Spaced Out

Year: 1997

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon 

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An Alien sequel penned by sardonic geek icon Joss Whedon and helmed by the director of Amélie! What could possibly go wrong? Answer: not as much as Alien 3, but Alien: Resurrection (the fourth entry in a franchise that had already long overstayed its welcome and has continued to do so for two more decades) trades idiosyncratic misery for completely generic fluff. But at least it’s remotely tolerable.

I’m not sure I have a thick enough carapace to survive this marathon.

In Alien: Resurrection, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is, well, resurrected. You can’t very well have an Alien movie without her so Hollywood an experimental medical facility paid her an assload of money cloned the DNA of her centuries-old corpse, and here she is. Once again, the movie fails to give half a crap about what the culture shock of waking up 200 years in the future must be like, only this time it also fails to give half a crap about Ripley’s DNA being merged with the Xenomorph’s, converting her from an avenging angel to a maternal figure with acid blood.

You couldn’t pay me to sit down and parse out the depths to how wrong this science is.

Anyway, Ripley is back and so is the Xenomorph, because this movie ain’t gonna be about her buying a timeshare on Pluto. The greedy General Perez (Dan Hedaya) has bred a baker’s dozen of the monsters for reasons nobody really cares to explain, and when things go predictably awry, the specimens escape from the custody of one Dr. Gediman (Brad Dourif, slumming it, and yes this counts as slumming it from the star of Child’s Play 3). Thus a ragtag band of space mercenaries (?) (pirates? I don’t know, they have guns) – including the morally superior (read: irritating) Call Winona Ryder) and the macho alpha dog Johner (Ron Perlman) – must reluctantly team up with Ripley to escape the ship and destroy the Xenomorphs before they reach Earth.

What a s*h*thole.

There are a dozen and a half sins that Alien: Resurrection is guilty of committing, but the largest are the atrocities performed on Ripley’s character. Their forced explanation of her return from the dead (spoilers I guess, but who really cares at this point?) robs her of any sort of personality, making her a clone with stunted feelings. If you’re paying Sigourney Weaver a truly grotesque amount of money, why script her into an emotional iron maiden? Just have her be struck by space lightning and get on with it. This is the third sequel, nobody cares.

Of course, this is a movie that displays Ripley’s newfound alien powers by having her make sweet dunks on a basketball court, so maybe character depth is a little too much to ask.

Unfortunately, there’s nobody to step up up and fill Ripley’s shoes, as hard as they’re trying to make Winona Ryder a thing. She fails as a Ripley surrogate and as a hard-edged warrior, and the only thing her character contributes is a delightfully inexplicable scene where she attempts to drink from a mug while wearing boxing gloves. The sad thing is, every other member of this overstuffed ensemble contributes even less.

This is no fault of the casting director. Ron Perlman and Brad Dourif are fabulous character actors filling the exact spaces they need to, but the script scrounges around to find anything for them to do, let alone the 35 faceless goons that are flanking them.

And love Joss Whedon though I do, this script just isn’t working. The way he tells it, his humorous dialogue was steamrolled by an overserious tone, but 1) did anybody really want Ripley trading Avengers-style quips with Hellboy? And 2) that still doesn’t excuse the ten-car pileup of syntax that attempts to pass itself off as wit.

It’s just not fun. The plot is a shambles and the action is poundingly repetitive (if I never see a squad of gun-toting astronauts tip-toeing down a metal passageway again I’ll be a happy man). It’s straight boring is what it is.

Something a film about a man-eating alien with acid blood should never be.

However, as much of a slog as it was to sit through, it has two strengths that buoy it at least above the dismal Alien 3. First, it’s surprisingly gory, resurrecting the grindhouse flair that made the original film so viscerally compelling. Second, the world-building of the franchise hits its peak here. The Alien movies have never particularly cared about exploring the technological developments that litter the world of the future, but Resurrection is full of fun little flourishes (like freeze-dried whiskey or a security door that identities people by their breath) that indicate subtle ways life has changed over the centuries.

Even if the characters are made of tissue paper, at least that paper is filled with blood and exists in a world I can find a foothold in. There’s still no justifiable reason for this film to exist, but I daresay I’ve seen far worse.

