Whenever I hear about a “Brotherhood”, it’s never a good thing. So often it’s followed by Blood or Evil Mutants. (“Sisterhood” on the other hand conjures images of roaming trousers.) Googling “Brotherhood of Satan” for instance, the top search result is the official Brotherhood of Satan website complete with admission application. I declined to answer the litany of questions like, “If you have any Background with Satanism please summarize your experience in the field below.” and “How do you think the Brotherhood will benefit from your membership?”, but I have to admit that these guys know how to do evil. Nothing gives me chills like a few essay questions. The second result is the IMDB for today’s film, 1971’s Brotherhood of Satan., a surprising little film with the Devil appearing where he belongs, in the details.


Emily of The Deadly Doll’s House chose this film for me as part of our monthly movie swap, and all during February, she’s had a great ongoing event, Short Month, Short Killers focusing on the many diminutive murderers in the movies. So for my part of the swap, I chose for her the little person exploitation/western classic, The Terror of Tinytown. In return I got the one-two punch of eerie, evil children and creepy old people that is Brotherhood of Satan. The Southwestern town of Hillsboro is under the control of a coven of witches who’ve been kidnapping children. Their intent is to place their souls into the kids and renew their life, but there’s one tiny problem. There are only twelve kids in town. Then along comes Ben (Charles Bateman), his girlfriend Nicky (Ahna Capri), and Ben’s daughter K.T. (Geri Reischel). Soon enough K.T. gets snatched, and Ben has to pin his hopes on the town sheriff (L.Q. Jones), his deputy (Alvy Moore), and the kindly town doctor (Strother Martin) if he hopes to stop The Brotherhood’s diabolical plan.

Unlike The Devil’s Reign, Brotherhood of Satan doesn’t need the technical advice of Anton LaVey. Because who really needs advice when you’re making it up as you go along. Satanists are old witches who can summon tanks, make dolls cry, and control the minds of little children? Sure, sounds good to me, go. That’s exactly what this film does too. It doesn’t wait around and try to explain things. It lets the viewer connect the dots themselves as it continues to fly forth by the seat of its pants. Written by star/producer L.Q. Jones and TV scribe William Welch, the script is nothing to rave about. On the page, Brotherhood of Satan might have been a mildly better teleplay than you average Night Gallery episode. Somehow pairing this script with journeyman TV director Bernard McEveety added up to enough to call this a certified film. McEveety directs as if Flesh for Frankenstein was being made for the movie of the week. The strength of establishing character quickly is on display, but there’s also some real art house moments that add to the strangely suspenseful tale. Some of the thanks surely also goes to cinematographer John Arthur Morrill who would later capture another cult classic, Kingdom of the Spiders.

While the film’s stunningly strange look does Brotherhood of Satan a world of good, what really makes the film is the unique cast. Top billed is Strother “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Martin, and without getting terribly spoilery, he deserves the top spot for his gleefully fun duel role. Martin was one of the stars of The Wild Bunch as was his co-star L.Q. Jones. Jones gives quite the performance as the town’s troubled lawman, but there was something about his hair in this film that made him look like he could have played Daniel Boone without a cap. Alvy Moore, who produced the film along with Jones, has little to do in the role of the deputy, but he exhibits the kind of good humor that made him so memorable as Hank Kimball on Green Acres and in dozens of other character roles. Ahna Capri (Enter the Dragon) and Charles Bateman make for an attractive, all-American kind of couple, and they along with Geri Reischel (I Dismember Mama) have a genuine chemistry that pulled me into the story.

Brotherhood of Satan was nothing like I expected. I thought it would have been a low rent piece of nonsense or perhaps at best an imposter Hammer film. Instead I was treated to a hidden gem full of devilish details that brought the film together. Plus, even though they never got around to killing, the kids were plenty freaky enough I doubt I’ll be stealing candy from a baby anytime soon. Unless the kid has really, really good candy, and I forget that I run the risk of angering The Brotherhood. There’s one thing that I won’t forget, and that’s to click on over to The Deadly Doll’s House and check out her thoughts on The Terror of Tinytown. In another month we’ll be back with another film swap, and it will be our second face to face swap, this time at Horrorhound Indianapolis!


The only clip I could find was a complete spoiler. So instead here's the song "Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness" by My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult that takes samples from the film.

