Girls just want to have fun, it’s just that sometimes that fun involves getting in touch with their evil side while ripping out a person’s heart. We all know the male villains of Jason, Freddy, and Michael, but in this age of gender equality it’s time to acknowledge the women who slice and dice their way through helpless victims. These particular characters must be one of the major players in the film, the movie must be more horror than thriller (sorry Fatal Attraction & Misery), and those who are more victim than villain (such as Carrie) do not count. While the body count is included, it doesn’t necessarily reflect their position on the list.
10. Sadie: The Last House on the Left (1972)
Before Wes Craven created Freddy, he created Sadie. The Last House on the Left is an early exploitation shocker that tells the story of two teenage girls trying to score drugs when they are kidnaped by a group of Mason wannabes. It doesn’t end well once they are taken into the woods where the girls are tortured, raped, and killed for the group’s enjoyment. One of the members is Sadie, and she can hold her own against her male counterparts. She’s a sexual deviant and a cold-blooded killer showing no compassion for her fellow women, gleefully stabbing one girl. Charles Manson, eat your heart out (she just might help you with that). The movie only shows her participating in the killing of the two girls.
9. Mary Lou Maloney: Prom Night II & III
Mary Lou is a stereotypical prom queen in this sequel, but when she is burned to death in a prank, she comes back as the prom queen from Hell. Once she takes over the body of the main character Vicki, Mary Lou transforms her from an innocent girl to a sexed-up nightmare. She’s on a mission to become prom queen again, and she’s not going to do it by wooing the student body. Instead, the school’s colors turn red as she dishes out the carnage to achieve her goal. No guy should date her since her hobbies includes hanging, electrocution, and locker rearrangement. She returns in Prom Night III and shows off her supernatural girl power with gorier and over-the-top killings involving a blender, football, and battery acid (ouch!). Her grand total for dead bodies is fifteen.
8. Mary Brady: Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers
She cooks, she cleans, and she will kill cats! Leave it to Stephen King to make a wholesome mother a thing of nightmares. Sleepwalkers introduces Mary, a caring All-American, apple-pie-type mother on the outside, but a deadly shapeshifting creature on the inside. She steps out of the kitchen to do her other motherly duties which includes feeding on virgin women’s lifeforce and loving her son way too much (if you get my drift). When she’s pissed, not even law enforcement can stop her as she sheds plenty of blood with her brute strength. Beware of her if you don’t eat your vegetables. Her only weakness is cats, and they hate her as much as she hates them. Cat lovers may get squeamish witnessing her kill several beloved furballs – along with eight humans, Mary also kills numerous cats.
7. Regine Dandrige: Fright Night Part 2
It’s a dream come true for a young man to have a beautiful woman show interest in him, but it can become a nightmare if she’s a vampire! The sequel to the original horror comedy replaces the male vampire with a provocative female lead. In pop culture, vampires are often portrayed as sexualized creatures, and Regine is no exception. This vixen is on a mission to seduce the returning hero of Charley in order to change him into a vampire, and that involves a sexy dance! Why? Because Charley killed her vampire brother. Because of her beauty and charm, no one suspects her true nature, not even Charley. However, she never kills anyone (that the audience sees). She doesn’t need to do the dirty work, instead she has her minions do the terrorizing and killings. Dracula beware!
6. Space Girl: Lifeforce
Some horror villains don’t need a name, don’t need to be from Earth, and don’t need to wear clothes. Simple referred to as Space Girl in this sci-fi horror flick, she’s an extraterrestrial vampiric alien who is discovered on a spaceship (naked), brought to Earth (still naked), and escapes into London (while naked). Doom falls upon the world since a kiss from her is deadly. After hypnotizing her victims, she lures them in and puckers her lips on theirs. This allows her to drain their lifeforce, turning the victims into zombies. Along with her two male counterparts, she successfully turns the city of London into an apocalyptic hell as humanity faces extinction. Luckily for Earth, she is eventually killed and sent back into space (naked of course). Her destruction in London cost thousands of lives.
5. Baby Firefly: House of 1000 Corpses & The Devil’s Rejects
Rob Zombie went from musician to director with his 2003 movie and its 2005 sequel. Acting as a throwback to grindhouse films, the movies feature a cannibalistic family called the Fireflys who loves skin, blood, and the “F” word. One person that sticks out the most is Baby, the nightmare sister. Unlike the rest of her family, she’s beautiful and keeps herself clean, but that’s where the differences end. Like her family, she is a deranged killer with a mouth like a trucker. When not enjoying ice cream, she indulges in psychological torture. She may have a pretty smile and plenty of charm, but that is just a facade to lure in people just to have them die. She’s not the only female in the family, as the matriarch, Mother Firefly, taught her children well in the art of murder. While she only has two direct kills, she assisted in many other deaths.
