Hello, my name is Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Slau.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club. And today, it's Shocktober.

Howo!

Muah!

The final edition before October says goodbye, and we have to return to, like, art house films. But until then,

we're talking today about scream queens. What is a scream queen, Will? A scream queen is exactly

what it sounds like, a woman who has made a career as an actress in horror films, or at least

made a significant mark as an actress in horror films.

Scream Queen was popularized when Slashers came into play,

mostly because it would be actors that would play the same thing over and over and over again in film after film.

And it's often a term that people for a long time found kind of derogatory,

and they didn't want to be associated

with, especially the first person we're going to talk about Jamie Lee Curtis, who I think is kind

of the prototypical scream queen. I think a lot of people use her as like the starting point for it.

And by the way, I think one of the interesting things about this topic is that horror has or is often perceived as having a problematic relationship with the female gender.

Well, it does.

Yes, it does.

And the role that the Scream Queen plays is a complicated one for many reasons.

Like I talked about before, of it being a derogatory term, like, scream

scream queen, they're usually associated with a number of things, is that they are conventionally

attractive and that they are often the victim who is menaced throughout the film. They're not

normally associated with like, oh, the scream queen is the hero of the picture who is the star,

...