ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to consider two films that foreground women as they focus on the peculiar evil of gruesome murders: Repulsion and The Silence of the Lambs. Each film tells the story of a horrific killer—a man in The Silence of the Lambs, and a woman in Repulsion. Repulsion presents itself as a horror story in which a very beautiful and sexy woman, Carol Ledoux becomes a mad slasher and villain who attacks and destroys men. This film presents the condition of horror as one of hopeless disruption and fragmentation rather than resolution; of suffering and reacting rather than acting. In her view, a number of feminist readings might be possible for each film. Feminist film readings interpret how films function as artifacts, and to do this, they must explore diverse aspects of a film as its plot, editing, sound track, point of view, dialogue, character representations, use of rhetoric, and narrative structures.
