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10 final girls we love

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Vegan Voorhees LOVES a good final girl. I’ve read people attempt to remove the need for a final girl in a slasher film over the years (“women are only good for dying” etc). These people are stupid. A slasher film without a final girl or a killer is almost always crap.

So, anyway, here – in no particular order – are ten of VeVo’s favourite horror heroines:

Molly Nagel (Renée Estevez)

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

Cutesy camper Molly is pretty much the only good girl at Camp Rolling Hills, under the watch of puritanical/homicidal/transsexual camp counsellor Angela, who rather indiscriminately “sends home” all of those who don’t act like a good young person should. Molly’s fate is left a bit up in the air, but from a throwaway line of dialogue in the third movie, it seems like she didn’t make it : (

There’s nothing particularly outstanding about Molly as a character: she adheres to all the assembly line clichés of the role in her goody-two-shoes way, but Estevez is winsome in the part.

Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals)

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Plucky reporter Taylor and her crew of two follow burgeoning mass murderer Leslie Vernon, who intends to rid the archetypal small town of Glen Echo of its surplus teenage population. However, he’s been leading the crew a merry ride by pretending he’s already picked his “survivor girl”, but it turns out he intended to face off with Taylor all along.

Her realisation of her placement as the final girl is something of a great moment in Leslie Vernon, and Taylor takes to the task with veritable gusto, besting Les in classic FG stylee.

Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt)

Urban Legend (1998)

Secretive Natalie is the numero uno target of the Parka-clad killer who’s stalking the campus of Pendleton University, offing her friends in inventive fashions. While she is naive enough to believe that it’s all something to do with a murder spree that occurred there twenty-five years earlier, deep down she must know that the bad thing she once did has come back to bite her in the ass!

Some people considered Alicia Witt miscast for the role, but her ‘bad fit’ is why she’s such a great final girl. Instead of the usual bubbly blonde chick or moody brunette ‘with issues’, Natalie is a booksmart, guilt-laden character who is eventually forced to shoot her best friend.

Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Halloween (1978)

The original final girl, Laurie Strode survived the murder sprees of Michael Myers on three separate occasions. But everyone remembers her best as the babysitter from heaven in John Carpenter’s original flick. Laurie is comprised of all the elements that make the final girl: she’s watchful, ever so slightly paranoid, virtuous, shy, and genuine.

Curtis played the lead role in other slasher films, but she never again scaled the heights of empathy that Laurie evoked as WE joined her in terror as she ran, hid, and eventually fought back.

Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

In Carol Clover’s book Men, Women & Chain Saws, she calls Nancy the ‘grittiest’ of the final girls. Wes Craven wrote his heroine as more reactive than most (something that follows through into the Scream movies); as her friends fall victim to dream stalker Freddy Krueger, Nancy resolves to take the fight to him. She purposefully goes looking for him in her dreams and, when she figures out how she can kick his ass, rigs several traps using household items, and unleashes it all upon her would-be killer.

The can’t-sleep motif at the centre of the Elm Street opus helps characterise Nancy as a great final girl: her folks believe she’s crazy, the doctors think she’s crazy, and even she begins to question her own sanity after more than seven days without sleep. But her paranoia wins through and Nancy emerges as the only survivor.

To emphasise just how good she is, watch the 2010 remake for Rooney Mara’s bad cover version.

Ginny Field (Amy Steel)

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

Assistant camp counsellor trainer and child psyche major Ginny meets all the functions of the standard final girl and blows most the competition out of the water. Ginny ‘senses’ the presence of something not quite right about the camp and is the only one who takes the threat of “a Jason” seriously. She crawls through windows, hides under bunks, wets her pants in fear, and finally uses her child psychology skills to fool Jason into thinking she’s mommy.

It’s difficult to list exactly what about Amy Steel is so appealing. Essentially, she does very little that her sisters-in-terror don’t. Her performance is neither racked with emotion or personal loss, but she simply seems to fit the mold almost perfectly, doing all the things we want her to do and coming out the other side with her life intact. She’s plucky without being annoying, tough without it seeming unlikely, and smart without being cocky.

Erin (Jessica Biel)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Michael Bay’s remake of Tobe Hooper’s landmark classic (which I’m not all that fond of), changed the leading lady from shrieking victim into a can-do ladette with growing star Jessica Biel convincing enough as a reformed juvie-hall probie whose road trip through Texas in 1973 becomes a nightmare of epic proportions.

Is it likely girls would have acted this way forty years ago? Maybe not, but TCM barely reflects the era it’s set in anyway. The characterisations are sketchy and malleable to the 2003 audience, which means that Erin pretty much steps through a time warp from modern post-Ripley female warrior ideals to do battle with Leatherface and family. But she’s appealing nevertheless. I was toing and froing between her or Eliza Dushku in Wrong Turn, but I think Erin just about has it.

Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey)

Black Christmas (1974)

Sensible and ever so slightly moody Jess turns out to be the final girl in the pre-everything scare-a-thon that is Black Christmas. Secretly pregnant by her highly strung boyfriend and concerned about the disappearance of a sorority sister and the stream of obscene phone calls their sorority house keeps receiving, Jess is under a fair bit of pressure from several angles.

Olivia Hussey was quite a big name when she made this film, but as it predates the conventions of the genre by some years, her eventual uprising as the heroine isn’t the cliché it would be now. Jess isn’t the ‘nicest’ girl in the group, she’s evidently not a virgin, and doesn’t want to compromise over the planned abortion of the child. In short, this kind of girl would NEVER be the heroine if the film were made these days. Still, these points only serve to define her character as realistic (as are most of those in this one) and so she becomes a good, ‘outside the box’ final girl in a similar way to Natalie in Urban Legend.

Courtney (Cecile Bagdadi)

Final Exam (1981)

In this tame post-Halloween campus-slasher, the killer stalking a group of college kids has no apparent motive and, in a reflection of this randomness, the nominal heroine, Courtney, becomes so by a similar lottery-of-gloom. Unlike many of her kin in this list, there’s not much to know about her: She’s the nice, conventionally pretty girl who constantly seems to be providing an ear for her friends’ various problems, whilst worrying about exams and wondering if she has a weak personality.

Eventually, all those extroverts who don’t care about their own personalities are knife-fodder and Courtney ends up running for her life around a deserted campus, until she is forced to fight back and, literally, get her hands dirty. Very dirty. In this straight-forward film, it’s nice to have an equally straight-forward character outlasting everyone else.

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell)

Scream 1-4 (1996-2011)

Last but by no means least, the final girl who just keeps getting put through the ringer. If you were Sidney Prescott, you’d be quite pallid of character and wear lots of dark coloured, sensible clothes too. Her mom was raped and murdered, first boyfriend turns out to be the one who did it, then he tries to kill her, then his MOTHER tries to kill her, then her mystery half-brother confesses to have been playing puppetmaster all along. Then, when she’s had a decade of rest, her own cousin tries to kill her!

Blood runs thicker than water, and Sidney’s sure seen more of it than most. But she copes, she fights and she survives every time despite tremendous odds against her: One final girl against a total of seven different psycho killers. I was never that keen on her in the first movie, she seemed too obvious, but as more and more of her buddies flatlined, she became gradually more mysterious and put-upon, which made me like her more. Plus she’s stuck it out and done four movies, more than anyone else in the same predicament.

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Crass class

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NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CLASS REUNION

2 Stars  1982/18/82m

“No class has less class than this class.”

Director: Michael Miller / Writer: John Hughes / Cast: Gerrit Graham, Michael Lerner, Fred McCarren, Shelley Smith, Miriam Flynn, Stephen Furst, Blackie Dammett, Marla Pennington, Zane Buzby, Marya Small, Art Evans, Barry Diamond, Steve Tracy, Anne Ramsay, Chuck Berry.

Body Count: 4

Dire-logue: “Somebody do something – the reunion’s bombing!”

John Hughes will forever be fondly remembered as the king of teen films in the 80s. He gave us teen-angst in The Breakfast Club, teen romance in Pretty in Pink, and teen-confidence in Ferris Bueller. What did he bring us in National Lampoon’s Class Reunion? Certainly nothing to laugh about.

It’s another bogus reunion, organised by another bogus killer in this bogus comedy from the hit n’ miss caverns of National Lampoon. In this case, the Lizzie Borden High Class of ’72 return to their now abandoned school a decade after graduation. There, they are stalked by a loon masked by a paper bag in revenge for a Terror Train-like prank played on him at their senior prom.

Unfortunately for the viewing audience, he only does away with a measly four victims – all of whom are killed off camera – while ancillary characters are allotted long inconsequential scenes in a wasted attempt to extract some giggles. Although there are a couple of amusing lines, the whole film plays like a waste of time and one might suspect Hughes didn’t actually watch any slasher films to try and make the spoofing accurate, rather than sticking to bland gags about demonic possession, blindness, dope, and cowardice.

A good cast is wasted (not to mention spared). Skip it and go straight to Pandemonium.

Blurbs-of-interest: Gerrit Graham was in Child’s Play 2; Stephen Furst was also in The Unseen and Silent Rage (also directed by Michael Miller); Michael Lerner was in Maniac Cop 2.

Hollow by name…

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What? A Halloween-set film on Friday the 13th? What am I thinking, you may bleat…? I don’t want to over-do my love for Jason too soon. And there’s another Friday the 13th in July, so we’ll do it then, K?

