In Defense Of Lady-Terrorizing Horror MoviesS  Horror films
frequently feature the bloody torture of women, often for such
"crimes" as being outspoken or having sex. So why do I love them
so much?  Apropos of The Last Exorcism, opening today, Forbes's
Kiri Blakeley looks at gender roles in recent horror movies —
and isn't too impressed with what she finds. She explains that
in the 70s, women in such movies were victims of "what Syracuse
University professor Kendall Phillips calls 'sexualized terror,'
wherein any woman who was sexually active got axed (or knifed or
strangled or garroted)." Things got a little better with the
Scream franchise ("[Neve] Campbell, whose character has sex in
the movie, and is just as pretty and popular as her high school
victim-mates, survives her attacker"), then got worse again.
Now, says Blakeley, women still get punished for fucking or
talking:  Two types are still a certain death sentence for a
woman in horror: the bitch and the slut. "The bitch will die
bloody," says Andrew C