I want to live a happy life and I want to be happy but everything is effort and I'm so tired already. What I've promised to myself is I will not let my illness kill me because despite everything I want so badly to live but it's hard when terror clouds your mind every second of your day. Every time I think I've escaped, I'm entrapped again - the eternal face-off between myself and I - How can I heal when the one I want to murder is myself?

There must be a secret I don't know and I'm determined to find out. My best revenge will be a long life lived, and my sweetest victory. I know I can succeed - that much I've got sorted out. And now I will fight to fulfill that potential because to do otherwise would be something more tragic than my current existence, and I won't accept it.

death in extremity

• floating clouds
• pandora's box
• martyrs
• the piano teacher
• back street
• leave her to heaven
• funeral parade of roses
• scarlet street (murdered)
• only yesterday
• letter from an unknown woman
• possession
• the night porter
• the marriage of maria braun
• lorna
• bad girls go to hell
• sophie's choice
• imitation of life
• the gestapo's last orgy (some cuts)
• your vice is a locked room and only i have the key
• waterloo bridge
• tess
• dancer in the dark
• breaking the waves
• repulsion
• incendies
• in a year with 13 moons
• ms. 45
• the story of adele h.
• the children's hour
• beyond the hills
• day of wrath
• chinatown
• vivre sa vie
• la strada
• the seventh victim
• that obscure object of desire
• twin peaks fire walk with me
• le bonheur
• vagabond
• black girl
• contempt
• monster
• mulholland drive

a list of movies ive seen where a woman endures extreme physical or psychological stress and dies in the end... the conditions vary wildly but a similar message is conveyed in all - death as escape, death as solution, death as rebirth, redemption through tragedy

techniques n theories that have helped me not get so mad over film

Growing up on cinema still firmly adhering to the (long extinct) production code (sex and violence must be punished, there must be a happy ending, our hero/ine must win), my first dip into film that transgressed old fashioned moralism was (surprise! i never shut up about it!) horror and exploitation film (which I was actually terrified of up until about the age of 12). First came slashers, most people's entryway -- excessive and pointedly shocking they almost always have someone you can root for and evil being punished even if only temporarily at the end. Like I've written about before (though its not my original thought at ALL), these movies are essentially fairy tales with acculturating purposes. And the main draw of these movies for a budding horror enthusiast but also baby feminist was the strong female character at the center of most narratives. So, going on, how does one begin to make sense of a movie like Last House On The Left where our female protagonists are raped and murdered? Or where the Strong Female Character is killed at the end? What does it mean to engage with cinema beyond identification? The number one rule always is context and tone. While something like Faster Pussycat Kill Kill clearly glorifies our outlaw trio of hellcats, something like El Topo is an irredeemable male leftist fantasy to me almost exclusively based on the horribly stupid corrective rape scene early on in the film. And while Lorna by Russ Meyer too has a plot-line where the victim falls in love with her rapist (a disgusting, useless trope), the fact that it's an independent sexploitation film from the mid-60s and entirely from the point of view of our sexually frustrated heroine gives it lots of redemptive reading to me and is a big reason I think its worthy of further analysis and appreciation even if it does not make the trope it employed okay. Most important to my enjoying films even as my moral convictions grew (and it getting increasingly harder to come to these things as an "objective viewer") was stopping reading things as straight. There's so many tools filmmakers use to express what they can't blatantly or don't wish to: defamiliarization/distancing techniques, camp, who the camera is focusing on and when, etc. Instead of taking narratives at face value, engaging with them critically has allowed me to enjoy so many things I otherwise wouldn't. While identification is important, active spectatorship is as well. You can still be critical, and identify, without entirely basing your experience of the film on projection. Which is why we can still like film noir -- the women are almost always punished for sins equal to if not less than the white male protagonists. They often have histories of abuse and exploitation as well. But we/I still love these films because they provide a glance at gender role subversion in an otherwise restrictive period of time. That doesn't mean the films aren't misogynistic, they often are, but it does mean that we don't have to hate them entirely because of it or that we can't get anything positive out of them. If I can be presumptuous about anyone caring about anything my dumb ass says, something I think I stress fairly often is how little most things are lacking in value and how so much can be gained from appreciating greys instead of black and whites (though there are certainly situations that each person will find irredeemable and that is perfectly okay! Objectivity can be and usually is a white male convention!). So hopefully this lil bit helps you go forth and enjoy what can be hard to navigate without these tools bcs there's sooooo much to offer in everything.

