Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 169 - Feminism and Horror
Abby sits down with our friend Kate Rotunda to talk about the intersection of feminism and horror. We start out by discussing Frankenhooker (1990) and go from there.
CW: Discussion of violence against women and SA.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Branker, and I'm sitting here with Kate Rotunda.
SPEAKER_01:Hello.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, Kate. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. We're so excited that you're here. Kate is a longtime Lunatics contributor, I would say. You write articles and help us with research and all kinds of things. And going into 2026, we're gonna have a bunch of episodes with Kate, and she has helped research on some really, really fun topics. So we're incredibly excited for those. But today we are here to talk about the intersection of horror and feminism, especially through the lens of Frankenhooker. Yes. Just a quick content warning before we get into this episode. We are going to talk about some potentially heavy themes, some themes of you know how women are objectified in horror. And so that could include sexual assault and beyond and other things like that. So just be aware that we're never gonna be too graphic, but that is something that's gonna come up today. So so if you're not comfortable with that, we wanted to make sure that you were aware of it. So you came to me with this idea. This was something that you wanted to talk about. Tell us why.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm a huge feminist and a huge horror fan, and you can't ignore feminism and horror, especially misogyny and horror. It happens all the time, it is still so prevalent. You'd think it would have gone down, but it's not. Recently, I watched Frankenhooker for the first time, and I fell in love with it. It is so campy, it is so crazy, and it is like, in my opinion, like uh feminist horror almost. And like Trauma is known for being pretty progressive with their ideas in the worst way almost. Like they do it in a way where it's so insane that you're watching it and you're like, there's no way this is progressive, but they sneak things in there, and it's just the way the character acts and the way the story ends is just so beautiful to me and gives agency to these characters that in any other film would have been treated as a complete joke. And not to say that it isn't a complete joke, because the movie is once again just ridiculous, but it generally I think they do a good job of showing a man trying to take control of a woman's body and it just completely backfiring.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. To me, it feels and it it must not be, but it feels almost accidentally feminist. Yeah. I actually just watched it for the first time as well in preparation for this episode, and I thought it was fantastic. Like largely, like it not not perfect, right? Of course, but I had so much fun watching it. It had such a fun arc. To your point, it kind of sidesteps the things you think that it might. The way that it sets up, you're like, oh god, yeah, this is gonna be a mess, right? Not that it isn't a mess, but it's a mess in a way that has a bit of a heart and has, to your point, like an ending that feels really satisfying as a woman watching horror films like this all the time. Yeah, I I thought it was a blast. I also am such a Frankenstein fan that seeing those like 80s remakes of some of those scenes was really fun in a different way. To your point, there's some stuff that feels really great. It feels really validating for our main character, right? Elizabeth Shelley, who is obviously a little bit of a nod to Mary Shelley with her name. It doesn't feel as satisfying, for example, for the sex workers in the movie. Of course. Yeah. And to your point about the drug use and all that stuff. Like, there's issues. There's issues with that. That aside, I think you're right. Like when Kate first came to me and she was like, I want to talk about how Frankenhooker is a feminist film. I was like, What? Like, I've never seen this movie, but there's no way. It's the title alone. The title alone, right? Like, you know, we're s we we don't even say that word anymore. Yeah, it's really, and and we're gonna have some mild spoilers, I'll say, for this, but you should definitely watch it. Oh, yeah. And I guess we'll give a little bit of context around Frankenhooker for people who haven't seen it. Yeah. So the film came out in 1980. And do you want to kind of give people a really high-level plot overview?
SPEAKER_01:The film starts uh following a young inventor of sorts named Jeffrey, kind of a Dr. Frankenstein type, doing little experiments in his basement, and he has a girlfriend named Elizabeth, and they are at a party for Elizabeth's father. Elizabeth and Jeffrey seem to have a good relationship, pretty supportive. I mean they both seem pretty juvenile regardless. The party ends in tragedy with Elizabeth dying in a freak accident, and Jeffrey is left depressed, and with his experiments, he is trying to think of the best way to bring her back. He has saved all her body parts and wants to bring her back. So he So romantic. Yes, very romantic. Basically, it's a very Frankenstein-esque thing where he needs more body parts. He doesn't have everything he needs, so he goes into the city and targets sex workers for the optimal women's body parts and ultimately brings Elizabeth back with some unintended consequences because she does not come back the way he wanted her to.
SPEAKER_00:And here's the payoff, and we're just gonna spoil the movie because I think it's hard to talk about this topic without spoiling the movie. So much of the movie, which is really short, it's like an hour and 20 minutes, so much of it is him like shopping for the perfect legs, the perfect butt cheek, the per and it's a joke, right? Like so much so that one of the butt cheeks he puts a check on, right? Like that's the one. He's like swapping left and right boobs. Like it's this whole thing, right? It's this joke of like him crafting this perfect woman. And the other layer to this, which we haven't even talked about yet, is at the beginning of the movie, at the cookout, Elizabeth's mom and other people are giving her a lot of shit about her weight. Yes. And so that's another important layer to this because then he's like crafting this perfect body. Yeah, you know, and her body gets destroyed. So it's not, you know, we don't know how he feels about any of that, but it's just us, it's something that they included in the movie intentionally, right? Yes. You would say, I guess, for example, if you're going to take her head, which she has preserved and just wanting to bring her back to life, you could just put her on any body, you could put her on one body, you know. But it ends up through a series of events that he's piecing this together.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, or you you'd think he would look for body parts that you're like, oh, this reminds me of her. This looks like her. But that's not what he's doing. He is he does not care about what she used to look like or any of that. He wants the perfect woman. He wants his girlfriend back, but if he can improve on her, he will.
