Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned

She’s a teenager. She’s teased at school. Her mum is unhinged. AND she’s just started her period. We’ve all been there, right? Well - not all of those. Even just one of those things is enough to deal with let alone all of them! Which is why life pretty much sucks for 17-year-old Carrie. But when she’s asked to the school prom by heartthrob, Tommy, things really start looking up – and she could even be prom queen. Everything is wonderful… everything is a dream… until she so spectacularly (and messily!) finds out that that everything really isn’t.

This supernatural horror portrays that first gruelling facet of womanhood – the dysphoric body horrors of puberty and teenage sexual awakening. Carrie’s period and sudden interest in boys threatens a loss of innocence which rubs up against the society around her, in this case embodied by her fanatically conservative religious mother. She feels one thing but is told something else completely which is pretty confusing and scary for a teenager. Unfortunately for those who fuck with her one too many times, that fear turns into utter unadulterated rage that is literally beyond words – her trauma manifests in the only way that it knows to – telekinesis, obviously! Being able to move objects with her mind allows Carrie to communicate non-verbally - she can finally show the world, or at least her school, exactly how she’s feeling: pretty pissed off if you ask me. And rightly so. Well, the dress was dry-clean-only.

Lesson learnt: give her a hot-water bottle and a hug!

Without Lady Snowblood there would be no Kill Bill. It’s no secret - and Tarantino does well to honour the roots. This film follows Yuki who was literally birthed by her mother to avenge the murder of her father and young brother and the rape and indirect imprisonment of her mother by a sociopathic vicious gang. Yuki grows up to be a beautiful avenging Geisha figure armed with a deadly samurai sword that’s kept deliciously concealed within her parasol. With graceful stoicism and little remorse she hunts down every last one of her prey. 

It’s fair to say that, in Yuki’s case, still waters run deep. Her mission on the surface is unequivocally clear, yet the tumultuous currents beneath are far more complex – her conflict between her “duty” and her “desire” is so commonly seen in the atypically male-dominated Japanese period samurai films made world-famous by Akira Kurosawa and subsequently emulated in many male-led Hollywood westerns. I love that Lady Snowblood takes up space in that male cinematic landscape. Yuki is painted onto beautifully poetic visuals - the calmness and traditionality of the delicately falling snow mirrors her traditional Geisha exterior yet it conceals the pain, the brutality and merciless bloodshed underneath. Yuki’s suffering at the hands of her own inner conflict immortalises her in the post-WW2 Japanese psyche – but she must do what she has to do to survive. Worth also noting that this film is fronted by iconic Japanese actress Meiko Kaji, also famed for her Female Prisoner Scorpion prison revenge series, whose death stare can pretty much cut through glass. Underestimate her at your risk.

Lesson learnt: don’t eat red snow.

You wouldn’t have thought that the parable behind all of the brutality in this film is simply “be a little kinder to one another”. But it is. There are two main female characters in this tragic story – Hye-Won is a city girl with no back bone and having lost her job returns to her home set on a remote island near Seoul. There she reunites with a childhood friend, Kim Bok-Nam, who has stayed on the island her whole life and now has a husband and a child. All seems rosy and light at first till we realise that Kim Bok-Nam’s husband and the rest of the islanders (with their small village ethics) treat her like dirt – she is essentially a slave to the land and her husband rapes her repeatedly. Hye-Won sees this all unfolding yet frustratingly never intervenes. The pressure cooker builds till one final devastating event triggers all that anguish in Kim Bok-Nam to manifest into something so malevolent that will have you holding your breath till that very last stand-off.  

The great thing about this film is that, unlike most revenge pictures, it does not glorify or fetishize any act of violence. Kim Bok-Nam does not turn into a blind-raging machine vamp, she doesn’t get “kick-ass”. You’re not invited to whoop and cheer with every kill. Throughout the events, she remains starkly ‘herself’ – hollow and so justifiably drained of humanity that you’re desperately rooting for her to fight back. When it finally comes, the pay-off from her merciless revenge comes not out of satisfaction but out of necessity and practicality. As though you’re taking that first insatiable gulp of air out of the deep dark sea of pain. I don’t question her morality even as the body count so casually piles up. 

Lesson learnt: give a hard working woman a holiday.

Vengeance is a dish best served cold. And in the case of Lady Vengeance it’s also a dish best served by leaving it out to thaw at room temperature overnight, spending YEARS concocting up the perfect recipe, and then inviting all your friends – and then friends of friends – over to help you serve it. Revenge can be a banquet – especially when it has the monumental task of wrapping up the infamous Vengeance Trilogy (preceded by classics Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Oldboy).

We meet Lee Geum-ja as she is just leaving prison – and she is not happy. We later learn that she was framed for the murder of a young boy - and to twist the knife in, her daughter is painfully taken away from her and given up for adoption whilst she is in prison. With that hotbed of pain, you know a bastard out there is going to pay! We flash back to witness the slow disintegration of her humanity whilst in prison – the beautifully orchestrated pseudo-religious motifs show Lee Geum-ja’s Mother Theresa-style selflessness curdling into a cold self-serving hunger for her own brutal justice. Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to seek any sort of redemption in her martyrdom – she’s too far gone and is willing to sacrifice any sort of happiness or future for the opportunity to express her revenge. But when she realises that she cannot carry the burden of her pain on her own she is forced to open up and share her load. And through empathic connections, i.e. with other female inmates who have been wronged by ‘the system’ and fellow parents who have lost their own children – only then is she transformed and “delivered from evil” - and her eternal suffering shall be no more. 

Lesson Learnt: red eye make-up really accentuates a good death stare.