4. Amanda Young: Saw Series
The gory Saw film franchise spans seven movies, and the character of Amanda Young appears in several of them. Making only a small appearance in the first film as a survivor of Jigsaw’s trap, she becomes a main character by the second film. At first, Amanda comes off as being another victim of Jigsaw’s demented game, but in the end it’s revealed she has become an apprentice to him. However, in the third movie, while she has developed a father/daughter relationship with Jigsaw, she doesn’t follow his rules (like a typical daughter). Instead of allowing the victims to have a chance of escaping the traps, she makes sure the person dies. One such person named Allison dies horrifically in a device nicknamed the angel trap. While she does have a sympathetic side with her caring for a dying Jigsaw and her mental troubles, it’s lost due to her jealousy, temper, and playing unfair. She participated in the deaths of many people, but her direct kills are three.
3. Julia Cotton: Hellraiser I & II
Pinhead and his Cenobites have been ripping the flesh off their victims for almost three decades, but in Hellraiser, Julia is the main villain. Putting the wicked in wicked stepmother, she makes Cinderella’s stepmom look like a saint. She’s an adulteress that lures in men in order to feed them to her undead lover. Though sickened by her actions after her first kill, by her second she starts getting pleasure from her deadly deeds. In the sequel, she returns from the dead but despite not having any skin she still has the ability to seduce a man. To get her skin, she kills numerous people in order to feast on them, including the love interest of her stepdaughter. Now transformed into a servant for Hell, she is even more deadly with the purpose of luring souls to their doom. She may look classy, but she’s full of vanity and bloodlust. Fifteen people die at her hand, possibly more unseen.
2. Angela Franklin: Night of the Demons Series
For Angela, Halloween is a time for parties, dressing all goth-like, and trying to scare her friends… but it all backfires when an ancient evil is conjured! The first film has the character throwing a party at an abandoned funeral parlor where a demon is unleashed. She is possessed, earning her the ability to talk in a deep voice and chase people without running. In between dancing and listening to death metal, Angela playfully chases her victims to kill and change them into demons. Many times she accomplishes this by kissing them, which might mean losing a tongue. Much like any good horror villain, Angela gets defeated but keeps coming back for more in the 1994 & 1997 sequels. Whether she’s attacking missionaries or doing a naughty trick with a gun, Amelia keeps her sense of humor. Now that’s how a girl should party! Though other demons help kill and possess people, Angela has eleven direct victims.
1. Pamela Voorhees: Friday the 13th
Jason is such an iconic villain that it’s sometimes forgotten that it all began with his mother, Pamela. In the original film, the slaughtering is done through the point-of-view of the killer, so audiences may assume it’s a man. However, towards the end it’s revealed the murders are done by a middle-aged woman who is seeking revenge for the death of her child. She puts the “blood” in “Camp Blood” as she kills men and women equally without mercy. In terms of murder weapon choices, she switches it up (a trait Jason will inherit) as she can can use a knife, an ax, or an arrow. The movie helped established the slasher genre, and it took a woman to do it! Being the mother of cinema’s most beloved mass murderer, it shouldn’t be a surprise. She has a respectful nine kills under her belt.
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Kind of late, I know. But What about Rebecca de Mornay in “The hand that rocks the cradle”? Or Joan Cusack con “Arlington Road”? Although no woman has ever put the creeps on me as Kathy Bates on “Misery”!
Does anyone reading this know if Jason was originally planned to be the killer in a sequel or was this originally a one and done idea with his mom the killer?
KLD, it was originally intended to be one and done, with the ending of a young Jason coming out of the water to be left ambiguous. But it was so successful that they had to come up with a story for a sequel (which were actually somewhat rare back then). And since the mother was way dead having been decapitated, they went with Jason somehow surviving and being the killer. If you watch the documentary “Crystal Lake Memories”, the screenwriter for part two even admits it doesn’t make much sense that Jason somehow survived as a little deformed kid in the woods with no parents, but he had to write something so they could make a film.
Jason’s mother was played by Betsy Palmer. Betsy played a ditzy but lovable character on I’ve Got a Secret. This was basically the way she was in real life. Playing Jason’s mother was a complete departure from anything she had done before.
What about Hillary Clinton in “The Ghoul Candidate”?
As opposed to Carly “I make up imaginary dead baby videos in my head” Fiorina?
Who the hell is Charles Mason?