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Final Girls
11 Plays8 hours ago
Today Nym takes a look at the horror trope of the final girl and how it has changed over time.
Enter the Nightmare for show notes, transcripts, sources, and more!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Nightmare Cottage'
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Nim and Nyleen's Nightmare Cottage, where we explore history, mysteries, and other tales of the macabre. I'm Nim. And I'm Nyleen. Let the nightmare begin.
00:00:48
Speaker
I'll see you real
00:00:55
Speaker
quick. That sounds so gross. as Well, that's what he's doing. Squeezing them beans. Oh, God. She's talking about coffee. Monkey's making coffee in another room, which probably won't show up.
00:01:09
Speaker
I don't think his typing showed up on the last one. If you heard typing in the last one, nightmarecottage at gmail.com, let me know. So how's things?
00:01:20
Speaker
Oh, you know, the world is... You know, I'm fine. i i am Day to day and all that, i I surround myself with my comforts and
The Mandela Effect: 'Wizard of Oz' Flying Monkeys
00:01:32
Speaker
whatnot. But I have to bring up, I left a part in the last episode that i probably wouldn't have normally left in there, but I had to leave it in there because it was us being Mandela affected live. For what? so Which one? So I have no idea how many times I've actually watched Wizard of Oz. Okay. It's been a consistent watch. We've talked about this yeah my entire life, but same and I haven't watched it as much in the last 10 years, but it's in my DNA.
00:02:00
Speaker
So when editing, there was that moment when you were talking about the evil flying monkeys. Yeah. Outside. Fly my pretties. Right. And I corrected that it was fly my pretties fly. hu But when I was second guessing myself and I was editing it, cause I was like, I can't leave that if we're wrong. And I looked it up and it's a famous Mandela effect thing. There's a point where she's talking to one of the monkeys saying it won't be long, my pretty. It isn't long or something really close to that. But she does both. No, no, no. Look at the the original fly. flight Yep. No, I'm going to go get my VHS because something has been fucked up here. No, I have it on VHS. And I remember oh I remember the it won't be long. My pretties fly. My pretties fly.
00:02:44
Speaker
You need to go back and rewatch it. Okay, no, I'm doing that. I'm giving me my, where's my phone? Calling my mother. cop put this in the VHS immediately. When my mother hears this, she's going to be also perplexed and probably is going to turn on Wizard of Oz immediately. and i All right, well, when you do that, Mommy Nim, I'm going to need you to send an email to Nightmare Cottage at gmail.com and let us know what your findings are. Thank you and have a great day.
00:03:14
Speaker
ah See you soon. That is frustrating. It is so frustrating. Like, it's something that... Like, i I should know. i should fucking know. Yeah.
00:03:25
Speaker
No, I agree. I agree. And i I feel like I've watched that movie enough that I'm like, i see, this is what I like about having like physical media, like the VHS and the dvd Like, yes, of course, I'm sure I'm going to turn it on and this dimension is going to be wrong, but that's fine. Okay.
00:03:43
Speaker
Because either way, I want to... I've noticed that when I want to watch a movie, I'm like, I have like 60 flipping streaming services. I have so many streaming services and I want to watch a movie. And of course i have a smart TV because that's all you can get these days. And so like I go to look up whatever and it's like, oh, it's on this thing that you don't have. It's always on something that I don't have. Or it is on something that I am have, but it's like, oh, but that's like a different tier. So
Streaming vs Physical Media
00:04:13
Speaker
like you would have to pay this to like rent it.
00:04:16
Speaker
Or like buy it. But like you're getting a discount and it's like, but I'm not even buying the real thing. yeah and that's what upsets me. So we have an immense, not immense. No, we have a tiny DVD collection. Itty bitty compared to probably most people. You have well-curated, decent collection is what you should say. Because it's, you know, you don't have a bunch of shit. You have yeah a bunch of stuff that you love and that's what matters. Yeah, I agree.
00:04:45
Speaker
I remember we used to do that a lot. We would go to movie trading company. Yeah. Because like it was like, what but else do you do when you're 20 and broke? No, that's exactly what you do. And then you add, you know, one to five movies to add to the forever rotation and...
