SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. PET SEMATARY. NEAR DARK. AMERICAN PSYCHO. These movies have heavily influenced pop culture, are loved by fans everywhere, and were made by women working in what has been traditionally considered a men’s genre. The truth is that from the first silent reels to modern independent movies, female filmmakers have contributed the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, the gruesome, and the just-plain-wrong to the world’s greatest genre. This lecture by critic and historian Heidi Honeycutt will sing the praises of creators from Mary Harron to Katherine Bigelow, and plumb the depraved depths of film fatales like Doris Wishman to Roberta Findlay, in order to tell the true history of women directing horror movies.

Having conducted hundreds of interviews and watched thousands of horror films over the last twenty years, Heidi Honeycutt has spoken at sold-out venues around the world about the political and cultural forces that shape the way women make modern horror movies. This lecture is based on her book I Spit On Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (Headpress Books), a comprehensive work that covers the evolution of women making horror cinema from 1896 to the present day.