People ask me all the time, “Wow, how in the world did you ever come up with your screen name?”

All right, fine ... no one ever asks me about it. But now that I’ve brought it up, aren’t you maybe just a little bit curious? Those of you with horror movie cred may have figured it out, but just in case you’re in the dark: The final girl, as usually seen in slasher films, is simply the last one alive. The phrase was coined by Carol Clover in her essential book on gender in horror movies, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, and she argues that having the hero of the film be, in fact, a heroine, the largely male target audience is “allowed” to take on the victim role without shame. To reinforce her point, Clover discusses movies where the final girl has an androgynous name, such as Hell Night, wherein Linda Blair portrays Marti, a college student trapped in a spooky mansion inhabited by a “gorked-out” family thought long dead.

It’s a tenuous argument at best; for every Marti found in slasherdom, there’s a Laurie or a Nancy. I suppose it all comes down to ... how much analysis do you want to put into these horror movies? Is the fact that the final girl is usually (but not always) a virginal “good” girl a statement about the perils of sex? Or does sex in horror mean boobs in horror, which in turn means money? Or does sex in horror simply put characters in vulnerable situations where the killer can strike?

Whether or not you agree that the strength of the final girl equates to a masculinization of the final girl, there’s no denying that she’s tough and resourceful. While everyone around her, friends and strangers alike, meets the business end of some cuckoo nutso killer’s knife, the final girl survives to take him (or, in rare instances, her) on. There’s no waiting around to be rescued by some guy — the final girl needs to take care of herself. Here are some of my favorite final girls to have graced the big screen.

1. Sally Hardesty: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

A simple trip to a swimmin’ hole turns into a nightmare beyond belief when Sally (Marilyn Burns) and her friends encounter Leatherface and his chainsaw. Sally survives a really gnarly family dinner and manages to escape Leatherface’s whirring blade. Sure, she ends up completely insane at the end of her ordeal, but who can blame her?

Burns’s mantle was picked up by Jessica Biel (as Erin) in the Chainsaw remake.

And Jordana Brewster had her shot at dueling against Leatherface in TCM: The Beginning. … continue reading

Boo! Did I scare you? No, well, fine. But I do know a scary secret. Lean close, I'll tell you. Closer. A bit closer. Boo! OK, come on, that time I had to scare you, just a little. Actually, this news is probably only truly terrifying to the actresses whose dirty little secrets I’m about to spill. You see, before they were screen queens, these ladies were all scream queens. Sure, they’re all big Oscar winners, A-listers and TV stars now. But at the start of their careers, they were just glorified bait. Here's a look at 10 actresses' horrific early careers.

Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, 1978): Like mother, like daughter. Jamie Lee followed in her mom Janet Leigh’s bloody footprints by squaring off with a Psycho killer. But at least Jamie got to live to fight another day, albeit two decades later in Halloween H20. … continue reading

So I was cruising the photos of the beautiful and bizarre at Cannes again (FYI, Sharon Stone: immortal glamour goddess from the front, still above average yet mortal 49-year-old from the back), when I stumbled across this vision of perfection: Catherine Deneuve and her daughter Chiara Mastroianni.

Yowza. With a little research (thank you, Google), I learned that Chiara is the daughter of Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni and an actress in her own right. OK, fine, her credits include roles in movies like Hillbilly Chainsaw Massacre and characters described as “S&M Girl #1,” but we can’t all be Catherine Deneuve. Still, she was at Cannes with her mother promoting their parts in the animated feature Persepolis, so good for her. … continue reading