With the release of Halloween Kills, Michael Myers will be back on the big screen and the return of the slasher icon will no doubt be a welcome one for many fans. While the film has brought back Laurie Strode, the original Final Girl, not all the women in slasher films have been confined to the role of victim. In these following flicks that span the 1970s to the 1990s, women were just as vicious as their male counterparts.
There was a killer doll and a few enraged mothers. Some were young and others were older. Plenty had masks or an outfit they could be easily identified in. But all had one killer trait in common. These women got rid of their victims viciously and without remorse. What more could a slasher fan want?
** Incoming Spoilers! **
Don’t Look Now (1973)
After losing their daughter to an accident, a couple decides to move to Venice to escape their overwhelming grief. But the husband (Donald Sutherland) starts to get obsessed with a small figure he keeps seeing, one wearing a red raincoat that is eerily similar to what his late child wore. All the while in the background, an active serial killer is drowning women. The final minutes of the film has the father corner the small figure.
Although he so desperately wishes it to be his deceased child, it is not. The killer the police are trying to catch and the small figure in the red coat are one of the same. Played by Adelina Poerio, the Red Coat Killer is an older, small woman who won’t be cornered by Sutherland. She takes out a meat cleaver and slices his throat. It’s a shocking and grim ending as he’s left in a pool of his own blood, bright like his daughter's raincoat.
Deep Red (1975)
In this giallo film by director Dario Argento, a musician and a reporter team up to solve the gruesome murder of a psychic and the deaths that follow after. As per tradition for the Italian subgenre, the killer wears plenty of leather. Black gloves and a dark coat are key identifiers as to who the villain is. But when their identity is revealed, it flips the whole story onto its head.
Flashback scenes show a child witnessing the murder of his father. The child grows up and ends up being framed for the film’s murders. But of course, this entry being on this particular list, the real killer was actually his mother. Played by actress Clara Calamai, Martha Manganiello is the one responsible for the very grisly deaths seen in Deep Red. And if there was ever any karma existing in the world, it certainly caught up to Martha. At the very end, before the credits roll, her chain necklace is snatched by a moving elevator. Her head doesn’t stay intact and the film’s title is made literal when Martha’s body collapses and the pool of her blood fills up the screen.
Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)
In this slasher/giallo hybrid, Karen (a young Brooke Shields) is killed before her First Communion and her volatile sister, Alice, is believed to have done it. Her divorced parents try to defend Alice, but more bodies start to pile up. Nothing is quite what it seems, except one crucial element. This is very much an “anti-Catholic” horror flick.
Mrs. Tredoni, played by actress Mildred Clinton, is both the most obvious and the least obvious person of interest. The film’s aesthetic and Mrs. Tredoni’s extremism in her Catholic faith go hand in hand. Religious imagery is found in spades in Alice, Sweet Alice. A very pious woman, Mrs. Tredoni devolves into a killer, using her faith as a means to off those she condemns as sinners. Although there are only a few murders, Mrs. Tredoni earns her place among horror cinema’s monsters.
The ex-husband to Alice’s mother gets very close to uncovering the identity of the killer. Dressed up in a yellow raincoat and wearing a translucent mask resembling a female with makeup, Mrs. Tredoni subdues the man. After she has tied him up, she starts to roll him towards the edge of the warehouse space they’re in. The drop down is high and absolutely fatal. Mrs. Tredoni rolls him once, then again, until all that is left is for gravity to do its job. It’s a brutal, extended death by the hands of a religious freak so out of touch with reality.
Friday the 13th (1980)
The first film in the long-running series only mentioned hockey-masked Jason by name. He popped up for a scare towards the end, but he was very different in appearance than he would go on to be. The villain of this introductory film to Camp Crystal Lake is his enraged mother, Mrs. Voorhees, played by Betsy Palmer. Armed with a hunting knife, she looks nothing like an unhinged killer who hears the sounds of her dead son urging her on.
She has no mask. She’s dressed in a cozy sweater. But she has the relentless need to kill off the camp counselors who she can’t dissociate from the reckless ones that didn’t save her son from drowning. Mrs. Voorhees even gets an over-the-top death scene. Her head is severed in slow motion by a machete she really should have left elsewhere. Jason got plenty of screen time in the sequels that varied in quality but it shouldn’t be overlooked that his mother started it all.