00:05:00
Speaker
The problem was I was really bad about like actually selling stuff to the movie. trader Oh yeah. I never got rid of anything. I just collected. i collected. I still have a lot of yep physical media that I still enjoy. Look, I'm one of these days, my house is going to, it's going to be the shrine that it truly should be But right now it is a bunch of boxes and a piece of art in my head, but I'm going to animal crossing the shit out
Reality vs Media Portrayals of Home Improvement
00:05:28
Speaker
of my house. one of these I'm getting there. It's going to happen.
00:05:31
Speaker
Your house is, i feel like you've already been doing that. I know, but little pieces, right? It's like you paint a wall and like you get this wall looking good, but now it's like, oh, that area looks pretty. And unlike a video game, you can't instantly the next one like right away because, you know, money and time. Guys, yes. You know what? That is what's misleading for video games. I will say that. And it's very upsetting. Yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
Even like movies and stuff, like they're painting. It looks fun. Even when it's like, oh, they just like painted this wall and they just wipe the sweat from their brow and they're like, ah, I'm going to make dinner. Okay. That is not what it's like to paint. Okay. It is chaos and it is like boring and taping stuff down. And then like, you're trying to like paint the wall and you're just like not getting the right pressure. You're getting too
Video Games and Real-Life Expectations
00:06:15
Speaker
much pressure or the paint's wrong. And then your dog gets in the way. Like it's just, it's not, it's not as easy or fun.
00:06:21
Speaker
Okay. It's not. You know, also, I think I think that video games have ah fucked me up on like the doing of things because, you know, when when you do it in a video game, you buy all of the supplies. You have to have the money to buy all the supplies. So you buy all the supplies. And then when you get there, you press a button and you do it. Yeah.
00:06:38
Speaker
it I have so many... I could start so many crafts right now with the shit I have in my house. no I have bought the beginnings. like I could do them, but like the problem is that when I get all the stuff, it's in front of me and I still have to do it. Yeah. But not like...
00:06:57
Speaker
In some fun montage where I'm doing like cute and fun things and being good at it. But no, it's a struggle the whole time. Look at this thing that's been in my Amazon cart. Like it keeps every day. It's like, hey, you should. um yeah just got your message.
00:07:13
Speaker
It's like, hey, you should totally buy it. What is it? I've got to know. Dude, look at this.
00:07:23
Speaker
So it's, do you remember those stained glass papers when we were like in the 90s? The books that had the the stained glass pictures, right? That you like colored with markers and they were like really pretty and cute.
00:07:37
Speaker
You don't remember. But like, so you just use markers and it's like a paint by the numbers, but with markers. Okay. And so... I love all of this. know. And so like I've been thinking of like buying it because it's like 20 bucks for the book and like 20 bucks for the markers. And I'm like, we could just like have a night where we just like color paint by colors. And like, I don't know, it'd be really cute. I think it'd be fun. I'm yeah, let's do it right now. Just can just I know you have plans later. Cancel them. wait we don't we'd have to order sorry as i well i mean it's amazon it's like immediate delivery we are not helping our own hoarding problem we just talked about how we have too many crops but this is this is the problem this is why you and me we're not a allowed to go shopping together because it literally becomes a freaking nightmare but we get fun stuff it's true always fun stuff
00:08:35
Speaker
I started working on this story, honestly, towards the beginning of the life of the podcast. Like, I've i've been thinking about it for a while. I'd work on it. I'd put it down for one reason or another. I've done this so many times that I actually had myself convinced that I had done this story already. Yeah, because I thought you had because you... i referenced it in another episode. I was like, yeah, I said in my final girl episode, but I hadn't. Because have you wanted to
The 'Final Girl' Trope in Horror
00:08:59
Speaker
do a Final Girl episode, but you ended up doing slasher movies. I did slashers, yeah. Yeah, instead. and It led you down that rabbit hole instead. Right, right. i I kept thinking, and I've i've referenced this in late conversation with Ace and on the podcast itself. and Anyways, I'm finally doing it.