Looking beyond the obvious about what makes Rear Window such a terrific film; something else is present, a sort of lesson in social behaviors.  As L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) is wheelchair bound due to a broken leg and a veritable prisoner in his tiny Greenwich Village apartment, he grows bored with the mundane and becomes something of a peeping Tom.  In a way, who could blame him?  There was no Internet, cable TV, DVD's or E books back in 1954, and television programs ran only for a few hours in the late afternoon and evenings.  Happily, Mr. Jefferies has three huge windows that looked out on the court yard of his apartment building, and right into, the windows (and lives) of his colorful neighbors – what better way for a homebound soul to pass his time than to become a voyeur ?

Much like Facebook and Twitter today offer many of us the chance to view the quotidian events of strangers,  Jefferies's windows allowed him to do the same, and with almost exclusive anonymity.  No need to “friend” anyone in this instance; in a way, it was if he had a raw feed into the lives of the people who lived around him.

Of course, since he did not know any of these people, he gave some of them nicknames, other's he just acknowledged without granting them a nom de stranger:

· Miss Torso : The curvaceous, blond woman with a seemingly never ending parade of gentleman callers.
· Miss Lonelyhearts : The middle aged woman who is unlucky in love and has a taste for booze and pills.
· The Composer who seems to be having a difficult time coming up with his next piece.
· The Couple with the dog.
· Miss Hearing Aid: a hard of hearing older woman who spends a lot of time napping in the courtyard.
· The Sculptress who creates pop-art-like statuary.
· The Newlywed Couple.
· The Traveling Salesman and his invalid wife (later revealed as Mr. And Mrs. Lars Thorwald).

For a time, Jefferies observes these folks the way an anthropologist might study a family of gorillas; from a very healthy distance, and with no real interaction.  In fact, he seems cut off from his fellow humans as he coldly observes and makes snide remarks about them.  When his no-nonsense nurse Stella (played by the brilliant Thelma Ritter) comments on his voyeuristic obsession (“I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away...I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin' out the window. See things you shouldn't see..." ) , Jefferies dismisses her by asking for lunch.  Earlier, Stella says to him, “Oh dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes, sir. How's that for a bit of home-spun philosophy? “ - and yet despite her warnings, later on, even Stella becomes addicted to window peering.

Before long, it seems that Jefferies is blinded to what is around him, and can only see what is outside.  Considering that his goddess of a  girlfriend, Lisa Fremont (played by Grace Kelly who is so stunning in this film she seems almost physically radiant), can't get a rise out of him, one has to imagine that Jefferies was either gay, or just a damned contrarian .  How could any heterosexual man not be seduced by the other-worldly-beauty of Lisa as she flits through his apartment in gossamer attire, serving up food from The 21 Club and constantly trying to get a little attention?   However, Jefferies coolly keeps her at arm's length as he is more concerned with what's going on outside of his world.

The first flash of any kind of empathy comes when Jefferies spies Miss Lonleyhearts seemingly dressing for a night on the town.  The middle-aged woman, puts on perfume and make up, and then glides to her front door, opens it and lets in … no one.  She mimics a date, pretends to be enchanted by her dream lover's talk, and then invites him to the table, laughing merrily and toasting him, until finally, the facade cracks and the poor woman breaks down in tears.  All the while, Bing Crosby is crooning, “To See You is To Love You” .  Suddenly we notice something in Jefferies' eyes, and when he toasts the lonely lady, it's his first real flash of humanity - as if he's finally realized that what he's seen (and more importantly what he feels) is part of  the universal human condition .

It's shortly after The Miss Loneylheart's incident that Jefferies begins to suspect the jewelry salesman  of murdering his wife, and suddenly he goes from passive observer to obsessed documentarian, noting the salesman's every move, his interactions with others, his late night comings and goings, and, of course, the absence of his formerly bed-bound wife.  Oddly enough, Jefferies' fixation on this situation begins to draw in Stella (at first), and eventually Lisa (who, it should be noted, risks her life to play detective – also of note during this juncture; Jefferies suddenly seems to be viewing his girlfriend with something more than indifference as she climbs the fire escape to gain entrance into the salesman's apartment – the look on his face as he's watching her is one part fascination and pride, and one part,  unbridled lust...it's as if she's finally proven herself worthy of his love).

