Babes In Boyland
Sexism and stupidity -- that's what this year's sci-fi and horror heroines are made of.
      by Sarah Kendzior

Character Type #1: I'm a robot -- a sexy robot!

It is the future. Man, having mastered technology on his native soil, seeks adventure in the faraway corners of outer space. A team of scientists sets out on a spaceship, determined to bring joyous discoveries to their fellow mankind. Faced with the inevitable problems that arise when the fate of the planet rests on, say, Lou Diamond Phillips, things begin to go awry. Thankfully, however, there is a woman behind it all, a woman in charge -- a woman who sounds exactly like a 976 operator. The name of this ode to female capability?

Lou Diamond Phillips gets kinky in Supernova.

Sweetie.

Ever wonder what a porn film written by 2001's HAL would look like? Supernova has your answer with Sweetie, the breathy, flirtatious, robotic voice of the Nightingale 229. Now Supernova, the thrilling chronicle of how Robin Tunney's ever-present, ever-naked breasts cope with zero gravity, isn't exactly an ode to feminism, but Sweetie takes it new, horrifying directions. There is nothing like watching Lou Diamond Phillips become aroused by the instructions of a female computerized robot, unless, of course, you count watching Lou Diamond Phillips become aroused by a giant, pulsing, alien penis thing. (As I said -- the movie has a few issues.)

Despite the obvious implications of a future where science is so male-dominated the ship computer center doubles as phone sex line, Supernova scares by virtue of its cold, robotic female protagonist. Like nearly all space movies to date, Supernova has a great gender imbalance in its crew. Whether that's based on the screenwriter's inability to write convincing female character, the screenwriter's inability to be convinced that great female characters are capable of any sort of scientific feats, or the studio assumption that men don't want to see women in charge, Supernova tries to counterbalance by presenting a female character that's ephemeral, yet present; scientific (she's a computer, you see) yet sexy (she's a hot computer!) She's Sweetie, and she's, quite literally, a sex machine.

I had pretty much blocked out Sweetie, Supernova, and the continued plummet of Lou Diamond Phillip's career (oh, wither the days of La Bamba?) until I saw Red Planet, another film with a rather lopsided crew (the great Carrie-Anne Moss and a bunch of wussy boys) and another female computer running the show. This one is not quite so salacious, but that's okay, because we have AMEE. AMEE -- or Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Excavation -- is the other female lead in Red Planet, the one who actually gets to leave the ship. (Carrie-Anne Moss, while both the captain and the hero, is resigned to staying inside the spacecraft, away from the big, scary, red planet.)

Lust in space? Not between these two in the deadly dull Red Planet.

Some would say that AMEE is the most interesting character in Red Planet, and quite possibly the most sane, seeing as the modus operandi of this cat-like, leaping she-bot is to annihilate the Red Planet cast. (They left her switch turned to "evil" mode, you see.) What's disturbing here is her relationship with Val Kilmer's character, the veritable Anakin Skywalker to her C-3PO. When the notion of AMEE is raised in conversation, this strange, slow smile appears over Kilmer's face, the kind that implies... certain things. Now maybe I was just really bored -- and truly, this could well be the case -- but there seemed something a little odd at work when Kilmer grinned knowingly, thinking, perhaps, of that Amy-Fisher-in-her-prostitute-phase spelling. AMEE. Kilmer seemed, needless to say, to like AMEE a little too much. And that's just plain icky.

Sexual robot relations aside, I want you to imagine something. It is the future, and a team of astronauts arrive on Mars. Their captain is Val Kilmer, but the crew consists of Carrie-Anne Moss, Angela Bassett, Sandra Bullock, Dame Judi Dench (hey, you try to find someone for the Terence Stamp character) and three or four other female actors. While Kilmer stays on the ship, talking to the male computer voice and the female NASA operators running the mission from Earth, the women set out to explore the red planet. Along with them comes their trusty robot, who unfortunately wants to kill them all. His name is Mapping Excavation Network. They call him MEN.

Nah...

Character Type #2: I'm not really a slut, I'm a Wiccan/Goth/filmmaker!

To a certain type of horror fan, the invention of the VCR was the worst thing that ever happened to the genre. Those halcyon drive-in days of the 1970s and early 1980s were the best, they assure me, filled as they were with B-grade masterworks and splatter gore cheese. When I inform these fans that I saw most great horror flicks on video, they award me a pitying stare, saddened that I missed the opening day of Halloween because I was too busy being born.

We have suffered for her sins: Jennifer Love Hewitt.

What's interesting, in light of my year with Blair Witch 2, Urban Legends, Scream 3, and a myriad of other studies in degradation is that all of the people who feel for my alleged plight have been male. And come to think of it, the majority of horror fans I've met in my life have been male -- while my female friends flocked to sci-fi or fantasy en masse, they remained doubtful at my claim that Halloween was a really, really good movie. I never understood. But I sure do now.

Discovering horror in the early 1990s, I was able to be picky. Certain films -- Psycho, The Exorcist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre -- had established themselves as classics, even if seen in a rather dubious light by some. Other films -- oh, say, Graduation Day, Splatter University and Jason Takes Manhattan -- had not. I've never really gotten that whole it's-so-gory-it's-good attitude -- I mean, trash is fine in a Starship Troopers sense, but rampant butchery leaves me kind of cold. What I'm saying is I knew what to avoid.

This year, however, I saw everything -- partly out of obligation, partly because some people paid me to, and partly out of blind hope weighted in the hot streak of 1999. And what I saw explained so much about that lopsided gender ratio at last year's Fangoria convention. I have a feeling there's going to be a large duh factor involved amongst my older, less discerning peers, but -- the average female horror character isn't Halloween's Laurie Strode, is she? Or Nightmare's Nancy, or even Texas Chainsaw's Sally, or even Scream's Sydney, the Kevin Williamson years.

Gone were the strong, tough, resourceful chicks who battled off the evil killer and survived. No, the modern day inspiration for today's horror heroines can be summed up in three words: Jennifer Love Hewitt. And from Hewitt, that brain-dead, cow-eyed star of the stunningly successful I Know What My Breasts Did Last Summer, came a litany of hellspawn. Jennifer Morrison. Erica Leerhsen. The return of Jenny McCarthy. I had always passed off Carson Daly's ex as something of a fluke -- sure, Neve Campbell's a little on the lethargic side, but at least the girl can act, and at least her character had, well, character.

Those of the Hewittian breed, however, are exactly what my female friends told me was wrong with horror movies, and exactly what I (wrongly) protested was not the typical case. And they're not, exactly -- what's so unusual about the new breed of horror female leads is that there is an actual attempt to make the characters unique, intelligent, or successful, things the mindless co-eds and teens of the 1970s and 1980s were not. Yet the bottom line -- the creepy, smarmy, this-was-obviously-made-by-and-for-middle-aged-men-who-don't-get-out-much bottom line -- is far more disconcerting.

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