00:09:17
Speaker
Are you familiar with the horror trope of The Final Girl? Yes. Yes. So obviously that's most basic. The final girl is the last or one of the last characters left alive in a horror movie after the villain does their thing.
00:09:28
Speaker
They're usually, though not always, girls. There's more rules because of course there are, and we're going to look at that here in a bit. Looking back on my eternally ongoing horror education, I think I've always been drawn to final girl stories. They inspire a sense of like adventure or like independence, personal power.
00:09:45
Speaker
It's like what I attribute to like Labyrinth and Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, and really any of the girl goes on a fucked up adventure or type of stories. And like ah I've just kind of glommed onto those my whole life. Man, Alice in Wonderland, like, even like if you go as far as the Alice, we've talked about that one, the Jabberwocky one. Was it Through the Looking Glass, the one with the Jabberwocky? think that was the one in the 90s, right? in The 85-ish, I think. Well, the one with the one with um Carol Channing and yeah the crazy call goat lady. The goat. Okay.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yes. Nightmare. Yes, that was that was older. that This is why you and I get along because your media was my media. It was just still around for you. Yeah. You're right. It does. Like a lot of those are really kind of horror in their own ways, too.
00:10:30
Speaker
but anyways, it seems like a ah pretty seamless transition from those stories to final girl stories. Yeah. I do want to acknowledge the fact that many depictions of final girls are problematic for various reasons. And I'm addressing that. I'm aware that even when many of these characters were written and that I'm aware that even many of these characters were written with feminist intent, the mark was frequently missed a lot. Feminism and horror is a big, massive, huge topic. And it's going to just keep coming up when I keep exploring the topic. Super fans of anything can get super rigid about labels and classifications within their genre or fandom or whatever.
00:11:01
Speaker
So this is a bit of a trigger warning to anyone who gets upset about genre rule breakage because... i I am I can't be precious about it anymore. I used to be one of those people. I used to be very specific about like if you're a fan of something, you follow the rules of the fan and you you have to be a certain way. And that is bullshit and stupid and gatekeepy and dumb. Are you Aaliyah?
00:11:25
Speaker
No, I'm not. My mother is my mother is though. Yeah. what are you i thought you were a leo because you're right at the beginning of november is that not i'm a scorpio mysterious does leo end in october no leo is in august what am i what am i thinking of libra libra is the beginning of october that's awesome i know astrology nothing i know nothing all right moving on The term final girl was made mainstream in Carol J. Clover's book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, which was published in 1992.
00:12:01
Speaker
She stated that the final girl is one that survives till the end of a killing spree her friends did not survive. She tends to be smart or bookish. She isn't sexually active or sometimes interested in sex at all.
00:12:13
Speaker
She abstains from drugs and alcohol. Basically, her moral superiority gives her plot armor. Okay. I agree with all of that, honestly. I mean, I think, I don't think that's too rigid. I mean, not the not the rest of, not like the back end, the moral, like, the moral implications, a moral ethics behind it. I don't i don't i don't care about that. But the the surviving till the end and being triumphant in some way, even if Those are my personal guidelines. It's it's the the character that has survived a horrific instance that most others did not survive. And they were instrumental in the downfall of the thing. Yes. Is is in my head what constitutes. And that's it. which and I'm going to be talking about some specific Final Girls. And there's people that don't consider the some of the ones that I'm calling Final Girls.
00:13:05
Speaker
Final Girls. So anyways, especially in the 80s, Final Girls were typically not bombshell type pretty. And sometimes we're even a bit androgynous, like like Alice and then the original Friday the 13th had like the Dorothy Hamill haircut and like she looked very boyish. Right. Kind of that androgynous kind of thing going on.
00:13:21
Speaker
Often their names are masculine, like Sydney, Ash, Jess, or Danny. Yes. Oh, fair. Yes. The reason for this is largely due to the fact that the typical to demographic for horror, particularly and from the 70s through the 90s, was teenage to young adult males.