Regenerative Apocalypse and '70s Horror Cinema

The fairy tale is controlled by a mythic order and a ritual narrative script. By embodying the child’s anxieties, fairy tales help him or her to understand and overcome ... difficulties. Most horror films share the positive, pragmatic function of the fairy tale in that–when they do allow unconscious material to come to awareness and work itself through in our imaginations–its potential for causing harm is greatly reduced. As with the fairy tale, the traditional horror film generally works to serve positive acculturating purposes.  

Tobe Hooper’s classic piece of cinéma vomitif inverts this mythic order and upsets the ritual narrative script–and on a cosmic level. The inverted fairy tale narrative is not simply a tale of personal tragedy; rather, like all fairy tales, it works to universal dimensions. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is compelled to repeat a fixation on a nonregenerative apocalypse, an end to history, a cosmic destruction ultimately denied by the film’s ending. Sally’s escape, however, is not a forestalling of the apocalypse, but simply a postponement of the end of the ritual violence. Her escape signifies a return to the cycle of horror, never to be redeemed by any sense of an ending.

Mikita Brottman, Offensive Films: Toward an Anthropology of Cinema Vomitif 

Much has been written about how 1969 marked the end of an era as Woodstock and the Tate-LaBianca murders signified a death of the facade of innocence that had dominated popular imagination for the past century, and the past 70 years of cinema. For middle class, white America it was considered no longer safe to leave your doors unlocked, to hitch a ride, to neck at Lovers' Lane, or even exist. With this death of "innocence," a facade people of color had rarely been under given the everyday terrorism of being a person of color in Western society, fell from white America's eyes and life took on a different hue. Previously relegated to cinematic ghettos, at least in its more blatant depictions, sex and violence exploded onto the silver screen like never before at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the horror film. Though Europe's output was exponential and amazing during this time, here I choose to focus on the American psyche as reflected in both independent and often Hollywood-produced horror of this decade.

The most obvious example, and the one referenced in the quote above, is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a film that marked both the beginning and the end of an era. While there were certainly films before it (some I'll examine later), Texas Chainsaw provided a glimpse into the public needs and fascinations that would bring the slasher to screens regularly nearly 5 years later. Representing a clash of the old (Leatherface and his rural, fledgling family) and the new (Sally Hardesty and her counterculture generational friends), TCM was part of a cinematic break from a world whose values were slowly losing out to those of the "Me" generation. Sally as fairy tale heroine (the child) and Leatherface as giant (the adult), she survives her fissure with the past but not without significant psychological trauma. Much like her real-life counterparts who were dealing with the reality of senseless war, colonialism, and the trauma both inflicted on everyone who experienced them even tangentially. For Sally there was no option but to lose your mind at the madness of society up to that point and the rapid, violent shift taken at the end of the '60s. When you wake up and realize you live in a whole new, dramatically freer, world, the afterglow is interrupted by the reality that those who've lived in the old one are still with us and very eager to hold on to theirs. Like a character in an HP Lovecraft story who stares into the void, the unanswerable, the incoherent, one cannot reconcile both realities. Antonioni said the real tragedy of Red Desert wasn't the fact that the world was changing, but the fact that his heroine couldn't adapt. This struggle was prophetic of the horror cinema to come.

An earlier foray into regenerative apocalypse is 1972's Last House on the Left, an independent shocker about two girls' experiment with counter-culture, the cruel reality of it, and bourgeoisie display of violence. It seems too easy to say the girls are punished for their pursuit of "experience", in fact the only ambivalence shown in the film is from the cops and from the parents, whose eventual revenge for the girls' rape and murder is portrayed as morally ambiguous in its execution. The question of force is dangled in front of us as the parents avenge their daughter's death in an equally graphic fashion as that of the two girls' rape and murder. Of course, we the audience know they're justified but there's a perverse element of fascism implied in the tactics a former generation uses on those somewhere in-between in retaliation for the defilement of the new -- whose generation said parents don't fully understand. At the risk of injecting my own prejudices -- what's great about this movie and why I want to avoid saying too much is the levels of analysis it begs. Are Krug & Co. indicative of the new generation's lack of security in a world without morals or are the parents fascistic vigilantes? In typical '70s fashion, there are no winners -- like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the meeting of the old with the new ends with everyone covered in blood.

Another Wes Craven film, 1977's The Hills Have Eyes, grapples with the American middle class and its fear of the other. Xenophobia has always colored American horror, and this time it's made manifest through a family's fight for survival against a cannibalistic, incestuous clan in the American Southwest. Film mythology has long solidified the image of the inbred or deformed as deviant, continuing and informed by a fear of those who are different which is as "American as apple pie". The nuclear family vs. those society tries to ignore (and, in the remake, the nuclear family vs. nuclear fallout), the American public explores their boundaries and own prejudices through the horror film, while the films themselves both confirm and question them.

