10 Horror Movies That Are Pro-Feminism

4. The Slumber Party Massacre

Though its title might conjure up images of nubile young woman prancing about in gauzy nightwear while having pseudo Sapphic pillow fights (well, at least before getting massacred), if you consider that The Slumber Party Massacre – whose creative crew include director Amy Holden Jones and feminist writer Rita Mae Brown – was actually intended as a parody of slasher flicks, it’s a different kind of film entirely.

Without a doubt, the male gaze is inflicted upon the film’s females – from horny high school boys to the film’s villain, a drill wielding escaped mass murderer – but here it’s played more for self-knowing kicks than outright objectification. It also isn’t above indulging in a neutralizing spot of female gazing too with its female characters making sexual quips at men’s expense and flicking through the pages of a copy of Playgirl.

While its premise of a bunch of teen girls being stalked by a male killer isn’t anything overtly subversive, his phallic choice of weapon - a large drill often wielded at crotch level and suggesting a bit of sexual overcompensation on his part - and its symbolic castration during the film’s finale certainly are.