00:13:36
Speaker
They needed the audience to empathize with the final girl. They didn't think men would like to associate himself with another man going through the horrors. But a tough chick is somehow a different story. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
It's like, oh, she's like, she's she's tough and she's cool and she's... Right, right. She's not like other girls. Yeah. So it's a bit of a mindfuck for me personally because something that's been a positive feminist influence was more or less constructed to give someone to root foreign horror without feeling emasculated. And see, you know what, though? I...
00:14:07
Speaker
I don't know. i I think I appreciate the eighty s um portrayal of, you know, feminism and final girl in those situations a little more than I do like current day. And I say current day, like um the Miss Mar-Vell movie. I think that was how her name was pronounced in the movie. mark The Mar-Vell movie. mark Is it Marvel? i don't remember what it was called.
00:14:31
Speaker
Like the Marvel. I haven't been following Marvel movies since after... Thanos release. So I am very lost on all of that. Okay. Well, it just, I think it was called her, her name was Marvell. And so technically that's how it was. Got it. Got it. Okay. Cool. But anyways, so it just felt like the movie was good and it was great and all, but like, I just hate how it's just so raw, raw,
00:14:57
Speaker
Girl power. Girl power. It's too much. It's too heavy, right? yeah well No, it's because people are doing it wrong. You know what pissed me off more than almost anything is in the Captain Marvel movie. That could have almost been okay and savable in a lot of ways, but in her big fight scene at the end, spoilers don't care,
00:15:15
Speaker
They play just a girl. They play just a girl right when they Yes, like yes, yes! Shove it down our throats. Sorry, I'm going to break the microphone because I'm upset. Yes, wait, hold on, hold on. That song at the end, it's just, it's it's too much. And like, I appreciate for some people that works. it's To me, it's just, it's too far. It's almost patronizing. It is patronizing. And I...
00:15:39
Speaker
I don't want to like poopoo on no good intentions and all of that. It's just my opinion. And yeah, it it is also not my my particular flavor of feminism. Yeah. It kind of bums me out. yeah It's like commercialized feminism. Exactly. And not real.
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, e for effort, I guess. But yeah. So back to like what you're probably talking about more than the like eighty s more of the trope of the of of a feminism.
00:16:07
Speaker
Thanks to the fragile male ego, the final girl tropes just stomped onto the horror scene in the seven days and never really let go. If you are hypervigilant regarding avoiding spoilers to the point you don't even want to know that it's a final girl situation you're going into, probably fast forward to like the nightmare fuel section. Probably not even then. See you next episode if you don't want any spoilers whatsoever.
00:16:31
Speaker
I'm not going to be spoiling any plots. I'm going to be covering movies from the 70s through present day. And again, my the spoilers will be very, very minor. No like crucial plot twists or anything like that happening.
00:16:43
Speaker
There are so many iconic Final Girls and Final Girl movies that I had to just pick where to focus. I'm sorry if I left out your favorite. Please tell me who that is. at Nightmare Cottage at gmail.com. Oh, yeah. And you can just do more episodes on them.
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah, or blog posts, I'm thinking I might do some highlights. So you can't have a conversation about Final Girls without talking about Laurie Strode from the Halloween franchise, played by the OG Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis.
00:17:08
Speaker
Oh, yes. Oh, gosh. Yes, I forgot. She was just... Well, and also she was in Prom Night. Like, she was in... movies. So many. But we're going focus on Laurie Strode because she's kind of what Final Girls have been modeled after.
00:17:22
Speaker
From her earliest interactions with her friends, we see that she isn't cut from quite the same cloth. Her friends, Annie, played by Nancy Kyes, and Linda, played by the awesome PJ Souls, are fairly carefree with that bit of high school rebellion. ah Meanwhile, Lori is carrying a massive stack of textbooks from freaking out that she forgot one, while the other girls are plotting sexy times with their respective boyfriends.
00:17:44
Speaker
as As you do and in the 70s. As you do in high school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that' That's totally awesome. As you do in high school looking like you're 40. It's totally fine. At least in their mid-20s.
00:17:56
Speaker
Probably. Yeah. um I think Jamie Lee Curtis was younger than that, but don't get me lying. I don't recall. The girls were obviously close, but Lori acts like dating and dances just aren't meant for her. Boys think she's too smart.