Kill Bill is literally based on the same plot and characters as those in Lady Snowblood yet it managed to hit the spot with the modernity of the times on its release. Say what you will about Tarantino (and questionable affiliations aside) – he has and will always be the film nerd’s film nerd – he knows his film theory onions and you know he’s read Mulvey! The Bride is the eternal figure of a woman with nothing to lose – she’s lost her baby, she’s lost her shot at a “normal life” – all at the hands of Bill who just wouldn’t let her go. Look up the definition of “toxic boyfriend” and you’ve got this explanation down. But Bill made one mistake – he didn’t kill her when he had the chance – and she will make him wish he had.  

In Volume 1 our lead is only known as The Bride – she is nameless because she is evidently devoid of humanity and at the service of her painful duty to the cosmos to exact her bloody revenge. Volume 2 sees her reclaim her name, Beatrix, and after learning that she is a mother, her personal desires rise to the surface. By the end, she is not just fighting to Kill Bill – but also to reclaim her story, her humanity - and her daughter. Which is why both films must be spoken about as two sides to the one feminine energy coin. It says she can be gentle AND barbaric. Honour her duty AND desire. Why must women be forced to choose one over the other when they can have it all these days? Because no matter what she chooses, there will always be the ever omnipotent eye of the patriarchy (or the ‘whatever repressive dick energy you want to call it’) bearing down on them.. in Beatrix’s case, she frees herself when she finally slays her omnipotent oppressor, Bill, and all of his recruited agents. That freedom cannot be bought or earnt fairly in this imperfect world –  so she must take it by force, unapologetically.

Lesson learnt: never mess with a pregnant woman on her wedding day.  

Many would assume from the title that this is just a piece of gratuitous exploitation. A typical rape revenge tale that offers little more than titillation, violence towards women and gore. If I told you that the director had originally wanted to call it 'Day Of The Woman', would you come at it differently? This film does not get the credit that it deserves - for many reasons that are googleable - but one thing that most do agree on is that it is THE quintessential rape revenge piece that kicked off a canon of (far inferior) rape revenge films. Unfortunately for it, it unfairly gets lumped with all the rest of them.

You don’t need to be a Mary Whitehouse-supporting pearl-clutcher to see why this film was originally banned - the first 50 minutes is rotten, plunging you into the depths of depravity as you watch a young woman, Jennifer, be subjected to multiple violent rapes and assaults by 4 men. She could be any one of us. A woman looking for a quiet summer to swim, sunbathe and write her magnum opus - until some bored, entitled and horny pieces of shit decide a different fate for her. It's hard watching. Really hard watching. Unflinching and raw. Which makes it all the more satisfying to watch her exact her vicious revenge – but with thoughtfulness, poise, dignity and not a hair out of place. This film should be up there with Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a horror classic – in a post-Vietnam War era showing man as the ultimate monster. Jennifer, as our final girl, must transform her trauma into premeditated catharsis by whatever means that she can in order to survive. I'm with her the entire way as she reclaims her victimhood – for the good, the bad and the ugly.

Lesson learnt: um, apart from the obvious... never mock a woman's writing.

We've all been partnered at some point in our lives with that douche that we knew we should not have been with. That person that was so wrong for us but we just couldn't quit them, and when our hearts are inevitably broken, it spins us into that devil-may-care "I'll show them!" post break-up kind of revenge. No? Just me then? Legendary DC character Harley Quinn infamously has this very same toxic, one-sided relationship with Joker – and the film picks up after they have just split up. It’s her, herself, her.. I? She's making it on her own now. Sister is doing it for herself. But it turns out that in the time that she was with Joker she has managed to piss off a helluva lot of people - and now without Joker’s protection they all come for their pound of HQ flesh. 

In a delightful piece of scripting, Harley utters the line: "psychologically speaking, vengeance rarely brings the catharsis we hope for" showing that she is self-aware and not to be underestimated. Her post-modern revenge isn’t to “get even” but to “get on with it” – she's moving on from Joker in the best way that she can, by not even thinking about him. This film is about Harley Quinn. Eventually she becomes the mentor that she never knew she could be by saving the kid. And makes the friends that she never knew she could make by uniting with them against a common enemy. Harley manages to narrowly escape the toughest challenges using her uncanny intuition and creativity as she becomes the heroine of her own story in all its playful, spectacular, colourful, and bratty glory!

Lesson learnt: never underestimate a woman on the rebound.

One would be forgiven for asking: how the hell can a woman's corpse enact any sort of revenge? For an entire film her dead body is literally lying on a slab. The simplicity is just sublime. The body of an unidentified woman finds its way to a coroner's office - no one knows who she is or how she’s met her end, but the two male coroners - a father and son team - now have the task of performing the autopsy. Thus ensues a cacophony of strange happenings that'll slowly unravel the chilling and otherworldly story behind this dead woman.

So much can be said of the empty spaces of this film. Being dead, she’s literally silenced and is spoken for – her story is assumed and her beautiful naked lifeless body lays there like a sacrificial offering to the men. But slowly her curse is revealed – from beyond her silence and inanimate body she somehow conjures terrifying illusions to trap then punish those in her path. Sure, the father and son have done nothing wrong – but they represent the generational misogyny who are literally about to defile this young woman’s body by cutting it open. This is the same primordial misogyny that burnt midwives at the stake as witches. The same misogyny that incarcerated “hysterical” women to “insane” asylums. These people will pay for the crimes of their ancestors. The reclamation of her vulnerability is heart-poundingly satisfying when you realise her power lies in a spiritual realm beyond the physical reach of people who put her there. Her revenge is literally served dead cold – but you know she’s only getting warmed up.

Lesson learnt: witches are your friends.