SPEAKER_00:So much so that he's even piecing together body parts from different women of different races. Yeah. Right. And so you truly end up with this very unusual, like a forearm is a different skin tone than her face, and her body. So it's bizarre, and okay, that's like, you know, that's an a layer of whatever that's added on to this. And so it's very, it's like the the epitome of objectifying a woman, reducing her to like the perfect body parts, all this stuff. The payoff is at the end. Yes. She does that to him. She puts his head, no, I don't know if she doesn't like piece it together, but she puts his head on a woman's body. Yes. And sort of parrots back to him all the phrases that he gave her about why this is like romantic and well-intentioned, and he had no choice. Yeah, for love. When, like, in reality, that's not the case, right? Like he didn't do what he had to do for love. He it it'll snowballed into something sh more shallow. Yes. And so she pays it back to him at the end in a really satisfying way because she's literally verbatim saying all these things that he said to her, and he has to like sit with that and you see his face of terror, you know, as it zooms out at the end and you see his full body.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and the movie definitely also I think goes into the Madonna Horror complex a little bit because he has Elizabeth basically as this his girlfriend, like the one he's in love with in the beginning. So when she dies, he wants her to come back, and so he goes to these sex workers in New York and treats them like they're nothing. He buys them, he um basically inadvertently kills them in one of the craziest scenes of all time. Oh, yes. Um and he uses their body parts and he puts them on her, and when she comes back, she does not remember who she is. She still has kind of the memory of the sex workers, so she goes to do their work. Yeah. And he loses his mind. He's like, You can't do like you're like, you can't go back there, you can't do that. And basically, that she's different. Those women mattered less than her. So, like, even though she is those women, she is a combination of them. Like, he can't stand the idea of her doing it, but he doesn't care about he didn't care that the other women were doing it, he didn't care that the other woman died. Absolutely. Like, it's just like her, and he saw no value to their lives until they were part of her.
SPEAKER_00:So, okay, they end up dying in this crazy overdose sort of scene, which it was unintentioned. But the truth is he was there to pick their bodies. So he was going to kill them. Yes. Right. And he had the intention of killing many of them, not just one. Yeah. And regardless of sort of how it came about in the plot, he had that intention. So it wasn't like he was holier than thou going into this. He he had that plan.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's also another character named Zorro, who plays the pimp of the sex workers, who is is the real villain of the story, in a sense where like how the movie is presenting it, who also gets his gets his at the end, like basically gets revenge at the end uh against him. But it's this idea that Jeffrey thinks he's better than the pimp. He thinks that what he's doing is more is like morally okay compared to the pimp when he's basically doing the same thing. And then yeah, at the end, when Elizabeth gets her memories back, there is a I think a really almost like beautiful moment, if you could say that with this film, where she talks about how she can feel all the other women in her. Like she says something like, I feel like I feel these memories that aren't mine, like I feel something. Like she she can feel the body parts and like who she is. And he kind of glazes over that. Like he glazes over the fact that he killed so many people. Yeah. And that he's like, Whatever, you're back. Like, great, cool. And like expects her to be totally fine with it. Another thing I think is interesting is that Elizabeth, when she first comes back, says to Jeffrey, like, Oh my god, you like found a cure for death. You brought me back to life. You're amazing. Like, that's amazing. Yeah. In reality, it is amazing to think about, like, yeah, he brought her back to life. But then he he and I think this is very intentional. He says that it only works on women. He only came up with like a serum for women.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's because it's just another version of him being selfish. Like, it's just like he's like, Oh, yeah, I only made it for you. Like, he doesn't care about the bringing back from death. He cares about like, I need that girl back. Right, right. But on a like lighter note, generally, the movie is just so fun, and you get to watch this like crazy looking creature stomp around Manhattan, like parroting these like weird phrases, and then the men she interacts with who like again, like she interacts with so many different men that like don't notice she's a Frankenstein because they're just so enamored with her sexuality. Yeah, like and she like fucks them up, she's super strong. Yeah, she's like really strong. She uh like takes no shit, she's like all of these things, and I just think it's like a good time, like aside from the fact that like I like, yeah, I love that the like feminist themes in it, but I it's just a fun movie to watch. And um, if you're a fan of the substance, I think the substance took a lot a lot from this visually.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. I hadn't thought about that actually until you just said it. Say more.