00:18:07
Speaker
Oh, no one likes the smart girl, apparently. I mean, that's what I grew up learning. Really? We get a display of her intelligence early on while in class. She's distracted. She's like, it's the part where she's like sitting at her desk and she's looking out the window. Yeah. Of course. And, you know, Michael Myers is out there staring at her from across the street. And then music starts. Yes. The teacher's talking and then they call on her. The teacher calls on her. And then she goes, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah giving the exact right answer.
00:18:35
Speaker
Oh, like a really thought out, perfect response, even though she was not fully present, just to kind of like lay out. Oh, she's just super smart. Even if yeah without paying attention, she knows all the answers. But yeah, so they really wanted to establish that she's like super smart and not like the other girls.
00:18:50
Speaker
While her friends are generally dressed in more trendy for the time outfits, Lori is wearing a bulky sweater, a long like down to the ankles denim skirt and painfully, no, I guess it was more directions and painfully opaque white tights covered from neck to toe.
00:19:04
Speaker
Just not. you know? Yeah. Not inappropriate for her age, right? But like compared to her friends, she's definitely buttoned up. The girls are discussing their plans for Halloween night and how they're going to balance babysitting and high school hookups.
00:19:17
Speaker
One of the most problematic things about focusing on the purity of the final girl is that it paints all the actions of the victims as bad or evil. Like yeah they get punished because they had sex. They get punished because they were drinking and partying. Yeah, they lied to mom and said they were going to spend the night at Janine's and instead they want to hook up with a boy. And so they got murdered. like Yep. Girls that have sex get murdered. Only pure girls can survive the psycho.
00:19:40
Speaker
So Annie gets targeted after dropping off the kid she's supposed to be babysitting across the street with Lori so she can go pick up her boyfriend and so they can, you know, hook up. Linda shows up at the house where Annie was babysitting with her boyfriend. Listen, Linda.
00:19:54
Speaker
They go bang in one of the spare bedrooms. Of course they do. And then promptly get murdered. In the bedroom, right? He gets murdered in the kitchen because he went to go get a beer.
00:20:05
Speaker
And then she finds she comes out when that's happened. I'm not supposed to be spoiling this. i' Sorry. I rewatched all of these movies this week just to have them all fresh in mind. I will say that one place where Laurie doesn't fit the rigid final girl mold, when Annie picks up Laurie to take her to the babysitting gig, they're smoking a joint on the way. So not perfectly squeaky clean.
00:20:25
Speaker
i know I agree. i see. This is where i I don't think any of the morality shit, the abstaining from anything makes the final girl. I think the wit and the drive and the the survivability, you know, the badassery of the inside, you know, yeah i think that is what makes the final girl.
00:20:41
Speaker
But yeah, so her intelligence and good girl behavior saved her life, saved the lives of the kids she was babysitting. And she almost took out the bad guy, but they had to have the man show up and save her at the last minute, which is sadly pretty common, especially in that time period. Laurie Strode was the OG final girl and generally the the mold from which the others were created.
00:20:59
Speaker
Where Laurie Strode is generally accepted by all as the quintessential final girl, there are debates about this next one. This one's probably my favorite final girl ever, but purists argue for different reasons that she doesn't fit the criteria. Okay. But this is my podcast.
00:21:14
Speaker
And I fucking love me some Ellen Ripley from Alien. Have you seen
Redefining the 'Final Girl': Modern Examples
00:21:18
Speaker
have you seen Alien? It's been so long. I hardly remember it. and So that one 1979. So, you know, fair. i remember the Alien or I don't know. There's been a whole lot of iterations and stuff. There was one where like it's raining and they're like trying to run without it seeing them.
00:21:38
Speaker
And there's been so many sequels and remakes and offshoots and whatever that you've probably at least seen it like on in the background somewhere of some like one one of the versions of it. But we're going to be talking about the original in 1979. Sigourney Weaver played Ellen Ripley and to me is the ultimate final girl. Okay.
