ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the modes of representation of older women in horror, first situating the cessation of menstruation against the horrific representation of menarche, its onset, for each process both calls attention to yet repudiates the reproductive 'use-value' of the female body. It considers the concept of gynaehorror to signal a sociocultural, discursive construction of female sexuality, subjectivity and reproductive embodiment that marks the female body as always-already monstrous, no matter its age, and that suggests that female embodiment is failure and entrapment. Gynaehorror deals with all aspects of female reproductive horror, from the reproductive and sexual organs, to virginity and first sex, through to pregnancy, birth and motherhood, and finally to menopause and post-menopause. Women occupy a privileged place in horror film. Horror films are outstanding indicators of how competing, complex and shifting discourses of motherhood are expressed and challenged in popular culture. The chapter also presents some of the key concepts of this book.