SPEAKER_01:Well, at the end, there is a scene where um kind of the leftovers from the sex workers that Jeffrey decided were not good enough become their own thing, a blob, a homunculus, whatever they call it. Yeah. And it's just a mix of like boobs and legs and like uh mouths and everything, and they take their revenge on their pimp. Um but I just also recently watched The Substance, and there was a scene, there's a scene, if you've seen the substance similar to that at the end, that I think just visually takes from this movie a lot. And it's just this it is, it's almost like a commentary on women just being a combination of body parts for certain men. Like that's all they are. But when that when those body parts take their own action, that's when it becomes a problem. So it's like these men trying to control these women and then these women getting agency still from the viewpoint of them just being their bodies by these men, but now scary because they can do something about it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And I think The Substance is actually a great movie to talk about in this episode because I thought it was fantastic. I loved it. Yeah, yeah. The overarching theme of The Substance really is like I felt like it was like a deeply probably felt as a deeply personal film to a lot of women for different reasons because so much of it is about defining your self-worth, especially through the eyes of men. Yes. But more so than that, like through your physical body, through the eyes of men, right? And you know, and it devolves from there and goes from there. But I think there's a lot of similarities to that with feminism in general in horror. And the substance is also a film that feels like it addresses that in a progressive way, yes, and not you know, as a byproduct of wanting to kill people who are having sex or you know, things like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think especially one of the things I loved about The Substance, and I think it's just true in Hollywood generally, is the commentary on women becoming less valuable as they age. Yeah, absolutely. And that's huge, especially with actresses and just in the industry and in life in general, women are treated as invisible or like less than the older and older they get because they are no longer sexually desirable. Yep. And uh one thing I also loved about the substance is while the bodies are viewed sexually because they have to be, because that's part of the common like commentary, like, is that this person is looked at in a sexual manner. The way she like degrades over time, especially like as the movie goes on, kind of is different from a lot of horror movies, especially when it comes to like so spoilers for the substance, when Eliza Sue at the end dies, she's this horrible, monstrous being. And often in horror movies, when women die, they die in the most sexual, presentable way. Like they're naked, they're in their skimpiest outfit, they're doing a sexual act, or they're just their result they're reduced to what they look like when they die. Yeah. And that's the thing I have with a lot of horror movies is that w women are often killed first, or more often than men in horror, but they also die in just a much more brutal way. And the substance does it in a way where it is brutal, but it's brutal because you've come to love this character. It's not just physically brutal, it's like all of the combination of the themes of the movie make it like that hard to watch. Yeah. Um because you're like, oh, it she really tried so hard to fit into this standard, a standard that really just keeps changing, keeps growing, keeps getting bigger, that it destroyed her. But in other movies, like uh one thing I always just think about is like there's so many movies where women die naked. They die naked, something happens to their like sexual organs as a way of their death. I know you hate the terrifier movies.
SPEAKER_00:I I do, but I honestly, this whole time you've been talking, it's all I can think about. Yeah, that's it's I and this is why I hate them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And like I I have a weird thing with like I'm I just like fun movies sometimes. But Terrifier, I rewatched the first one recently, and there is a scene where a woman is cut like upside down and naked from her vagina to her head. Yep. And it is long and it is so unnecessary. Like I know those movies are all about gore, but like that death in particular, and just the death of women in those movies are so rough to watch.
SPEAKER_00:That death in particular is burned into my brain in a way that I was thinking about it while you were speaking. Like it's so and I want to pause actually because I think something there's something interesting I'm thinking about as you're talking, and I think that you and I share in this, which is being a woman who loves horror. Yes, whose like personality is defined on the fact that they love horror is a really interesting place to be, especially as women who are hyper-feminist and progressive and whatever, all these other things. Because I think, and I noticed you just did this a little bit, and I do this too, you almost sometimes feel like depending on the crowd, yeah, you need to apologize for liking Terrifier or apologize for liking Halloween or whatever, or vice versa. If you're talking to like horror people in a different, you know, sort of social group, like never bring up your commentary on it, right? Or your pushback on it. And like the truth is somewhere in the middle. I think you and I both, and many people will agree. I can love these movies or love extremely graphic horror movies, but also be critical of the treatment of women in them. Yeah. And that's I think important to talk about. Like it's not an all-or-nothing thing. And in a lot of these cases, there's films that are transformative and deeply personal and all these things, but also there's issues with the way people are represented, and not just women, of course, like many other types of groups, you know. And as the genre evolves, like I feel like it's really starting to shift only the last few years into something that's more and maybe that's unfair, but something that feels like there's more awareness of this sort of thing in it, yeah. Sometimes, but even with Frankenhooker, going back briefly, just to say, yeah, like Frankenhooker is incredibly fun. Yes. It's both problematic and progressive at the same time. And that's okay because we're talking about it and addressing it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think, yeah, I think it's important to address, like, you can like something, and I God knows I love insanely awful horror movies. Like I like just bad horror movies, uh, mistreatment of like everyone. Yeah. But it's yeah, it's you can't ignore those. You can't throw them aside and you can't just pretend they never happened because that's never gonna get you anywhere. Like and not to say that like you have to love them if they're bad, and you can be turned off by a horror movie because of something they did. Yeah, like terrifier. Yeah, like terrifier. Like that's a totally valid reason to not like something. Yeah. But it's just it's this need to, like you said, like apologize for, especially like I and this is a broad statement, but you never really see men apologizing for liking a movie where women are brutalized. Like, yeah. So like it's just something that but it is hard sometimes because I will watch horror and it just a scene will happen, and I'm like, really? Like that? Another scene that I talk about all the time to jump to another movie is in Final Destination 3, one of my favorite movies. There is a scene where two girls die in a tanning bed. And if anyone's seen this movie, knows this scene. Yep. And Final Destination is known for its brutal deaths. Final Destination, that's all those movies are. There's barely any plot, there's just crazy deaths. But there's a difference between like in horror movies, people are killed in brutal ways sometimes because that character sucks and you want to see them die that way. In Final Destination 3, it's like two of like very sweet girls who are just there to be like kind of bimbos. Yeah. And then they die naked in a tanning bed for like, I want to say like five minutes of just like horrible screaming. And it just feels like it takes you out of it for a second. It took me out of it where I'm just like, why? Why did this need to happen? Like, and I really don't know the answer as to why it needed to happen, other than for fun, for to see their boobs, to see like whatever. Like, it's just rough and it it it stings you a little bit, especially like while watching older things. You're just like, oh, that felt really gratuitous for no reason. Even in a movie where gore is everywhere, felt really weird.