00:21:58
Speaker
The crew of the Nostromo spaceship are checking out a distress signal on a small planet when shit gets weird. When the crew that was exploring tried to get... I'm going to be leaving out a lot of details so nobody get mad at me for leaving shit out. When the crew that was exploring tried to get back on the Nostromo, only Ripley wants to follow protocol and make them wait for decontamination before getting back on the ship.
00:22:18
Speaker
It was the rules and she insisted on them following them. But she gets overridden by a man. And the crew comes back on board before any decontamination happens.
00:22:28
Speaker
So spoiler alert. This was a bad fucking idea. Yeah. And everyone starts dying and it's really horrific. Of course. So, but through being a genius and quite the badass, Ripley and her orange Kitty Jonesy survive the horrors that take out the rest of her crew.
00:22:43
Speaker
The arguments against her not being a final girl are really honest. I mean, they are from the purists. and You find out in the second movie that she has a daughter, so she's had sex. Ripley was intentionally written as gender neutral.
00:22:54
Speaker
So some use that as an argument, but that doesn't really hold up because there's been boy final girls already. Yeah. Actually not already at this point, but there will be later that are considered an ROK. Alien is sci-fi horror instead of a slasher. So that's the thing. Ripley is seen as a mature woman rather than a helpless girl. Like it doesn't yeah quite fit the mold, but I i agree that she is definitely.
00:23:17
Speaker
I think she is a Final Girl and I think everybody can suck it. um She's the sole survivor of a violent occurrence, which is what makes her ahead of her time. And so I hate moving straight from the late 70s to completely skipping the 80s with its just massive galaxy of Final Girls to choose from. But that's what i'm going to do There is so much great horror in many iconic Final Girls that helped shape the trope for the era. And like I said, I'll probably do some blog posts to kind of shape out some of that later. But I wanted to make sure I had time to cover everything else. so yeah So when the first Scream movie came out, it was 1996. I was a freshman in high school.
00:23:52
Speaker
And I did not like anything popular. Okay. I i did see in the theater and I do generally remember enjoying it, but I basically dropped it from my existence because it was too mainstream. I'm putting bunny ears on my yeah mainstream because I was just a little twat. As we all were in that age. Yeah, we all had our snobbish things about our media.
00:24:12
Speaker
And hey, anybody who needs to hear this. Well, there is some garbage that gets to be mainstream and popular. Some things are popular because they're worthy of attention and it catches on. And it it just took me way too long in life to learn that. So learn that if you haven't learned that. It's okay to enjoy things.
00:24:28
Speaker
Anyways. What 15-year-old me was too dumb to get was that this movie was going to change the genre forever. It took the discussions that happened among horror nerds and made it mainstream. yeah Everyone suddenly knew the rules of how to survive a horror movie.
00:24:41
Speaker
And in the sequel, they really nailed down that Sidney Prescott, played by Neve Campbell, is the final girl of the Woodsboro murders. and see And it was like really impactful for you because it was like before the internet. so No, I had internet by then because we were early adopters, you bitch. You were just being twat right now.
00:24:58
Speaker
o But the rules got spelled out in the movie that was commercially successful and widely seen. But one of the most amazing things about rules is breaking them.
00:25:09
Speaker
When someone says something has to be a certain way, there are people Brilliant and daring people who will find the best, smartest ways to do it differently while still holding the spirit out of spite.
00:25:19
Speaker
So where we've landed is a survivor that isn't restricted to a cookie cutter pattern. The moral purity requirement is pretty much completely off the table across the board. More genres of horror beyond slashers are accepted and embraced. And they're not all straight white blonde women, ah though a lot of them still are. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:35
Speaker
In 2011's You're Next, Erin, played by Sharni Vinson, is going on a trip with her boyfriend to meet his family in their remote cabin in the woods, which, you know, you know how that goes. Yeah, I love those. They're so scary. So slashery things happen. But what the killer doesn't know is that Erin grew up as a survivalist with a dad that taught her everything she needs to make it to the end.
