Women who write horror

[cloudy]

Actually, my daughter gave Jennifer's body four out of five. She also really liked it for a non-horror reason-- that the girls are the active elements every step of the way. Which is refreshing, yanno. At least, to girls.

I don't understand this remark, can you explain?Funny you should say that! i just found out where my list came from;
http://splinister.com/blog/?postid=586

Fuckin' pokes me in my activism bone, heh. Well, February is coming up!

I LOVED Jennifer's Body. It was funny in a "I can't believe I'm laughing at that" way. One of my favorite flicks recently.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I LOVED Jennifer's Body. It was funny in a "I can't believe I'm laughing at that" way. One of my favorite flicks recently.

yeah, so nyah nyah nyah, Hydra!

Seriously though,we were talking numbers, not quality. And it's pretty irritating that women's work gets counted only on the basis of quality, like because there is so little of it, women should not produce the schlock like the boys do.

Only the pearls, girls! if you're gonna do it, do it perfect!

Nope-- women also have the right to produce mistakes, failed experiments, bad taste that makes money. They can be judged by those things, without being judged as representatives of the entire sex at the same damn time.

 

[Jagged]

Met LA Banks and she writes some great horror. Very funny African American woman who was stuck writing romance when she wanted to be writing about vampires. When her editor asked her to do vampire stuff when it became "hot" she already had a pile of stories ready to go...I suggest checking her out.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Thanks jagged

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Actually, my daughter gave Jennifer's body four out of five. She also really liked it for a non-horror reason-- that the girls are the active elements every step of the way. Which is refreshing, yanno. At least, to girls.

Try out 'Ginger Snaps'. I get the point on the girls, just wish Cody had found a way to make the characters more than the standard high school cardboard cutouts.

I don't understand this remark, can you explain?

The humour (to me anyway) is in the wrong places, so some of the scenes are really uneven or don't work properly. The good comedy-horrors know when to go for laughs and when to scare you shitless. "Shaun of the Dead" is mostly a comedy-parody and then it turns on a dime and effectively shocks the audience by playing it dead straight.

"Jennifer's Body" goofs it because Cody can't resist slipping in the funnies at points when the film should be going for the jugular. I mean, in Scary Horror Mode does your main character really stand there trading trashy one liners with a demon that's just torn her boyfriend's throat out? It wrecks any kind of dramatic tension.

The one scene where I think she got the right mix was when the band breaks out into some impromptu singing and then plunges the knife into her. That's a really good example of how to switch from humour to horror for maximum shock value. Unfortunately it's lessoned because it's a flashback - we already know she survives and don't have as much sympathy as she's already munching her way through the school.

The film isn't terrible, it just frustrates me for the opportunities missed or botched.

yeah, so nyah nyah nyah, Hydra!

But this is of course just my opinion

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I follow horror cuz I write horror, and no one writes scary stuff these days. Even Stephen King confesses that he forgot how to do it. The girls are no worse/better than the guys, and they guys are eunuchs.

Pete Dexter writes some creepy stuff...my favorite is a scene where a young doper abuses a cat and the cat shreds the boys pecker. "Leonard! Thats just his way of saying 'please dont swing me by my tail.' "

 

[LaRocha]

Gag humour, pun/slapstick and self-aware silliness is what the modern horror consumer has come to expect, intermixed with the shock and awe camera work. Jennifer's Body was never meant to be something to terrify. Cody is too into irony to write a real horror movie. And the folks trying to write real horror movies are too into the right-this-minute selling points of the Japanese films that were popular in the 90s.

Humour undermines horror. Hutter isn't smokin' doobs in Count Orlock's guest room with some hot ass Latin maid before he goes and battles that creeptastic mother fucker. Texas Chainsaw Massacre would've made for an okay novel, but the movie has the actual sound of the thud when the dude gets hit with the hammer. Moving pictures killed novel horror. There's no novel that does horror better than a movie equivalent. You don't even need sound to outdo Bram Stoker or that cheezeball Joyce Carol Oates.

 

[PoppingTom]

.... Cody is too into irony to write a real horror movie. And the folks trying to write real horror movies are too into the right-this-minute selling points of the Japanese films that were popular in the 90s.

Humour undermines horror.

OK, maybe this is the reason I don't like horror.....

 

[Stella_Omega]

Bump!
I just got this in email;

... back-up research that girls & women make up a huge portion of the horror audience:

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20293304,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/fashion/sundaystyles/30horror.html

…And I’m sure there’s more out there. Another huge audience for horror films: Latino/as. Check out my friends at:

http://www.latinhorror.com/

She went on to say;

I’m trying to raise financing currently for a female-centric horror flick that definitely reinvents that Last Girl Standing. Wish me luck, and stay tuned…

 

[Handley_Page]

My favourite is H P Lovecraft.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Middle two links don't work. The first article is very interesting though, ta for that.

I'm a bit sceptical on reinventing the Final Girl trope. It's commonplace because it works. Kill off the superficially strong and capable looking characters early to establish the monster's scare credentials, then give the audience somebody vulnerable to root for in the last third so they're still interested even after the monster's novelty has worn off. It also gives a classic character arc as Last Girl goes from weak and vulnerable to surviving through her own resourcefulness. That's an awful lot of horror film plots distilled one paragraph.

Not much wriggle room there, although I could be wrong.

If Final Girl is too strong and capable then she isn't Final Girl, she's 'Strong and Capable character killed off first to show how scary the monster is.' Then we're Final SomethingElse.

If they make her strong and capable and don't kill her off then we're into a Mary Sue bore-fest where there are no character arcs or development (and a much-beloved Game franchise is ass-fucked over and over by a mediocre Film franchise)

Make her bitchy and unsympathetic and the audience either doesn't care or wants her dead (at least films are starting to move away from her always having to be Little Miss DoNoSexOrDrugs)

Or you could kill her off early when the audience is least expecting it (or used to, before Eli Roth and Hostel came along). Then you have a Fake Final Girl and a different movie altogether.

Not much leeway and a whole bunch of storytelling pitfalls to fall into. I wish her luck indeed...

I'm not surprised on the latin market for horror. The orginal Spanish language version of Dracula (shot on the same set at night after the other crew had finished) is supposed to be superior than the original.

More recently, [Rec] is also superb (I think they remade it in the US as Quarantine, but I haven't seen that yet). There's some other recent Spanish horror movies I've been meaning to check out as well.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Hydra, I've fixed the links.

I'm not going to get into the discussion on why women might want to reinvent the 'Last Girl Standing' trope.

 

[TE999]

My favourite is H P Lovecraft.

Mine as well and Clark Ashton Smith.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Hydra, I've fixed the links.

I'm not going to get into the discussion on why women might want to reinvent the 'Last Girl Standing' trope.

I can take a good guess why

About the only consolation is films (the good ones) do seem to be trying to make them start out less like wet blancmanges. The main character in Hostel 2 achieved it in a very satisfying (if eye-watering!) manner.

The 'How' is probably an interesting discussion.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Humour undermines horror.
HUMOR AND HORROR ARE THE SAME THING EXCEPT FOR THE RESPONSE. I mean, you can assemble a competent horror tale and end it with a gag, or vice versa.

Moving pictures killed novel horror.
YET THERE ARE PLENTY OF HORROR NOVELS AND STORIES.
PSYCHO by Robert Bloch is a better book than film. In the book Norman Bates is creepier and the tale is significantly better in terms of its cohesion and coherence. Movie directors have time constraints, writers dont. So Bloch packs more stuff into the book than Hitchcock had time for in the movie.

.....