Behind the Couch

1815. Ginger and Brigitte Fitzgerald, two orphaned teenaged sisters, seek refuge at an isolated trading fort in the snowy Canadian wilderness. They soon learn that the fort is under siege from werewolves lurking in the surrounding woods. After Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) is attacked and bitten by the lycanthropic son of the fort's factor, she begins to change. Her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) seeks a cure while trying to keep them both safe from the men in the fort, whose mistrust of the sisters is stoked by a bloodthirsty, wrathful minister. Directed by Grant Harvey, Ginger Snaps Back is a period piece (no pun intended) and a prequel to Ginger Snaps (2000), the story of a young woman who, on the night she first menstruates, is attacked by a werewolf and begins to transform into a monster. It was followed by  Ginger Snaps Unleashed (2004), which follows the plight of Ginger's sister, Brigitte, as she struggles to find a cure for her own latent lycanthropy. Written by Chr...

While conducting research for my forthcoming monograph on Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves , I had the pleasure of conversing with science-fiction and fantasy author Suzy McKee Charnas. Back in the late eighties Suzy wrote an award-winning short story called ‘Boobs’, which not only shares strong affinities with The Company of Wolves , but also preceded the thematically similar Ginger Snaps (2000) by over a decade. Like these titles, ‘Boobs’ connects the ambivalent figure of the adolescent girl, fluctuating between childhood and adulthood, with the figure of the werewolf, which fluctuates between human and beast, and draws parallels between menstruation, developing sexual identity and desire, and the unleashing of something wild. It tells of Kelsey, a shy and lonely teenager whose menarche coincides with her transformation into a wolf. She uses her new-found power and abilities to take revenge on a bully who has made her life a living hell and whose cruel nickname for Kelsey, due...

2000 Dir. John Fawcett ‘Monstrosity is explicitly associated with menstruation and female sexuality... woman’s monstrous nature is inextricably bound up with her difference as man’s sexual other.'  Laura Mulvey ( Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema ). ‘The release of sexuality in the horror film is always presented as perverted, monstrous and excessive; both the perversion and the excess being the logical outcome of repression.’ Robin Wood ( The American Nightmare ). Written by Karen Walton, Ginger Snaps tells of a young woman who is attacked by a werewolf on the night she begins to menstruate, and begins to transform into a monster. Links between the menstrual cycle and lycanthropy cunningly swirl together to form a twisted tale of monstrous pubescence filtered through a chilling body-horror narrative. The result is a dark, savagely funny and haunting film that staggers blinking and bloodied into the unkind light of day as the most significant ‘menstrual horror’ since Carr...