What do you reckon the most misogynistic horror film ever is?

Agreed. And it's also hilarious. Oh god, Nic Cage, I love you.

Wizard of Oz. Kills two women and reinforces the notion that the putative heroine of the film should be happy living in her monochrome shit kicking farm girl existence instead of chasing after her dream or finding another escape route out of that rural hellhole.

"There's no place like home."

Heh.

Has absolutely nothing to do with the topic really but how was The Cell? It has Bobby Goren/Thor in it and I love that guy.

I would say that, to qualify as misogynistic, the movie has to be more than just sexist in the traditional ways; there has to be an undercurrent of hatred. Just portraying women as weak and vulnerable isn't enough, for instance. It has to also portray this fact as being, not tragic or even factual, but grounds for despising them, with the intended audience response being "they deserve it for being weak."

I would also say it does have to be specifically unbalanced. If the movie portrays both men and women as being deserving only of torment and death, its just misanthropic, not misogynistic. I just note that having a man be the monster does not automatically constitute balance, unless the writer actually intends for you to view that as a bad thing.

Roger Ebert's review of I Spit On Your Grave and his review of its remake took the films to task for misogyny. The two films are notable for being some of the few films he has given zero stars. The reviews are notable for being so venomous they are enjoyable.

edited 1st Feb '13 12:25:57 PM by Achaemenid

Most sexist horror films tend to fall in the Unfortunate Implications or Fair For Its Day categories. Quite a few are sexist because they're a homage to an older film, a homage to a certain type of horror film, or because it's simply making use of classic scenarios and traditionally sexist tropes that are a staple of certain types of horror. In these cases the creator doesn't have an agenda or any bad intent.

For something truly misogynistic, I think we'd have to find a misogynistic writer/director whose intent was to send a misogynistic message.

Hmm, I am not sure if the Russ Meyer films count as misogynistic even back in the day.

I feel bored, so I'll post stuff from a long-running Philippine horror franchise called Shake Rattle and Roll (Basically 3 unrelated segments in one film, 14 movies all in all) Note: Males also die rather than only girls are the only ones who died, possibly gorier.

Shake, Rattle and Roll (1984): EPISODE 2: PRIDYIDER (frigidaire, refrigerator or something) The first death (I think) is a woman getting her back and spine crushed by the sentient fridge's door, repeatedly. Then the protag nearly gets killed when she gets apparently seduced and nearly killed by it as if it was raping her. She got saved when her mom pulled said fridge's plug.

Shake, Rattle and Roll 3 (1991) EPISODE 1 Yaya (Nanny) Among other things, we have a maid going nuts after getting assaulted by a ghost (violence not seen), the mother witnessing said female ghost enter house (in a Large Ham way) in what I could describe as an indoor typhoon with an exploding Xmas tree and burning star lantern, said mother gets away with her baby (also a girl). Then the ghost bangs against car windows while visiting the assaulted house again and finally the baby got kidnapped by the ghost

EPISODE 2: ATE (sister) Let's see, a woman finds out that her sister got turned into a zombie (thank goodness not the [1] overused Gorn flesh eater type) by two cult leaders, woman is force fed soup (which she posioned to kill the matriarch, but its poisonless), woman nearly gets strangled by her zombie sis with a chain, and thr wife cult leader died in the most violent way in the short (getting a piece of wood thrown into her eye).

EPISODE 3: UNDIN Lets see the monster this time is an Uncanny Valley frog-monkey Mama Bear who first kills a girl who took her eggs, stowaways in a cooler by the female Butt-Monkey protag who kept the eggs, then kills the dorm owner( a woman) via acid while she's using the toilet. Third death is a male stalker who gets a more obvious and rather disturbing death. Then the Jerkass Large Ham destroys all but one of the eggs and gets kicked in the toilet and gets a Karmic Death, again acid, where her head is somehow still alive for sometime before dying while the rest of her body is a skeleton, along while most of the dorm residents and the male partygoers are killed. So much Black Comedy.

Shake Rattle and Roll 4 (1992) EPISODE 1: GURO (teacher) The first death involves a female student getting assaulted by a hot yet Jekylland Hyde like teacher via hit, bashed and thrown repeatedly (its a dummy). Then there's a Butt-Monkey woman who first had the newspaper she held burst into flames via male students firing a scalpel via chemical reaction. Then she got hurt again by students, I'm not sure all I remember is burnt hair and a sooty face I think.

