ABSTRACT
Woman's birth-giving function has provided the horror film with an important source of many of its most horrific images – its intra-uterine iconography, the parthenogenetic mother, evocations of the uncanny and images of alien births. In other horror films the monstrous womb belongs to woman or female creature who is usually about to give birth to alien being or brood of terrifying creatures. Her womb is depicted as grotesque thus giving concrete expression to its monstrous nature. Some are active (The Brood) in that they control their evil offspring; some are raped by alien (Inseminoid) or even by a computer (Demon Seed) and give birth to non-human offspring; in a recent film (Dead Ringers) the heroine was represented as a freak because she possessed a triple uterus – a medical impossibility. The specific way in which horror film represents the womb as monstrous occurs in films in which women give birth to inhuman offspring as viewers saw in The Brood.