TL;DR: Alien: Resurrection is a mildly diverting but still dull and muddled sequel.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 874
Reviews In This Series
Alien (Scott, 1979)
Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
Alien 3 (Fincher, 1992)
Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997)
AvP: Alien vs. Predator (Anderson, 2004)
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (Strause & Strause, 2007)
Prometheus (Scott, 2012)

I Find You Unpleasant To Be Around

Year: 1992

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Alien 3 is a disastrously compromised motion picture that its director disowned and is largely reviled by all but a select few outliers who hail it as a nihilistic masterpiece. As usual, the controversy around the movie forces people to take strong stances for or against it, ignoring the fact that it’s a completely middling film when all is said and done.

People never learn. They really ought to read my blog more.

In Alien 3, Lt. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) crash-lands on a prison planet, not realizing that an alien Facehugger is along for the ride. Her fellow survivors from Aliens – Michael Biehn and the little girl formerly known as Newt – have perished during the crash. She conscripts the prison’s medical officer Clemens (Charles Dance) to help her perform an autopsy on newt while she chokes down sobs and the camera repeatedly zooms past the girl’s dead eyes like a hungry fly. Then they toss her friends’ bodies into a flaming pit, superimposed over Ripley’s devastated eyes, while in the other room a Xenomorph bursts out of a puppy dog, painfully killing it.

They’re really making a meal out of this.

So yeah, Ripley must team up with the 25 interchangeably British prisoners to fight off the alien once more. They fight a lot about how exactly to accomplish this while the alien mows down the expendable meat who inexplicably decide to wander off alone.

It’s basically a slasher movie, with slightly less phallic symbolism.

Alien 3 has a truly spectacular opening logo. The 20th Century Fox fanfare trumpets from the screen, shifting almost imperceptibly into a blaring minor key musical sting that hits you like a ton of bricks. And that’s pretty much the last nice thing I have to say about the movie.

Alien 3 really revels in being a miserable slog, which is totally fine for a movie to do, even if I’m not a huge fan of that style. But a movie this nibbled-at by production quibbles in no way has the strength of character and tone to sustain such a dismal atmosphere. It’s too unsure of itself, rapidly flitting from idea to idea, to the point that its bleakness is inconsistent. So whenever something truly dire happens, it feels wholly unjustified, and whenever something remotely happy occurs (as rare as that is), it feels manic and forced.

And then there’s the fact that it’s all just wicked emotional manipulation, grabbing you by the hair and rubbing your face in its every bleating misery.

LOOK AT THIS DEAD GIRL! GUESS HOW DEAD SHE IS! VERY!

As if that wasn’t enough, it’s a technical misfire on every level. I’m not going to point fingers at any particular person behind this very tampered-with production, but Alien 3 is just a mess. Scenes bubble up from the plot’s molten primordial ooze with no context whatsoever, the geography of the prison appears to be some sort of M. C Escher thought experiment, and the editing is – in a word – perplexing.

There are some excellent deep focus shots of lurking aliens, but this cosmic ineptitude (and the fact that every single character – including Ripley – looks exactly alike), Aliens is muddled and incomprehensible. Even worse, it’s boring. The action of the third act is defused by the editing making it entirely unclear what is happening and where or why, so all we have to cling to is an endless carousel of scenes of Ripley being angsty at Charles S. Dutton.

Oh, and there’s some abysmal CGI at certain points, but this was 1992. Hollywood was going through some forgivable growing pains.

In motion, it looks more like that dancing cartoon frog than an alien beast.

OK, it’s time to resheath the claws. As insufferable as Alien 3 tends to be, it’s far from the worst thing to happen to the franchise. While there are only one or two things that qualify as categorically “good,” it’s at least operating at a basic level of cinematic decency. It galloped by at a steady enough clip, and Sigourney Weaver is always a delight, even when her character’s actions are entirely inscrutable. If you love to watch Xenomorphs repeatedly drop down onto people from the ceiling, then boy do I have the film for you.

TL;DR: Alien 3 is a miserable, overwrought slog.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 748

Reviews In This Series

Alien (Scott, 1979)

Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
Alien 3 (Fincher, 1992)
Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997)
AvP: Alien vs. Predator (Anderson, 2004)
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (Strause & Strause, 2007)
Prometheus (Scott, 2012)

Bug Hunt

Year: 1986

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn

Run Time: 2 hours 17 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

This October, I watched Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror classic Alien for the very first time, which sparked the gestation of this marathon I’m about to embark upon. But, like most people born after 1983, the first film in the franchise I ever watched was James Cameron’s seven-years-later sequel Aliens. So we’re kicking off this exploration of a franchise that’s mostly new to me with a revisitation. I’d say  resurrection, but we’ll have to wait until 1997 for that. I haven’t caught this flick in over a decade, so I was definitely excited to give it another look.

