FINAL GIRL POP CHAT

What exactly is a “final girl”, you ask? A final girl is the chick from the slasher flicks of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that is always the last one standing amidst the corpses of other slutty, foolish teens. She is the girl with her feet on the ground, slightly tomboyish (sometimes downright asexual if you recall Laurie from Halloween), resourceful, intelligent and will not hesitate to open a can of whup-ass on whichever mindless male killing force happens to be stalking her.
If one day a razor wielding maniac spawned by the seed of 1,000 mental patients starts to dream stalk me, or a masked mutant in overalls sneaks up on me in the shower, or if my wackjob boyfriend is carrying a grudge about his dad’s affair with my skanky dead mother, or if my lecherous uncle accidentally opens a Chinese box that is the doorway to hell, or a strange meteor passes too close to Earth setting off a radiation chain reaction that wakes the dead, I’m supremely confident that I will be able change out of my diaphanous nightgown, grab the nearest hanger/machete/lamp and brain the daylights of out the bastards before decapitating them and setting them ablaze for good measure. In fact, I’m looking forward to it! I’ve been mentally preparing for it for years.

My favorite final girls are:

1. Nancy – No final girl (Heather Langenkamp) has ever been so spunky and courageous – at the end of the first Nightmare she was chasing Freddy! Combined with her slightly punk rock and fashion-forward grey streak, way before X-Men’s Rogue made it hip, and you really got something. So badass that she was resurrected to defeat Freddy in a meta-movie showdown for New Nightmare.

2. Kirsty – this feisty chick (the stunning Ashley Lawrence) from Hellraiser also had fabulous hair – once again, a brunette, like all serious women I suppose – and fought off the somehow hunky Pinhead from “tearing her soul apart”, basically by selling out a sketchy family member. Now that’s dysfunction.

3. Sydney – (Neve Campbell) from the Scream series is pretty much Nancy part deux, updated in her sexual politics just enough not to be a completely anachronistic prude while still conforming to the general “good girl” qualities necessary for a final girl.

Rarely horror films will feature final boys. Of course, they aren’t subjected to the same chastity standards as the girls and most of the time they come off as slightly unmasculine or outright gay – since the look and experience of abject fear is coded as a feminine emotion, it’s perceived in our our society that only females can ever feel so completely powerless. Nevertheless, two final boys stand out in my mind.

1. Jesse – the subject of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 falls squarely within the gay camp as does the rest of this ridiculous sequel. Jesse spends alot of time crying into the boobs of his Meryl Streep lookalike co-star as she tells him that she will protect him. That fact, and the homoerotic undertones in the relationship with his constantly shirtless BFF as well as the creepy gym teacher character with a penchant for visiting seedy bars in full S&M leather regalia during his off hours makes for some very interesting textual anaylsis indeed.  For all this silliness, you can’t beat the scene where a bird bursts into flames in midair and the dad blames it on a misfunction of the gas stove.

2. Pax – this handsome survivor of Hostel outwits an entire Eastern European town involved in a torture-for-profit scheme to escape with his life, be a would-be hero to another female victim, and get righteous revenge on the slimy German businessman who paid to carve up his too trusting pal. I think Hostel is a brillant movie and can’t wait to see what part Pax plays in the sequel – will he be on the other side of the scapel perhaps?