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, watching through, right? We just finished our Friday the 13th series. Watching through all of those movies, there's so many naked women who are who they get to this camp, right? It's always the same thing, or wherever they are, they undress, they start having sex, and there's another layer here where, to your point earlier, a lot of the time women are killed while they are having sex, which is very similar to what we're saying with the value of women in Frankenhooker, right? There's like a hierarchy of women who are pure or impure, in addition to anything else. And so while that's not always a hard rule, that's something you see again and again, especially in like 80s slasher movies and things like that, where it's okay for them to be killed because they're having sex, and that's bad.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And yeah, the final girl is often pure virginal on that. She's not having sex, she's not drinking, she's not doing drugs. And anytime there is like a final guy in a horror film, that's never a point. Right. That's not really the point of his character. His character is just strong, brave, or like in Evil Dead, he just kind of happens to be the one to survive. Like no offense to Ash and Evil Dead. But um with yeah, with Final Girls, there's always like why she's alive, like why she did this. Lori in Halloween is the motherly type. She protects the children. She's not having sex, she's like taking care of all this, though she does smoke weed.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Poorly, but yeah. Poorly. She tries, gives it her best. Yeah, even that. They have to make a point that she's bad at. Yeah, she's coughing and she's this is not something she does often, but she takes in the children, she protects the children. Or in uh Friday the 13th, yeah. Alice, she's not doing anything, she's not off having sex, she's there to do her job, and that's it. Or even in like Alien, like not even a sexual thing, but like obeying the rules. Like, I love Alien, and I think Ripley is a complete badass, but no one likes Ripley in that movie. Yeah. If you watch that movie over, her crewmates like don't like her because she's stoic, she's hardened, she's like kind of compared to the other woman not crying all the time, not she's masculine. Yeah, she's very masculine, especially because she was written as a man first. Exactly. But then at the end, she gets like in her underwear for no reason. That always surprises me when I watch that movie. There's a scene at the end when she's in the escape pod where she just strips down to her underwear for no reason. There's simply no reason for that scene, other than oh, I guess she's a woman final girl, so we gotta have at least one scene where she's half naked. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It goes against everything they had set up for her the whole time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I guess one could argue that it's just like, oh, it's supposed to be a human moment, like she's relieved, she's whatever. But like it just that scene always felt so unnecessary to me. But yeah, the final girls are either someone women people hate, like that happens a lot, or like women that are like so good that like you couldn't possibly want them to die. Like, look at her, she's perfect. She's like, again, the Madonna Whore thing, like she's amazing. Like, why would she die? Like, she doesn't deserve to die, other than that girl who had consensual sex. Yeah. Like it's it's a lot. And I think it's sexuality is something that is played with so much in horror to the point where like even the progressive view of it is not that progressive. And uh one thing I do want to talk about is rape revenge stories, where like that's supposed to be like, oh look, she did this, like this happened to her, and she's getting her revenge, and you get to see these rapists die. But it's like all of those movies have very brutal sexual assault scenes.
SPEAKER_00:17 minutes, right? Last house on the left, 17 minutes long.
SPEAKER_01:Like, I first of all don't need the woman to be a badass because something terrible happened to her. Yep. And it's not just true of horror movies, it's true of a lot of other movies like Kill Bill. Like movies that are set up like only when a woman is brutalized to a point of like insanity, basically, can she then stand up for herself? And even if you want to do that, like why do you need to include the scene? Like, who is that for?
SPEAKER_00:Like well, that and that's the question. And I think it's the same question as the tanning bed thing you're just talking about. Who is it for? You can do you can do the the crazy tanning bed death in 30 seconds. Yeah, you can allude to what's happening in Last House and the Left very briefly from afar. Yes, but it's the trauma of watching that in the way that it's filmed, which is horrifying on such like almost uh realistic way. Yeah, that if anybody is watching that and they're like, I'm entertained, I'm chill with this, I find it deeply problematic.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's scary, and like, or even still, like um, one of my favorite horror movies of all time is Jennifer's Body. Same. Diablo Cody is a beautiful writer, but Jennifer's Body is an allegory for both puberty and sexual assault when Jennifer is sacrificed. That is supposed to be like she's taken in the van, she's taken in the woods, like that, but they don't show that. They show like her being killed, but it's in a normal way, and it's not more gratuitous than any other violence in the film. But they didn't have to show her being assaulted, they didn't have to show that. It's it's implied, it's also like her sexuality is prevalent before and after that. But it's a comment on it without showing this like brutal thing happening to her. Like you don't need it, and everyone gets it, and everyone understands. Like it's you don't need that scene. Jennifer's body was also a victim of misogyny in the real world because of its marketing, which I think became very um well known recently. That it was marketed as look at Megan Fox, be sexy, um and make out with Amanda Sayfried. Yeah. Who's the main character and not in any of the posters? If you look at any, she's not in a single like of the main posters, but the marketing team was different from the production team. So the marketing team was like, Megan Fox is in this, and Megan Fox looks hot in this because, well, Megan Fox does look hot in it because once Megan Fox, and yeah, the point is that she's supposed to disarm like she's a succubus if that's what it's supposed to be. But the marketing team just marketed it towards young men. And so the movie failed because young men don't want to see that movie. That was a movie made for young women. Yeah. Um, the language of it, the friendship of it, the content of it, all of it is for a younger woman audience. But because it was marketed as look at Megan Fox as a cheerleader, right, with just on the like poster a little bit of blood on her lips as if she's like a sexy vampire, men go see this movie and see her be like this kind of contorted like woman who's targeting men. Yes, it didn't do well. And so it kind of flopped and then it became a cult classic, obviously. But it's this world in which if there isn't something that is typical of horror in it and it's not for certain audiences, people are like, oh well, that's a bad movie. Like sometimes things just aren't for you. Right. It's like it's just not you don't need to see it. If you don't like it, it's not meant for you.