You could say I was slavering at the jaws.

In Aliens, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only survivor of the Xenomorph attack on the starship Nostromo, has been drifting through space in cryosleep for 57 years. When she is found and awakened, she learns that the Weyland-Utani corporation has built a colony on LV-426, the very planet where her crew discovered the deadly creature. She is strong-armed by corporate stooge Burke (Paul Reiser) into joining a crew of marines bound for the planet after the company loses contact with the colony.

When they get there, they of course discover that the colony is decimated and turned into a hive for the hideous aliens. Flanked by the handsome and capable Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), the cowardly braggart Private Hudson (Bill Paxton, may he rest in peace), the half-trusted android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), and the fiery badass Private Vasquez (Jennette Goldstein in brownface, oh me oh my), Ripley must fight off the aliens, escape the planet, and protect the colony’s only survivor: a little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn).

Get away from her! Please?

Aliens (especially in its overlong director’s cut) is actually structured a little bit like James Cameron’s later epic Titanic. The first half focuses on character drama that’s a wee bit too thin to sustain itself, before crumbling entirely in the face of a showstopping, groundbreaking special effects spectacle. There’s a very clear division in the middle too, as the Xenomorphs don’t appear onscreen until at least the hour mark (I clocked the director’s cut at 1 hour, 13 minutes). The first half is far from bad: it features a Sigourney Weaver with seven more years of experience under her belt (it shows) and a crew of mostly likeable, if interchangeable marines. Plus, it stays true to the trauma Ripley would be feeling as a survivor while it sets up a spooky little locked-room mystery in the empty colony.

But there’s no way any of that could compare to the triumphant return of the shiny black, relentlessly phallic H. R. Giger monstrosities. Although the first two or three scenes with the Xenomorphs (a shootout, a car chase, and an offscreen siege) do highlight the limitations of the special effects by showing only one or two aliens at a time in quick flashes and nudging them out of frame every chance they get, every sequence improves on the next until it becomes a pulse-pounding hailstorm of fire, bullets, and shards of black carapace.

And they saved the best for last. The alien queen, with her translucent crystal fangs, gargantuan bulging egg sac, and stories-high crown of spindly ridges, is a masterpiece of terrifying excess, a worthy foe for the hard-nosed survivor Ripley has become. She’s also an excellent foil for the film’s themes of femininity on attack, two sides of the same coin of motherhood.

Hail to the queen, long may she reign.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to point out that Aliens takes the grindhouse horror villainy of its predecessor and transplants it into an action flick milieu. It’s a military siege movie more than anything: James Cameron’s Saving Private Ryan. Whether or not this makes it better or worse than the original varies depending on how much mileage the war genre has with you. For me, it’s about zilch, but I find Alien to be superior in many other ways, especially how it succeeds in creating and sustaining a mood. Aliens doesn’t have a mood. It’s blustery and loud and awesome, but there’s not quite as much going on beneath the surface.

That’s not to say it’s an unintelligent film. Cameron’s script just puts it all out there and throws subtlety to the wind, which isn’t a wrong way to go about things. It’s just a bit less sophisticated. Which is awesome.

OK, I obviously have conflicting feelings about this, but there’s one thing there is absolutely no argument against: Private Vasquez is a problem. It’s hard to take war scenes seriously when prancing through the middle of them is a white lady who has been dunked in bronzer and is grumbling things about “pendejos.” Jennette Goldstein gives a good performance, but there’s just no excuse for not hiring a Latina actress here. The fakest effect in Aliens should not be one of the human characters, and the racial baggage this forces onto the movie weighs it down like an anchor.

So… Aliens! I guess I don’t want to exit on a down note. It’s a gun sci-fi shoot-em-up romp with excellent production design and explosive effects. Everything here James Cameron has done better in other movies, but as its own entity, it’s not exactly a chore to sit through. It’s one of those films that justifies the practice of making sequels, and I can say as many negative things about it that I want because it will all just bounce off its sturdy ion hull. Aliens is a great movie. Mostly. But it is, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, nor would I want to.

