10 Most Terrifying Female Horror Movie Villains

Carrie is a fascinating film, loaded with subtext, allegory and classic Stephen King tropes of religious fundamentalism, bullying and the psychological damage caused from having possessive, obsessive families. Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) is a lonely teenage girl who has suffered a life of bullying and both mental and physical abuse. Upon hitting puberty, her psychic powers manifest and she exacts a terrible revenge on her classmates, teachers and her mother, in a climactic bloodbath that is as terrifying as many of King’s best adaptations.

Piper Laurie plays Carrie’s mother Margaret, a religious fanatic who has spent years transferring her guilt and sexual repression onto her daughter. Murdered in self defence by Carrie, who uses her psychic powers to impale Margaret with a number of sharp objects, Piper's performance is that of a woman dying in ecstasy, with so much metaphor involved that the scene is a Freudian smorgasbord of crucifixion, penetration and parental abuse.

Laurie believed the script to be so over the top that De Palma had to convince her it was a black comedy to elicit the correct performance from her. It worked. Laurie, a three times Oscar nominee and star of The Hustler, gives us the quintessential overly-protective mother role, demented and terrifying, and most definitely a female villain to be remembered.