1000 Women in Horror: An Interview with Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Ever since Mary Shelley’s Creature first spoke, uttering the words "I expected this reception [...] All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!", horror has provided a voice for the voiceless. It has made readers and audiences privy to the outsider's perspective, and in doing so, has challenged mainstream, ‘normative’ values and presented the experiences of the marginalised and ‘othered’. From ground-breaking literary works by Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter, to trailblazing filmmakers such as Lois Weber, Alice Guy-Blaché and Maya Deren, whose work flickered fiercely across the early silver screen, women – historically silenced and marginalised, and currently living in a world where violence against women and girls is practically ambient - have used horror to interrogate and subvert traditional male-centric narratives and examine themes of agency, bodily autonomy, motherhood and restrictive societal attitudes. Women have been working in and influencing the genre from the very beginning. They practically invented it. 

While horror has a reputation for being misogynistic and regressive in its depiction of women, it is also a genre - for better or worse - that places women and their experiences to the fore. From classic titles such as Carrie, Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, to cult faves including The Company of Wolves, Ginger Snaps, The Craft and Jennifer's Body, horror has used women's bodies and experiences to ponder themes such as identity, transformation and transgression. These ideas are the subject of a brand new documentary, 1000 Women in Horror, a rich, in-depth exploration of the representation of women in the filmic horror genre. Produced and directed by Donna Davies, and written by film critic and author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas – adapted from her book, 1000 Women in Horror, 1895–2018 (2020) – this essential work not only analyses how horror can be used to expose and subvert restrictive, societal gender norms, it sheds light on the too-often overlooked female perspective, and indeed the role women have played in shaping the genre. Featuring candid conversations with a plethora of women filmmakers and critics, including Mary Harron, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Akela Cooper, Kate Siegel, Brea Grant, Jenn Wexler, Nikyatu Jusu, Mattie Do, Cerise Howard and Chelsea Stardust, among many others, 1000 Women in Horror pulls no punches in its exploration of the cathartic power of horror. Among the various topics and tropes discussed, the figure of the Final Girl (a term coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws), and the resilience and strength she embodies, is held up as being of particular appeal to women and minorities: to those who, as Akela Cooper suggests, ‘can’t just walk out of their house and exist without threat.’

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas was kind enough to chat with me about how she adapted her book for screen, and why the transgressive power of horror is perfect for subverting and deconstructing ideas of normative gender roles.

The documentary is based on your groundbreaking 2020 book, 1000 Women in Horror 1895-2018. How did the film project come about and how was the journey from page to screen?

It's actually a pretty crazy story - the short version is that the book was actually optioned before it was even published! In 2018 I was invited to be the president of the horror jury at Fantastic Fest in Austin, where I met many people I now consider close friends. One of these was a producer from the UK called Giles Edwards, who I took an instant liking to - one of those people you meet in your life who feels like they were always a friend, you just had to go through the formality of actually meeting. The wonderful Kier-La Janisse invited me to give a lecture for the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies at the fest that year as well, where I basically did a kind of overview of the research I had been doing for the as-yet still unpublished book 1000 Women in Horror. Giles saw the lecture, bought me a milkshake, and the deal was informally done - the book was soon formally optioned, and the process had begun.

Your book obviously forms the basis for the documentary; however, it’s not a straight adaptation focusing on women as creators within horror, it branches out into an examination of the representation of women – specifically their bodies and experiences - in horror. What informed this decision, and how did you work with director/producer Donna Davies to take the project in this direction?

So the book is very much a kind of A-Z type deal, which really wouldn't have worked in a feature film documentary in terms of providing a narrative or giving us space to flesh out the broader ideas we wanted to talk about. I worked incredibly closely with Donna, and the whole team, including our producers Giles, Greg Newman and the glorious Nicola Goelzhaeuser, on this question during development, and this was one of the suggestions for structure that came up in our brainstorming sessions.

We knew we didn't want to do a chronological history type thing, because the problem with that is that it would risk being seen as an attempt to write an ultimate or dominant narrative of the history of women in horror - just ideologically, from a historiographical point of view, we really wanted to have room to sort of acknowledge "there is no one single history, there are near infinite ways to tell this story, and who should or shouldn't be included". It was very important to us to acknowledge from within the documentary that we can't possibly tell the entire story of women in horror in 90 minutes - it would be just as ludicrous as trying to tell the story of men in horror in 90 minutes. So it was a bit of a tricky dance.

The structure of the film is fascinating. You mentioned in a recent interview that it was inspired by the ‘assumed normative life cycle of a woman—girlhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age’ – which enables you to dive into so many aspects of how women are represented in horror. What informed the decision to do this?

It was a lot of tea and chats with Donna to refine this structure, but we liked it because at its heart it is predicated on the fundamentally subversive potential horror has to usurp and challenge stereotypes and cliches. "Oh, there's a little girl with a doll!" is a fairly common idealised cliche of girlhood, but in horror it's like "oh-oh, the girl is evil", or "oh-oh, the doll is evil" or, my favourite, "oh-oh, the doll and the girl are evil." There are of course horror movies that are fairly regressive and aren't subversive at all, but we realised our favourite ones actually do this same kind of transgressive switcheroo at every stage of life - right through to "oh-oh, that kind grandmother lady is actually a witch who is gonna eat your face off."

Author, film critic, historian, ICON: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

As several of the filmmakers in the documentary assert, women have always had a seat at the table when it comes to horror. It hasn't always been easy to pull up a chair though, and there's a reclamation happening in terms of the marginalised voices and communities using horror to tell their stories. What is it about horror that enables filmmakers and storytellers to deconstruct, expose and subvert ideas regarding gender, identity and restrictive societal conventions?

Horror at its core is really about bodies and/or minds and/or spirits under attack, or threat of attack. There is something about this core acknowledgement about our very vulnerability as human beings that I think makes this a powerful creative space for anyone wanting to creatively explore the way that power and identity work in terms of that vulnerability, often through the language of the fantastic and/or the gothic imagination.

How fair is it to say that horror, as a filmic genre, has come a long way in terms of representation and inclusivity, providing a space for marginalised voices to tell their stories? Why do you think it is still viewed as being misogynistic and regressive?

It's stating the obvious that horror cinema has historically been made almost completely by men, and it would be naive to suggest that all of those men have been necessarily positive in their representations of and attitudes towards femme characters on screen, and the idea of femmes working behind the scenes in a production capacity.

But the many women we interviewed in our doc I think are Exhibit A that despite this bleak history, femme filmmakers are finding a way forward despite the 100+ year long history that has sought to exclude them from making movies.

The more diversity we have amongst filmmakers, the wider the kinds of representation we will get in film and the more accessible it will be to people from all different walks of life - and that is a win for everyone.

I would absolutely love to sit down and watch a horror film written and directed by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. What would this look like? Would you ever consider making a horror film? What would be your dream project?

I have been a film critic now for over 20 years, and as 1000 Women in Horror suggests, I am at a point now where stretching my wings a little further than my usual comfort zone is very much something I am prioritising. Is feature filmmaking part of that? You'll have to stay tuned to find out!

1000 Women in Horror is currently available to watch on Shudder. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is the author of various books on horror and cult cinema, including Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study (2011), Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality (2014), Masks in Horror Cinema (2019), The Giallo Canvas (2021) and The Cinema Coven (2024), to name but a few. She has also written several monographs on films including Suspiria, Ms. 45 and The Hitcher. Keep up to date with her work here.