ABSTRACT
Most studies of the horror film that have considered questions of gender and spectatorship
have concerned themselves with a theoretical male spectator, usually identifying the
monster’s gaze as male, and the heroine-victim as the subject of that gaze.1 From such a
critical perspective, Linda Williams describes the female spectators gaze at the monster as
representing ‘a surprising (and at times subversive) affinity between monster and woman’ that
acknowledges their ‘similar status within patriarchal structures of seeing’.2 Williams does
not, however, regard this female gaze as a pleasurable one: despite their affinity, female
spectators do not find pleasure in the figure of the monster, and the act of looking is punished.
For Williams, this explains why the female viewer of horror films refuses to look, often