While it's common knowledge that the horror film is how society works out their anxieties through a controlled experience, not all films work through the same anxieties, even if they have the same genre. Take zombie films -- widely recognized as survivalist melodramas now, the zombie as we know it today was born of social allegory in Night of the Living Dead and crystallized nearly 10 years later in Dawn of the Dead. While George Romero would deny it, its very telling that a film about zombies, mindless creatures driven by impulse, takes place in a mall -- the new emblem of economic prosperity in encroaching Reagan America. Consumerism and capitalism itself are the real enemy in this film -- not the undead. Its not a fantasy about a select band of Exceptionals and there's no one person you root for -- you're invited to share the experience of society's collapse being not that different from society as it is. And while I have personal aversion to shopping, and the shopping mall, being portrayed as the Epitome of capitalist excess, which is always gendered, the overall message can't be ignored.

In both these films, there is no end to the violence. Zombies are taking over the world and those society tries to ignore will always exist. One is a never-ending apocalypse in a literal sense, the other a universal reminder that xenophobia has and continues to shape us as a culture -- and both victim and aggressor can often be one and the same.

My final film is the first to show a hint of redemption or closure: often reviled, often for good reason, Meir Zarchi's I Spit On Your Grave is the perfect hotbed of Grindhouse politic. Allegedly concieved as a feminist film (the original title is Day of the Woman and was changed by distributors to better market it in exploitation circuits), it gained instant notoriety for its graphic rape scene which makes up the bulk of the film. Initially shown in grindhouses and denied a screening for journalists, the first exposure American critics had of the film was amongst the typically male, typically seedy regulars who frequented these theaters known for cheap thrills and excesses of sex and violence. As can be expected, much of the audience cheered on the rape and many critics walked out before any of the revenge sequences, automatically condemning it as the cheapest exploitation. While it's feminism is debatable (and really a gratuitous rape scene by a male director, no matter how good his intentions, usually means he's failed), I Spit On Your Grave effectively embodies the truism "Men Don't Protect You Anymore" -- a fit comparison given the fact that Jenny Holzer's series was poetically displayed in 42nd street grindhouse marquees. Tellingly, Jennifer is not raped by her hypothetical college educated boyfriend, but uneducated backwoods "hicks". While it's usually the case that most rapists are likely to be someone the victim already knows, the "stranger rapist" is both the common mythological figure and the template used most often in paracinema to explore female fear of sexual assault. And while here our heroine Jennifer gets her vengeance over the old-guard rapists, we know the trauma of sexual assault lives on and takes more than quick justice to process through. If I Spit On Your Grave can be considered horror, a label which its most commonly marketed under -- whose horror is it? The male viewer who recognizes misogynistic impulses within himself and is frightened by the rapists' comeuppance, or the female or female-identified viewer who recognizes the all too familiar, all too possible situation? Like the rest of these films, this movie makes us question two-fold what messages we're supposed to be delivered. If the goal of political filmmaking is to spur the viewer into critical action, by showing divergent points of view of both our victims and aggressors, '70s independent horror does just that. Our regenerative apocalypse is not one where answers are easy or our hero always wins, or we even know who the hero and villain is, and why. The regenerative apocalypse is one we're living in as a post-modern society.

And it's not just independents or cult favorites that delivered on this concept of an apocalypse that never ends. The Exorcist has no real happy ending -- Pazuzu leaves Regan's body but where does he go to next? In Alien, the creature is ejected but there's more where he came from. In Halloween, Laurie survives but Michael Myers vanishes -- and besides, isn't he a stand-in for societally enabled white male sociopathy like the majority of slasher killers anyway? In each film there is no end to the terror, but a promise of renewed horror -- just think of all the horror sequels produced. If these films can be considered exemplary, the entire crux of the post-modern horror film lies in a "regenerative apocalypse". Even when the terror is "over", it leaves its scars, and then is it really even over?

