Mad Women is among the best subgenres of horror. Who doesn’t love a bit of feminine rage cut through the lens of the anti-hero or the straight-up villain? Cinema is littered with mad women getting revenge or sinking into the depths of insanity. It’s a staple. Even more, actors slither into these roles with poison-tipped fangs, and they never get the credit they deserve.
We know Hollywood only loves horror when it’s breaking box office records. But it has never and will never go anywhere, no matter what casual horror fans say. Many of horror’s loudest and scariest performances come from women. After flicking through the genre, here are the 11 Best Mad Women in Horror. Who are your favorites?
Woman – The People Under the Stairs
What better way to kick off this maddening list than with Woman from The People Under the Stairs?! Wendy Robie plays the deranged property owner to perfection. Paired with Man (Everett McGill), Woman digs in her venomous teeth, tightening her grip not only on her young daughter Alice (A.J. Langer) and the many other children living in squalor in the walls, but also the Black tenants living in her apartment buildings. Wes Craven knew how to drive home important social issues with a sledgehammer, and it certainly helps to have someone like Robie eating the scenery.
Mary Esther – Children of Sin
Little-known horror film Children of Sin features a criminally overlooked performance by Jo Ann Robinson, who plays a conversation camp leader named Mary Esther. Writer/director Christopher Wesley Moore pulls from the real-life horror of conversion therapy and gives Robinson room to diabolically play with a truly unhinged performance. While Robinson’s turn is quietly The People Under the Stairs-coded, she brings a delightfully wicked iteration that goes wacky in the third act. Robinson deserves all the flowers.
Lucy Harbin – Strait-Jacket
Joan Crawford is the Grandmother of All Mad Women. She not only delivers in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but her performance in Strait-Jacket is incredibly underrated. It’s absurd, really. Lucy Harbin (Crawford) finds her lover in bed with a mistress and loses her mind, grabbing an axe and chopping them into bits. And that’s just the opening scene. Throughout the film, she explores a woman pushed to the edge and offers a performance that teeters on the line between coping and derangement. Director William Castle knows how to let Crawford have free rein to get the most out of her. It’s a sight to see.
Pearl – Pearl
Mia Goth quickly became a force in horror thanks to Ti West’s X. The throwback slasher set in motion Goth’s superstar career. The prequel, simply titled Pearl after its eponymous anti-hero, kills the old Nature vs. Nurture debate—it’s both. Goth digs her early 1900s boots into the bloody earth as she seeks to destroy everyone around her, trying to keep her from living the most delusional dreams. What’s even worse is watching Pearl’s spirit break off and wither, cementing her despair in the annals of horror history.
Annie Wilkes – Misery
The modern madwoman is gloriously captured with Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Misery. There’s nothing nearly as horrifying as watching an obsessed No. 1 fan take a sledgehammer to her favorite author’s ankles. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. Bates flitters through all the phases of a madwoman, from lonely recluse desperate for affection to a ravaged woman just wanting a little blood on her linen. Director Rob Reiner takes the Stephen King source material and turns in a wild rabbit hole of parasocial relationships and how we, as a society, feed into it every single day.
Cheryl Roberts – Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
Susan Tyrrell plays the disturbing, predatory aunt, Cheryl Roberts, in William Asher’s Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker. When a young boy’s parents die horribly in a car crash, she takes sole custody to raise him. As he grows into his teenage years, Cheryl develops sexual feelings for him and slowly cuts him off from the outside world when he expresses ambitions of going to college. You can see Tyrrell having the time of her life; you love to see it.
Sue Ann Ellington – Ma
It’s honestly heart-warming to see the resurgence of Ma in recent years. Octavia Spence gives one of the most ballsy and peculiar performances of modern horror. Sue Ann is just lonely, but when a group of high schoolers begs her to buy them beer, she takes it to extremes. She stalks them and their families, and she eventually lures one parent, with whom she went to high school, to his death. And it’s glorious.
La Femme – Inside
Wanna feel bad about your life? Well, then, Inside is definitely for you. It arrived during the French Extremist era, and it just might be the granddaddy of them all. A mourning widow and pregnant woman is attacked in her home by someone known only as La Femme (Béatrice Dalle), who’ll go to any lengths necessary to get what she wants. Inside is not only disturbing; it’s gross, chilling, and downright devastating. Dalle gives it her all. Her performance is so gut-punching that you may even be wary of meeting her in real life. It’s that bonkers.
Anna – Possession
Isabelle Adjani remains one of the best physical actors of her generation. In Possession, she plays Anna, a bored housewife who wants more out of her life. While her husband is away, she hooks up with another man and reveals her desire to leave him. Once they do separate, Anna quickly devolves into the textbook madwoman, but Adjani’s performance is so much more than what you might expect. The subway scene is enough to make your blood run cold. She nails the nuances of the role, but she also embodies it down to her soul. Anna’s movements become so erratic that there’s just no turning back.
Winifred Notty – Victorian Psycho
If you look at Maika Monroe’s resume, you’ll notice that she frequently picks oddball roles in which to flex her acting chops. From Villains to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Longlegs, her work certainly speaks for itself. But that was all a primer for what she’s done in Victorian Psycho, the culmination of acting below the surface. She excavates the darkest and most chilling parts of the human subconscious. Monroe colors Winifred Notty with an absurdist view on psychological derangement—to the point where nervous laughter is the only appropriate response to what she does onscreen. [Full Review]
sink. your. teeth.
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