The definitive history of female horror directors that reads like a late-night conversation with your favourite film programmer
Here’s the thing about horror film histories. They tend to circle the same corpses. A few familiar names surface in every conversation: Whedon, Craven, Carpenter, the usual suspects, and we’re supposed to believe that’s the whole picture. The canon. The bloodline.
But canons are just stories we’ve told ourselves so many times they’ve calcified into fact.
Heidi Honeycutt has spent fifteen years chipping away at that calcification. I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies arrives like a crowbar to the glass display case. It doesn’t ask for space at the table. It builds a longer table.
Reading this book feels like digging through an archive that was always there but somehow locked. Honeycutt’s prose works like archaeological tools, careful brushes that reveal what’s been buried. Not just the obvious names you’d expect. Not merely a roll call of contemporary directors getting belated recognition. She starts at the beginning. The actual beginning.
Alice Guy-Blaché made her first film in 1896. She was likely the only female film director on the planet for a solid decade. And she was making genre pictures—fantasy, thriller, the macabre. By 1903, she’d adapted Faust. Think about that. Before most of what we recognise as cinema existed, a woman was already pushing it toward the grotesque and supernatural.
Honeycutt traces this line through Louise Kolm-Fleck’s The Ancestress in 1919, the first known feature-length horror directed by a woman, partially recovered and restored, through the sound era’s brutal contraction of opportunities, through television’s accidental generosity toward female directors in the 1950s and 60s. Wendy Toye was directing for the BBC. Ida Lupino moved from acting to directing Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lela Swift helmed nearly half of Dark Shadows.
The book’s structure resists easy chronology. Sometimes it is organised by historical period. Sometimes by format, television serials, exploitation features, VHS direct-to-video, and short films. Sometimes by geography. This sounds like it shouldn’t work. It absolutely works. The organisational logic mirrors how women actually found footholds in the industry: opportunistically, across multiple platforms, in the margins where the gatekeepers weren’t watching as closely.
She gives serious attention to Doris Wishman. This matters. Wishman made roughly thirty films between the 1960s and 1980s, nudist camp movies, sexploitation, roughies, and later some surreal oddities starring Chesty Morgan. Her work is objectively strange. The editing feels almost randomly assembled. Shots linger on doorknobs and ashtrays for no discernible reason. Honeycutt doesn’t pretend otherwise. She calls Wishman’s films “remarkably, objectively terrible” in places. But she also refuses to dismiss her. Wishman existed. She worked. She directed when women simply didn’t direct. That fact alone complicates every neat narrative about the impossibility of female filmmakers in exploitation cinema.
This candour runs through the entire project. Honeycutt operates as a journalist, critic, programmer, and fan simultaneously. She’s not writing feminist theory for other academics. She explicitly states that film fans don’t need Freudian readings of Stripped to Kill, they need to know who made it, how they made it, and why it matters. The book delivers exactly that.
The chapter on exploitation films and the VHS era hits hardest. Barbara Peeters directed Humanoids from the Deep (1980), which she intended as a critique of male violence, until the studio reshot additional rape scenes without her consent. Katt Shea made Stripped to Kill (1987) and Dance of the Damned (1989) for Roger Corman’s Concorde, pictures that treat strippers and predators with more complexity than the premises suggest. Stephanie Rothman, who directed multiple films for Corman in the late 60s and early 70s, including The Velvet Vampire (1971), which reimagines the lesbian vampire trope with genuine interest in female desire.
These aren’t footnotes. They’re feature presentations.
Honeycutt’s writing style resists what you’d expect from a 464-page reference work. She’s conversational without sacrificing rigour. She’ll describe a film’s plot with genuine enthusiasm, then pivot to the production realities. The effect feels like sitting with someone who’s watched thousands of horror movies and retained not just the facts but the feeling of each one.
She positions these filmmakers within their actual historical contexts rather than retrofitting them to contemporary politics. That matters. It’s easy to wish Wishman had made feminist manifestos. She didn’t. She made whatever would get financed, often with titles like Bad Girls Go to Hell and A Night to Dismember. But those films exist. They provided work for actresses, crew members, and women behind the camera when the studio system provided almost none. Honeycutt lets that complexity stand.
The global scope remains ambitious. Pink films from Japan. Horror pornography. Experimental work. Animation. Anthologies. Short films that launched careers, such as Jennifer Kent’s Monster (2005), which became The Babadook. Honeycutt treats all formats as worthy of attention because, for women directors, short films and anthology segments often provided the only available entry points.
She also handles the transition to digital with clear eyes. The internet, crowdfunding, social media, these genuinely shifted possibilities. Filmmakers like Gigi Saul Guerrero and Prano Bailey-Bond built followings through shorts before features. The chapter on 21st-century digital production reads like a dispatch from the front lines, which makes sense given Honeycutt’s work co-founding Etheria Film Night, a festival that showcases genre shorts by women.