Curtains (1983)
A group of actresses are confined to a director’s mansion while they compete for a role. It isn't long before a masked killer starts to pick them off, one by one. There are several twists and turns before it’s revealed actress Lynne Griffin (Black Christmas) is behind the deaths. Her character of Patti O'Connor so desperately wants the role, she figures murder is the best of her options.
The mask she wears is what truly makes Patti a unique oddball among these other villainesses. It’s the face of an old woman, with long hair. Because it’s also made up of plastic, none of the features move, except the human eyes staring out of it. In a key sequence, she attacks a victim while out on a frozen lake. But there’s one more part to it that really sells the scene: Patti is charging forward while ice skating, wielding a hand sickle to get the job done.
Scream 2 (1997)
Actress Laurie Metcalf was a new addition to the followup film, where a copycat killer wearing the iconic Ghostface costume started to make a real-life slasher sequel. As reporter Debbie Salt, Metcalf plays a rather timid character that seems to be forcing herself to be a hard hitting reporter, until the last act reveals Debbie Salt was an alias for Mrs. Loomis, the mother to the slain Billy Loomis from the first Scream.
What better motivation can a killer have than in Mrs. Loomis’ words, “Good old-fashioned revenge?” Dressed in a pristine white suit, with a gun pressed to the head of Final Girl Sidney, Mrs. Loomis hardly blinks. Her wide eyes are on alert to the possibility she might just pull the trigger and fear she would miss the precious moment of death she’s been seeking out the whole film.
Having a mother be the villain of a slasher film is nothing new. That doesn’t mean it’s not welcomed. Mrs. Loomis only has a limited amount of screen time in her true identity, but Metcalf is up to the task. She matches the energy Neve Campbell gives off as Sidney and audiences don’t have to think too hard as to why Billy Loomis grew up to be the mass murderer he was.
Urban Legend (1998)
Killings at a college campus are inspired by popular urban legends, from “The Hookman” to a killer being in the backseat of a car. It’s all being orchestrated by a vengeful Brenda Bates, played by Rebecca Gayheart. Mrs. Loomis might have had wide eyes but Brenda has both wide eyes, frantic movements, and hysterical screams of mania.
Although lost among the meta slasher flicks of the ‘90s, Urban Legend may not be the best but it certainly isn’t the worst. More importantly, Brenda’s hooded killer does get a kill that succeeds in building up tension. Fellow actress Tara Reid is hunted down while working at the campus’ radio station. After her coworker is killed off, she’s left alone to try and survive. Reid falls off a stairwell and almost makes it out alive, but Brenda gains the upper hand. The very big axe she holds is swung into flesh and bone, again and again. Brenda survives several attempts on her life and by the end, she is at a new campus, ready to tell curious students the urban legend of the murders she committed.
Bride of Chucky (1998)
How do you change up a slasher franchise just enough to keep your fans coming back? Creator Don Mancini found a solution. Jennifer Tilly was brought in to accompany Brad Dourif’s foul mouthed Chucky. With her high-pitched yet raspy voice, the goth doll Tiffany proved herself capable of being more than Chucky’s lover. She has bloodlust and sentimentality.
The doll with black lipstick and a leather coat paired with a wedding dress could swing a bottle into an overhead mirror so its broken shards would kill the unlucky bed occupants. She can also look up to her idol, Martha Stewart, and be a romantic at heart. The Blondie song, “Call Me,” heard in her makeover sequence, might have been the perfect anthem for Tiffany. She wasn’t going to let something as simple as being trapped inside a plastic child’s toy get her down.
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Director Tim Burton creates a very atmospheric horror film where an isolated hamlet is terrorized by the Headless Horseman, a specter that has a fondness for decapitation. There is never a sunny day here. Fog seems to be forever settled around the simple homes and the haunted woods that surround them. But investigator Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp) learns some very dark magic is at play. The Headless Horseman is simply following commands. The stepmother of Ichabod’s love interest is the true culprit.
Lady Van Tassel (Miranda Richardson) has planned this revenge against select members of Sleepy Hollow for nearly all of her life. She executes her plan, no pun intended, quite successfully. Richardson is a terrific actress and her portrayal is both campy and sinister. While she doesn’t kill off as many victims as she makes the Horseman do, Lady Van Tassel does get her hands dirty. She picks up an axe and delivers the chomping blow to an unsuspecting victim, their blood spraying across her face. Don’t mess with a wicked stepmother.