Review: 'The Science of Women in Horror: The Special Effects, Stunts, and True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fright Films'

Horror lurks on a hostile terrain, and that landscape is unquestionably most hostile toward women. Throughout most of the genre’s history, women have usually been present to shriek, get slaughtered, show their bodies, and huddle in a corner while some dude tussles with the monster. This is a particularly sorry situation since it was a woman—Mary Shelley—who invented the horror genre as we now know it two centuries ago.

Meg Hafdahl and Kelly Florence are two horror fans well aware of this problem. Their new book The Science of Women in Horror: The Special Effects, Stunts, and True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fright Films mainly functions as an entertaining movie and TV guide for feminist horror fans frustrated by the lack of non-insulting viewing options. The writers basically whittle their list of feminist-friendly horrors down to a skimpy 29 films, which probably would not fill the first ten pages of the usual horror guide. So, as their book’s unwieldy title suggests, they pack their pages with much more than the standard starred recommendations. The Science of Women in Horror offers some interesting tangents related to the real life science, history, and psychology behind the films; analyses (a reading of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night as a sort of horror/western is particularly compelling); making-of details; and interviews with actresses, filmmakers, and fellow horror fans.

Because it takes on so much, The Science of Women in Horror feels a bit like Mary Shelley’s creature, its various elements often stitched together haphazardly. An interview with Dee Wallace is dropped into a chapter on Bates Motel, a TV series on which the actress never appeared. The interview and chapter have the theme of motherhood in common, but it’s still a confusing choice especially when the discussion strays from that central theme to more generic questions like “What are you working on now?” The decision to place the interview with Deborah Voorhees— who appeared in a Friday the 13^th movie and is now directing a Friday the 13^th movie—into a chapter other than the one about Friday the 13^th is especially baffling. The interviews are worthwhile, but would have been less jarring in an appendix. There are also a few lazy gaffs, as when the writers label The Omega Man a “blaxploitation” movie just because its leading lady is African American, assume the lead character of Black Christmas is a babysitter, and identify famed film critic Robin Wood as a woman.

The movie choices are heavy on the past decade, which isn’t surprising since we’re living in relatively enlightened times (the monster in the White House notwithstanding), though Hafdahl and Florence miss a few opportunities to discuss decidedly female-friendly twentieth century horrors, such as The Stepford Wives, Near Dark, and Alien. Therefore, The Science of Women cannot quite be called the final word on final girls. However, I also loved the final chapter: a brief history of the largely uncelebrated women who’ve been working behind the scenes on horror cinema since the medium’s beginning. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t realize that a woman—screenwriter Ruth Rose—was responsible for really bringing the proudly misogynistic characters of King Kong to life. No doubt she met a lot of jackasses like Carl Denham and Jack Driscoll in Hollywood. Ultimately, The Science of Women is messy, but it should still be commended as a fun and often informative early step in the study of feminist horror.