Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox of Scream

And we're back, film kids. Here for another exciting addition to the Horror Woman of the Day list. Today, the honor is given to the ladies of Scream (Craven, 1996).

I was planning on giving the honor to Neve Campbell alone, but the character of Gale Weathers is almost on par with Sidney Prescott. And yes, you're probably thinking this list is incredibly driven towards the films of Wes Craven, but it cannot be denied that his films have featured some incredible female protagonists. In the beginning, Sidney was the sole heroine of the film, while Gale was considered the anti-hero or "the bitch." Her role morphed into an incredibly likable and borderline admirable character, and by the time Scream 4 (Craven, 2011) is released, we find ourselves rooting for both of them, nearly to the same degree, anyway.

This franchise is well-known for establishing female characters that are very knowledgable about horror films, helping them fight back against the killers that actively pursue them. The fact that Scream was so self-aware was incredibly innovative in 1996. Never before had the victims of the slasher genre known what was coming. This combination of satire and horror was wonderfully effective, and helped breath new life into the dying horror genre. While Scream 2 (Craven, 1997) was rather entertaining, Scream 3 was a cheesy rehash of what had once proven so effective, but had been done to death in parodies and other horror films of the time. One would have considered the franchise dead, and for 10 years if was. 2011 marked the rebirth of Ghost Face, and the return of writer Kevin Williamson to the series.

In this film, Neve Campbell proved that she is still just as much the epic "Final Girl" that she was in 1996, and more so, while Courtney Cox shows that Gale Weathers is still a force to be reckoned with. So, in honor of the DVD release of Scream 4 today, I present Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox of the Scream franchise.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more glorious women of horror.

Olivia Hussey (Jess) from Black Christmas (1974)

The "Horror Woman of the Day" is Jess from Black Christmas (Clark, 1974)

Four years before the release of the iconic Halloween (Carpenter, 1978), Bob Clark, also known as the director of A Christmas Story (Clark, 1983) ironically, released Black Christmas. This particular slasher film is innovative and controversial and gave inspiration to countless filmmakers in the near future. One thing that sets this film apart from other horror films of the time is it's strong heroine.

Jess, a member of a nameless sorority, has just found out that she is pregnant. In a time when the second wave of the Feminist Movement was in full gear, the topic of abortion was one of greatly heated debate. This film faces the issue head on, and it is the topic of several conversations and conflicts that arise. Hussey plays Jess as a strong-willed and intelligent young woman, a breath of fresh air in the horror films of the 60's and early 70's. Hussey, known by most as Juliet from Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli, 1968), standard viewing in every 9th grade English class, proves to be an excellent "Final Girl" and earns a place alongside Jamie Lee Curtis, Heather Langenkamp, and Adrienne King in the annals of slasher film history.

Just for the record, I had a hard time determining today's choice. Margot Kidder also provides a very entertaining performance as Barb, the sorority girl who parties like it's nobody's business. In the end, Hussey won, but Kidder came in a very close second. So, here's to all of the excellent actresses of Black Christmas. This film makes for one entertaining ride, and a great addition to the horror genre.

Stay tuned tomorrow for another exciting addition to "Horror Woman of the Day!"

Cynthia Carr- The Last House on the Left, 1972

Cynthia Carr (Estelle Collingwood) - The Last House on the Left (Craven, 1972)

The Horror Woman of the Day for October 2nd is Estelle Collingwood from The Last House on the Left. While most mothers of the horror genre, at the time anyway, were left on the back burner while the plot focused on the men or children in their lives. Not the case with this disturbing film. When Estelle's daughter is raped and murdered, she along with husband Dr. Collingwood release all kinds of vengeance on the culprits, who are unknowingly staying at the house of the girl they attacked.

This film, also written and directed by Wes Craven, was, and still is, incredibly controversial. Few, if any, horror films had depicted such an offensively violent act before. The part that is of interest, for me, lies in the second half of the film, once the parents realize that they are housing the killers of their daughter. Craven has spoken about how this film deals with his thoughts on the Vietnam War, and that is blatantly clear. The main theme of this film is the discovery of one's capability for violence. What really separates the kind, and then viciously violent, Dr. and Mrs. Collingwood, from those that killed their daughter?

The level of revenge that these two individuals go to is extreme, disturbing, and very entertaining at the same time. Craven's intent was to speak about how the young men who were fighting for this country were capable of unspeakable acts, and how when driven to such drastic lengths, the average family next door to you might be capable of exactly the same thing. This film, while suffering from poorly executed attempts at comic relief, surely remains at the top of most critic's "Most Disturbing Films" lists.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more Ladies of Horror...

Heather Langenkamp From Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1995)

Hello film kids. As a bit of a distraction from the typical fare here at Adventures of a Film Major, for the month of October, I will be offering a "Horror Woman of the Day."

