Friday Top Five / Horror Movie Month: Final Girls

Every October, I try to focus entirely on watching only horror movies at home. Obviously, if I go see something in theaters, I can't always stick to this code, but my Netflix queue is currently full of horror movies, some I've seen before and want to re-watch, others via recommendation of my other horror movie loving friends, some I've missed over the years. I figured for my Friday Top Fives this month, I would stick to horror movie related topics. The first is Final Girls. In case you don't know what that is, it's pretty self-explanatory. The final girl is the girl that survives the killer in a horror movie. Sometimes she's a bad ass right from the start (see: You're Next and Alien), and sometimes she starts out terrified and afraid and finds a way to conquer her fears and make it out alive anyway (see: just about every other horror movie). So, here is my list of the best.

05. Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp in A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984)
You may remember Langenkamp as the brainy sister on Just the 10 of Us (and if you remember that TV show, one of my faves growing up, then kudos to you!), but her claim to fame is starring as Nancy, the teen whose dreams become haunted by burn victim / psychopath Freddy Kruger. Along with her boyfriend (a young, sexy Johnny Depp), and friends, Nancy tries to figure out who Freddy is and also tries to stay awake for days at a time. But sleep will always catch up with you and so will Freddy! It's no secret that A Nightmare on Elm Street is not one of my favorite horror movie franchises, but Nancy is a great heroine - she's smart yet vulnerable, strong yet frightened.

04. Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell in Scream, 1996)
Sydney is a new kind of final girl - the kind that is so much smarter than everything around her. She exists in a self-aware universe, one where you have seen all the movies that came before and you know the rules and it's more like a game than anything else. Campbell is fantastic as Sydney in the original Scream, a girl who is looked at as a victim (she's already been through the ringer with her mom's death) but is so much tougher than she lets on. She gets tougher yet in the subsequent sequels, and by Scream 3, she is a bonafide bad-ass.

03. Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1974)
Sally may have had it the worst. Not only does she have to put up with her super annoying brother for the entire trip through the hot Texas sun, but also she has to endure the world's worst dinner party when she is the guest of honor at a dinner held by Leatherface and his family of even crazier psychopaths. But Sally is a survivor as she jumps through a window and runs and runs and runs until she can't run anymore. By the time she escapes in the back of a pick up truck, she may be free but she's also covered in blood and possibly (probably) insane.

02. Lila Crane (Vera Miles in Psycho, 1960)
If Psycho is the original horror movie, then Lila Crane is the original final girl. Vera is the smart as a whip sister to the much more flippant and irresponsible Marion. While Marion doesn't think twice about sleeping with married men and stealing money and running away to stay at the creepiest of all motels, Lila spends the movie searching for her sister and braving the creepy innkeeper and his overbearing "mother" at the Bates Motel. If every horror movie stems from the DNA of Psycho, then every final girl has a little bit of Lila in them.

01. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, 1978)
And then there is THE SCREAM QUEEN. The one and only. The best. Jamie Lee as Laurie in Halloween is the epitome of the final girl. Ignore all the mythology that gets heaped upon this franchise as it grows, in the original Halloween, Laurie was just a pretty, quiet, smart girl who becomes the obsession of a masked and escaped killer. Jamie Lee was a nobody when she starred as the deep voiced girl who would rather spend the night babysitting than getting drunk and having wild sex with some random boy. Jamie Lee's Laurie changed the perception of the Final Girl and became the icon every final girl that followed wanted to be so badly.