SPEAKER_00:It's not revolutionary to be a woman who likes horror. Oh, yeah. Growing up, my m my because of my mom, I'm into horror, right? Like that's something that's not new, but there's this perception, I believe still, in the world where it's like so rare. Like women in horror, like, and like yes, women in film, women, all of those things are important, and but women fucking love horror. Yeah. And there's an audience for that. And like I think that marketing team was also like, oh, well, men are that's where the the bigger audience for horror is, and that's not true. No, you know, and I I think a lot of it's just like maybe women don't love watching films where women get killed all the time in brutal ways while they're naked, but there women do love horror, and that's not a niche or like subversive thing. That's like a very, very, very common thing. Yes. Just to say. Yeah. Jennifer's Body uh was one of those like really pinnacle films for me. Oh yeah. And I didn't know that about the marketing team at all. It's really interesting to hear that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:All the posters, Amanda Seyfried isn't in a single one of them. And if she is, she's in the background.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And all of them are Megan Fox pose scandalously, all of that, and it's just not like the posters to the movies are just not what the movie is. Like it's right.
SPEAKER_00:Right. There's like your two point, there's nothing wrong with Megan Fox being hot on a poster, but it's a it's a misrepresentation of the plot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And uh even, I mean, like, I just don't think people uh understood, and it flopped, and it just there are articles if you want to like read more about this about how the marketing team failed that movie. Yeah, it's just these things where like I'm a huge fan of bubblegum horror as well. I know you love the love witch.
SPEAKER_00:Love the love witch. Love it.
SPEAKER_01:Like that, you can see these women being badass without giving up their femininity and without using that feminine for men. Like the love witch, I think is I when I first watched it, I was like younger and I was just like, oh, what just happened? And then I watched it and then I'm like, oh, that was awesome. Like that was I love I see what they're doing there. Yeah. Moments in it where like you kind of flip the switch and you don't force your character to final girls, they're often forced into like masculine roles, like Ripley and Alien, or forced into a feminine that men are comfortable with. Whereas in The Love Witch, she's like hyper feminine to the point of like men don't really like that, or like she gets tired of them, or just just her completely own agency. Like, men are just kind of there for her, and like she like uses them, she does her thing, it's over. And like not to say that you have to have like a movie where the men are completely disposable, but like it's fun to watch a movie where your main character doesn't have to give up anything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Like as a woman, like she doesn't really give anything up, she doesn't change herself in any way, she's not attacked, she's not anything, she just is who she is. Yeah. And you just watch her story.
SPEAKER_00:There's this element of the Love Witch, which I think is really one of the reasons I love it so much. This comes up all the time in horror, right? This in and just in history. This idea of vanity being a sin. This idea of caring too much about your appearance or dressing a certain way makes you bad, all that stuff. The thing I love so much, one of the things about the Love Witch is that her she is so aesthetic, right? She is doing her makeup, she's doing her hair. Like to your point, she's hyper feminine, but she's beyond that, she's putting time and care into like she loves to dress a certain way, she loves to style her room a certain way, she loves, and that's not a bad thing, and that doesn't make her weak, and that doesn't make her vapid, that doesn't make her vain. It's just something she's really into. It's her version of art. And I find that to be so fun, and it's almost like we see her like dream world almost through her eyes. And I love the part in that movie, which at first I was really confused by, but the as years go on, I am so warmed up to it where. There's two moments. One where you just see a shit ton of modern cars, and the other time when someone's on like an iPhone, and you're like, oh, she's in the modern world. Like they're purposefully doing that. She's just creating this like art space for herself. And I I think it's so cool. Um, I mean, also any kind of menstrual spell horror I'm into. Oh, yeah. 10 out of 10.