favorite horror remakes from the past 15 years

At the beginning of the 1990s, American horror had reached an all time low. With everything either being direct-to-video, unsuccessful attempts at a predictable slasher formula the American public had lost interest in, and endless sequels that got increasingly worse, the world was caught off guard when Scream injected horror with much needed perspective, postmodernism, and provided an answer to the debate of the early 90s over whether these films were actually as misogynistic as prominent (often male) commentators demonized them to be. The question had even become in fact: are these films feminist? Scream's resounding answer: they can be. And while Scream launched a whole new series of horror movies, the genre in general was getting a new popular reassessment. As audiences looked for something more, producers saw an opportunity to incorporate the latest special effects and film-making techniques with tried and true templates -- and the 2000s Horror Remake was born. The bane of the horror community for the last decade (often including myself), as the tide has died down I find myself looking back at fondness at some of the attempts to inject new life into otherwise forgotten (by the general public, at least) gems. After all, these are the films made by a generation who grew up with Riot Grrrl, who saw the renewed interest in feminism in the '90s after a decade of regression and moral panic, who spent their formative years firmly in Generation X; it shouldn't be surprising that the themes and focus of these remakes reflect that. Horror has always been a woman's domain, if only because men have historically been too weak to show weakness, but it hasn't necessarily always championed her in the same way that found representation post-Scream. These movies are rehashes of already established (mostly 1970s) masterpieces, but one welcome update in all of them is their representation of women. All horror has profiteered off the female perspective, but not all horror has necessarily valued it and female livelihood as it has in the remakes of this century. While it's easy to dismiss remakes as unnecessary or redundant (which is often true, especially considering how few new horror films are given the same funding), it's worth the effort to make peace with the present and find as much positives as you can while you work toward a better future. After all, few things are without value. Warning, spoilers ahead:

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Marcus Nispel, 2003)

Listen, I love the original. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, not to mention my favorite horror movie. So this is sacrilege -- but just as the original evokes hot summer days and long summer night(mare)s, the remake delivers on this and absolutely does not hold back, without becoming excessive or bordering on torture porn. Note: this doesn't make it better, but it does make it the best of the 2000s horror remakes I have seen. And just as Marilyn Burns poured herself into the lead role, coming out as the star of the film, the first legit Final Girl, the one who set the standard for the decade to come, Jessica Biel absolutely slaughters the role of Erin and gives us the ultimate Final Girl of the 21st century -- one that is yet to be surpassed in any big budget horror film. She screams, kicks, jumps, bleeds, has snot running down her nose, her face shoved in dirt, and runs her ass off -- but, unlike Sally Hardesty, Erin fights back. While I love Sally, she is the perfect Final Girl precisely because she is so reactive... Final Girls increasingly became more proactive as the genre matured and Erin, 30 years after the original came out, personifies this. It's not all running and screaming, it's getting your due. So it's not better than the original... few things are or ever will be, but Erin will have you rooting your ass off for her and the last 40 minute chase scene is absolutely everything I love about and look for in the horror genre. Terrifying, tense, and cathartic. Watch with your girl friends at 3am in August.

When a Stranger Calls (Simon West, 2006)

If I'm being honest, the main thrust of this list is nostalgia. As in -- I watched most of these movies either in middle school or my first years of high school. So let's talk PG-13 horror. It's terrible but in 2006 it was nowhere as prevalent as it is now post-Asian horror remakes and Paranormal Activity. So how does this translate to a slasher formula? Honestly... surprisingly well. The original film's famous opening is here stretched out into a feature length film and controversial as it may be to say, it works, especially if you're 13 and its one of the few movies you can see in the theater with your friends unsupervised. I think when it came out I was first getting into horror films, and I think its longevity in my mind and esteem is largely to do with this fact. It's the perfect intro to slasher film: bloodless, suspenseful, and entirely carried by one Final Girl. I don't know if I would like it at all if I saw it a few years later -- the only other PG-13 slasher I can think of is Prom Night (2008) which I hated, though I'm sure if Halloween were released today it would be PG-13 -- it holds a place in my heart as a Baby's First.

Black Christmas (Glen Morgan, 2006)

Like TCM, Black Christmas is one of my favorite horror movies ever. It's chilling and allegorical and truly Feminist Horror. The remake.... not so much! What it is is campy, gaudy, and a lot of fun. Plus Mary Elizabeth Winstead!! Who I was obsessed with in 2006! And is legitimately the closest to a scream queen we've had in the past 10 years. I haven't seen this one in a while but from what I remember it's a lot like The Women but with serial killers. An almost completely female cast, with lots of personality, lots of attitude, and lots of blood. Plus some really inventive deaths!

