With Alexandra Heller-Nicholas' 1000 Women in Horror documentary on the horizon at Shudder, we’re reopening the TNHC archive.
Back in 2022, we interviewed Alexandra about her book, 1000 Women in Horror, for our 5th zine issue, THE HIGH PRIESTESS. Here's that conversation.
“From that foundational moment in 1818 when Mary Shelley’s classic gothic horror novel Frankenstein dared to make an outsider the centre of its story, horror has at its best been about giving a voice to those who otherwise struggle to be heard.”
- Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, intro, 1000 Women in Horror
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is an Australian film critic and the author of eight books exploring cult, horror, and exploitation cinema, with a particular focus on gender politics.
Her 2020 release, 1000 Women in Horror, stands as a landmark encyclopaedia of the women who have shaped the genre. The volume features interviews with figures including Barbara Magnolfi (Suspiria), Julia Ducournau (Raw), Hannah Neurotica (Ax Wound zine; Women in Horror Recognition Month), the Soska Sisters (American Mary), Aislyn Clarke (The Devil’s Doorway), Karen Lam (The Curse of the Willow Song, The Cabinet, Doll Parts, The Stolen, Chiral, Stained, Evangeline), and many, many more.
This 600-page tome gathers an extraordinary range of writers, actors, filmmakers, and creatives. Should the need ever arise, it also doubles nicely as something you could use to firmly hammer home the simple truth: women are — and always have been — at the dark heart of horror.
[TNHC] Can you tell us a little about yourself and how 1000 Women in Horror came to be?
[ALEXANDRA] It was in a sense a natural confluence. I had two simultaneous, dual research interests that I’d published at length about, including books and things like that; my primary interest was horror and exploitation film, the other was women’s filmmaking. If this were a Venn diagram, the overlapping section is where 1000 Women in Horror was spawned from – it felt very organic, even inevitable in a way.
[TNHC] We find a lot of women gravitate towards the horror genre, why do you think that is?
[ALEXANDRA] There’s a few different ways to tackle this question, but the most immediate one for me just based on anecdotal experience is “because we’re not supposed to”. The idea that horror movies is a boys’ club and these movies are aimed only for a teenage boy audience underpins really key feminist horror work like Carol J. Clover’s Men, Women and Chain Saws; that book in fact is predicated on that very assumption.
But stepping back, there are as many reasons that some women like horror as there are why others are repelled by it. I would speculate that the fascination with bodies under threat and the visceral ‘truth’ of some horror films – and perhaps even things like vengeance fantasies – might overlap with the lived experience of a lot of women. Dario Argento once said that most of his fans are women, which I absolutely believe – Argento’s films I have found are very much a kind of gateway drug for so many women I know that are into horror.
[TNHC] During the process of writing this collection, has it highlighted anything around the representation of women in horror for you?
[ALEXANDRA] It sounds odd, but the question of representation and gender is far more slippery than we might think it is. I flinch when I read people trying to make sweeping generalisations about the representation of women in horror because it’s just impossible.
Like, yes, there are amazing progressive depictions, but there are also inescapably some pretty troubling ones. What I guess interests me the most is stepping back from what is in front of the camera in terms of representation and looking just as much as how the women who work behind it are represented; the answer there is, broadly, not at all.
A large focus on the book was not just focusing on actors and directors, but also lesser acknowledged roles – producers, writers, editors, people working in sound – and sort of formalising their involvement in horror, too.
[TNHC] Who are some of your favourite horror film makers?
Once upon a time I would have had a very clear list here, but the older I get the more that I am finding the real thrill that I am getting is from new discoveries; people who have perhaps only made one film so it’s hard to define them as a “favourite”, but who bring something so unique and fresh to the table – the young Canadian director Avalon Fast really ticks that box for me currently.
I also really like filmmakers who experiment with the elasticity of horror and genre more broadly; I’ve co-edited books on Peter Strickland and the collaborations of Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani, for me, along with someone like Lucile Hadžihalilović, are just electrifying.
[TNHC] What’s the key takeaway you want someone to have when reading 1000 Women in Horror?
[ALEXANDRA] I know it sounds oddly self-defeating, but – and I note this in the book’s introduction – the biggest compliment in a way is for people to get cross about who hasn’t been included and really leave reading it with the question “What, only 1000?”. I even leave a space in the book for readers to add their own names! The whole point of the book from this perspective is sort of a jokey provocation – that a book on 1000 women in horror is ultimately as silly as a book on 1000 men in horror. With the women I selected I really aimed to have a very broad spread in terms of history and geography just to paint a rough picture of just how embedded women and their work is in the genre, even if that has been broadly ignored or treated as a novelty.
[TNHC] Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to tell our readers about?
[ALEXANDRA] My work on women in horror has a long tail, so I am working on a number of projects that expand on that in different forms that are exciting. In 2021, I published the 10 year anniversary second edition of my very first book Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study that was significantly reworked and features a whole new chapter on women-directed rape-revenge film. So my interest in women in cult, horror and exploitation – both in front and behind the camera – continues, and hopefully will for some time longer!
1000 Women in Horror premieres on Shudder on March 20, 2026.
The Shudder Original premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival and has since screened at Sitges, SXSW Sydney, and the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival ahead of its Shudder debut.
Directed by Donna Davies (Nightmare Factory), the documentary dives deep into the women who have shaped horror cinema from 1895 to the present day. Through their work as directors, actors, writers, and creators, these pioneers have left an indelible mark on the genre’s evolution, even when the industry failed to fully recognise it.
The film features interviews with Roxanne Benjamin, Akela Cooper, Mary Harron, Cerise Howard, Kier-La Janisse, Nikyatu Jusu, Roseanne Liang, Annalise Lockhart, Toby Poser, Sara Risher, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Kate Siegel, Jenn Wexler, and more.
[Header image courtesy of Shudder]