And for today: Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) from Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1995).

Since the original Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984), Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) has been the epitome of the "Final Girl." When I did this project on Facebook last year, I included Nancy from the original Wes Craven classic. This year, I'm switching things up a bit. In New Nightmare, we find Heather Langenkamp playing herself. This is an interesting take on the Freddy world, one that was able to breathe new life into a franchise that many had condemned for it's turn to humor instead of horror. While this film make be a bit tongue-in-cheek, it disregards the all out laughs of the the films before it. Wes Craven returns as the screenwriter and director, in addition to playing himself in the film.

Some horror connoisseurs might feel that New Nightmare is a cliche addition to the franchise, but I felt that it was a very clever and interesting take on the material. Heather playing herself works incredibly well and she makes for an even greater heroine than in the original film. Heather is asked by Wes Craven to play Nancy one last time in an attempt to kill the demon that inspired the character of Freddy.

What follows is an intense battle between Heather and the demon that escalates to the final showdown. Langenkamp has grown since the original and even since her role in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Russell, 1987). In that particular film, Nancy is a mentor figure to the Patricia Arquette character and never lives up to her original "Final Girl" potential. In New Nightmare, however, the action is all Heather, and she lives up to and even surpasses that of Nancy in the earlier films.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the next addition.

A Trip to Chinatown

Well friends, it has decidedly been quite some time since I've written to you. Apologies all around. There has been a tremendous amount of grad school reading on my end, and one loses sight of the important things when faced with so many chapters of Stanley Cavell text. (Pretentious film scholar reference, if you didn't notice!)

As for my quest for the Cinema Literacy Exam, Chinatown (Polanski, 1974) was my second viewing. I, embarrassingly enough had never seen this film. Let's skip the traditional, Nicholson, Dunaway gave career-defining performances, and Huston was the epitome of pure evil and get straight to the film jargon.

In the brief (15 minutes at most) documentary that accompanied the film on the DVD, the screenwriter, Robert Towne, said that he wrote the script with Nicholson in mind, and that over the course of production, Nicholson was encouraged to change his lines to make them sound more natural in his persona that has lasted four decades. I thought this was an interesting approach, and it made the dialogue seem so natural and believable.

This is one of the great films that is studied over and over again in film courses across the country, despite the fact that I do not recall it ever being mentioned in any of mine during my undergraduate years. This is pulpy neo-noir at it's finest. Every moment is singed with sexual chemistry between the two main characters. Dunaway gives off such heat in this film that she nearly rivals Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944, Wilder). And I said almost there, film kids, there obviously is no equal to Stanwyck in the femme fatale department.

What's great about this film is it's pace. Polanski drags this plot out over 130 long minutes. The action is, apart from a few key chase scenes and gun fights, rather slow. The story is about the L.A. water works, of all things. This may sound incredibly dull, but it is because of this that this film is so memorable. Normally, you would scoff at the idea of a film being made about a man investigating the corruption of a city's water system, but this film's intensity is at such a high that it could make even the most mundane moments of these character's lives seem fascinating. That is a combination of performance, writing, and direction. No one element can really be given sole credit for this film becoming the iconic work of art that it is.

One of the most interesting elements of the film, in my opinion, is the casting of John Huston as the villain. Here is a Hollywood titan that is responsible for directing such a large number of classic films, such as The African Queen (1951), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Key Largo (1948), and he is truly the devil incarnate in this film. This disturbing performance, that seems so kind and jovial on the surface, yet so internally evil, is one of the defining elements of the film. Just take a look at that picture there. Doesn't this look like the face of the kind grandpa or neighbor that smokes cigars regularly? Huston takes that image and knocks you on your ass with it.

Chinatown is a film that should be studied in depth by every film student that is pursuing a career in film scholarship, as it is the definitive example of neo-noir and features some of the finest performances in the medium. Period. Whether or not you are a fan of Roman Polanski, let the film speak for itself and expose yourself to one of the finest films of the 20th century.

Coming up next......

Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)

All photos were courtesy of Google Images.

The 39 Steps

Ranked #4 on the 1999 British Film Institute's list of "100 Best British Films of the 20th Century" (Glancy, 80), Alfred Hitchcock's classic espionage thriller, The 39 Steps was released in 1935.

Considered by many to be the best of Hitchcock's early works, The 39 Steps showcases the auteur's profound knowledge of sound as it utilizes a technique known as sound matching as a transitionary plot device. This advanced use of audio is one of the reasons why the film is held in such high regard.

To flow from the scene of a murder (as shown here)

to the train in which the protagonists are traveling (see below)

Hitchcock used the briefest of cuts and transformed the sound of the woman's scream into the loud whistle of the train as it exits the tunnel. With this technique, the viewer is instantly transported from one location to the next in one jarring transition, barely leaving time to come to terms with what has happened in the scene prior. To my knowledge, this is the first instance that this technique was used so effectively.