SPEAKER_01:It is, I was talking to someone and they were like, oh yeah, like the menstrual stuff in Midsumar and Love Witch, we were talking about that. And they were just like, oh yeah, that made me really uncomfortable. And I'm like, the the blood in Midsumar was the part that made you the most uncomfortable. Like, that's what, like, it's just this need to see what you're used to seeing, especially in horror. And it happens a lot where like original horror is something that is like so sought after. Like, it's hard, it's been happening forever. And it's almost impossible. And that's fine because you can play with things so much. But to see something so different, like the Love Witch or even Jennifer's Body or Franken Hooker, like something where you're just like, that's not what I'm used to seeing. It makes people feel weird. Yeah. But it's also nice to see like a version of, like you said, like she's doing her makeup, she's like so like all of this, but it's never for anyone else. Like she's just in her house looking like that at points, like all that. But there's a book I love called The Ways of Seeing by John Berger, where he just talks about like the way we perceive the world, and he has a quote in it about women and how women are viewed. And he says, To be born a woman has been to be born within an allotted and confined space into the keeping of men. And he also says, um, a woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself while she is walking across a room or while she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisioning herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood, she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continuously.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So basically, just like this feeling of being watched, this feeling of you need to look a certain way, you need to act a certain way, that in horror is punished often with women. Like women doing what women are like quote unquote supposed to do, which is dress a certain way, act a certain way, like sleep with men, but don't sleep with men, like any of this is punished. Right. And obviously men are punished for having sex in horror too. But it's just it's so different because you're never seeing their genitals. No, you don't see their genitals, you don't see any of that. There's not a like long scene of them stripping. There's not a long scene of any of that. Um, and it's just this like purity idea that is so old but so continuous, like to today. Like it's just something that is hard to watch. It's and I also think that there's a lot of horror characters who die in like crazy ways other than almost adopted by female horror fans as like an icon or as like a like a great thing, or like uh in I Know What You Did Last Summer, um Helen Shivers, like the friend who dies, like she's like people are like, She should have been the final girl. Like it's crazy that they killed her. Or it's or in Franken Hooker, I think she's iconic. I think all the sex workers are iconic. Yeah. And it's just like, or in Terrifier, like her friend in the beginning is like so fun and like free and like awesome, like, and all she does is yeah, she bothers him a little bit, but whatever. And it's these characters that like you're sad seeing die, because I'm all for a gratuitous death scene if the character is an asshole. I love watching like asshole horror characters really get like crazy death scenes because you're like, yeah. But with women, they're like they do like one thing wrong or are never mentioned again. One thing I want to talk about was in Scream, yeah. Yeah, has one of the craziest deaths in that movie, in my opinion. Everyone else is stabbed, everyone else is stabbed and left to die. She's like running, screaming, trying to crawl through the garage, get stuck in the garage, is like slowly brought up and killed. And this is the main character's best friend, the one of the other main characters' little sister, and she's never mentioned again. In like, I mean, I they may off-handedly mention her in the rest of the series, but barely. They don't have a scene of mourning, they don't have anything. Like, if she just dies and it's over, like it's such a crazy long scene for a character that is not a throwaway character, and they have this like long scene and then they throw her away.
SPEAKER_00:Right, yeah. It's actually interesting. I'm thinking about all this too as you're talking. I almost feel like, in a way, going back to to Jennifer's body, but to so many other horror films, there is like this rebellion, this act of rebellion that comes with queer horror, especially for women. Yes, because right, to everything we're talking about, like women are perceived in horror through the the eyes of men generally. And we're talking about like a straight sort of cis het situation. But when you have scenes like in Jennifer's body or just like generally queer horror, it feels like just almost by nature it flips that on its head. Yeah. Because you're not, you know, I'm thinking about bodies, bodies, bodies a little bit, but you're not like those characters aren't inherently there to serve men or male audiences, and maybe they do, but you know, whatever. Yeah. But like there's a different angle to it, and just even that shift is so powerful, you know, in in movies as they come out now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I'm not saying that like you can't have sex in movies or no, of course not. Obviously, you can't prevent audiences from being assholes. Yeah. If like towards characters, especially like complex female characters, like people end up hating them when like just if it were a man doing the same thing, they'd be like, Oh, well, he's going through a lot. Yeah. Um, but you can't but you don't have to play into it. And I'm not saying you even need to like have the most progressive take. Just like treat them like other people in your film. Like, if a man dies in your film in a crazy way, sure, have a woman die in a crazy way. But if a man dies in your film and it's kind of normal, like then keep your deaths consistent. Like, keep all that consistent. Like, there's no need to have this follow this trope of women just being brutalized. And I just would love to see more agency with women characters in horror and just less of in order to become a badass, yeah, you need to watch all your friends die, or you need to watch um, you need to be brutally assaulted, or any of that. Like, I guess that I guess that watching your friends die is a big part of horror, but it's this almost forcefulness of the characters. They like force the characters to see things and experience things in order to prepare them for the end of the film. Whereas you could just have your character living and experiencing something instead of it kind of being the actions of women in horror films is less actual actions and more of them not doing things, and that's what gets them forward rather than them actually taking agency into their own lives.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's totally right. And to your point, like I love films with naked women, I love films with sex, I love films with drugs. Like, that's not the pro point. It's like the association or the message that's of the pairing of those things, plus, right? Yeah, and you know, I think about Titan a lot or like other films that are also exploring gender, right? And I think the great thing, right? The positive silver lining of this is like because horror has been very binary for so long, yes, I think there's gonna be some really incredible films that can use these tropes and flip them or play with them as we sort of expand into a more progressive world, right? So I think that's really exciting and something I'm looking forward to a lot.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm really looking forward to well, because film has opened up to so many different groups of people now. Yeah. Just films that we're almost not only progressive takes, but we're just the gender or whatever of a person does not matter. Yeah. That's not important to the film. That's not why they survive, that's not why they're doing this. Right. It just is happening. Right, right. So, like, not only do we need films that are more progressive towards women that actually take feminist stories, but there's also feminists to just have a film where if a woman survives, that's just because that character survives. It's not because she's a woman, it's not because of that. Just treat them like people consistently and then obviously murder them viciously, because it's still horror.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's still horror. We still want the the kill. Yeah, we still want that.