The Hitcher (Dave Meyers, 2007)

Perhaps the biggest influence of Scream and direct effect on the following generation of horror films is the WB protagonist. Neve Campbell was from Party of Five, the cast of I Know What You Did Last Summer were all known teen stars either from film or TV, and the 2000s followed this formula with 7th Heaven's Jessica Biel in Texas Chainsaw, the entire cast of House of Wax, and One Tree Hill's Sophia Bush in The Hitcher (among others). And then there's the mid-2000s horror heroine aesthetic: while the late 70s and 80s had high waisted jeans and long sleeved topped Final Girls, this past decade favored tank tops (usually white) and denim skirts (or jeans) which is so, so iconic and so, so prevalent in all of these movies. And Sophia Bush with her husky voice, her conventional beauty, all adding up to something almost "queer", is the ideal Final Girl. My biggest gripe with the original is how Jennifer Jason Leigh is used and disposed of for plot tension -- its like when rape is used as a plot device to further men's stories. Horror films are over-saturated with women as victims as is, which is why I have a hard time engaging with horror films that graphically engage in violence against women yet have male protagonists leaving no hope of a redemptive or cathartic finale -- but this remake reverses that. Instead of the girlfriend getting torn in two by a truck, the boyfriend you assume to be the protagonist does and Sophia Bush kicks ass both surviving the ensuing terror and getting her revenge. The image of her walking down a lonely road with a car wreck fire blazing and in her requisite tank top, denim skirt, and cowboy boots carrying a shotgun is one of the defining moments of the mid-late 2000s, right alongside the first 3 seasons of The Hills.

Sorority Row (Stewart Hendler, 2009)

I have a thing for husky voiced women. I don't know if it's a gay thing or a trans thing but one of the top reasons I love Final Girls is they almost always have either a husky voice, a gender neutral name, or a seeming lack of interest in heterosexual (or any) coupling. Usually all 3! In this one it's Briana Evigan's raspy voiced sorority (Final) girl who steals my heart. If Black Christmas is The Women with serial killers, Sorority Row is all that but with surprising female solidarity. Sisterhood: really that powerful! Throw in some Evil Boyfriends and this is a perfect update of the classic slasher formula: with all the flack girls get for competition among themselves, this movie sets it up then subverts it while having you genuinely carrying about (almost) all of its frequently catty sorority sisters. One of the biggest sub-themes of slashers is female solidarity and male unreliability but hardly ever do slashers allow for more than one Final Girl, and each as equally badass as one another -- this one does, and for that I genuinely love it.

Last House on the Left (Dennis Illiadis, 2009) [TW: rape]

The original is unrepentantly cruel, misogynistic, and pretends to pose a philosophical question that has been posed before (and better) in order to excuse its excesses. Not that it's not effective in some regards, it is considered a classic after all, but in this case? I might actually prefer the remake. For one, the girls' rape and murder is not used as a plot device to contrast the level of violence in the eventual vengeance -- in this one there's little question as to whether the violence exerted on the rapists and murderers is equal to that enacted on the girls. Also, in this one the daughter actually lives and makes it back to her home, letting her parents know unquestionably what has happened to her -- a fact left more ambivalent in the original and leaving the vigilante justice coming off as neo-fascist in execution. In this remake, the sympathy and perspective lies more with the victims of the rape and murder than a general objectiveness toward what so many women can not possibly be objective to. "Moralist" is sometimes used as a dirty word -- but we have to look at who benefits from saying we should live without them and in what circumstances -- because often it is those with the most privilege who wish to always see things as ambiguous and "objective". For me, its cathartic to see a rape and murder not treated exploitationally in a horror film but as justified of retribution after a history of cinema that chooses to see such things in shades of grey and avoids condemnation in turn.

The Thing (Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr., 2011)

Okay, so this one's not a remake per se but a prequel is a reimagining is a remake and they have the same exact title so I'm gonna go with it. This movie portrays what has happened before the events of The Thing (1982, itself a remake of 1951's The Thing from Another World) at the Norwegian camp, leaving off where the 1982 film picks up directly after. And again we have Mary Elizabeth Winstead, queen of 2000s horror, greatly undersung, as a female scientist in a largely boys club in the Antarctic. I love the original The Thing but it is a sausage fest of the highest order... and it works and is entertaining because where you have a bunch of straight men there's little room for manifestations of misogyny or even homophobia. But, what I love about this remake/reimagining/prequel is that they found a way to give us a science fiction heroine and Final Girl who is not cliched or needs protecting or guidance from the men around her, is justified in her hesitations much like Ripley in Alien, and who manages to save the day in the end. Toward the end of the 2000s there began another backlash against Final Girls and strong women in horror, with countless men on forums the world wide web over arguing that it was predictable and even misandrist (lol) at this point, but horror is one of the few areas of film where women are allowed to be strong, allowed to show the full range of emotions without shame, and allowed to win in the end. If men have drama, action movies, etc. and the one area of film where women are still murdered and exploited left and right wants to have one positive portrayal once in a while, then PLEASE let us have this.

