Jigsaw: Here is a guest post from my good friend Gemma! enjoy!
Us girls love a good strong female to look up to and rally behind, sadly most horror chicks end up naked and beaten against another girl in a closed sleeping bag or possessed and violated by a tree. (Jason X, Evil Dead) I've gathered up a few of the best female protagonists who truly deserve the title bad-ass. Enjoy!
Ellen Ripley
From: Alien
Warrant Officer Ripley is aboard Nostromo, a spaceship hauling fuel back on
its return trip to Earth. When the ships signal is interrupted, the crew investigate the
nearby planetoid, leaving Ripley to make repairs. One of the investigating crew is injured by a
creature later named a 'face hugger' that attaches to his face. The crew violate quarantine by
bringing him on board along with the creature inside him and trouble ensues. The creature kills all
crew on board and Ellen commences an explosion to kill the creature before shuttling herself the heck
out of there back into space.
Memorable Moments: When Ripley discovers the alien queen growing inside her, she kills
herself by throwing herself into a furnace as the creature begins to erupt from her chest.
Quote: 'We waste this thing, and then you take care of me.'
Baby Firefly
From: House Of 1000 Corpses
Vera-Ellen or 'Baby' is your one of a kind morbid daddy's girl who belongs to a family
of twisted serial killers. Baby invites two couples she encounters while hitch-hiking back to her
house, where they meet the Firefly family.
Memorable Moments: Baby parading around in a cheerleader outfit taken
from one of the dead teenagers her and the family torture and kill.
Quote: (To one of her victims) 'You can go ahead and piss yourself for
all I care. If you want special favours you gotta give me something in return.'
Jennifer Hills
From: I Spit On Your Grave
A young woman takes a cabin retreat to work on her book, while alone and vulnerable
she is brutalised, raped and left for dead by a local sheriff and some morally depraved
individuals. After she falls into a river and is believed dead by the attackers, we enjoy
watching her extract her revenge in equally vile an brutal ways, finishing with the sheriff.
Memorable Moments: During her revenge binge, she captures one man in a bear
trap, holds his eyes open with fish hooks and leaves crows to peck out his eyes.
Quote: (Storch: 'She's just an innocent girl!') 'So was I.'
Elizabeth Shaw
From: Prometheus
Set in 2089, archeologists Elizabeth Shaw and partner Holloway find a star map in Scotland
they believe to be the clue to humanities origins. An elderly CEO funds a trip to follow the map
to the moon LV-223 aboard the ship Prometheus. Holloway is poisoned by David, the ships
butler and maintenance man, afterwards he infects Elizabeth and impregnates her with one of
the creatures found on the moon.
Memorable Moments: When Shaw is inpregnated with the alien, she uses the ships
automated surgery capsule to slice open her stomach, extract the squirming creature and staple
her wound back together. No medication.
Quote: 'Make no attempt to come to this place of origin, there is only death here now.
My name is Elizabeth Shaw, last survivor of Prometheus, and I'm still searching.'
Cybil Bennett
From: Silent Hill
When Rose's daughter Sharon is having odd dreams where she wakes up screaming 'Silent
Hill', she decides to drive to the place to discover the source of her daughter's terrors. She
encounters a cop called Cybil who accuses her of kidnapping her daughter and after discovering
her crashed car in the desolate Silent Hill, handcuffs Rose and becomes her companion as
they battle the demons of the place.
Memorable Moments: She took being tied to a ladder and burnt to death like a champ, not
screaming for mercy, but calling quietly for her mother and branding her killers crazy
as her skin melts away.
Quote: 'Mother is god in the eyes of a child'
Clarice Starling
From: Silence Of The Lambs
Starling is a student of the FBI academy, working in the behavioural unit and tracking down
serial killers. She is fortunate enough to encounter Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist
and cannibalistic serial killer.
Memorable Moments: Clarice wonders into serial killer Buffalo Bill's house
and fends him off alone and covered in darkness.
Quote: 'Your anagrams are showing, Doctor. Louis Friend? Iron Sulfide, also
known as Fool's Gold.'
Chris MacNiel
From: The Exorcist
Chris is the possessed Regan's long suffering mother, seeking the help of two priests
when doctors offer no help for her daughter's drastic change of behaviour.
Memorable Moments: Getting her face pushed where no mother's face should ever go.
Quote: 'I'm telling you that 'thing' upstairs isn't my daughter. Now, I want you to tell me that
you know for a fact that there's nothing wrong with my daughter, except in her mind. You tell
me for a fact that an exorcism wouldn't do any good. You tell me that!'
Erin Hardesty
From: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Erin Hardesty is played by the beautiful Jessica Biel in tight jeans and a white tank top, she
makes a great slasher film heroin, being chased by a chainsaw wielding Leatherface,
attempting to reason with a psychopath -hick sheriff and managing not to scream for
the entire last half hour of the movie.
Memorable Moments: Managing to escape with a baby unharmed
after repeatedly running over the sheriff.
Quote: 'Her body is starting to stink, you guys!'
Grace Stewart
From: The Others
Grace is a tightly-wound widow, living with her two children who suffer with photo
sensitivity after her husband never returned from fighting in the second world war.
Memorable Moments: The defining moment when Grace discovers she and her
children are dead after she went mad, smothered them with a pillow and turned a rifle on herself.
Quote: 'At first I didn't understand what the pillows were doing in my hands and why
you didn't move, but then I knew, it had happened, I killed my children.'
Rachel Keller
From: The Ring
A young journalist investigates her neice's sudden death and ends up fighting for her
son's life after he is afflicted with the same deadly curse. We see Rachel grow from an
unaffectionate, selfish parent to a fierce protagonist who witnesses an old man electrocuting
himself, plunging into a well and climbing back out being trailed by a pissed off dead girl.
Memorable Moments: Being knocked down a well containing a dead body by a possessed TV.
Quote: 'I think before you die, you see the ring...'
Carrie White
From: Carrie
We've all been that weird girl in school who struggles to make friends and has a
particularly over-bearing mother. However, not all of us have telekinesis that has
an annoying habit of flaring up whenever we're pissed off (if only...).
Memorable Moments: Sue, Carrie's only friend at school visits her grave and as
she bends to place flowers down, a bloody hand bursts out and grabs her wrist. According to
my dad, this is the moment where everyone jumped in the cinema way back in 1976.
Quote: 'It has nothing to do with Satan, Mama. It's me. Me. If I concentrate hard
enough I can move things.'
Angela Vidal
From: REC
Why is it the Spanish make such great, original horrors? Here is a great example of
one, starring a television reporter Angela and her inconspicuous camera man who are
left trapped in an apartment building containg a disease which turns people into bloody-thirsty savages.
Memorable Moments: In true homage to the handheld camera phenomenon, at
the end of REC 2, we witness Angela crawling into the cameras view and having
a worm-like creature burrow down her throat.
Quote: 'We have to tape everything, Pablo. For fuck's sake.'
Annie Wilkes
From: Misery
Annie Wilkes is how I imagine every Twilight fan if they were given the chance of
kidnapping Robert Pattinson. Annie is a murderous, manic depressive and above all writer
Paul Sheldon's biggest fan. So when he is caught in a blizzard and his car comes off the road, she
seizes the oppurtunity to nurse him back to health and impose her will on the plot of his unfinished book.
Memorable Moments: The phrase 'hobbling' springs to mind, after Annie flies into a rage
following Paul's attempted escape and breaks his ankles with a sledgehammer.
Quote: 'You! You dirty bird, how could you!'
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