Killer Scream Queens -- A Horror Icon That's a Pinup Girl Rather Than a Threat

Genres are often confused with their icons. A genre is a set of story conventions. Icons are dramatic elements -- character archetypes, objects, settings, historical periods, etc. -- that recur throughout a particular genre, so that they become associated with that genre.

The vampire is a horror icon, though other genres also use vampires. Love at First Bite and The Munsters have vampires, but are comedies. The spaceship is a science fiction icon -- but Alien is a horror film.

Icons are a form of shorthand symbolism. Being symbols, it's easy for an icon to disengage from their "parental genre" and take on lives of their own. To convey meanings, and have a purpose, apart from their parental genre's goals.

The horror genre's goal is to inspire fear, usually through an Unnatural Threat (less often via a Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest). However, rather than frighten, some horror icons disengage from the horror genre and instead comfort, or sexually excite, or offer a sense of empowerment to the viewer.

Consider the blood-soaked Killer Scream Queen (as opposed to Scream Queens that are victims). Although this horror icon has perhaps been a threat in some films, today she is primarily a pinup girl. Audiences are not meant to fear her, but to identify/sympathize with her, and enjoy her massacres of (often male) victims.

Examples of Killer Scream Queen pinup girls include Chainsaw Chelly (right) from Dove Matrix:

Also consider this work of art, The Girl, The Chainsaw, from Million Gossip:

The Killer Scream Queen pinup girl has even become a whimsical Halloween costume. Ladies can purchase this Chainsaw Babe outfit from Sexy Costumes:

The Killer Scream Queen is a horror icon that's found a life outside of the genre. No longer threatening or scary, she is used primarily to...

1. Offer "strong" role models to women.

Some critics have accused 1980s slasher films of misogyny. Not entirely fair -- in the 1980s, slashers and victims came in both sexes. But female victims were more often, and more fully, exposed in all their nudity, so the accusation has a kernel of truth.

But the Killer Scream Queen is unabashedly reverse-sexist. She conveys an attitude of: "Now it's our turn to have fun with a chainsaw!"

Chainsaws (as opposed to knives or machetes -- which are smaller and lacking in power) are the Killer Scream Queen's weapon of choice. A Freudian (of which, I am not one) might suggest that these women are arming and empowering themselves with an especially big phallus.

There's an implication that, because these killers are women, it's liberated and progressive to enjoy their violence. One is not supposed to feel threatened by them, so much as to side with them. That's also true to some extent of ugly male killers (who have their fans), but even more so of attractive female killers.

At the 2010 Viscera Film Festival, co-founder Heidi Martinuzzi said that "Feminism is simply equality." Not all feminists agree with that definition -- or even agree about what "equality" might look like. Rosanne Barr has expressed disdain for Angelina Jolie's depiction of "strong women," because all Jolie has proven (according to Barr) is that women can kill in large numbers too. Barr describes Jolie's films "violent" and "psychopathic."

Are female killing machines (such as Lara Croft -- and the Killer Scream Queen) "strong and equal" to men -- or have they merely surrendered their femininity for masculinity? By emulating male killers, have they proven the equality of women, or the superiority of patriarchal values?

2. Serve as the object of men's sexual fantasies.

Men are expected to regard the Killer Scream Queen as sexy, and a conscious effort is made to depict her as sexy. The Killer Scream Queen is invariably young and shapely. She might be buxom, but never overweight.

Although she is a horror icon, her rigid conformity to dominant beauty norms weakens the Killer Scream Queen's claim of also being a feminist icon.

Why are men attracted to murderous women? Perhaps for the same reason that women are attracted to murderous men. They imagine the killer will make an exception in their case, recognizing the force of "true love." The Killer Scream Queen will massacre the jocks who've bullied the nerd -- and then she will fall in love with the nerd.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers offers an example of the Killer Scream Queen as sex object (in a film, as opposed to her many pinup images):



3. A blood-drenched, chainsaw-wielding nymph has Shock Value.

The Killer Scream Queen offers an "in your face" assault upon "respectable society" that is always appealing to teenagers and marginalized subcultures. People who feel weak, ignored, or devalued sometimes feel empowered by identifying with horror icons. These icons are not perceived as threats, but as friends, compatriots, or avengers of bullies. Like some other horror icons, the Killer Scream Queen is popular because parents disapprove.

Consider this Twisted Sister video. Dee Snider, in typically freakish Heavy Metal icon makeup, appears on a poster. The father's disapproval upon seeing this poster elicits a smile from the son. (The father snarls, "Wipe that smile off your face.") Presumably, the son wouldn't enjoy Twisted Sister's music as much if the father were a fan.



Horror icons are losing their shock value. This is because...

A. Horror is big business. One can't offend Corporate America by buying its product.

B. Halloween has become an adult holiday. It used to be only for children, but Boomers largely refused to give it up upon attaining adulthood. Today parents are more likely, than in the 1950s, to share their children's interest in horror.