Evil Dead (Fede Alvarez, 2013) [TW: rape]

Evil Dead (1981) is the near-perfect Halloween film -- Ash is my boyfriend and my VHS copy of 1 and 2 are my prized possessions. But as far as women go... the series is pretty bleak. And usually it works, because its black comedy! or campy! and purposefully over the top! but then you have... the tree rape scene. Now, people forget that the first Evil Dead is genuinely scary and horrifying... there's comedic parts to it of course but it doesn't really come to the fore until the second. So when we have the rape of a female character -- literal, physical and psychological -- in a series with otherwise thin characterization or screen-time for women, it leaves a bad taste. While the remake improves upon this slightly by having the rape less literal (its oral rather than vaginal and depicted as by a doppelganger of the woman in question), it is still a rape nonetheless. Where this film begins to make up for it, and set it apart from the original, is in the fact that the victim in question is the drug-addicted sister of the presumable hero of the story -- and while he is the hero of the story up until a point, its the revived sister who lives until the end and gets the final say. This is important because she is allowed to be flawed; she's not the perfect virginal Final Girl, she's kind of a burden, but she is also a victim of circumstance -- and to have this victim (of sexual assault, of murder, of addiction) re-enter the picture after the assumed hero dies and kick ass in the end is important for genre film in this decade. Even though she gets vengeance in a phallic display of aggression over her doppelganger (complete with the line "feast on this motherfucker" as she shoves a chainsaw down the demon's throat), there's something to be said for using the aggressors language and methods to best them: think of the ending of I Spit On Your Grave where Jennifer says "suck it, bitch" -- the same words used against her during her assault -- and disembowels her final rapist with the boat's motor as she speeds away. The Evil Dead remake is not a great one, but in our current climate and considering the history of the series, it's a refreshing one.

On Crazy Fat Ethel, Female Neurosis, and why #Representation kind of matters

Criminally Insane is the thing of legends. IMDb describes it as "An obese woman recently released from an insane asylum kills anyone who attempts to get her to stop eating." and the VHS blurb boasts "250 pounds of maniacal fury" (sidenote -- I'm at least 250 pounds and homegirl is nowhere near that). Given my recent fatscination due to my weight gain in the past year and a half, and the persistence of my best friend Kapi'olani, we finally sat down to watch the thing of VHS lore and it did NOT disappoint in any way. To be honest, to be real, to be frank I was blown away. Finally, big beautiful womyn have reached mythic, mad, glorious proportions.

Let's back up -- paracinema is awash in images such as this. From Repulsion to Possession to Images to any Jose Larraz film to countless slasher finales, the image of the woman wielding the phallic symbol before/during/after murdering someone (usually a man) dominates the imagination of male filmmakers the world over. I won't get into the object fixation because it's literally been written about by everyone and also its boring and trans-ness is pushed to the wayside in favor of reductive readings but the gist of it is -- it's an empowering symbol. And while I WILL write more on this at a future date, it's neither exactly a male fantasy of female empowerment or a female one -- what's ignored in these discussions is the possibility that our identified victim/aggressor can be both and that is what is empowering. But back to the movie -- the reason this is so important is because instead of the usual willow-y/haunting beautiful figures we've come to associate with fashionable madness through film and television, our protagonist (if there is one--nobody holds our sympathy or identification more than crazy fat Ethel) is "250" pounds, pissed off, and she looks it. And we root for her, despite her casual 1970s racism, despite her murders, despite the obvious camp inherent in what is essentially a John Waters film played straight and (unfortunately) less queer, Crazy Fat Ethel is our girl. And as hollow as saying representation matters is, there is psychological value in the representation of ugly madness for me. Nobody seems to talk about it but I know viewing myself outside of myself as some archetype of beautiful female madness has enabled me more than one person has. It is so easy to identify with a trope and have that trope propel you further into your own latent mental illness, imo. Not that I haven't always had mental problems, but striving to fulfill this image subconsciously of the beautiful, doomed, mad girl -- a way of aestheticizing what is otherwise unbearable -- has hurt me as much as the madness has and vice versa. Think of girls performing sexuality before having one -- I have probably always been mad, but I have known how to perform it from such an early age figuring out what is legitimate and what is symptomatic becomes an arduous and seemingly fruitless task. We need Ethel because she is crazy and fat and not glamorous and we still love her. We love her because she is larger than life (no pun intended), because she is a victim of a flawed psychiatric system, because in the end we know she alone knows what is best for her because we have all been there. And maybe I'm getting too deep in my feels over her -- I should step back and mention the film is hilarious, shocking, amazing, genuine, melodramatic in the absolute highest positive, and cathartic. You need to approach these films from a pure place, not a naive place per se but one free of knee-jerk judgement and critical of constructs of quality that have been hammered into us from day one because in the end they're always changing -- what could be more limiting than adhering to the social code acceptable now instead of adhering to your own?

