In 1987, director Adrian Lyon made a movie based on a short film by James

Deidon about a New York City lawyer called Dan who has an extra marital affair with mysterious

sexy blonde called Alex. After a weekend of illicit hot steamy sex, Dan tries to shun

and ignore Alex, hoping she'll go away, but Alex will not be ignored.

The movie, fatal attraction, was an intoxicating mix of soft core eroticism and operatic slasher horror.

That proved to be a winning formula at the box office. From a $14 million budget,

the movie went on to gross over $300 million and received six Academy Award nominations.

In its wake, came a spate of high-end glossy thrillers through the late 80s and early 90s.

Films that took on the tropes of 80s slasher horror, but they put respectable stars front and center.

The films were often set within the home and focused on female characters in the tradition

of the classic women's pictures of the 1940s. But these women were often the villains.

They were dangerous, unhinged, and they shared more in common with the antagonists of the

Grand Dame Gignol pictures of the 1960s. In 1990 Rob Reiner adapted one of Stephen King's

most terrifying novels, Misery, about a writer being abducted and tortured by a deranged fan

called Annie Wilkes. Actress Kathy Bates channeled Betty Davis and other

exploitation stars for her performance as Annie, and it went on to win her an Oscar for best actress.

While both these films were more commonly labeled thrillers rather than horrors,

as they were far too respectable to be considered horrors, both features some of the most frightening

moments in modern cinema and both gave us two of the most iconic female horror villains of all time

in Alex Forrest and Annie Wilkes. Join me as we continue exploring the evolution of home invasion

and we discuss Adrian Lines' fatal attraction and Rob Reiner's Misery.

He didn't get out of the car!

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