SPEAKER_01:Let's talk about teeth. Yes, let's talk about teeth. I love teeth. I watched teeth for the first time when I think I was maybe 12 or 13 years old. Okay. And I loved it. I thought it was amazing, and then I had mostly male friends at the time, and I said, Hey guys, let's watch something, but don't look up what it's about. And I forced them to watch it with me. Nice. Um, they were deeply uncomfortable. But Teeth is a film that, and I know I said I don't like the rape revenge films, but sometimes that's what you have. That's what you have to work with in terms of feminist films. Yeah. That's what they give you. But Teeth is a film about a girl going through puberty who has pledged to wait until marriage, and who the men in her life are refusing to do that. They are pressuring her, they are attacking her, they she cannot catch a break. And her body gives her a self-defense system, which is teeth in her vagina. I um will bite off your penis if you try to have sex with her. But the one thing I love about teeth is that every time something happens to her sexually and her vagina attacks, yeah, um, it has been sexual assault. There is a, and they make a point of this consensual sexual scene in the film where nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because the point is not she can never have sex. The point is not her vagina is protecting her from sex, the point is her vagina is protecting her from sexual assault.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I loved that they put a consensual sex scene in that film. Because that means there should be no one that's afraid of this. Exactly. Yeah. Like she still has agency with her body, she's not losing control of her body. It may feel like her body's doing something against her will, which in the beginning, when she doesn't know what's happening, it is, but it's protecting her. But it's not something that is gonna keep her virginal forever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then towards the end of the film, she learns to control it and use it to her advantage. And while again, this movie is campy and doesn't have like the best, like it's not the most like amazing film, and it's not, and it has scenes where are again are a bit much, but it just takes a young girl who would be taken advantage of her life and gives her this agency. Yeah. And like I like that in the beginning, she is confused, she doesn't know how to control it. Cause again, a lot of films, a lot of horror films like to explore like puberty and coming of age and all that in a grotesque way. Yeah. But she grows and learns to use it and learns to be comfortable with her sexuality and take control of her sexuality. So it's not saying to young women, be afraid to have sex, it's saying to young women, You, this is your body. You can do like you have control, you have agency, like you have a say in this.
SPEAKER_00:And there should be no one, if any man ever watches that movie, or any, you know, whatever, any man, any person with a penis watches that movie, yeah, and they are uncomfortable, yeah, then they're somebody who maybe is used to having non-consensual sex. You know what I mean? Like there should be nothing about that that freaks men out. Yeah. Like unless they're someone who who doesn't listen to a no.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, or like even yeah, even the scenes that are like, other than like the gore in it, like, yeah, there are scenes where a guy's penis is fully bitten off, and I can see that maybe hitting someone. But welcome to the life of like being a woman. One of my favorite films, Sleep Boy Camp, has a girl like oh yeah, like like with a curling iron, like like I'm pretty sure like in her vagina at one point, or like or Texas Chainsaw Mask Carl. That's a rough one, Kate. That's a rough movie. Sleep Boy Camp? Yeah, that's a whole other movie that is that movie. I would say I do not agree with the ideas of. I just think it's really fun to watch.
SPEAKER_00:That movie is not let's caveat that so you don't get canceled. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly. That movie is so dated, so so dated, yeah. And I actually wrote a whole essay on it in college about like why it's messed up, but I just think it's fun to show people. Yeah. Because it makes no sense. But regardless, Terrifier has women's boobs being cut off. Again, her being like cut straight down from her vagina, like Texas chainsaw. Texas chainsaw mask, or she's hooked on that hook. That is like one of the worst. Like, that makes my skin crawl.
SPEAKER_00:That movie is that movie is hard for me to watch.
SPEAKER_01:So, yes, there are gory scenes in it where I can see it making you uncomfortable, especially with genital things, but like that's horror movies. Like, there's gonna be gore in it that makes you feel icky. Right. But other than that, the deaths aren't happening for no reason. The deaths aren't they're done by her and done by her body for a reason. And there's so like again, there's just so much agency with her character. Like, she becomes this like powerful woman, and wish everyone had that defense mechanism, that'd be great, but yeah, obviously, not real.
SPEAKER_00:But not you're real yet, but maybe our bodies will evolve, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But it's just this this character who is treated as a joke in the beginning that knows what she wants, and her also idea, like though she does end up having sex before marriage consensually, it's not something that feels like a betrayal to her character. Nothing is done for the male gaze in that film. Everything is done for women's empowerment generally. Like obviously, there are jokes made and all that, but just this idea of yeah, a young girl who has complete control over her body by the end.
SPEAKER_00:And I have to say, Teeth the musical, which was an off-Broadway show that came out last year, I think, was one of the most fun theater experiences I've had in New York. There was the first two or three rows had to wear ponchos because they were in the blood splash zone. It there were so many dildos involved in that show. You can listen to the soundtrack on Spotify, and I encourage that you do. If it ever comes back to New York, I will let you guys know because it was a delight.
