10 Most Underrated Female Horror Movie Monsters In History
These ferocious females don't get the attention they deserved in their horror movies.
When you think about the most iconic horror villains of all time, chances are you'll think of a man, or at least something that used to be a man.
As for female horror villains, it's always the same few names that come up in discussion time and time again: Annie Wilkes from Misery, Samara Morgan from The Ring, Pamela Voorhees from Friday the 13th, and the Xenomorph Queen from Aliens.
There have been plenty of fantastic females from across horror history, far too many to condense into a single countdown, so this list will only include characters who are not praised nearly as frequently as they should be and that could be classed as a "monster".
There is a difference between "monster" and "villain", so while some of these women are the antagonists of their respective films, others are more complex. It would be a struggle to call any of them "heroes", but there's definitely more to them than snarling teeth and insatiable bloodlust.
Here come the girls - and you'd better get out of their way.
10. Carmilla - The Vampire Lovers
A full 25 years before Dracula came out and made vampire fiction what it is today, Irish author Sheridan le Fanu published Carmilla, a story about a female vampire who pursues female victims.
In 1970, Carmilla finally got the big screen treatment in The Vampire Lovers, a Hammer horror and the first of three films based on le Fanu’s work.
The lead character, played by Ingrid Pitt, is the daughter of a countess who also goes by the name Marcilla and pursues several women, including the niece of a local baron. As she operates under the veil of ignorance afforded to women at the time, the townsfolk slowly realise that there is a monster in their midst, and resolve to destroy it once and for all.
As a film, The Vampire Lovers isn’t the best offering from Hammer, even at this late stage, but Carmilla herself is a wonderful villain who breaks all the social norms of the time. The queer dynamics of the film - while no doubt driven by the male gaze - make it fascinating to watch back all these years later, while Carmilla’s campy mannerisms wouldn’t look out of place in a modern cult classic.