Women Horror Directors

WHD: Women Horror Directors

I am at work on a book about women horror directors and their movies - this page gives a relatively brief overview of how this came about, while other pages to come will go into more detail about the history of the project and what it entails.

Genesis

Back in 2002 I had bought some books on gender and the horror genre. Partly as a result of that, I became curious about women horror movie directors. I had also greatly enjoyed director Antonia Bird's Ravenous

, and played horror trivia games with the staff of Walk of Fame Video in Cohoes, New York. I enjoy discovering lesser-known movies and scouring through the for sale sections of independent video stores turning up such overlooked films as Virginia L. Stone's Run... If You Can!

at Video Plus in Coxsackie, New York.

A list of women horror directors begins

I compiled a short list of some female horror directors I knew of and some I found by doing internet searches and posted to the Usenet group alt.horror on Oct 16 2003 a new thread, female horror directors? It had just eleven women on it, and seventeen movies. Posters there contributed some, and I kept adding more as I found them. I also posted to the Internet Movie Database Horror Message Board, where boarders were also able to suggest some additional women or movies. Both alt.horror and the IMDb Horror board deserve a lot of thanks for their suggestions and interest in the subject!

Ax Wound: Gender and the Horror Genre

In continuing to search the internet for additional women or movies to add to the list, I came across a page for the zine Ax Wound, devoted to gender and the horror genre. Perfect! I e-mailed the editor, Hannah, letting her know about the list I was compiling, wondering if she would be interested in seeing it, and if she knew of any others. She was indeed interested, and published a portion of it in issue #2, as was announced March 23, 2005. The published portion of the list (seventy-five directors) included Stephanie Aldridge's Slice 'N Dice (2003) through Helma Sanders-Brahms' Die Berühte (1981)

, with part II of the list to be published in Ax Wound III. For Ax Wound's website see http://www.freewebs.com/axwound/ (which is in the process of moving to http://www.axwoundzine.com/).

Pretty-Scary: For Women in Horror By Women in Horror

Another site I found in my further searches was Pretty-Scary.net, a site "for women in horror, by women in horror." Again, how perfect! On June 7, 2005 I registered as a user for the message boards for the website Pretty-Scary. My first post on that day was to the forum “Shameless Self Promotion” announcing the publication of the list in Ax Wound. One of the site's three owners, Heidi Martinuzzi, expressed a particular interest in the whole list, at that time composed of 179 directors and about 240 titles. We exchanged PMs through the website, then e-mails. In an e-mail to her July 13th, 2005, I proposed a magazine article making use of the list and July 21, 2005 I proposed a book.

A book on women horror directors begins

As I stated in my July 21st e-mail, "There are at least a couple ways a book could be born from the list, either a collection of interviews with directors, or an encyclopedia-type book with biographies and synopses of the movies. Or some combination thereof." Heidi agreed it was a good idea. The idea of writing a book was intimidating to me, having never written one before, and so writing it with a partner was an appealing idea. Thus we proceeded for about a year. However, it became clear that a collaborative effort would unfortunately not succeed as we planned. At present, we are each proceeding with our own books on the topic.

A book on women horror directors?: What and Why

A detailed history of the project

List of women horror TV directors

Thanks