Much has been written about how women have been portrayed in horror films, and a good chunk of it suggests strong female characters have usually played second fiddle to the horny male adolescent fantasy.
There are many exceptions, of course. Perhaps most famously, there’s Alien (1979). And more recently, Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth (2007) made some noise for shaking up the genre.
But when it comes to celebrated directors...well, we can't do much but scratch our heads.
We went back and looked at the award winners from nine horror film festivals--both famous and not so famous--and couldn't find one woman whose work had been given the top prize for a feature film.
(for the record, the festivals we looked at were: Saturn Awards, New York City Horror Film Festival, Toronto After Dark Film Festival, Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, Dark Carnival, Sacramento Horror Film Festival, Fright Night Film Festival, Screamfest LA, and Shriekfest).
Sixty six prizes awarded over the years and not one woman. That's a really bad batting average.
We did manage to find one woman with an award-winning film: Yfke Van Berckealer. And that was for a 37-minute short film (Zombie Love) at 2007's Zompire: The Undead Film Festival, which is held annually in Portland, Oregon.
To be fair, Hollywood hasn’t fared much better. Just three women have been nominated for a best director's Oscar award--but no winners.
Are we overlooking an award winner? Let us know.
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