TL;DR: Aliens is a little shaggy and problematic, but nothing can touch its sci-fi action glory.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 978
Reviews In This Series
Alien (Scott, 1979)
Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
Alien 3 (Fincher, 1992)
Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997)
AvP: Alien vs. Predator (Anderson, 2004)
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (Strause & Strause, 2007)
Prometheus (Scott, 2012)

Arrow in the Head: Ripley's Believe It Or Not

Year: 1979

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt 

Run Time: 1 hour 57 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Read my full review at Arrow in the Head.

Additional Notes: I can see why they hired James Cameron to do the sequel to this film. Alien is a massive, unprecedented special effects spectacular that tests the limits of the gooey monstrosities you can show onscreen. And aside from an obvious cut replacing a dummy head with Ian Holm’s and a late wide shot that exposes too much of the Xenomorph’s “dude in a suit”-liness, the effects hold their glorious icky power to this day. H. R. Giger’s orifice-tacular design is gross enough on its own, but it’s realized with tremendous skill. 

Like I said, design is what really counts in this movie. Although the basic interiors have lost their charm after years and years of rip-offs and copies, there are subtle elements that still stand out, my favorite being the hatches that swirl shut like a camera lens.

I suppose I should mention the cast, although the human element barely registers in this cold and (literally) alien film. They have solid chemistry and their banter is amusing, although they’re only given a handful of character traits between them. Sigourney Weaver isn’t, like, mind-blowingly good, but she retains her femininity while still presenting a tough, professional attitude, a balance that earns her all the credit she gets for being an iconic strong female character.

I really don’t have that much more to say about Alien, because at its core it’s devilishly simple. I respect what it does and how it works, but as the years pass I’m less and less sure that it’s Ridley Scott’s doing why it works so well. All I can say is, when compared to its proto-predecessor, the likewise Dan O’Bannon scripted Dark Star, Alien is a massive quantum leap forward for 70’s sci-fi.

TL;DR: Alien is a base and dirty grindhouse horror flick with the impeccable design of an A-list sci-fi picture.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1051
Reviews In This Series
Alien (Scott, 1979)
Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
Alien 3 (Fincher, 1992)
Alien: Resurrection (Jeunet, 1997)
AvP: Alien vs. Predator (Anderson, 2004)
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (Strause & Strause, 2007)
Prometheus (Scott, 2012)

Popcorn Kernels: Who You Gonna Call?

When the remake of Ghostbusters is nigh, what else is there to do than catch up on a zeitgeist franchise of the sort we just don't seem to have anymore?

Ghostbusters (For our Scream 101 episode about this very film, click here.)

Year: 1984

Director: Ivan Reitman

Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver 

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A trio of out-of-work paranormal scientists open a business busting ghosts, only to stumble upon an ancient demon bent on ending the world inside from of their client’s fridges.

It’s impossible to approach a review of Ghostbusters without a great deal of baggage. You can try to check as much of it as possible, but you’re at the very least still stuck with your carry-on. The obscenely popular horror comedy was so ingrained into the hearts and minds of those who were growing up or even alive in the 80’s, the remnants of Ghostbusters have drifted down from generation to generation like a Jungian cultural memory. 

I could make “don’t cross the streams” jokes long before I was old enough for my parents to even consider renting me Ghostbusters. And if you can show me any American alive today who does have at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I will show you an amnesiac. My spell check even knows that "Ghostbusters" is a word. Ghostbusters is an innate, primordial piece of cinema, and that’s the reason that the backlash against the remake has reached such shrieking, ludicrous heights.

That is to say, Ghostbusters adopts such a revered position in the pop culture idiom, it’s difficult to walk up to that hallowed door and nail your Theses there for all to see. But what can a lowly blogger do but try to say true to himself? Here goes: Ghostbusters has flaws. Deep-seated, crippling flaws that loudly announce themselves while the world plugs its ears. Does that mean it’s not a good comedy film? Hell no! In fact, it’s a great comedy film. But as a holistic narrative piece, it can occasionally be a bit of a shambles.

Born as it is from the minds of extremely talented sketch comedians, the deliciously high concept of Ghostbusters (underemployed scientists become a modern, macabre twist on New York exterminators) is populated by a handful of wacky, paper-thin characters not suited for the long-term scrutiny of a feature film. More a collection of (admittedly funny) tics and mannerisms than fully rounded personalities, it’s extremely challenging to get a sense of what makes them tick and how the dynamics of their relationships operate. 