It's not until murder is suspected that Jefferies makes any real connection with the salesman (now revealed to be Lars Thorwald) .  Suddenly he has a crime suspect in his sites and this alone seems to be reason enough to make actual contact.  Up to this point, nothing has compelled him to actually reach out to the people he's been spying on, not even witnessing Miss Lonelyheart's fumbled attempt at suicide (though to be fair, Stella attempts to the call the police before Miss Lonelyhearts abandons her plan).  One assumes that had Thorwald never killed, Jefferies would remain a passive participant; watching others, studying them, judging them, but never taking the step to introduce himself to any of them once his convalescence was over.

Viewed today, Rear Window may be nothing more than a charming relic of a by-gone era, a Technicolor glimpse of the way we were.  Surely a bored homebody these days can find many ways to pass his or her time without resorting to peering into the windows of strangers and passing judgment on them...then again, is L.B. Jefferies hobby any different from the basement dwelling internet troll who anonymously posts foul diatribes on the websites of strangers?  Or what about the seemingly respectable individual who spends hours on end viewing photos, videos or live feeds of naked strangers in flagrante delicto ?  Is that any different from the man in the wheelchair going all wolf-like over the hot blond babe he spied doing calisthenics across the alley way?

Older people are fond of talking about the way things used to be; of how when they were younger, neighbors looked out for each other and were friendly.  Oddly enough, no one seems to know anyone in Mr. Jefferies' neighborhood.  And this was back in 1954.  Had we already become that disconnected as a society in the early 50's?  More than anything, Rear Window seems to show that as much as things have changed, they've remained stunningly similar.   We still don't know our neighbors, we're still disconnected from each other, and we only seem to interact with people if there is some kind of long-range barrier (that could be a court yard, or it could be the internet).  We are still a race of Peeping Toms (reality television, anyone?) - constantly staring all goo goo eyed into the windows of other people's lives safe in the assumption that we may be far superior to those we are watching, judging, assuming and drawing conclusions on .

Today, no one needs a pair of binoculars or a high powered telephoto camera lens to see into the lives of others, today it's laid out for anyone; the curtains are parted, the shades are up and privacy is an afterthought.  Today we can all be L.B. Jefferies, using office chairs or easy chairs instead of wheelchairs as we sit in comfort and become entranced by the millions of Miss (and Mister) Torsos and Lonleyhearts who seem to be straining for someone, anyone to look their way and pay them some attention, even if it's brief, meaningless and anonymous.  Welcome to Mr. Jefferies neighborhood.

As February continues, I thought it was high time I mention that alongside Women in Horror Recognition Month it is also Black History Month. The combination of these two overlapping month long events gives me a great reason to talk about a couple of my favorite films. While the blaxploitation craze of the ‘70’s spawned quite a few horror films, they were primarily takeoffs on classic characters (Blackenstein, Blackula, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde). There was the occasional stray original idea like J.D.’s Revenge or Ganja & Hess, but two films stand apart to encapsulate both of February’s honored groups, 1974’s Sugar Hill and Abby. Made the same year, both by American International Pictures, both blaxploitation horror hybrids, and both put women at the center of the action. However, they show very different sides to how their titular women were portrayed, as well as the two sides of blaxploitation horror.

William Girdler’s Abby stole a note from the other takeoff films, and mixing things around a bit, sought to make a buck on the success of The Exorcist. That is, until Warner Brothers Studio sued (mostly unfairly) for copyright infringement and won. To this day, the film only pops up on low value DVDs or from gray market sources. Though it made quite a profit in its initial release, Girdler, the director of The Manitou and Three on a Meathook, never saw a dime of the profits. In Abby, Carol Speed plays the title character, the new wife of a well respected preacher. When the preacher husband's father, working as an Exorcist in Africa, releases a demon, it flies all the way around the world to find a home in Abby. Possessed by the entity, Abby goes from good girl to bad girl overnight, and if not for the help of her father-in-law (Blackula star William Marshall), she would be lost to her devilish and wicked ways forever.

The other film on the docket today, Sugar Hill, also remains hard to find though recently it has become readily available thankfully to Netflix Instant Watch. Sugar Hill was the single directorial effort from Paul Maslansky who had previously produced films such as She Beast and Castle of the Living Dead. Diana ‘Sugar’ Hill (Marki Bey) is the refined girlfriend of a successful nightclub owner, but when he is killed by the local white gangsters, Diana goes back to her roots. Asking for the help of Voodoo Queen Mama Maitresse (Zara Cully), the pair summon Baron Samedi who dispatches a gang of silver eyed zombies to do Sugar’s bidding. Working her way up the chain of criminals (à la Coffy), she eventually gets around to the kingpin played by Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry.