00:25:56
Speaker
Instead of being an innocent and unsure damsel in distress, she very much flips the script on the whole situation, which is nice very rad. Nice. Ready or Not from 2019 brought us Grace, played by Samara Weaving.
00:26:08
Speaker
love this movie. Grace is marrying into an obscenely rich family, like NDA just to enter the house rich. Without giving away the actually very fun plot, it's basically these obscenely rich people playing hide and seek with Grace trying to kill her. But they don't know how to think like her because she's not an evil money obsessed psychopath. So through a lot of bullshit, she survives. Again, I just I love this movie with the exception of like one major thing, which I'm not going to talk about here. But if anybody wants to discuss that with me, Nightmare Cottage at Gmail dot com. In Prey 2022, Amber Midthunder's Nauru, we watched that one together. She's a healer within her Comanche tribe, though she wants to prove herself to be a hunter. That one was like completely in in another language, wasn't it?
00:26:49
Speaker
It was in Comanche. Yeah, it was all subtitled. Beautiful movie, i remember that. So it's it's in the Predator franchise. So a Predator shows up and starts fucking things up, but it ends up being her intellect, prowess, and getting people to work together that saved her and some of the people in her tribe.
00:27:05
Speaker
And this was the first ever depiction of an indigenous final girl in any film or television. I mean, what about Pocahontas?
00:27:15
Speaker
So that is not a horror movie. I think we're still kind of at least like we're we're talking about final girls. if i She's not a final girl. there was That's not it. I'm sorry. I mean...
00:27:31
Speaker
I will look into that. It's not something I've considered. Okay. But that's it. That is it. I'm going to start looking for who's a fucking final girl everywhere now. Damn. I'm going to watch Pocahontas tonight and I'm going to text you the whole time. I don't care if you're having a date. You're going to get texted about Pocahontas and her final girl status. Yeah. Look, i might I might just be like, just trying to be positive about all of it. I don't know.
00:27:56
Speaker
Anything that has a female in it and she overcomes some kind of horrible, stupid shit. Okay, well then let me revise that and say this was the first ever depiction of an indigenous final girl in horror film or television. Okay.
00:28:11
Speaker
And while I do agree that the story of Pocahontas is actually horrific. Yes. Most people would agree that. in the horror genre. Disney horrifying. My kid tried to watch Peter Pan and he was so scared. You're not wrong. You're not wrong.
00:28:27
Speaker
right. Lupita Nyong'o's Adelaide Wilson from 2019's Us is a badass mother that saves her family after terrifying doppelgangers murder so many people. Have you seen it? Yes, and it makes me want to throw up. so good. I hate it because it's uncanny valley. That shit scares me so bad.
00:28:49
Speaker
Well, if you have not seen this movie, you have to see it. I went into it not knowing a thing, and I really recommend everybody do the same. i i don't know that I can really explain it without spoilers, so just go watch us. Just don't... Go watch it. Don't leave the room.
00:29:04
Speaker
Don't let the other person you're with leave the room. You'll never trust them ever again. So the last final girl I'm showcasing today is Mia Goth's Maxine from the movie X in 2022.
00:29:15
Speaker
ah Maxine is the final girl while being the antithesis of the final girl. Maxine is a porn star. Nice. She has none of the typical moral plot armor, but she survives the star in Maxine 2024 and was very much the final girl.
00:29:31
Speaker
That was the one that I haven't seen, right? That was the other. No, I'm thinking something else. I'm thinking something else. I don't know, but I'm pretty much thinking I've got a Mia Goth trilogy in my weekend. Yeah. So anyways, I love how the rules have changed. um And I love that despite whatever the reasons are that we gave them, that horror as a genre is dominated by strong, capable women adapting and coping and getting through the most fucked up of situations.
00:29:55
Speaker
Do you have a final girl that has that you've been drawn to that you love that you're interested in? I think I do. But like, I don't know that she like exactly fits in your box. But didn't I just say, fuck the box?
00:30:09
Speaker
I mean, you kind of did. And then I was like, well, what about these? And you were like, well, Pocahontas isn't horror in any way. Exactly. But that's what I mean. Horror. If it has to be a final girl horror, I'm I don't know that I do, but... Well, what do you have in mind?