Comedy is a genre uniquely suited to contain these types of characters (and Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Rick Moranis especially have the chops to pull it off), but there’s just no excuse for a character like Winston Zeddmore (played by Ernie Hudson), who shows up halfway through the film, integrates himself into the group offscreen, says and does next to nothing that can be perceived as funny on the visual or aural spectrum, and then is arbitrarily handed the climax’s closing line. This guy is a non-entity, there’s no discernible reason for his presence in the film (other than the fact that the casting director probably looked around at lunch and realized there was not a single black person on set), and he doesn’t even have the decency to make us laugh. The producers really should send Mr. Hudson a fruit basket or something, because he is well and truly f**ked by this film.

Similarly vexing is Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, who gets plenty to do when she’s possessed by the demonic Zool, but it hardly more than set decoration in human form. Ghostbusters is haunted by this kind of half-finished feeling (and in fact there are some effects shots that literally weren’t completed by the deadline), with a heavy sprinkling of sedate hang-out scenes, a ghost BJ scene clearly shoehorned in for… personal reasons, and an altogether too easy climax.

But even a half-finished Ghostbusters is an incredible one. The state-of-the-art effects are designed with the gleeful creativity of a fairy tale yet are just dangerous enough to earn the horror half of that horror-comedy hyphenate. And there’s no denying that this cast assembled some of the brightest comic minds of the 1980’s, delivering an endless conveyor belt of quotable dialogue with some of the keenest, most off-kilter readings in the business. Ghostbusters is a tremendously funny movie and yes, that really is the only thing that matters.

Rating: 7/10

Ghostbusters II

Year: 1989

Director: Ivan Reitman

Cast: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The now defunct Ghostbusters must reunite when an underground river of ectoplasm and an ancient Sumerian spirit threaten to destroy New York.

Ghostbusters II is kind of a miracle sequel, if only for the fact that it managed to reteam the director, writers, and entire cast (down to the bit parts) five years down the road after the original became a massive hit, spawning an empire of merchandise, imitators, and a cartoon series. For that fact alone, we must thank Ghostbusters II, but bringing back that crew brought back their particular set of problems, with a handful of new ones for flavor.

For starters, despite expanded screentime for both, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver are still treated like tagalong little siblings that the movie just doesn’t have time to deal with right now. We see Hudson in the opening, where we’re shown what the former Ghostbusters are up to, but in the climactic first act trial scene that predicates their reformation, he vanishes in a puff of ectoplasm. He continues this Houdini act throughout Ghostbusters II, reappearing only when it would look cool for there to be four beams of light instead of three. 

And Sigourney Weaver is yoked to a particularly unforgiving role: divorced single mother/damsel in distress. All she’s asked to do is coo at a baby, waltz about in a towel, and be just strong enough that she can resist Venkman’s advances until she is broken in like a horse. It sucks to be an actress in an 80’s comedy, don’t it? She is trapped in this insipid part, which commits the egregious sequel sin of breaking her up with Bill Murray just so we can see their inexplicable romance blossom yet again in the exact same pattern. Whee…

And then there’s Rick Moranis. His performance in Ghostbusters is perhaps my favorite of the bunch, and he continues to excel here. But his character is shoehorned in so poorly that he hangs from the film like a throbbing goiter, a constant reminder that what you’re watching is entirely pointless, a ramshackle artifice created only to capitalize on the brand of a lifetime.

Naturally, the third act also has the same problems, depicting a generic evil threat with no discernible stakes that’s defeated in about 2.5 seconds flat. And the film has the audacity to tack on a nauseating “power of positive thinking” vibe to the whole thing. At least the desperate Stay-Puft substitute (an animated Statue of Liberty stomping its way through the street of New York) is achieved with some tremendously convincing special effects.

In fact, all the effects here are particularly well-rendered. Five years of technological development and time to actually complete the work does wonders for Ghostbusters II. Although the ghosts are much safer and more Henson-esque this time around (thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the Ghostbusters cartoon), there are actually multiple ghosts busted in this movie, wreaking convincing havoc about town with lavish detail. In this respect and this respect only, Ghostbusters II is a vast improvement over the original.