I guess what I look for in films, besides comedy whose job is to satirize social roles (when done successfully), is the genuineness Criminally Insane delivers on. Made on a micro-budget with one set, there's something transcendent in the unprofessional line delivery and the bargain bin costumes and dialogue. It's the reason I love melodrama, and Italian horror, and 80s action flicks. These movies are often self aware but they never play off of that -- something that is so insidiously cheap to me. While I love Rocky Horror and John Waters, I love their serious progenitors the most. Through humor these comedic films lambaste the social rules of middle class America, but the films that play this straight subvert those social roles on a wider scale, often effortlessly.

Crazy Fat Ethel doesn't kill because people keep getting in the way of her food, Crazy Fat Ethel kills because a whole social structure is in place that pathologizes her eating habits and appearance. Crazy Fat Ethel is a reactionary, but a justified one. A big girl can only be pushed into a corner for so long...

Sun-Drenched Cinema

(Mostly) horror/exploitation films (mostly) from the 1970s evocative of: walking barefoot on the hot asphalt at 7pm in the American Southwest, hitting the Drive-In late in August before starting senior year, listening to T. Rex while cruising in a 1970 dodge challenger with your feet on the dashboard.

Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)
Before he went family-friendly with blockbusters like E.T., Spielberg was weirdly concerned with masculinity, or maybe not so weird considering the flux American society was in at the beginning of the 70s. Instead of having the male character assert his masculinity by tapping into some primordial aggression like so, so many movies regurgitate as the answer for Men in the Age Of Feminism, our protagonist kind of just barely survives; and despite the sympathy the audience automatically holds for an innocent in peril, the film never portrays him as an especially sympathetic figure. Whether this is due to the director thinking he is pathetic for not being enough of a man, or pathetic for thinking that he's not enough of a man because Women Are People, is left ambiguous. What is always omnipresent is the sun, the car's engine, and Southern California's arid inland.

And Soon the Darkness (Robert Fuest, 1970)
England's primary horror output at the end of the 60s was gothic chillers and Hammer glamour, and euro-horror in general is not known for its road movies the way America is, but one of the greatest contributions to scorched cinema is this early 70s thriller about two girl friends on a holiday cycling through rural France when one of them goes missing and the language barrier makes it all the worse. Featuring hot pants, girl detectives, and feeling foreign and alone whether you're surrounded by the open, empty land or in a room full of people who can't understand a word you say - or can they?

Night of the Comet (Thom Eberhardt, 1984)
Though this list is in no way chronological, we have finally hit the 80s -- from the grindhouse to the living room, the Drive-In is still Queen, as evident in this sci-fi/horror/chick flick (and I say this in a positive sense even though the term makes my skin crawl) about an 18yo valley girl who works at a movie theater and her cheerleader sister who both miraculously survive the almost total extinction of the human race -- and have to deal with those who haven't died yet aren't exactly... "alive". Featuring a pop feminist department store showdown and a Mexican-American male lead - this (unintentional?) updating of W.E.B. Du Bois' "The Comet" is a perfect paean to the Drive-In aesthetic with a heart of gold. Recommended for: valley girls with uzis.

Hannie Caulder (Burt Kennedy, 1971)
And we're back to the early '70s in this Raquel Welch starring rape-revenge Western. Taken by force, husband killed, house burned down, and left for dead, Hannie recruits a bounty hunter to mold her into a skilled gunfighter in order to deliver personal retribution. Raquel Welch was one of the few (though white-passing) Latinas to find success in Hollywood in the late '60s, albeit largely as a sex symbol. Though this isn't exactly high caliber acting, it is a more dynamic role even if she is highly sexualized early in her plight for vengeance. Shot in Spain, produced in Britain, but highly indebted to Spaghetti Westerns, this female fronted gem is lighter on the misogyny and violence than you would expect (at least for a film that's crux and narrative propulsion is rape -- it's no spoiler to say she wins in the end) and entertaining as hell.

Eaten Alive (Tobe Hooper, 1977)

1. Deep in the swamps of Louisiana, disfigured psychotic Judd (Neville Brand) manages a sleazy, decaying motel. Upon learning that one of his guests is a prostitute, he promptly impales her with a pitchfork and tosses her to the crocodile that stalks the nearby waters. This is just the first in a series of slayings, and, as the croc's belly begins to bulge with victims, people grow suspicious. Outsiders begin to poke around the motel, but Judd simply sees them as more treats for his pet.

