Men, Women, and Chain Saws

Gender in the Modern Horror Film

De: Carol J. Clover

Narrado por: Eva Wilhelm

From its first publication in 1992, Men, Women, and Chain Saws has offered a groundbreaking perspective on the creativity and influence of horror cinema since the mid-1970s. Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented - notably the slasher movie's "final girls" - as they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. The lesson was not lost on the mainstream industry, which was soon turning out the formula in well-made thrillers.

Including a new preface by the author, this Princeton Classics edition is a definitive work that has found an avid fanbase from students of film theory to major Hollywood filmmakers.

©1992 Princeton University Press; Preface copyright 2015 by Princeton University Press (P)2021 Tantor

Brilliant insight and analysis!

The term "final girl" is just the tip of the iceberg in Carol Clover's book.

Rich and insightful

I’m a massive genre fan, and being able to read this seminal work, one which coined the term “final girl”, has been a total joy. The audiobook is well performed by Eva Wilhelm, and includes the latest forward by the author. My only complaints have to do with the facts that a) the chapters in the audiobook do not match up with the physical book at all (when the audiobook metadata says “chapter 6” but the narrator says “chapter 3”, you can see how difficult it would be to sync up the audiobook with the physical book you might be reading in bed) and b) none of the footnotes are read.

Regardless, this is a great way to enrich your knowledge of cinemas least understood genre.

Good reader, decent book

This one was ok. Interesting, but not riveting. I read it on a movie podcast recommendation. It used a lot of psych and movie language I wasn’t super familiar with. I might have liked it better if I liked movies more. It was also frustrating that it was an older book and didn’t reference any newer movies which addressed the book’s arguments.

Very insightful!

Explains some deeper motives for why people enjoy horror movies. She discussed many movies that I hadn’t seen before. 👍

Absolutely Fascinating!

Men, Women & Chain Saws is a fantastic analysis of gender in the horror movies we love. I believe it's a must for fans that love a deeper perspective on the genre.

In chapter 3

So, I am only in chapter 3, and my change my view by the end of the author begins doing more research, but I am sneering a bit as she takes the bait and low polling result on the main audience to slasher films. It has been studied and noted, in easily found publication and documentries, that the rate or female audience to mainstream slasher film is higher-55% at last counts- then the male audience. If you subject studies to exploration grindhouse theatre houses, female audience is lower only due to the towns that those movie houses reside being in areas deemed as “rougher”. While I have gone to those theatres , it was only in daytime with a keen eye always on the lookout for a purse snatcher or assaulted before and after. Females LOVE slasher films, and that a female would not find this research is not a good thing. That she also seems to be more pointed toward male feeling on female captivity and suffering and stating a female must become “masculine” to defeat the villain is also bunk. The female must find her own, defiantly feminine power to defeat the villian. I hope further throughout she does more research and does not localize studies to her own small cali cityscape

pls get a new recording

this book is SO interesting but the recording feels like siri reading to you. I still finished it because it’s super intriguing, but I ordered the physical copy bc I couldn’t cope.

Outdated by today’s standards but interesting academic read

Horror movies especially the 1980s slasher movies are often been criticized for their portrayal of women getting attacked. This landmark book argues on the contrary, explaining how the then modern horror films weren’t necessarily all anti-women butchering movies.
The author using mainly Texas chainsaw massacre, exorcist, deliverance, and a few other films, explains how certain themes appear over again in these movies causing audiences to follow and empathize with the main characters and see movie tropes of it’s time. This book is where the concept of the final girl arises from.
But within a very short few years, the slasher genre ended and the movie Scream commented on various horror tropes that made this book outdated and audiences familiar with the movies cliques and film language that this book analyzes. I mean did we need a whole chapter to explain to us that whether one is male or female that rape is bad?
The book is also written very academic so listeners might get bored, especially with the monotone British lady narrating this book. If you enjoyed your college academic texts then you’ll know if you will like this book

Deeply Misogynistic

I had to return this book unfinished. It didn't even matter that i got it on sale. I would need to be paid to keep this book in my library. The author's deeply misogynistic takes on women were just too disgusting to even try to grapple with. Basically, women who are "feminine" die while women who survive become "masculine" because being intelligent, assertive, proactive, and skilled turn a woman into a boy. That backward and regressive interpretation of womanhood really needs to be left in the 1950s. I hope a more modern and feminist analysis can be made on this topic.

There's so much more to horror than this...

I tried really hard to read this through an early 90s lense because, obviously, horror movies and the world in general have changed drastically in the 30 years since this was published. Even so, I can't say I agree with most of what Carol Clover posits. She has a few interesting points regarding things like the city vs country dynamic and of course the iconic Final Girl. Other than that, majority of the things discussed in this book are a wildly Freudian stretch. Sure, there are some horror subgenres (ie. r**e/revenge) that necessitate a sexual analysis, but Carol seems to view every single horror movie ever made through her Freudian glasses. I would like to remind her that other psychological philosophies exist.

The chapter in which she focuses on the sexuality in the formula of slasher movies is especially frustrating. Allegedly, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was her introduction to slashers/horror in general and kicked off her analysis of such movies. Yet when discussing, in her opinion, the complete focus on sex in "all" slasher movies, she conveniently avoids discussing the original TCM to instead focus heavily on TCM2 because it better fits her thesis. The original TCM is utterly, and intentionally, asexual.

It could be just as easily argued that the similarities in slashers arise merely from it being a popular subgenre and the formula works for audiences. Horror has always been a very connected community and directors, writers, and actors have always learned from and fed off of each other. For heavens sake, the one and only reason we have the Jason jump scare in the lake at the end of Friday the 13th is because Tom Savini had just seen Carrie and wanted to emulate the Carrie's hand jump scare.

I am a major horror fan and I think it is has always been the absolute best genre in which to hold up a mirror to the audience in terms of social commentary, anxieties regarding changing political and cultural landscapes, and all forms of psychology. That being said, Carol ignoring all of that and just reducing it all down to sex is painful. She missed the forest, and all the horror inside of it, for the trees, simply because she thinks they look phallic.