C. Anything will lose its shock value over time.

In Horror Film Aesthetics, I enumerate Four Appeals of horror: 1. Catharsis, 2. Metaphysical Transcendence, 3. Sympathy for the Other, and 4. Ideological Palette

The Killer Scream Queen's appeal is primarily a case of Sympathy for the Other. Her fans see her as an attractive symbol of empowerment. They don't so much fear her, as wish they were her, or were dating her. She is a horror icon with little horror bite -- a figure of comical fun and sexual excitement.

Horror requires threatening threats, and vulnerable victims, otherwise there's little to fear. The more we have Sympathy for the Other -- the more we empathize with the killer as opposed to the victim -- the weaker the horror.

To lesser degrees, the Killer Scream Queen sometimes functions in an Ideological Palette (as a symbol for some political message or other), or Catharsis (when she is threatening sympathetic characters -- which is not too often).

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For more about the appeals of horror see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

What Is An Unnatural Threat -- And Why Does It Matter?

Horror requires an Unnatural Threat. Slasher films without an Uberpsycho (an indestructible, superhuman slasher, such as are Myers or Jason) lie closer to suspense/crime thrillers than to horror. Weak, pathetic slashers (e.g., Maniac, Don't Go in the House) are Natural Threats, hence, only tenuously horror.

Why does it matter? What differentiates a Natural Threat from an Unnatural Threat?

The quality of fear.

Compare these scenarios:

1. You're at home, alone with a loved one. Just the two of you. Someone you've known and loved and trusted for many years. Say, a husband. You're talking intimately. Suddenly, he pulls a gun on you, snarling, saying he's hated and lied to you all these years, and now he will kill you.

Horror? No, the threat is natural. Happens every day. It's shocking and frightening, but the tale could as easily make for a crime thriller, a suspense film, or a soap opera.

2. You're at home, alone with a loved one. Just the two of you. Someone you've known and loved and trusted for many years. Say, a wife. You're talking intimately. Your wife enters the bathroom, leaving the door ajar. You see her reflected in the mirror, though she doesn't realize that you see her. As she calls out to you, cheerful and loving, she reaches under her chin and peels off her face, revealing a hideous alien. A bizarre hole in her "face" continues shouting to you, in her lovely voice, cheerful and friendly. Her eye-thing glances into the mirror and sees you watching her...

That's horror. That's an Unnatural Threat. The quality of fear differs. The Ring and The X-Files inspire a qualitatively different fear from the fear evoked by Saving Private Ryan, Death Wish, or Underworld.

An Unnatural Threat evokes both fear and a sense of wonder. An Unnatural Threat is awesome and mesmerizing. This is why an Unnatural Threat packs a stronger emotional punch than does a Natural Threat.

Some films do qualify as horror, despite their Natural Threats. I'm talking about the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest, whose killers are colorful and bizarre (not weak or pathetic), as is found in Texas Chainsaw Massacre or House of a 1000 Corpses).

But because the quality of fear differs from unnatural psychos, I'm inclined to think that the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest is not a horror subgenre, but an entirely different horror genre.

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For more about Unnatural Threats, Uberpsychos, Apparent Uberpsychos, and Naturalistic Psycho Gorefests, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Masks Empower Horror Psychos and Slashers

The classic horror psycho is what I call an uberpsycho. A dark, enigmatic, force of nature. Indestructible and relentless, he feels no pain, no empathy, no sympathy. He doesn't run, but plods forward, calmly confident in his ability to catch his victims, and fearing no pursuer.

Halloween's (1978) Michael Myers was the first uberpsycho -- and the first horror psycho. Until Myers, psychos primarily inhabited mysteries, suspense films, crime thrillers, etc.

Psycho (1960) is an excellent and frightening film, but Norman Bates is a suspense psycho. He is mortal and vulnerable. He is a natural threat, and thus elicits from audiences a different quality of fear than a unnatural threat.

An uberpsycho is an unnatural threat. Myers and Jason are indestructible and superhuman, for no good reason. Our sense of their indestructibility is supported by their enigmatic nature. Try to explain their strength, and they become less mysterious. Hence, they become less believable -- and less powerful, less threatening.

To create this enigmatic aura around a horror psycho, it's helpful to keep them hidden either offscreen or behind a mask. A psycho risks being disempowered (i.e., feel less threatening) when we see his face.

Final Exam and He Knows You're Alone both feature silent, nearly mute psychos, killing for no apparent reason. Yes, they're skillful with a knife. Final Exam's killer even has the required superhuman strength.

Yet because we see their faces early on, they're brought down to our human level. They are less impressive. Not enigmatic, dark forces of nature, but merely crazy humans on a killing spree. These films edge away from horror, toward the suspense/crime thriller genres.

Alfred Hitchcock famously said that a strong villain makes for a strong film. Alas, the psychos in Final Exam and He Knows You're Alone are nondescript rather than enigmatic.

Even worse is when a film focuses on a mundane psycho (rather than on the victims), showing us his pathetic life in detail (e.g., Maniac, Don't Go in the House). In such films, the psycho appears weak, vulnerable, and natural. We feel disgust and pity, rather than awe and fear.

