Conventions of Female Victims

Women are not always victims, and they are often empowered. In films like Alien, it is the woman who survives and kills the alien threat, were her crew both male and female, die.

Directors such as Dario Argento ("If they have a good face or figure I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man) and Brian De Palma have expressed a preference for menacing or killing beautiful women in their films.

Tim O’Sullivan and co say that “the dumb blonde stereotype might include: blondness, seductive body language, strong makeup” This is supported in “Scream” by the character tatum Riley who gets killed in the most sterotypical way.

The book “Men, Women and Chainsaws” by Carol J Clover “A phychokiller who slashes to death a string of mostly female victims, one by one, until they are subdued or killed, usually by the one girl who has survived.”

Results show that of the males asked, there was an equal split between favouring attractive model-like lead characters and preferring more believably everyday characters, however there is an uneven split for the females that were asked, the majority favouring attractive leads.


Wendy in The Shining was not attractive compared to the characters in the teen movie horrors, showing a clear difference between psychological and slashers, where slasher victims have pretty female victims, and psychological focuses more on the acting ability.