Scream Queens: Horror Heroines Exposed
There are two archetypes of women important to the horror genre. One is in front of the camera, the Final Girl; the last survivor, the girl whose odyssey of horror transforms them into a steel warrior. The other is the Scream Queen, and this is the actress. They’re the iconic actresses of the industry. Elvira. Jamie Lee Curtis. Linnea Quigley. Lisa Wilcox. Danielle Harris. It’s a concept unique unto horror. It’s a typecasting of sorts, but one of reverence and love.
Scream Queens takes a look at those women and their experience in the industry. And it should be said that it is ONLY women here, which is refreshing. For too long, horror has been propped up as a male-oriented genre. The last thing this doc needed was a man mansplaining scream queens. This had to be from their mouths. And that’s what this is: 80 minutes of women, from the 60’s to the 10’s, talking about their experiences. What it’s like to be viewed as a scream queen; what it means for your career; the fanbase and how they can be challenging; the sexuality and nudity that often comes with being a woman in a horror movie.
Is it all that educational? Not really. You won’t find out a whole lot of new information here. It’s hard work, you can get typecast, horror fans can be creepy, nudity is a difficult choice, yeah, yeah, yeah. It might be educational for a non-horror fan, but for a horror fan, it’s not plumbing new depths. It’s really just personal reflections here. But not every doc needs to be breaking new ground or some kind of journalistic milestone. Sometimes, it’s just enough to record history. And in that regard, it does a fine job.
That’s not to say this doc isn’t without flaws, though. The doc is hosted by Troma mainstay Debbie Rochon. She is wooden and stilted and awkward. I can’t tell if she’s trying to be sexy or campy or vamping, but it doesn’t work. What’s weird is, when she is a talking head, she’s fine; it’s just her host segments and segues, where she loses all charisma.
The movie also perpetuates some disprovable and tiresome myths. I won’t say slashers didn’t have some misogyny in them — just look at the frequency of long, lingering gazes of female frontal nudity versus fleeting male rear nudity — but, from a story standpoint, the “it’s all about killing women” myth is tired and hoary and just plain false. Go and watch a Kill Count video from James A. Janiesse. He’s done the math; men are killed almost always at a 2/1 ratio over women. Men are more likely to be ambushed and eviscerated in extraordinarily gory fashion, where women are stalked and dispatched with more face-to-face contact, positioning them as more vulnerable. But the notion that all of these movies are being all women getting slaughtered is just wrong. And this movie leans on that pretty hard, which is a shame. For all they talk about women in horror roles being empowering, the doc’s position tries to have it multiple ways, treating horror movies as exploitation, which ignores reality.
It’s also a little … weird? Off-putting? … for the movie to have this lengthy section talking about nudity, and how it was an expectation in the 70’s and 80’s, and that it was sexist and wrong … and then there’s clips of nudity from the movies. Um, what? You could run a sentence through four languages in Google Translate and not come away with as mixed a message.
One more complaint; this doc originally came out with a blu-ray release of the D-level slasher Graduation Day, and was then re-released with Scream Factory’s excellent Friday The 13th box set. From what I can tell, the original featured clips from the movies the women were in. The version in the F13 set replaces ALL of the clips with F13 clips instead. It’s weird hearing Linnea Quigley talk about when she objected to nudity and seeing Kirsten Baker’s nude scene from Friday Part 2, or Lisa Wilcox talk about how her character in the Elm Street movies went from wallflower to kicking ass, and a clip plays of Kimberly Beck in F13 Part 4. I don’t know if it’s a licensing issue or what; if so, then maybe don’t include the doc. It’d be better than shoehorning in F13 clips everywhere.
Overall, it’s not without its flaws, but it’s not without its charms either. It’s nice to see all these women embrace their position and not look down on their time in horror. And it’s nice they got a vehicle to be honest about their experiences, good, bad or indifferent.
Scream Queens takes a look at those women and their experience in the industry. And it should be said that it is ONLY women here, which is refreshing. For too long, horror has been propped up as a male-oriented genre. The last thing this doc needed was a man mansplaining scream queens. This had to be from their mouths. And that’s what this is: 80 minutes of women, from the 60’s to the 10’s, talking about their experiences. What it’s like to be viewed as a scream queen; what it means for your career; the fanbase and how they can be challenging; the sexuality and nudity that often comes with being a woman in a horror movie.
Is it all that educational? Not really. You won’t find out a whole lot of new information here. It’s hard work, you can get typecast, horror fans can be creepy, nudity is a difficult choice, yeah, yeah, yeah. It might be educational for a non-horror fan, but for a horror fan, it’s not plumbing new depths. It’s really just personal reflections here. But not every doc needs to be breaking new ground or some kind of journalistic milestone. Sometimes, it’s just enough to record history. And in that regard, it does a fine job.
That’s not to say this doc isn’t without flaws, though. The doc is hosted by Troma mainstay Debbie Rochon. She is wooden and stilted and awkward. I can’t tell if she’s trying to be sexy or campy or vamping, but it doesn’t work. What’s weird is, when she is a talking head, she’s fine; it’s just her host segments and segues, where she loses all charisma.
The movie also perpetuates some disprovable and tiresome myths. I won’t say slashers didn’t have some misogyny in them — just look at the frequency of long, lingering gazes of female frontal nudity versus fleeting male rear nudity — but, from a story standpoint, the “it’s all about killing women” myth is tired and hoary and just plain false. Go and watch a Kill Count video from James A. Janiesse. He’s done the math; men are killed almost always at a 2/1 ratio over women. Men are more likely to be ambushed and eviscerated in extraordinarily gory fashion, where women are stalked and dispatched with more face-to-face contact, positioning them as more vulnerable. But the notion that all of these movies are being all women getting slaughtered is just wrong. And this movie leans on that pretty hard, which is a shame. For all they talk about women in horror roles being empowering, the doc’s position tries to have it multiple ways, treating horror movies as exploitation, which ignores reality.
It’s also a little … weird? Off-putting? … for the movie to have this lengthy section talking about nudity, and how it was an expectation in the 70’s and 80’s, and that it was sexist and wrong … and then there’s clips of nudity from the movies. Um, what? You could run a sentence through four languages in Google Translate and not come away with as mixed a message.
One more complaint; this doc originally came out with a blu-ray release of the D-level slasher Graduation Day, and was then re-released with Scream Factory’s excellent Friday The 13th box set. From what I can tell, the original featured clips from the movies the women were in. The version in the F13 set replaces ALL of the clips with F13 clips instead. It’s weird hearing Linnea Quigley talk about when she objected to nudity and seeing Kirsten Baker’s nude scene from Friday Part 2, or Lisa Wilcox talk about how her character in the Elm Street movies went from wallflower to kicking ass, and a clip plays of Kimberly Beck in F13 Part 4. I don’t know if it’s a licensing issue or what; if so, then maybe don’t include the doc. It’d be better than shoehorning in F13 clips everywhere.
Overall, it’s not without its flaws, but it’s not without its charms either. It’s nice to see all these women embrace their position and not look down on their time in horror. And it’s nice they got a vehicle to be honest about their experiences, good, bad or indifferent.
Mini Review: There are two archetypes of women important to the horror genre. One is in front of the camera, the Final Girl; the last survivor, the girl whose odyssey of horror transforms them into a steel warrior. The other is the Scream Queen, and this is the actress. They’re the iconic actresses of the industry. Elvira. Jamie Lee Curtis. Linnea Quigley. Lisa Wilcox. Danielle Harris. It’s a concept unique unto horror. It’s a typecasting of sorts, but one of...