Till then, enjoy the starstudded tame-fest that is The Hollow:

THE HOLLOW

3 Stars  2004/15/83m

“Terror rides again.”

Director: Kyle Newman / Writer: Hans Rodionoff / Cast: Kevin Zegers, Kaley Cuoco, Nick Carter, Stacy Keach, Judge Reinhold, Lisa Chess, Nicholas Turturro, Eileen Brennan, Joseph Mazzello, Shelley Bennett, Melissa Schuman, Natalija Nogulich, Blake Shields, Ben Scott.

Body Count: 5

Dire-logue: “Teach me the meaning of the word BONEyard…”

Zegers, Cuoco, Carter, Mazzello, Brennan, Keach, Reinhold! You seldom see such a well known cast roster in a slasher film, even less likely one that ended up premiering on TV.

This is a tame little affair concerning The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow and his return to decapitating glory when ancestors of his move to the origin town. Kevin Zegers is affable enough as Ian, the put-upon great-great-great-something of Ichabod Crane, who is tormented by Stacy Keach’s drunken spouter of olde tales who says ‘ye’ a lot and refers to Ian as ‘Teacher’.

When, as ever, nobody listens to the old man’s blithering and demands that the town calls off its traditional Halloween night festivities (including a hay ride through the haunted woods), the pumpkin-headed horseman turns up wherever horny teens dare to tread and relieves them of their noggin.

Backstreet Boy Nick Carter plays the arrogant jock and love rival of Ian’s for the affection of a pom-pom waving pre-Big Bang Theory Kaley Cuoco. One would think that if an unknown had played the role, he most certainly would’ve joined the legion of the beheaded but his survival is one of the main flaws of the movie.

Reinhold and Brennan have comparatively little to do in their respective roles as Ian’s strict football coach father and a random old woman who owns the land that the hayride tromps through. She appears for all of five minutes and phones in all of three lines that have no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Joseph Mazzello, grown up from his role as “annoying kid” in Jurassic Park is another “name” with next to nothing to do. But at least he, unlike Carter, has the decency to croak early on.

A body count of five means there’s little in the way of imaginative grue, but The Hollow is entertaining insofar as its family-friendly horror status allows it to be but its resistance to pile on the cliches or let itself get too carried away with gothic theatrics make it a fun flick, if not a particularly memorable one.

hollow-cast2

Blurbs-of-interest: Zegers was also in Wrong Turn; Cuoco in Killer Movie; Keach was also in Children of the Corn 666; Eileen Brennan has a similarly minimal cameo in Jeepers Creepers; Reinhold made his big screen debut in send-up Pandemonium (Brennan also made a cameo in that); Melissa Schuman was the lead in The Retreat.

Powersaw killed the radio star

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THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2

2.5 Stars  1986/18/97m

“After a decade of silence… the buzzz is back.”

Director: Tobe Hooper / Writer: L.M. Kit Carson / Cast: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Jim Siedow, Bill Johnson, Bill Moseley, Lou Perry.

Body Count: 3

Dire-logue: “You got one choice, boy: Sex or the saw.”

I’m not a fan of the old Texas Chainsaw movies by any measure. The original manages to be both over and under rated simultaneously but I don’t particularly care if I ever see it again.

Keep your pitchforks and torches at bay until I get around to reviewing it. For now, let us focus on the sequel…

The first half of this VERY 80s movie is great stuff. Charismatic Texan DJ Stretch (Williams) overhears the chainsaw-slaying of two snotty frat boys during her radio show and volunteers to assist vengeful ranger ‘Lefty’ Enright (Hopper), uncle of Sally – sole survivor of the original massacre. In Texas. Involving a chainsaw.

Thirteen years on, Lefty is hell bent on tracking down those responsible. Meanwhile, those responsible – Leatherface and kin are hiding out beneath an abandoned amusement park, where they make ‘the best meat in the state’ under the cute name of the Sawyers.

Leatherface and hyper-sibling Chop-Top are dispatched to kill Stretch after she broadcasts the recording of the frat murder over the airwaves. Instead of being sawn to ribbons and served up in a burger shack, Stretch manages to win Leatherface’s affections and he lets her live. She follows them back to their lair, where she is captured and tortured while Lefty begins destroying the place.

Differences between this and the original are sharp: Where the old film traded on its almost documentary-style feel, TCM2 hinges itself on dark humour and visual surrealism, recreating the infamous dinner scene before the climax. Not to mention the Breakfast Club-esque poster artwork.

It’s less of a slasher film – possibly as a reaction to the over-saturation of the genre it helped create – than a bizarre nightmare set to celluloid.

Johnson stands in for Gunnar Hansen as Leatherface and the Tom Savini grue effects work is great, especially the scalping opener. When original submitted to the BBFC for a rating, they came back requesting as much as 25 minutes of cuts! It was eventually released unscissored in 2001.