Abby and ‘Sugar’ Hill could not be more different characters, and they really show off the two sides of the blaxploitation boom. Abby, written by Girdler with his Mid-America Pictures co-founder Gordon Cornell Layne, not only riffs innocently through William Peter Blatty’s backyard, but it does so by populating the film with stock, cardboard characters and questionable stereotypes. While Abby starts off a pious woman, the film kicks into exploitative gear by making Abby’s possessor a Demon of Sexuality. So before she gets her green, glowing eye levitation and foaming at the mouth on, she gets to tramp it up a bit. This is of course put to a stop by her African costume wearing, black preacher father in law and his son.

Meanwhile, Sugar Hill scribe Tim Kelly, who also penned the Vincent Price film Cry of a Banshee, characterizes Diana ‘Sugar’ Hill as a together kind of women who is strong and confident even in the face of supernatural danger. While the film does exploit the fact that Ms. Bey is clearly an attractive woman, it mostly saves its stereotypes and exploitative nature for the cartoonishly evil whites (especially Betty Anne Rees’ vapid gangster girlfriend Celeste). Where Abby is the victim of supernatural forces, ‘Sugar’ Hill isn’t the least bit intimidated by Baron Samedi (future Dukes of Hazard actor Don Pedro Colley in an inspired performance), and even manages to turn the tables on him. Where Abby is a victim, Diana Hill is a vengeance seeker. While both women have “gone bad”, one has done it due to the control of a supernatural power and one for love.

The real difference between the two films is the imagination in the script. Abby may have been unfairly impeded by Warner Brothers’ legal department, but that doesn’t make the movie that much better. While the young priest/old priest combo is changed to a father and son and the pea soup scaled back to a yellow, foamy mouth ooze, the exorcism scenes look a little familiar though on an AIP budget. Sugar Hill actually tried to do something different by bringing the Voodoo zombie (albeit with silver eyes) into modern horror. It is impossible for me to watch the rise of the zombies without thinking of Fulci’s similarly filmed scene five years later in Zombi 2. Both films seek to connect with black history, but where Abby’s link to African lore seems disingenuous, Sugar Hill connects voodoo directly to its link to slavery, historically the religion's main route into the United States.

While both Abby and Sugar Hill are entertaining films, Abby’s entertainment value is more reliant on how outlandish and exploitative the movie is. It’s a fun flick to watch with some friends and have a laugh about it and also a surefire way to work a term like Blaxcorcist into a conversation. Sugar Hill on the other hand is a pretty well constructed horror film that remains both interesting and entertaining from start to finish. It has its share of laughable moments, but for an early seventies horror offering from AIP, it had a lot going for it. The important thing though is that they both were made. Even now there are few horror films made with female leads, and of those almost none with African American women in leading roles. (Unless you want to talk about Gothika, and who does?) So while I definitely consider Sugar Hill to be the superior of the two films, there’s good reason to watch them both to celebrate all the special events in February.

My love affair with Alfred Hitchcock began when I was in 2nd grade. On a family trip to Universal Studios I was dragged into the Alfred Hitchcock Experience after being told several times that it would not be too scary for me. Here, they recreated the shower scene with live actors and showed clips from the famous schoolyard scene in The Birds. It was too scary---but somehow I was exhilarated. I purchased a Psycho pen from the gift shop and begged my parents to let us rent the film that night. From there on out I became obsessed. I must have rented every single fifteen pound Hitchcock DVD that my library had--and yet here I am in my twenties slowly realizing that I can hardly remember half of the films I had seen. The greatest example of this is in fact, Dial M for Murder. I can recall bits and pieces of it; the famous scissors killing, Grace Kelly’s red dress and a pair of stockings--but it is there my memories seem to end.

Having revisited the film today I can understand why I may have not remembered too much about it. It’s a film where not a whole happens and yet---so much happens, if that makes sense. I like to think of it in terms of how I felt after watching Blood Simple for the first time. That ending shot of the underside of a sink where the pipes are arranged in this intense and complicated way. Films like this and Dial M for Murder have the great fortune of speaking volumes without really raising their voices. Maybe I didn’t appreciate it when I was younger, for it lacked a similar amount of outright danger and suspense found in films like Psycho and The Birds--but I can definitely appreciate it now.

