Horror movies often feature a “last girl,” a woman who survives to the end of the movie when most – or all – of others don’t. Stephen Graham Jones, author of My Heart Is A Chainsaw, and a favorite of the last girls.
“The last girl is as weak as a silver bullet for a bird, like a daytime vampire, like a zombie’s head,” Jones says in Section 482 of Geek design in Galaxy Podcast. “It’s a natural remedy.”
Geek design in Galaxy recipient David Barr Kirtley it says the last girls adopt our habit of what we cause. “It’s much more rewarding for a girl to defeat a bad guy than for him to be a knowledgeable soldier,” she says. “It’s not really difficult for someone like that.”
Grady Hendrix, author of Final Girl Support Team, says the meaning of the last girls is stability. “They don’t stop trying, they don’t give up,” he says. “Laurie Strode [in Halloween] not strong or very fast, Ginny inside Friday Chapter 13 it’s not really powerful. As soon as they tried, we stopped. ”
The last girls were often seen in movies, but until recently trope was not common in books. Awesome writer Theresa DeLucci says a new generation of writers is now exploring the idea of the last girls in more depth. “I think the fiction of the last girls has been just looking at them from the outside, and looking at how they feel, and their emotional pain, and how it affects their lives, in terms of their emotions,” she says. “This is how it is made to look new, especially this summer.”
Listen to the full interview with Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, and Theresa DeLucci in Section 482 of Geek design in Galaxy (above). And see some of the highlights from the discussion below.
Stephen Graham Jones on Shouting:
“I was in grad school in Florida, and the agreement I made with myself to go to graduate school was that as soon as I went I just wrote all the time – I didn’t do anything socializing or going for a walk or anything. During a winter break in ’96, we knocked on my door. There’s a friend who says, ‘Hey, let’s go see a movie.’ I gave him the usual excuse. I said, ‘Hey guys, I’m writing a story. Sorry. ‘And he kept arguing with me, and in the end it was easier to go with this stupid movie than to argue with him. So I went, and it was Shouting, and I just felt like my brain was spinning again, just like all the homework I had done all my life was suddenly an emergency. And I was there the next six nights, watching the movie, and I’ve been living ever since – reading about it, writing about it, watching it over and over. ”
Theresa DeLucci on dangerous women:
“One of the hardest things of my life was attending a violent convention Ruggero Deodato was a distinguished guest, and Goblin he was playing. He showed House on the edge of Park, Fulci, Random Execution, all these things. I was the only woman in a group of 100 people, and by the time I reached the third movie with the fifth rape, I just got up and went. I took the keys to my boyfriend and just kept saying, ‘I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. ‘I went home and just sat in a dark room and was unhappy all day. I feel like, ‘These movies aren’t my people.’ And I think there’s a lot going on in the movies now – and we’re seeing fiction – when the sex of a female corpse, right then and there, hasn’t started again. ”
Grady Hendrix at death:
“Death in the end is nameless, formless, blindfolded with an unusual weapon – scales – coming to all of us. Death is very similar. This is one of the things I like about minimal movies, such as Friday Chapter 13. Jason they kill you if you are a criminal in a gang, they kill you if you are a good girl, they kill you if you are a criminal, they kill you if you are a bad person. Looking at bag bags, male or female, take from Jason, watching strong guys in groups, men or women, who threaten other people take it from Jason, who is not old. Death brings down everyone’s nail. No matter how big your collar is, or how many motorcycles you ride, or how big your mohawk is, Jason will hit you in the head. ”
Grady Hendrix pa Final Girl Support Team:
“As a child, I was not allowed to watch R-movie movies, I read about them and pretended to have seen them, because I didn’t want people to know that I was a loser who couldn’t see R- voted videos. At the age of 8, I managed to trick someone into buying me one. Fangoria # 12 from April ’81, who was Friday Chapter 13 on the cover. The first twist of the second episode is that Alice Hardy, the last girl from episode, starring Adrienne King, appears to be the Part 2 star, then knocks 10 minutes inside. With this good night, he solves his problem from one episode, and then Jason just hits him in the head. I remember clearly saying that I was very cruel. … I think part of it was because I was identified with him for some reason, and I didn’t want him to die, because it was like I was dying. And that’s where the book came from. ”