SPEAKER_01:Like, yeah, again, sexuality is not the evil in horror films. No, it's how you portray it. Yeah. Sexuality can be amazing in horror films. It can be used as and again, I'm not I don't have a problem with sexuality being used as a weapon. I don't have a problem with that. It's when you force your character into their sexuality. Right that's an issue.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because sex like sex is deeply human. Yes. How people identify is deeply human, like going through sort of and you know, and also just to like broaden up the conversation a little bit, like even as women, like how people w women are not a monolith, right? Men are not a monolith, transgender people are not a monolith. Like the ever way everybody approaches all of these things is so nuanced and different, and you know, etc. etc. And so and so there's no like right or wrong playbook, right, around how things are portrayed or it's a spectrum, is the point, right? But there are things that feel incredibly difficult to watch, regardless, I would hope, of your personal identity, right? To see a certain type of person portrayed over and over and over again and killed in a certain way over and over and over again is exhausting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's true of different races, it's true of trans people in horror. There is actually, I think, a book just came out not that long ago about like transness and horror and just how they're uh always portrayed as the monsters. Yeah. And again, like Sleepaway camp. Sleepaway camp. Yeah. But like even that movie, it's not even a like it's again a forced upon the character. Yeah. Like if characters make choices, that's acceptable. In Teeth, she ends up making the choice to again in the beginning, it's like a little like sloppy, but she makes the choice to use this as a weapon. And she uses it to her advantage. But then you look at something like even yeah, Last House on the Left, like just something that is forced on them. Yeah. Her sexuality is forced on her, her revenge is forced on her. Like this revenge never would have had to happen. And like, yeah, Jennifer's body, she uses her sexuality to her advantage as well. But also, she was forced to become that. But you know, but that's the commentary on it. Like other films, like they force them to become it, and they're like, Yeah, that's cool, that's great. She's a badass, she kills all her rapists. But in Jennifer's body, it's a comment on being forced to become this, like ruining other people's lives and seeing your friend like kind of have this happen to them. But yeah, it's just this need to over-sexualize women, but not so much that it makes men uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00:I'm trying I'm even thinking about um Nightmare on Elm Street with that imagery of his like gloved hand, right? Freddy's gloved hand coming out in the bathtub, like between her legs. It's just like it's just non-stop. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:It's a hard topic to truly get into with like such a broad idea of like in all of these films. Like you would have to like individually dissect so many classic slasher films and so many classic horror films to really get down to the nitty-gritty of how women are treated. But it's just important to not only watch out for these things in horror films and like see where you can find it, to like see who's still doing it or like how it's still prevalent, because it's important to acknowledge that it's happening, but also to acknowledge when you see changes in it or how it makes you feel, or and it yeah, not just with feminism, but with like everything that you think is mistreated in horror or in movies generally. It's important to acknowledge it, and it's hard for me to talk about like in such a concise way because your mind goes everywhere because you're like so passionate about it, and it it really does affect you every day, and so yeah, I enjoy talking about it, but it's something that I think like more people need to acknowledge, and I'm glad that there are more women and um like making horror, more trans people making horror, queer people making horror, like different races making horror, just like so many more people are open to it now, and you get to see this change, or you get to see commentary on it in films, like kind of becoming meta and like more satire with it, and it kind of opens other people's eyes to something that maybe you just saw as a background thing, but really can affect like people while they're growing up and seeing these and seeing how they're represented.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think representation in horror and film in general, of course, but especially in horror is so important because there is like we talked about this in the Friday the 13th series. There's so much ROI, there's so much popularity, even against bad horror, yes, for a reason. Horror is an insanely popular genre, even if it doesn't maybe have the respect of other sort of film genres for a reason. Yes. It's escapism, it's something people want. They want the thrill, they want the adrenaline, it's fun. We've said that word a hundred times in this episode. It's fun. And I think the part the kind of the core of what we're getting to a little bit here is that we go to horror movies, we watch horror movies all the time for tons of different reasons. But one of those reasons is that escape, right? It is I want to see a campy horror movie. I loved Jason X because it was so freaking crazy. Like, I want that. I love that. That's something horror can do that not a lot of other genres can do. Where it gets uncomfortable is where you have a 17-minute hyper-realistic scene that is not an escape. Yeah. It's it's certain there's tons of reasons that it's not okay. But when you have these things, and there's actually a scene in um Thanksgiving, that that horror film that came out a few years ago. Oh, I know that movie.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I watch it every Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, it's I I really liked it way better than I thought it was gonna be, but there's a scene and it's not a feminist scene. There's an oven scene, and it goes on way too long. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:That's the same with the Final Destination tanning scene. Yeah, it's not even about feminism at all. Too long. It's just like, why to these characters are you doing this? Yeah. It's often women. Yeah. And it's just I think it hurt it, if anything, it takes you out of the plot.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No, it does. It made me so anxious watching it in the theater. I thought I would have to get up and leave.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thanksgiving, Last House on the Left, these things that like it hurts you deeper almost like because like in Friday the 13th, you see women die and you see them in these sex scenes, and it's rough, but at least it like happens, it's quick, it's over, you're like, okay, that's a horror movie, and you continue on. With films like that, you're like, you almost leave the horror film. You leave the movie. Yeah. You go back to like you kind of start thinking about your own director. Yes. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. I like Thanksgiving, but um, I have thoughts on Eli Roth. Yeah, fair. Um but you start thinking about the people who made this because you're like, why did you do that? Like, what's wrong with you? And if anything, I think it takes away from the horror film.
SPEAKER_00:It also for me, like it yes, I think about the director, but then I also think about my experiences, right? Like it it brings about maybe like trauma or other things in a way that you're not looking for in an experience, like watching a film called Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving. You know what I mean? Like you're there to have a fun, good time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and you're just like, this is so not necessary to the plot. It's so different from the rest of the movie in terms of how long it lasts.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And just you feel icky. You feel icky, like like a different kind of icky than horror movies should make you feel. Like you feel real world icky. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Kate, thank you so much. This was so lovely to sit down and talk to you about feminism and horror, especially through the lens of Frank and Hooker, but through the lens of so many of these films. If you want more from Kate, stay tuned. But also head to lunaticsproject.com and click on articles. Kate writes all the time for us on lunaticsproject.com, and there's so much that she has to say, and so much that the world wants to hear from her. So definitely go and read some of her articles there. And yeah, thanks for being here. This was excellent. Thank you guys so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.
