Issue 49: Women in Horror


Les Diaboliques

Women in Horror: Scream queens, she-devils and scare mistresses

To coincide with the celebration of ‘Bloody Women’ at the Bird’s Eye View Festival, we look at women in horror with articles on Ingrid Pitt, Amber Heard, Alien‘s Ripley, Halloween‘s Laurie Strode and emerging UK female horror directors. Clouzot’s noir masterpiece Les diaboliques and intriguing Korean revenge tale Bedevilled are on cinema screens. Filmmaker Jennifer Eiss wonders if women prefer psychological horror, Jessica Fostekew explores horror from a comic perspective and artist Lisa Gornick offers her take in a Comic Strip. Our Reel Sounds column is on Delia Derbyshire’s score for The Legend of Hell House while writer Sarah Pinborough picks Ripley as her horror alter ego. In Short Cuts, we review Birds Eye View’s programme of horror shorts.

To mark the BFI Nic Roeg season we have a feature on the Venice of Don’t Look Now. Also on cinema screens this month are Haruki Murakami adaptation Norwegian Wood and controversial Japanese corruption saga Confessions of a Dog – read the interview with director Gen Takahashi.

New DVDs include Czech 60s political satire Larks on a String and Lucio Fulci’s surreal zombie shocker The Beyond and we have an interview with Clio Barnard about The Arbor. Our Online Movie column looks at paper theatre and folk-punk combo Pete and the Pirates pick their favourite films in the Film Jukebox. In the Blog, we report on the Rotterdam Festival and we have a capsule review of Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

PODCAST:
Bloody Women: To coincide with the Birds Eye View Film Festival’s focus on women in horror, Virginie Sélavy leads a discussion with three women filmmakers working in this traditionally male-dominated genre: Melanie Light, director of Switch, Kate Shenton, director of Bon Appetit, and Jennifer Eiss, co-director of Short Lease.