I haven't actually seen this movie since I was 13, and hardly even then, but what I can remember from its rare Turner Classic Movies screening was the heady atmosphere, lack of moral expectation, and utter seediness. I can't say I'm a fan, but I can say it's left an impression for life -- like a nightmare you only half remember.

Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975)
The movie that defined the Cronenberg aesthetic and ideological fixation, this was also released as They Came From Within and was notorious in grindhouse circuits under that name. Melding sex, violence, and social critique, this is the closest J.G. Ballard got to the silver screen in his prime. Ask anyone over 40 and they will remember remnants of this film, often as more horribly graphic than the film actually is. High rise apartments, the bourgeoisie, and venereal disease -- best viewed on VHS or on-demand at 3am in your friend's house after they've gone to sleep. Summer inside with the a/c on blast.

Coffy/Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1973/1974)
It's common knowledge at this point that Pam Grier is The Best but I need to repeat as often as possible in case anyone misses it--Pam Grier is THE BEST. And while these movies don't drip heat like the rest on this list, they are absolutely essential summer double bill viewing. Black women had never, ever been portrayed this powerful, in control, and JUSTIFIED before and really, rarely have ever since. And though it is ABSOLUTELY exploitation, its written and directed by a white man, it is pure capitalization--99% of film output is exactly that. What is exploitation? Is it only when the content is niche? When you strip it all down, all media is sensationalism and I'd argue you really have to take a closer look at what is disregarded as exploitation, and when, to get the full picture. Minus the early '70s typical homophobia -- like I said, these movies were largely written and directed by white men and the most threatening thing possible would be to portray minorities as showing any sort of solidarity with other minorities -- these movies are a dream to behold, and a reminder of what representation could have been had the "Strong Black Woman" not become a caricature to capitalize on and instead continued to be fleshed out so we eventually saw more strongly characterized black women in the decade that followed.

They Call Her One-Eye aka Thriller: A Cruel Picture (Bo Arne Vibenius, 1973)
In case it's not obvious, vengeful women are a favorite of grindhouse filmmakers and viewers alike. Because, if anyone has a RIGHT to be vengeful it is women. Unfortunately, the easiest way filmmakers of this era found to make our heroine's plight sympathetic was to make the initial defilement something all too many women already experience. Because the producers of these films were primarily in it for the money, and the filmmakers were often looking for a way to express themselves with minimal restrictions, many directors were given free reign content wise as long as there was lots of sex and violence. Lesser directors filled this quota w sexualized violence, others tapped into the reality of it to deliver tales of female retribution to our screens. There's two cuts of this film. One with a porn stand in for Christina Lindberg's prostition/rape scenes that are very graphic and completely unnecessary, and one that does the minimum in portraying the actual sexual violence on screen and the maximum in identifying the viewer with our mute protagonist and her vendetta. It's called the "Vengeance Edition" and it is beautiful. It would be too easy to dismiss all exploitation as trash when so many hold the keys to catharsis -- if you have the privilege to be able to endure the bad, I always encourage seeking out the good. This movie isn't June or even July but a late August, with fall right around the corner and the past 8 months far behind you.

Predator/Aliens/Terminator (John McTiernan/James Cameron, 1987/1986/1984)
It's the middle of the summer, 96 degrees, and the Drive-In is showing $5 double features with homoerotic machismo, big guns, badass women, Nike high-tops, simultaneously stereotyped and humanized minority characters, and tons of explosions -- show up in jean shorts, hit the concession stand, and enjoy the ride.

The Ultimate: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Cars with no a/c, windows rolled down & on the highway passing nothing but drought blighted farmland, a perpetual coat of sweat, running barefoot, smashing through glass, bell bottoms, tank tops at midnight, exploitation as art, the end of an era.

And the modern: Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007) 
Quentin is the worst. His movies cherry-pick grindhouse cinema and are eaten up by film bros who see it as trash elevated to art through craftsmanship. People who would heckle through any 1970s movie with less than 7 stars on IMDb love him and it’s easy to see why -- essentially he’s just tapping into the populism inherent in exploitation films. There’s a reason these movies were so popular, and QT is updating that with slightly more self-awareness to fit our postmodern times but still through the lens of a straight, white man -- its an annoying predicament. That being said, Death Proof is the ultimate in sun-drenched cinema: from the references to car culture and films, insanely impressive stunts, and practical effects to the largely female (and not completely white!) cast and protagonists, Death Proof takes everything that is great from exploitation cinema of the 1970s and manages to make something both loving (we can say all we want about Tarantino, but he does LOVE these movies) and genuine while staying true to the grindhouse spirit and aesthetic.