember those that made the biggest splashes in deep cut pools of blood, I was amazed at how few icons there actually are compared to male ones. However when I look at the list of eight or so paradigms to the femme fatale, their strength as individual characters more than makes up for their weakness in numbers. Thanks to William Congreve and his poem “The Mourning Bride”, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” was born and became one of the most prominent quotes to be used to describe the volatile temper of a betrayed or wounded woman. The following should not be crossed in such a way as to provoke those feelings of fury.

ElviraCassandra Peterson
Movie Macabre, Elvira Mistress of the Dark

Whilst not an actual monster or ghoul of any sort, she was the voluptuous mistress of the night and survived as THE gothic popular subculture icon, who gave introductions and presented B-movie horrors such as She Demons, The Night of the Ghouls and Eegah on her shows Movie Macabre and Midnight Madness. As campy and southern as they come Elvira “the sassy lassy with a classy chassi” is the epitome of the popcorn, sexploitation, monsters from mars type horror flick.  Films such as Fright Night, House of 1000 Corpses and the television series Tales From the crypt owe their use of tongue-in-cheek horror presentation to Elvira. Beware though, as if she catches your eyes wandering over to a big bosomed bikini babe, she is likely to have your nuts as a show-time snack.

Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald (Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins)
Ginger Snaps Ginger Snaps II: Unleashed Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning

These are two middle-class suburban misfits, with an unhealthy passion for the morbidly chilling and the chillingly morbid. They are Goths but not in the sense that Elvira was a Goth, more along the lacerations of suicide wishes (“out by sixteen or dead in the scene but together forever”) that would outdo the imagination of any child blowing out their birthday candles. What makes these two so appealing is their combination of attitude and introversion; peculiarities and self-awareness. However this is not where there power lies, no, what they excel at is ripping things apart with their incisors, pouncing with a mouth full of foam, sniffing out the musk of menstruation and howling at the moon. Yes, they are lycanthropes or werewolves if you prefer, and they have a well of rage for the beautiful, the popular, the horny and the male; so if you like your organs arranged as they are then I suggest you keep out of their way.

Carrie White (Sissy Spacek)
Carrie

Tapping the same vein as Ginger and Brigitte we have ourselves another high-school oddity by the name of Carrie. However unlike the hair-pair this teenager has been battered into submission by not only thoughtless and spiteful peers but also a mother whose fanaticism with Jesus Christ and the wages of sin has left Carrie friendless, hindered and as meek as lamb with no self-worth or confidence whatsoever. So you may be asking yourselves how someone so tame could possibly be a threat to anyone. Well you see all this abuse does leave its mark somewhere in the subconscious and in Carrie's case, has afforded her telekinetic abilities, which means she is able to move objects purely with the power of her mind. In theory this sounds like a very useful and pragmatic skill but as we know such power does have a tendency to tempt one to the dark-side and after the ultimate humiliation befalls our anti-heroin, she snaps and leaves a trail of bloodied and broken bodies in her wake. The fury of Carrie has never been surpassed and she remains the thorniest of all roses.

Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates)
Misery

Like Carrie, Annie was originally the brainchild of author Stephen King who decided to give obsession and psychosis a more homely environment to be nurtured. Annie is a die-hard fan of the author Paul Sheldon and her admiration is actually quite charming at first. She shows her appreciation and looks after an injured Sheldon who has crashed his car near her house, nursing him back to health, that is until she feels she has been betrayed in the most insulting way possible. It seems that the heroine of the series of books that she so adores is to be killed off in the next one, leaving Annie with no choice but to resort to blackmail and eventually torture to convince Sheldon to reconsider his plans. I have seen weapons of serious intimidation being wielded by some of the most notorious psychopaths in horror such as Jack Torrence and his axe, Leatherface and his chainsaw and Michael Myers and his kitchen knife, but the collected way in which Annie smashes in the ankles of the now feeble writer gives rage a new more inconspicuous disguise.

Well this has already gone on to long so I must continue this putrescent profiling in part two which will be served up soon for all you fanatics of foul-frantic females.

Nathan
**Read more articles by Nathan**