In watching this film, one is able to witness a great director developing the skills that would pave the way for his even more masterful films such as Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946), Rope (1948), and Rear Window (1954). Upon the release of this film, Hitchcock was not yet known for his incredibly long takes, and for the most part, the takes in The 39 Steps are not exceptionally long. What we have here is a charming film that combines a touch of romance with the suspense that Hitchcock has always been synonymous with.

I am, of course, most familiar with Hitchcock's films of the 40's, 50's, and 60's, so this was the earliest of his films that I have viewed. I greatly look forward to seeing the films made prior to this one. The 39 Steps is a great film, one that showcased a talented young director and featured riveting performances from all involved.

That's #1 on the list of Film Literacy Exam films crossed off. 99 to go...

Work Cited:

Glancy, Mark. The 39 Steps: A British Film Guide. I.B. Tauris: London, 2002.

All images are courtesy of Google Images.

A Declaration of What's To Come...

I know it has been far too long since my last post on here, but many exciting things have happened since the last time I wrote. I graduated from Bowling Green, and was accepted in the Film Studies Master's Program at the University of Miami. Florida life is certainly very different from that of Ohio. For one thing, there are tiny lizards roaming the sidewalks everywhere.


One of the first things I found out from the School of Communication is that at the end of my two years here, I will have to take what's called a Film Literacy Exam. Basically, they have devised a list of 100 films that have changed the world of film and are necessary viewing for anyone that wants to be taken seriously academically in this field. I'll include the list at the end of this post.

This new quest for academic enlightenment features many films that I have already seen before, and quite a few that I, embarrassingly enough, had not. So, over the course of the next two years, I will be writing about these films in preparation for the Film Literacy Exam. That being said, I will still critic current films that I have seen, particularly because the theatres here get a much wider variety of films that the theatres back home.

Let the epic journey begin...

And now for the complete list of films:

The 39 Steps (Hitchcock, 1935)
The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)
8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
Aguierre, Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
Anatomy of a Murder (Preminger, 1959)
Asparagus (Pitt, 1979)
Awaara (Kapoor, 1951)
The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)
Betty Boop and Popeye Shorts (Fleischer, 1930s)
Bicycle Thief (de Sica, 1948)
The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946)
The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
The Blot (Weber, 1921)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)
Breaking the Waves (von Trier, 1996)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1919)
Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel and Dali, 1929)
Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch and Morin, 1961)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
City of God (Meirelles and Lund, 2002)
Cleo from Five to Seven (Varda, 1961)
The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
Daughters of the Dust (Dash, 1992)
Do The Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
Don't Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1963)
Earth (Mehta, 1998)
El Norte (Nava, 1983)
The General (Keaton, 1926)
The Graduate (Nichols, 1967)
Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937)
Harlan County, USA (Kopple, 1976)
High School (Wiseman, 1968)
Hiroshima, mon Amour (Resnais, 1959)
The Hitch-Hiker (Lupino, 1951)
Hyenas (Mambety, 1992)
Ikiru (Kurosawa, 1952)
Imitation of Life (Sirk, 1959)
In a Lonely Place (Ray, 1950)
In the Mood for Love (Wai, 2000)
It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934)
The Jazz Singer (Crosland, 1927)
L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
La Jetée (Marker, 1963)
Land without Bread (Buñuel, 1932)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls, 1948)
Los Olvidados (Buñuel, 1950)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
Memories of Underdevelopment (Gutiérrez, 1968)
Menace II Society (Hughes Brothers, 1993)
Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, 1944)
Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
Mon Oncle (Tati, 1957)
Morocco (von Sternberg, 1930)
Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922)
On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954)
Open City (Rossellini, 1945)
Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940)
Primary (Drew, 1960)
Raise the Red Lantern (Yimou, 1991)
Red (Kieslowski, 1994)
Red Dust (Fleming, 1932)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986)
Salesman (Maysles, 1969)
Salt of the Earth (Biberman, 1954)
Scarface (Hawks, 1932)
The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Sherman's March (McElwee, 1986)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand, 1937)
The Sorrow and the Pity (Ophuls, 1971)
Soy Cuba (Kalatozov, 1964)
Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
Tale of Winter (Rohmer, 1992)
A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami, 1997)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
The Thin Blue Line (Morris, 1988)
Top Hat (Sandrich, 1935)
Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch, 1932)
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi, 1953)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
What's Opera, Doc? (Jones, 1957)
Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage, 1962)
Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodóvar, 1988)
The World of Apu (Ray, 1959)
Xala (Sembene, 1975)

And that's that, folks! Just as a note, I do believe that the majority of these films are included on the Netflix Instant Watch!