Based on the stage play by Frederick Knott, Dial M for Murder so delicately portrays a man whose idea of “the perfect murder” goes horribly wrong. After uncovering that his wife is having an affair, Tony Wendice arranges to have his wife Margot killed. In a much  unanticipated turn of events, Margot fights back and ends up killing her attacker, causing Tony’s plans to be rearranged and Margot’s innocence to be shattered.

It’s funny how your mind seems to take in the little details over the big ones. How had I not remembered that Grace Kelly’s character was having an affair? Or that Grace Kelly had initially been found guilty of the murder and sentenced to hang? I started to get worried that all those years ago I had become bored after the famous murder scene and turned off the film. It was possible, the film does get sort of heavy somewhere in the middle there but that didn’t justify my rash decision. I began thinking about what it was that was so seemingly different about Dial M for Murder and I settled on this idea.

Somehow, Dial M for Murder continues to stay a mystery even though we know the identity of the villain right away. In many mysteries, figuring out the identity of the killer is the prime harborer of suspense. Here however, the suspense is gained by the possibility of the villain’s escape right from underneath our noses. The suspense is found and put completely in the hands of the other characters. We as the audience can do nothing but sit back and wait in anticipation for them to come to the right conclusion. I had never given this much thought before but in these other typical murder mysteries--we as the audience tend to feel on the same page as the character’s trying to figure it out. This is what surprises me so much about Dial M for Murder. We are still trying to figure out something that we already know the answer to. How can that be?

The key to proving Tony Wendice’s guilt is of course what creates these wonderful moments of suspense. How can we find him guilty? And will anyone be able to prove it? Up until the final moments we are practically ready to explode with anger at the possibility of Tony’s escape and yet when we see Inspector Hubbard stealthily switch his coat for Tony’s, we barely begin to relax. We are not completely put to ease. We wait with baited breath listening to Hubbard’s commentary as he watches Tony out the window. Will he realize it? Will he mistakenly profess his guilt? Or will he just walk away? Even still in these moments of simplicity and these moments where not a lot is happening, I find that my heart continues to race.

Even earlier in the film a similar tactic is employed when Tony realizes his watch has stopped. How can it be that we are almost rooting for him to make that telephone call and secure the moment of Margot’s death? How is it that we can find ourselves on this strange divide between liking Tony and hating him? I don’t think I’ll ever understand it but trying to is a start.

And then there is everything else about Dial M for Murder. The simple way that Margot’s love is shown so differently and perfectly between the two men. By setting up a romantic kiss between the two men so close to one another we are made instantly to understand what separates them. There is such a passion in the scene between Margot and Mark and yet such a cold and distant kiss between Margot and Tony. It’s almost as if Grace Kelly plays two different characters. In some ways I find that Grace Kelly is almost always talked about for her beauty alone. What about her? What about her acting and her performance? Her transformation into a woman who has been in prison is one that I find to be alarming. She looks destroyed and she actually feels broken.

There are also the little touches that make Dial M for Murder such a strange joy to watch. From the ever so clever Hitchcock cameo in an old photograph, to the image of the detective holding a woman’s hand bag, to the very perfect way that Hubbard combs his mustache while phoning in Wendice’s arrest. Again we have simple pleasures that combine to make one film, not so simple after all.

I may have not been taken with Dial M for Murder my first time around, but that’s all changed now. Small details and big ones, Grace Kelly before and after the big house. Latch keys and nightgowns, scarves and stockings--there’s so much to talk.

When I was thinking about the films I wanted to watch for Women in Horror Recognition Month, I thought a lot about “final girls” who didn’t fit in the traditional mold. One popped into my brain immediately almost as if someone had put it there using the power of their mind. That character is Tina as played by Lar Park-Lincoln in Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood. Unlike the vast majority of women in Friday the 13th movies, Tina is not a wild, crazy camper scrambling though the woods trying to make her escape. She is a troubled young women, but she also holds an inner power making Tina a force to be reckoned with for Jason Voorhees. It is not a power fueled by the same kind of supernatural brute force as the hockey masked killer, but rather by a combination of her mind and emotions. So while Jason might prefer machete’s and harpoons, Tina is able to fight back with only her thoughts.