To shoot an effective horror slasher film (rather then a suspense or crime thriller), it helps to hide your psycho offscreen or behind a mask.

Apart from uberpsychos (an unnatural threat), there is another sort of horror psycho found in naturalistic psycho gorefests. These psychos are mortal (i.e., naturalistic), but they're also colorfully crazy and fearless (e.g., Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of a 1000 Corpses), rather than pathetic or nondescript.

But they're another issue, not to be found on the "slasher spectrum," which runs from the enigmatic (Halloween) to the nondescript (Final Exam) to the pathetic (Don't Go in the House).

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For more about Unnatural Threats, Uberpsychos, Apparent Uberpsychos, and Naturalistic Psycho Gorefests, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.

Can One Distinguish I Spit On Your Grave from Death Wish?

I'm tired of all the remakes of 1970s and 1980s horror films. So many remakes over the last 15 years; most of them inferior or no better than the original.

But the recent release of the new I Spit On Your Grave raises another issue. This film played this past weekend at the Screamfest L.A. horror film festival. The film is being marketed and critiqued as a horror film.

But is it horror?

I've not seen the remake, but I've seen the original. I've been told by those who've seen both films that the remake's story is faithful to that of the original.

How does this story (the same in both versions), differ from the story in Death Wish?

It doesn't. All three stories are fundamentally identical. A woman is brutally raped and killed. This gives the audience permission to enjoy the bloody vengeance that is then visited upon criminals and thugs. All three films are not horror, but revenge fantasies.

Yes, there are minor variations, but do any of these elements differentiate I Spit on Your Grave from Death Wish so that the one is horror, but not the other?

In I Spit on Your Grave, the rape victim takes revenge, whereas in Death Wish, it's the victim's husband who takes vengeance. This may qualify I Spit on Your Grave as more feminist than is Death Wish, but not more of a horror film.

Another variation is that I Spit on Your Grave punishes the men who injured the woman, whereas Death Wish punishes any and all criminals (i.e., those who prey on women, and men, other than just the husband/vigilante's wife). This makes the revenge killings in I Spit on Your Grave more personal, but not more of the horror genre.

I Spit on Your Grave is more graphic than is Death Wish. The women are brutally raped in both films, but a man is castrated in I Spit on Your Grave, whereas the criminals are mostly shot in Death Wish.

But if I Spit on Your Grave is horror because of the rapist's more graphic death, are we not being asked to identify with the rapist? Is that what makes the film horror?

No, because horror requires that we identify/sympathize with the victim, not with the monster. This is why revenge fantasies by their very nature risk undermining the horror elements.

A final variation is that I Spit on Your Grave is a low-budget, indie film, whereas Death Wish is a big studio product. This is also why the former is more graphic; indie films were more graphic than studio fare in the 1970s.

This may be the key reason to the (false) perception that I Spit on Your Grave is a horror film. Back then, horror was more likely associated with low-budget, indie trash. Because I Spit on Your Grave was a low-budget indie film, and a highly graphic one, it was more likely to be marketed by the distributor, and accepted by the audience, as a horror film.

It's a marketing thing. Another example of people's genre perception being formed by marketing rather than by objective, rationally derived, aesthetic criteria.

Horror requires an Unnatural Threat. Something "not of this world." Some dramatic element that, as H.P. Lovecraft wrote, creates "a malign and particular suspension or defeat of the fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space."

An Unnatural Threat can take the form of the supernatural (e.g., The Sixth Sense, The Haunting, The Exorcist, The Mothman Prophecies, The Grudge, Lost Souls).

But an Unnatural Threat can also be an "unnatural creature" of science. That is, some creature that is unnatural to our current understanding of nature (Alien, The X-Files).

Can a slasher make for a horror film? Yes, provided that it is an unnatural slasher. Halloween was the first slasher horror film. This was because Michael Myers could not be killed. He was unnatural.

Myers was the first of what I term the Uberpsychos. Halloween's great contribution to horror was the invention of the Uberpsycho, a new type of monster. It was with Halloween's introduction of the Uberpsycho that the psycho crossed from the crime/suspense/mystery genres into horror.

But there is no Uberpsycho in I Spit on Your Grave. Just tawdry, sleazy, pathetic villains -- cruel, but ultimately weak and mortal. Can you imagine the heroine in I Spit on Your Grave defeating Myers or Jason? Of course not. Horror monsters are not so easily killed.

I have grudgingly carved an exception to the Unnatural Threat. I'm willing to concede that there is a second horror genre, which I call the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest, wherein the victim is terrorized by mortal humans (e.g., Saw, The Devil's Rejects, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But even in these films, there must be something that removes this stories from the natural and normal. Some element...an especially bizarre or deranged psycho, or an especially unusual environment or situation.

I see nothing in I Spit on Your Grave that removes it from the realm of crime drama/suspense/revenge fantasy.


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For more about my thinking on Unnatural Threats and the Naturalistic Psycho Gorefest, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.