Place this book alongside Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s 1000 Women in Horror and Alison Peirse’s Women Make Horror. They form a kind of scholarly, encyclopedic, and essential trilogy. But Honeycutt’s voice distinguishes itself. She’s less interested in theoretical frameworks than in the texture of careers: who worked with whom, what got made, what got lost, what got restored.
Mary Harron directed American Psycho (2000) and later Charlie Says (2018) with Guinevere Turner co-writing both. Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody made Jennifer’s Body (2009), which critics savaged on release and then spent fifteen years correctly reevaluating. Amy Holden Jones directed Slumber Party Massacre (1982) from a Rita Mae Brown script, a slasher that undercuts its own genre even as it delivers exactly what the genre promised. These aren’t anomalies. They’re part of a continuous line stretching back to Guy-Blaché.
Honeycutt quotes Wendy Toye at one point: “People say, ‘You’ve never been a feminist, and you never fight for women.’ Well, I don’t, really, but I think an example of doing something and getting on with it and not being a crashing bore about things is probably better than getting onto a platform and making some speech about it all”.
That’s the book’s ethos in miniature. Not a polemic. A demonstration.
It collects hundreds of demonstrations across 130 years. It’s thick with photographs. It’s heavy with titles you’ll immediately want to track down. It’s candid about which films actually work and which matter for other reasons. It treats horror as a serious cultural form without losing sight of the fact that it should also be fun.
The book ends where it must, with the present moment, where female horror directors are more visible and successful than ever. Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024) is the obvious recent proof. But the point isn’t that we’ve finally arrived. The point is, we were always here.
You’ll never watch a horror movie the same way again.
That’s not hype. That’s just what happens when someone turns the lights on.
I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movie by Heidi Honeycutt
Slumber Party Massacre. Pet Sematary. Near Dark. American Psycho… These horror movies have heavily contributed to pop culture and are loved by horror fans everywhere. But so many others have been forgotten by history. From the first silent reels to modern independent films, in this book you’ll discover the creepy, horrible, grotesque, beautiful, wrong, good, and fantastic – and the one thing they share in common.
This is the true history of women directing horror movies. Having conducted hundreds of interviews and watched thousands of horror films, Heidi Honeycutt defines the political and cultural forces that shape the way modern horror movies are made by women. The women’s rights and civil rights movements, new distribution technology, digital cameras, the destruction of the classic studio system, and the abandonment of the Hays code have significantly impacted women directors and their movies.
So, too, social media, modern ideas of gender and racial equality, LGBTQ acceptance, and a new generation of provocative, daring films that take shocking risks in the genre. Includes short films, anthologies, documentaries, animated horror, horror pornography, pink films, and experimental horror. I Spit on Your Celluloid is a first-of-its-kind celebration, study, and ‘a book that needed to be written’ (says cult filmmaker Stephanie Rothman). You will never look at horror movies the same way again!
Horror Book Reviews: Ginger Nuts of Horror, Your Premier Horror Website for 17 Years
For every horror enthusiast searching for authoritative horror book reviews and a definitive horror website, your journey ends at Ginger Nuts of Horror. As a trusted pillar of the dark fiction community, we have spent over 17 years building a reputation for the most passionate, insightful, and credible coverage in the genre.
Our dedicated team of reviewers lives and breathes horror. Our collective expertise, forged over nearly two decades, ensures every review is a deep, critical analysis. We don’t just summarise plots; we dissect the terror, explore the thematic depths, and connect you with the very emotional core that makes horror books so compelling.
Why Ginger Nuts of Horror is the #1 Resource for Horror Fans
Unmatched Depth & Legacy in Horror Book
Reviews: With 17 years of reviewing horror, we offer an unparalleled perspective. Our reviews expertly guide you from mainstream bestsellers to under-the-radar indie gems, helping you find your perfect, terrifying read.
Exclusive Access to Horror Authors: Go behind the scenes with in-depth interviews that reveal the minds behind the madness. We connect you with both legendary and emerging horror authors, exploring their inspirations and creative processes.
Award-Nominated Authority & Community: Founded by Jim McLeod, Ginger Nuts of Horror has evolved from a passion project into an award-nominated, essential horror website. We are a global hub for readers who celebrate horror literature in all its forms, from classic ghost stories to the most cutting-edge dark fiction.
Experience the Difference of a Genre-Dedicated Team
What truly sets us apart is our dedicated team of reviewers. Their combined knowledge and authentic enthusiasm ensure that our coverage is both intelligent and infectious. We are committed to pushing the genre forward, consistently highlighting innovative and boundary-pushing work that defines the future of horror.
Ready to dive deeper?
For horror book reviews you can trust, a horror website that champions the genre, and a community that shares your passion, Ginger Nuts of Horror is your ultimate destination. Explore our vast archive today and discover why we’ve been the top choice for horror fans for over 17 years.
Jim "The Don" Mcleod has been reading horror for over 35 years, and reviewing horror for over 16 years. When he is not spending his time promoting the horror genre, he is either annoying his family or mucking about with his two dogs Casper and Molly.