When Tina (Park-Lincoln) was just a six year old girl, she made a wish many children flippantly make. She wished that her father was dead. Tragically, unknown to her, she was in possession of an untapped telekinetic power, and when she made the wish, the dock of her family’s Crystal Lake vacation home gave way beneath his feet plunging her father to his death in the lake. Ten years later, at the behest of her doctor (Terry Kiser), Tina and her mother (Susan Blue) return to the lakeside cabin to confront the guilt that has haunted Tina’s life. Dr. Crews however has other ideas. He believes that Tina’s telekinetic powers are linked to her heightened emotions. Rather than trying to help her, he has brought her to Crystal Lake to provoke a response which will give him definitive proof of her ability. What he didn’t count on is what other secrets the lake holds. When Tina looks out across the water and wishes that she could bring her father back to life, it instead stirs Jason Voorhees, who had been chained to a stone and sunk to the lake bottom. Responding to Tina’s wish, Jason comes back to continue his reign of terror.

Unlike horror’s other teenage telekinetic, Carrie White, Tina’s power is never linked to either her ascension into puberty or due to emotional trauma. While trauma certainly seems to exacerbated her condition, the fact that her powers manifested in her youth suggests to me that it was an innate, though inert, ability. Psychotherapist Susan Caroll PhD states in her article “Awakening Our Full Potential”, “Strong emotion is an important element in telekinesis because emotion is ‘energy in motion.’”  While Caroll  goes on to talk about “love-based emotions” as a source for these powers in her article, there seems to me no reason it could not be grounded in the opposite. There have long been paranormal theories regarding poltergeist activity linked to unchecked telekinetic powers in young girls living in the proximity of limestone. Perhaps the intensity of Tina’s powers in relation to Crystal Lake not only are caused by her heightened emotional state, but also the makeup of the lake’s bedrock.

What makes Tina’s paranormal ability really interesting to me is how it differentiates her from Jason Voorhees. Jason kills and continues to live as a supernatural force of vengeance intent on continuing his mother’s work. He manifests as a monster filled with violence and brute force, happy to split skulls or beat someone in a sleeping bag against a tree. Vengeance and brutality are so often male dominated traits, and there is no doubt Jason’s oedipal revenge directed at those who trespass against morality is a very masculine. On the other hand, while Tina’s powers first manifested in defense of her mother as well (her parents had been fighting prior to Tina’s fatal wish), she is filled with guilt, despair, and plagued by an unstable mind leading her to spend many years in a mental hospital. While Jason gains his power from rage and vengeance, Tina’s power comes from her sadness and anger, a powerful emotions in both men and women, but especially potent in young women. Channeling these feelings, she becomes aware of her ability, and though this awareness it allows her to use it to fight back against Jason’s brute force.

Much of the credit for how well the character of Tina works goes to Lar Park-Lincoln. While she was no stranger to horror movies having also appeared in House II: The Second Story, she was a stranger to psychic phenomena. Park-Lincoln has been quoted as saying, “"I took it upon myself to work with real psychics and learn what it would be like to experience a vision and what a person would go through trying to communicate the experience to other people. I was really serious about trying to do this movie right." This attention to detail greatly contributed to the areas where the somewhat lukewarm film succeeds. While Park-Lincoln nails the vulnerability of her character, she also shows a strength, which like her character’s telekinetic power, is hidden deep inside her. This was also the first Friday the 13th film for Kane Hodder who played the hockey masked killer in films VII though X. For my money, Hodder is one of the best Jasons, and here his massive, intimidating frame makes for a striking dichotomy to the diminutive Park-Lincoln.

While Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is only a mediocre entry into the series, the individuality of Tina both as a “final girl” and a rival for Jason makes up for many of the film’s shortcomings. Where many of the films series’ female characters are portrayed as stock, weak damsels in distress, Tina starts off as a traumatized girl who might be considered weak only to grow into a supernatural force in her own right. One that is powerful enough to defeat Jason Voorhees, well, at least until the next sequel. Unfortunately, Tina’s storyline is not extended beyond the confines of Part VII. Instead in the next installment Jason headed off to The Big Apple. As a formidable opponent to the supernatural killer, I don’t think that Tina, and likewise Lar Park-Lincoln, have gotten their due, and what better time to give it than my first post for Women in Horror Recognition Month. For more information on events going on this month, make sure you check out their page on facebook for links to all the great contributions out there.