Jamie Lee Curtis

Welcome to Finals Week, inspired by real life college finals! We'll have a new academic paper on horror films every day this week!

Gender Roles within Scary Movies by Alex Boles

“What’s your favorite scary movie, Sidney?”

These words haunted American society for at least five years when Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 3 were released in 1996, 1997 and 2000 respectively. At least, the words haunted middle-aged women home alone in their big houses in the middle of nowhere scared to answer the phone at night. The fear and portrayal of women also allowed stereotypes and other characters to form for the future of women roles in scary movies. Sidney, played by Neve Campbell, says at the beginning of the first Scream film after receiving a phone call from one of the killers, that there is no point in watching scary movies because they all display the same representation of women...

Today on her Huffington Post Blog, Jamie Lee Curtis (best known to horror fans as the original Lori Strode in John Carpenter's Halloween, as well as the star of thr original The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train), shows us she's actually very anti-horror on Halloween.

Her desire to 'tone down' the gore on halloween, especially when it comes to kids, just really gets my panties in a twisted, bleeding bunch.

"Halloween, the holiday, is a breeding ground for a seemingly unending gruesome gore fest," says Curtis. "Has it always been this way? I don't think so. I remember Halloween as a time to dress up in a costume other than myself. That was what was fun..."

Women's website BellaOnline has an article about the career of Jamie Lee Curtis by the horror movies editor Steven Casey Murray. You can read his fun little piece here. Also in the news is an article about female directors from CNN.com called Chicks directing flicks. Mentioned are Pretty/Scary favorites Sophia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, and Sarah Polley. Read the article here.