Top 10 Horror Movie Heroines

Posted at 5:00 AM Oct 27, 2008

5. Marilyn Burns as Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Banned in Australia and the UK for many years, and for good reason (be warned, even the trailer below will give you the creeps). Marilyn Burns was a recent college graduate with little acting experience when she was cast as Sally Hardesty, the lone survivor of Leatherface, a chainsaw wielding maniac. I remember watching this movie at 15 and not being able to sleep with the lights off for weeks – it's powerful, intense, insane, and brilliant. The cuts and scrapes on Sally were real, as director Tobe Hooper filmed Marilyn running through the woods at top speed. With Leatherface chasing you, you don't have time to jog.

4. Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemary’s Baby

The lesson of this film? Don't ever move next door to Satanists. They have the strangest habit of trying to take over your womb and impregnate you with the Devil's spawn. Mia Farrow is haunting and lovely in this Roman Polanski film, convinced someone is out to get her baby, but unaware that the truth is so much worse. Plus, that short 'do is just to die for!

3. Shelley Duvall as Wendy Torrance in The Shining

Poor Wendy. Stuck in a haunted hotel for months with a kid who sees things and a husband who wants to kill her. Literally. Plus, could her hair have been any more greasy and unkempt? Gawd, Wendy, I know there was no one at The Overlook but your psycho family, the homicidal bartender, those weirdo twins, and that lady in the bathtub, but you would think you could at least pull it back into a ponytail! In all seriousness, Shelley nails it as the tortured wife of an artist gone mad, and by the end, we feel as exhausted as she does by the hell she's been through. No wonder she went on to make Faerie Tale Theatre after this. She needed a change of genre!

2. Janet Leigh as Marion Crane in Psycho

I hesitate to include this one as Janet doesn't actually make it to the end of the film (hope I'm not giving anything away to the three people who've never seen Psycho). But for the shower scene alone, Janet Leigh just deserves more than a mention. Filmmakers have studied director Hitchcock's quick cuts and made notes about the chocolate syrup used for blood and the melon that helped produce the stabbing sound. But what really made the scene iconic was the gorgeous face and the horrifying screams of Marion as she suds up for the very last time.

1. Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode in Halloween

Not only is it quite possibly the best horror film ever made, Jamie Lee has got to be the queen of them all (even more than her mama in Psycho) in the totally incredible Halloween. This movie is memorable because of its slow pacing, the way it builds suspense simply yet in a way that is totally terrifying, and because of Jamie Lee as the sexually repressed good girl Laurie Strode. The scene where she locks herself in the closet and attacks Michael Meyers with a wire hanger still makes my heart race. Every babysitter's worst nightmare. Every horror fanatic's personal favorite.