Halloween Blog#3-Girls are scary

One thing that I have picked up on in recent years especially when I worked at Blockbuster is that girls love slasher/horror movies. One would think that movies about a usually male psycho chopping up naked girls would appeal to weird, horny boys. Well, you thought wrong my friend! Many girls love it too. Not all girls fit my female slasher lover criteria but if you do this what you are....

• Aged 13-45
• Attractive
• Usually in a committed relationship
  

Almost every day when I worked at Blockbuster I would have girls come in and ask me for horror movie recommendations while their boyfriends and husbands groaned and walked towards the comedy,action and soft-core porn. I enjoyed helping these gore hound girls. It was fun and I always liked talking to people about different movies. I also would love when they would return the movie and tell me they loved it. I felt like I was doing a public service and helping people get their money's worth of entertainment.
The question is why are so many girls attracted to horror movies? I thought I was the only one who had noticed this until my boyfriend and I watched a documentary called Going To Pieces:The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film where some the point was brought up. According to the documentary (and me) girls enjoy these films because most of the time a female is the hero. Look back at movies like Rear Window where Grace Kelly is hell bent to solve the mystery of the missing neighbor all while looking fabulous and saving the day. (I have a theory that Grace Kelly was the prototype for the last surviving smart girls in horror movies).

In every horror movie now there is that last remaining girl who either gets away, kills the bad guy or is left to come back for the sequel such as Nancy aka Heather Langenkamp in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies who finally gets rid of Freddy even though I love him and want him to kill all those stupid teenagers.

Then you have the heroines who do some serious ass kicking such as in 1980s I Spit on Your Grave which was the first female revenge movies and has some of the most disgusting scenes ever put on celluloid. It's a good cautionary tale and allowed girls to seek justice on those who did them wrong. Note to girls:this is not a good date movie. Watch this one alone or with your friends. I was actually told by a guy I dated in high school to watch this one alone. YIKES!

While there are the girls who save the day there are also some great horror female villains even though they are very hard to come by. Girls cheer on the heroines but we also love a good nasty, female villain. Society frowns upon women being bad which is why we are so drawn to them such as The Bride of Frankenstein. Even though we only see her for about 5 minutes in the actual Bride of Frankenstein film she is the most popular Classic Universal monster. Why? Because she a monster with boobs. What's not to love?

Some other great female villains include that awful Japanese girl in Audition, Glenn Close as the infamous Alex Forrester in Fatal Attraction, Sherri Moon as Baby in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, and Shawnee Smith as Amanda in the Saw movies.
Another reason why I think girls are drawn to these movies is that they teach us that bad girls and whores die first. If you are a girl who has sex in a horror movie you will die! I think there is a fascination with wanting to see girls that remind us of the ones we hated in high school get hacked up. Also consider the fact that us girls bleed for five days every month gives us a higher tolerance for blood. Sorry to be gross but it's true. If men had periods they would all kill themselves. Like I said, girls are scary!
Happy Halloween!