But, like I said before, the whole point of Ghostbusters is to make us laugh, and this sequel doesn’t quite cut mustard. Although Murray and Ramis still punch up their material with effortlessly kooky line readings and franchise newcomer Peter MacNicol is delightfully camp as an improbably accented museum curator, the script just isn’t up to snuff. It falls back on too much weak slapstick (especially where the river of slime is involved), awkward improv, and ill-thought-out plotting. It’s a very messy film that has little reason to exist, and while there’s still a spark of what the original has to offer, it’s not really worth your time.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1397
Reviews In This Series
Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
Ghostbusters II (Reitman, 1989)
Ghostbusters (Feig, 2016)

Women In Horror Month: Scream Queens

Man, February is just rocketing by, isn't it? Here's one more post for Women in Horror Month before we say hello to March!

THE TOP TEN HORROR ACTRESSES

#10 Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Cold Prey, Cold Prey 2, Chernobyl Diaries)

OK, I don't think there's anybody alive and conscious who thought Chernobyl Diaries was a good movie. But this Norwegian actress deserves as much exposure as she can get. Her character Jannicke didn't earn the #7 spot on my Top Final Girls list for no reason. Berdal manages to infuse her character with a dignity and passion that is far superior to what most American actresses in similar roles have been trying to achieve for over three decades now.

#9 Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Aliens, Ghostbusters)

'Nuff said. Sigourney Weaver didn't spend a lot of time in horror outside of the Alien franchise, but when she was here she absolutely killed it, providing one of the most memorable protagonists in horror history in a film that most people my age don't even have the attention spans to sit through. That's some staying power right there.

#8 Elsa Lanchester (Bride of Frankenstein)

Fun Fact: The Bride of Frankenstein only appears in one movie. And she's only in that one for about 45 seconds. The fact that this character has been so permanently etched into the minds of the public is due entirely to Lanchester's no-holds-barred horror performance as an inhuman creature who reacts with pure visceral horror at the visage of her similarly created husband. She has later stated that she based her performance on the movements of geese so you know she's a great and insightful actress because geese are the freaking devil.

#7 Sissy Spacek (Carrie, The Ring Two)

I'm sorry Chloë Grace Moretz, but y'all ain't got nothing on Sissy. The perfect outsider, her Carrie is angular and weird in a subtly intense way that could only happen in high school.

#6 Zelda Rubinstein (Poltergeist, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon)

Honestly, I can't even tell if she's a great actress because I'm too distracted with being terrified by her voice. But that high tremulous voice is the most perfect fit for horror I've ever heard and the casting director who hired her for Poltergeist can expect a lavish Edible Arrangement at his or her doorstep from yours truly any day now.

#5 Tippi Hedren (The Birds)

I've frequently discussed my love for The Birds on this blog, so I won't belabor my point here. Just remember that this smoky blonde provides a chewy caramel center for all the avian ridiculousness and grounds the horror in a real, imperfect, but perfectly relatable character.

#4 Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense, Fright Night)

Poor Toni has been playing bedraggled mothers for decades at this point. All I can say though is that she does a great job at it. Her scene in the end of The Sixth Sense where her son relays a message from her deceased mother is one of the only film scenes that never fails to make me cry. She is the single best element of a great film that elevates it above what could have been a simple ghost story into a supremely satisfying family drama as well.

#3 Jessica Lange (American Horror Story)

Jessica Lange, man. Her late career shift to horror came out of nowhere, but this diva has a wicked streak as broad as Ryan Murphy's paycheck. She flawlessly habits characters as far ranging as a drunken neighbor to a drunken nun to a drunken witch. All kidding aside, Lange's acting prowess is as compelling as an electromagnet.

#2 Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, Halloween II, The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train)

Another gimme. Jamie Lee Curtis is responsible for basically the entire decade of the 80's and is the single best actress to ever carry the Final Girl mantle. Beautiful but not overwhelmingly so. Compelling but not pretentiously so. Jamie Lee occupies that space exactly in between Oscar pandering and method acting. She's nothing but entirely real.

#1 Frances Conroy (American Horror Story)

Frances Conroy is a trouper. Given the most nonsensical character in the third season, she managed to make it her own and spawn a veritable army of internet memes in her wake. She throws herself with hurricane force into her meaty roles (my favorite obviously being Moira, the maid with a dark secret) and finds the reality in some fantastically surreal characters. She certainly doesn't get as much love as she should, so please. Write her a letter. Send her a lollipop. Something.

Thank you so much for supporting Women in Horror month alongside me! It's been fun while it lasted, but remember what Cassidy always says: "It never stops being women in horror month." And it's true. There's always time to appreciate the importance of the female gender in the development and success of the horror genre. And if you stick with me, I'll be sure not to disappoint.
Word Count: 830