25 Incredibly Well-Made Horror Films Directed By Women

25. Karen Arthur - The Mafu Cage (1978)

Chances are you€™ve never seen anything quite like The Mafu Cage (aka My Sister, My Love), a bizarrely memorable horror flick based on themes of mental instability, sororal devotion, incestuous behaviour, and obsessive love. Director Karen Arthur never opts for cheap thrills, instead choosing to imbue her film with heavy doses of atmosphere. In the film, Carol Kane plays Cissy, a delusional young woman who was never able to move on from her childhood in Africa and the death of her anthropologist father. Her sister Ellen (Lee Grant) promised their late father to always take care of Cissy no matter how extreme her abnormal behaviour may be. To keep her content, Ellen allows her sister to keep an ape around to illustrate as she did for her father's research. Cissy eventually goes on to kill the poor ape in a fit of rage before she decides to step her game up and move on to humans. It's not difficult to see why this film has not quite found an audience. It's easy to classify the unclassifiable as "cult" when a film contains such convoluted algorithms. But what is a cult film without a cult following? With such a unique vision and subversive material The Mafu Cage is certainly deserving of a devoted flock of admirers by now.