Shake Rattle and Roll 5 (1994) EPISODE 2: ANINO (shadow) Near the end of the segment after a male family member got thrown then strangled into unconciousness, the shadow then attacked two female member which I can easily describe as domestic abuse by an invisible perpetrator on two women in less than two minutes ((no blood!).

I'll probably add more eventually some other time. Comment!

edited 7th Feb '13 3:22:05 AM by SentaiToku

inb4 Silent Hill.

I think Silent Hill's problems are other than misogyny. It deprotagonized the protagonist, but it didn't deny heroism to the cop until the very end, when everyone got screwed. At the same time, Sean Bean was forced into complete irrelevance, so. . .

Basically, I don't think the writers or director hated women, they just were doing a clueless focus-group adaptation that substituted cliches for depth.

Are we talking about the game or the film?

The movie was apparently criticized for being misogynistic. That wasn't my impression of the movie overall, although it DID severely niggle me that Harry Mason was gender-swapped, and I felt the reasons the director gave (that he couldn't imagine a man in that situation—looking for his daughter, being afraid, etc.) for that were very sexist in general—women are hysterical, men are emotionless automatons, etc.

Sean Bean's character wasn't even supposed to be in the movie, from what I heard. The director's original script had an all-female cast, which was returned with a post-it saying "There are no men".

Evidently the film. Which is sad, because Heather Mason often makes "best female characters in video games" lists, and with good reason.

I would add to this "Are the women killed off as punishment for engaging in 'bad' behavior, especially in relation to the Final Girl?"

Our society has serious issues with women expressing their bodily autonomy, especially when it comes to sexual partners. This misogynistic undertone sometimes comes through in horror films when "slutty" characters get killed while the female protagonist is highlighted for her purity.

This is also important.

I think that one only would really be evidence of misogyny if the film, itself, showed a double standard on the matter. If men who have sex get slaughtered roughly as often, its likely just sexist. Note that the same films that kill off women for having sex usually also have a woman has the only survivor, because Men Are the Expendable Gender.

What is more important is how The Scourge of God chooses its victims. Where there is a blatant Double Standard in how vices are treated between the sexes, it is a good indication of sexism somewhere. I remember watching one horror movie (the name escapes me, but it was fairly downmarket) where the "slutty one" had sex with the male lead and was duly brutally killed, whilst the male lead Took a Level in Badass, survived the entire film, and got with the Final Girl (who, btw, was nauseating in her Incorruptible Pure Pureness up until that point) when they were out of danger (there wasn't even a stinger). The double standard is extremely obvious - if you are a woman, having sex makes you a slut and you will end up horribly (and undignified-ly) murdered (bonus points if you are suggestively impaled), whilst if you are a man, having sex makes you man's man and an epic badass who will get the girl and guiltlessly forget about your previous brutally-killed liasons.

Sex is the example I used here, because it is so common, but it is by no means the only one. Drugs, alcohol (gasp), rudeness, and even pragmatism are all presented in different ways - for instance, a pragmatic male is usually considered hard but fair, trying to do "whatever it takes" for the group's survival, whilst pragmatic females are often cold and cowardly bitches.

edited 20th Feb '13 2:55:57 AM by Achaemenid

There's Fantom Killer, a weird little slasher/porno (softcore, I think) series from Russia or Poland or somewhere like that. The killer is some kind of psychic manifestation of misogynistic men, and specifically targets promiscuous and usually really dumb women who lose their coverings under the flimsiest of circumstances (Oh noes! That tree branch somehow ripped all my clothes off!)

In the fourth one, the villain ties a girl up, and uses her like a mop◊.

The general horror film also has a habit of encouraging the audience to judge characters based off of five minute and generally two dimensional introductions - it's where we get generalizations like "the slutty one" or "the unnecessarily jerkish one," and is probably my biggest peeve when watching a bad horror movie, or even some good ones. Anything that reduces characters to stereotypes is going to very closely run the risk of sexist overtones and implications, as well as racial overtones and implications. And just in general, I dislike the implication that characters should be so shallow and easily gleaned in the first place.

Satan's Cheerleaders. Oh good god Satan's Cheerleaders. You know it's a bad sign when the only two female characters in the whole film you don't want to strangle are both committed Satanists.

I looked at the wikipedia page, but it's very bare. Can we have a precis of the plot and an explanation why its misogynistic? (Not that, with a title like that, I doubt your assessment).