Hopper and Williams are good, although all characterisation goes out of the window at the halfway point, which swivels from the great first half to an annoyingly indulgent latter section.

About as entertaining as the first one but in a vastly different way and nicely made by its helmsman so worth a look at least once.

Blurbs-of-interest: Caroline Williams was later in Stepfather II and Hatchet III. Bill Moseley can also be found in Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, Home Sick, Silent Night Deadly Night III and Natty Knocks; Tobe Hooper also directed The Funhouse, and the 2003 remake of The Toolbox Murders.

Dream scenario

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A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: THE DREAM MASTER

3.5 Stars  1988/18/90m

“Are you ready for Freddy?”

Director: Renny Harlin / Writers: Brian Helgeland, William Kotzwinkle & Scott Pierce / Cast: Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, Tuesday Knight, Danny Hassel, Andras Jones, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman, Toy Newkirk, Brooke Theiss, Nicholas Mele, Brooke Bundy.

Body Count: 7

Dire-logue: “Hey, yo Needledick – I bet you’re the only guy in school suffering from penis envy!”

The last really decent hurrah for Mssr Krueger was also the most successful in the canon, almost doubling its $7m budget on the opening weekend alone and eventually grossing nearly $50m the US alone, leaving aged onlookers Jason and Michael trailing by some distance.

So what made it so successful? Dream Warriors was an amazing sequel, hoovering up more than ten times its own budget the previous year. Freddy had become the American mass murderer of choice, appearing on everything as the series grew more and more in popularity, reaching phenomenal levels of pop cultural significance by the time a third sequel was rolled out, directly by a then unknown Finnish filmmaker called Renny Harlin…

While The Dream Master is a fun outing, it’s noteworthy that it’s a lot less bloodthirsty than the films that preceded it. Effects work is on top form but if it’s blood you’re after, there’s not a lot on show, possibly drawing in the kind of audience who wouldn’t typically show up for a slasher movie and shooting it up with so much humour that you’d hardly believe it was a horror film at all at some points. Add to that the film is practically sponsored by MTV, this was going to be a hit regardless.

Picking up an unspecified amount of time after the events of Elm Street 3 (though the back of my old VHS said it was two years later), surviving dream warriors Kincaid, former mute Joey, and Kristen (now played by Tuesday Knight), are finally living as regular American teenagers, gladly free of the curse of their deadly night terrors. But how often does that kind of tranquility last in small towns with a mythical killer legend? Not very.

Resurrected by the magical fire-piss of Kincaid’s dog – ! – Freddy does away with the boys in quick succession and then goes after Kristen, who, in her last ditch attempt to stop the terror, transfers her ability to pull others into her dreams, to her goody-two-shoes friend Alice.

Seems that with all the Elm Street kids now dust, Freddy doesn’t feel like giving up and needs Alice to pull her friends into her dreams for his homicidal kicks. So the asthmatic girl is sucked to death during a chemistry test, Alice’s brother is taken on by an invisible sensei, and insect-a-phobic gym fiend Debbie is turned into a giant roach!

What prevents this slick entry from ticking all the boxes – besides the restrained grue and general non-threat of Freddy – is the nomination of Alice as the new final girl. Lisa Wilcox does fine in her homely shy girl routine but the character is scripted to type to the extent that she’s a virtually parody of the good and true final girl: all sensible, conservative clothes and chaste demeanour. With each death, Alice takes on an aspect of the personality of the deceased until she’s ready to take on Freddy as a hardass.

The title suffix refers to Alice’s concept that eventually bests Krueger; a little ditty that alters the words to As I Lay Me Down to Sleep… But who is the Dream Master? Is it Alice? Freddy? Some non-corporeal other designed as a device to angle the film on? Nobody really explains, but it works and Fred is done in about as icky-ly as it gets in 80s horror.

Consequently, the film is fairly even in its ratio of what works to what doesn’t. It’s not remotely scary but the popcorn appeal is maxed out and the cast are an extremely likeable ensemble: You could actually believe that they are friends.

The Dream Child, while continuing with the surviving characters, attempted to back-pedal to scarier times and subsequently tanked and, to date, the winning formula seemed lost with the 80s, which is no bad thing, merely a time-stamp of a time when all everybody wanted to see was a razor-fingered child molester eating a pizza made out of dead kids’ faces…

Blurbs-of-interest: Englund, Wilcox, Hassel and Mele all returned for the next movie. Aside from his other turns as Freddy, Robert Englund was also in The Phantom of the Opera (1989), Urban Legend, Heartstopper, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and Hatchet. Ken Sagoes was later in The Back Lot Murders. Andras Jones was in Far From Home with Drew Barrymore the following year. Renny Harlin also directed Mindhunters.

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