00:30:24
Speaker
For me, I feel like my final girl is Marceline from Adventure Time. It's not horror. You know, I'm going to give you that, though, because she's a vampire. Well, she didn't start off as a vampire. Doesn't matter. And she basically survived an apocalypse, literally an apocalypse. Yeah.
00:30:42
Speaker
and with some man that found her on the street and she's a half demon, half human, and she doesn't know what's happening to her or how to survive. And she ends up surviving the entire apocalypse. And then she ends up fighting vampires and but ends up becoming the last vampire and refuses to murder humans anymore and lets them survive and repopulate the earth.
00:31:11
Speaker
There's like a whole story behind that, which I just spoiled all of it. Sorry. I don't know if that counts, though. Okay, well, it counts because we want it to count, and this is our conversation, and it doesn't matter. I was just thrown off by Pocahontas because I was talking about specifically horror, and and i didn't it would just some was something I had never considered. So I actually really love that you said that.
Nightmare Fuel Film Recommendations
00:31:39
Speaker
So my nightmare fuel... Are those movies I just mentioned? I know it's a lot and I'm sorry, but I'm mentioning Halloween 1978, Alien 1979, Scream 1996, You're Next 2011, Ready 2019. Ready or Not, yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
scream ninety ninety six you are next twenty eleven ready or not twenty nineteen ready or not yep pray 2022 us 2019 and x 2022 are you just gonna put every horror movie ever on your nightmare and and this is these are this is quintessential this is final girl education 101 just a little package to to check out a a little bundle if you will Yeah, just a little bundle. They're they' are definitely not the only ones. There are many, many more that are very much worth exploring, but that is the package of the ones that I explored today.
00:32:31
Speaker
Do you have nightmare fuel? I don't know that I have nightmare fuel today. Okay. No, I do have just a little something to end the episode on that I found this morning. i woke up and this is going to sound horrible, but I was tickled by it. um I think I sent it to you. You did, yes. I i i have to.
00:32:53
Speaker
Okay. So this morning i woke up and did my usual thing where you wake up and grab your phone unhealthily and scroll for a little while because you don't want to get out of bed because it's Saturday and it feels nice and I don't want to do that. And my kid's behind me and it's fine. Everything's fine. So.
00:33:08
Speaker
and it was raining this morning. It was. It was raining. And then my like my window was open and all ended up grabbing the kitty and I brought her to bed with me. And she was so soft, dude. She was so soft. And I was just cuddling with her because, you know.
00:33:23
Speaker
She's soft. It was the best. Anyway, so this morning was great. And then I ran across this this little piece of news that made me laugh really hard. So there was a police chase last night, apparently, and this murder suspect, which I'm going to have to look into, but there's a murder suspect that was running from the police. He ended up crashing the car and apparently went to like an apartment complex. And so they're searching the apartment complex. I'm to have to look into like how the heck this happened. But they saw this guy that was dressed up as Spider-Man just show up out of nowhere. And so they were like, hey, you, what are you doing? And they detained him and later released him. so i wasn't the guy i don't know can you imagine a guy running around with a spider-man costume ready to just like i'm here to help right like that's what i'm saying like is this a guy who was like listening to the police scanner and was like ready i'm ready like i'm gonna find him and they're like bro are you the guy that we're looking for and he's like no no no i'm i'm here to help and they're like
00:34:32
Speaker
Okay, we're taking you, first of all. and second of all, the no But I'm going to have to look into it. I just thought that was just, it just tickled me to just think of that whole situation. i'll ah i'll see what I can find.
00:34:47
Speaker
love that. That's ridiculous. I think that's the end of today's nightmare. Yes, I think that was that was a good little nightmare and a hopefully a fun little thing if you want to look it up Should be fun.
00:35:01
Speaker
All right, sweet dreams. Have a good night. If you have topic requests, book or movie recommendations, or just want to say hi, email us at nightmarecottage at gmail.com or visit our website at nightmarecottage.com. Sweet dreams.
00:35:31
Speaker
Bye bye!