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Episode 102 -- Powers of Horror (Film), Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2025-10-28 04:31:53
Imported:
2026-09

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Content

To get you ready for spooky season, here's In Bed with the Right with a look at some classic horror films, asking: What's scary about gender? And what's gendered about fear in these movies? This second part dives into more classic 1970s horror, into changing workplaces and fairy tales, into gialli and mouths with mouths in them. Our focus is on 1977's Suspiria and 1979's Alien. Hope you enjoy!

Comments

mrakobesiye

Re: Ellen Ripley I always assumed her outsider status was because she was kind of middle management

A Felt

I’ve loved this series as someone who is fascinated by horror movies but too squeamish to watch many of them. I was particularly interested in the discussion of how fairy tale tropes are incorporated into horror movies (my undergrad thesis was all about folk tales and feminism) and feel like the gender politics of fairy tales could be its own episode topic!

Marie

Thank you for this amazing Episodes! As a person who used to watch horror movies (and is too afraid) and now only reads the summary I am delighted to learn more about their gender and fairy tale aspeks. Thank you! My dad used to tell me about seeing the first alien movie in cinema and getting up, when they leave the planet thinking it was the end.. and then the aliens happend. That must‘ve been a cool feeling.

Fuchsia

It's ok I checked! Jonesy the cat survives the franchise, Ripley makes it back to Earth with him and is strong armed into going back out by the corporation to have further horrible adventures with the alien, but Jones stays behind in safety, presumably with a cat loving friend.

Nicky

I am just reading "Capitalism Hates You. Marxism and the new Horror Film" - by Joshua Gooch. Maybe worth a discussion in a future podcast?

Rhysograph

If y’all are ever interested, I have a working list of films I call Birth Control Cinema that I’m happy to share. These are films about the horrors of reproduction, pregnancy, and child-rearing. I’m also grading them based on the perspective they take. Generally speaking, if it’s a male perspective, the film focuses on body horror and ickiness of pregnancy and birth or the “madness of women.” If it’s a female perspective, we see more existential analysis of loss of self, overwhelm, and Cassandra syndrome… with some body horror as a treat. My current fave: “Huesera: The Bone Woman” Also I happen to work at the film festival that had the world premiere of Alien in 1979. It’s a point of pride for us. Fun fact: The goop the xenomorph drools is in fact K-Y lube and shredded condoms made up the mouth tendons!

MARIA PRAMAGGIORE

JOHN Hurt! Not William. Big difference. You corrected yourself. Love your series. Frustrated—as a film/media scholar—that horror analysis hasn’t moved on from 90s paradigms. Not your fault. But it’s a gaping wound at the heart of the discipline!

MARIA PRAMAGGIORE

There’s also an emerging genre of maternal eco-horror.

Sierra Wilson

I think that’s right? She’s not in the union, and that’s a source of friction.

mrakobesiye

Suspiria remake has problems but it also has the best costume and set design ever

Reggie Debris

Fun note for a podcast about gender: Alien is the movie referenced in the Alison Bechdel comic that created the eponymous test

Molly

Where do I request barbarian for next year 😇

pixlaw

So while listening to you guys discuss Suspiria through a gender lens, i was struck by a thought: Have either of you ever seen or thought about the 1970-ish film Performance? It's exceedingly cryptic, almost to the point of incoherence, but there's an awful lot of mostly unexamined gender-related issues. Sure there's a bit of 60s-style softcore porn footage, but there's a something else there which I can't quite identify. Maybe it's something as simple as the sheer number of drugs almost everyone on set was consuming. Or maybe the questions of identity, masculinity and gender identification which run throughout it are actually trying to address bigger issues in a rather sad, limited 1960s way. Anyway, I call it to your attention, and hope to hear someone at some point discuss it. I think it a rich text, as they say.

Jennifer Moran

I’m so happy yall mentioned Goblin immediately, I was worried yall would talk about Suspiria and not mention them! So good, I got to see them on their FIRST US tour many years ago and it was such an amazing show!

Zoë

Oh my gosh yes!

James Talley

Haven't finished yet, so please don't spoil, but the Alien: Earth series at the moment seems to have us rooting for the aliens in a newish way. Not just as agents of comeuppance for arrogance and evil (tho that's there, too), but a kind of mother-child identification between our ingenue last (?) girl Wendy/Marcy and the aliens. I kinda view the show so far as about authenticity, and since humans aren't authentic anymore (and the few who are seem powerless), you root for the captured critters and Wendy/Marcy as she struggles to create an authentic self.

Phoebe Evans

At one point in the discussion of Suspira there seemed to be a suggestion that the choice of ballet school as a milieu is almost somehow a feminist choice. But I feel that ballet school was chosen because sacrifice and bearing pain is what GOOD girls do. If he had chosen fancy riding school or art school, where there was some suggestion of dilettantism, where Suzy wasn’t experiencing extreme discipline, then there would be doubt that she was a good enough girl to survive. And if she’s not a good girl, she’s a bad girl. And bad girls end up dead.

Autumn

Loved the discussion about the alien being female coded and doing harm to men through penetration. There's a thread to pull on about the construction of transfeminine monstrosity that feels subtextual in most horror but really shines through in Alien

Maud McInerney

So Carol Clover served on my dissertation committee while she was actually writing Men, Women and Chainsaws. I never actually took a class with her but I was writing about medieval women and she (before horror) worked on women in the Norse Sagas. The first time we met the subject of horror came up and when she found out that I was a fan and had actually seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre we became buddies. She said her female friends were appalled at her because as far as they were concerned horror was just a woman hating genre.

Maud McInerney

Also... Nostromo is named for a Conrad novel. There too it's the name of a ship involved in crooked mining deals. Because the real horror is capitalism, of course. And I agree that Alien Earth looks good but damn, that show makes no sense according to the universe of the movie, or indeed internally. Pretty but nobody's home.