Joe's Reviews > The Science of Women in Horror: The Special Effects, Stunts, and True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fright Films

The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with The Science of Women In Horror: The Special Effects, Stunts and True Stories Behind Your Favorite Fright Films by Meg Hafdahl. & Kelly Florence. I snapped this up on Kindle by virtue of the magnificent title and the fact that I am the demographic for this book. I never skip an opportunity to learn something about women in the horror genre, but I abandoned this book at the 15% mark.

The writing is abnormally poor, hurling facts at the reader that are readily available on Wikipedia (like the Webster's definition of post-traumatic stress syndrome). The authors explore no film at any depth, skirting through plot and sprinkling in some quotes from the filmmaker, which anyone could read online. Those hoping for a book that documents the making of films like Carrie (not included), The Howling (not included), The Craft (not included), Jennifer's Body (not included) or Midsommar (not included) will be disappointed.

Please do not buy this book sight unseen like I did. Read the first chapters before parting with your mad money. This subject matter deserves far more thought and effort than the writers gave it. Hafdahl & Florence have "written" two other books, one on Stephen King and one on monsters, all with "The Science of" in the title. This book certainly has the feeling of something that was cranked out to bring in a revenue stream. As a genre fan I was highly disappointed.

Moving on, I'll share a few thoughts on the film that's not only my favorite Women In Horror but my favorite film of all time: Alien (1979). I've seen Alien in theaters every five years or so since the age of 14. I've studied the 177-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, The Beast Within, which you can watch on YouTube. YouTube also features Millennials or Gen Z recording their reaction to movies they're watching for the first time and Alien is a top selection for most of them. Men and women alike remain on edge for the entire film. And this is a so-called old movie from the '70s. It looks like it could've been made a few years ago.



Alien was so far ahead of its time that it's still out in front of how movies are written today. This can be best expressed by Helen Mirren, who in her MasterClass isn't discussing horror films or any film in particular but how actors can transcend traditional casting choices when she brings up Alien. She gives writing credit to the film's director Ridley Scott instead of the original screenwriters Dan O'Bannon & Ronald Shusett, but her observations are on point:

The first time I understood what was possible was I was privileged enough to read the script of Alien. I was up for a role in it, which I didn’t get, sadly. But I was privileged to read the original script, Ridley Scott’s script of Alien. And it was brilliant, because the way it was written, all the characters had names like Ripley, or, I don’t know, Tonn, they had these weird names that could be male or female. There was not a single direction in the script that said whether this was a man or a woman. It didn’t say, "Ripley is a tall, athletic woman with a fierce determination in her eyes," that sort of stage direction which you often get. So annoying.

There were no stage directions at all for any of the characters, so any of the characters could have been played by a man or a woman. And that was such a liberating idea for me. I had never thought of that before. Thought that was possible. And there it was, laid out for me in this wonderful script of Alien. And from that moment on, it really transformed my thinking about who could play what and why. And Alien was quite a long time ago and it’s taken us all--and especially the world of producers and writers and directors--to catch up, and indeed the audience, to catch up.



Previous reviews in the Year of Women:

-- Come Closer, Sara Gran
-- Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
-- Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
-- Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
-- My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
-- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
-- The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George
-- Miss Pinkerton, Mary Roberts Rinehart
-- Beast in View, Margaret Millar
-- Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent
-- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
-- Desperate Characters, Paula Fox

-- You, Caroline Kepnes
-- Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith
-- Don't Look Now and Other Stories, Daphne du Maurier
-- You May See a Stranger: Stories, Paula Whyman
-- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw
-- White Teeth, Zadie Smith
-- Eva Luna, Isabel Allende
-- Slouching Toward Bethlehem: Essays, Joan Didion
-- Eve's Hollywood, Eve Babitz
-- You're on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir, Parker Posey
-- The Beauty of Living Twice, Sharon Stone
-- Fade Into You, Nikki Darling

-- The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers, Emily Levesque
-- The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir, Sara Seager