In part because of a current writing project, and in part because of recent thoughts/discussions about the gurlesque and the grotesque, my recent game is this: if everyone in my family were characters from a horror film, novel, or short story, who would they be? I'm not going to tell you my thoughts just yet (or maybe ever, unless I finish the project and someone publishes it). But the question lead me to think about female characters in horror, and then female perpetrators of violence in horror, and then to dynamics where the violence is specifically or mostly female-female OR where the major dynamic in the film is a relationship between two women.
The two that immediately came to mind were Alien 1 (Ripley vs. the female alien monster) and Suspiria (female protagonist discovers that her ballet school is really a cover for a coven of witches). Below is a list of others that immediately came to mind. Tell me what I'm missing--and yes, I know that this list is full of mostly films in English from the Western part of the world, but I suspect if I started looking at some of the recent anime other's have pointed me towards, I'd find more:
- Carrie (girl with telekinetic powers is abused by crazy Christian mother, eventually destroys her school, is stabbed in the back by her mother, but then telekinetically crucifies her mother with kitchen tools)
- Succubus (duh)
- Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (female vampire!)
- Rosmary's Baby (Not so female-female violence, but it is a pregnancy horror)
- It's Alive (Also about the horror of babies)
- Friday the 13th (it's actually Jason's mom who is the killer, not Jason)
- The Ring
- Psycho (maybe only half makes the list, because the mom is dead, but she still exists as a taxidermied version of herself and in her son's head)
- "Ligeia," by Edgar Allan Poe (also only half on the list--a woman inhabits another woman's body, but it's a male fantasy)
- The Brain that Wouldn't Die
- Lair of the White Worm (mostly female-male violence, but some female-female violence)
- Dagon AD (The fish girl--although it's mostly about her trying to convince her brother that he should mate with her so they can live under the sea together forever)
- Dracula's vampire women should get a mention, even though they are clearly subordinate to him.
- The Exorcist (Definite mother-daughter thing)
