Scream Queen Research and Examples

The decision making on choosing our main actor was based on the stereotypical "Scream Queen" taken from the slasher genre. We researched a variety of slasher films to analyse the representation of this character. We looked at films such as Scream, Halloween and Psycho. We mainly adapted our idea from Scream. 














Drew Barrymore plays the scream queen Casey Becker in Scream, who is represented with blonde hair, which is almost essential for the scream queen character. Casey is in the first opening scene and within this scene there is a
phone call where she has to answer a question to save her boyfriend Steve. The actress we used will have long, blonde hair which we thought would fit perfectly for the character. In Scream, Drew Barrymore wears quite covered up clothing, such as jumpers and jeans. However in the

Steve is a stereotypical teenage boyfriend character.

majority of horror films we researched, the scream queen was wearing revealing, figure-hugging clothing and was heavily caked in makeup. We decided that representation would fit better with our film opening as it is more stereotypical.

Similar to Steve in Scream, the actor in our film opening who played the boyfriend will also be tied up in a chair. In the opening scene, Casey Becker thinks that it is her boyfriend that is on the phone at first playing a joke on her. We adapted that idea into our film opening as it showed that the scream queen is naive, vunerable and sexually active.



Halloween

Another scream queen we researched was in Halloween. This character was called Judith Myers.

Michael Myers (the murderer of the film) killed Judith on halloween night because she betrayed her brother by choosing to be with her boyfriend rather than babysitting Michael. Michael uses a knife to kill his sister, as he goes upstairs to find her he follows a trail of his sister's clothes. When he reaches her he finds her naked, this scene really signifies her as a sexually active character.

This was a significant movie in cementing the stereotypes of the slasher movie genres. Judith has long hair and revealing clothing (or no clothing at all), is sexually active and isn't shown as caring for school or anything deemed 'nerdy'.


Psycho
The scream queen in Psycho was the actress Marion Crane. In Psycho Marion has blonde curly hair, wears makeup, and is dressed in her dressing gown. She undresses fully and enters the shower before she is brutally stabbed, and collapses in a heap naked in the shower. This tragic scene signifes possibly a sexually active character, and enhances the male gaze theory.