As part of our celebration of Women’s History Month here at Horror Press, I thought it was high time to celebrate the most important women in slasher history. Both in front of and behind the camera, women have been essential in creating some of the most iconic and well-respected slasher movies, and I shall attempt to highlight 10 (well, 11, but I won’t tell if you won’t) who have had the most impact over the decades.

While there are many, many runners-up on this list, and I’m certain there are just as many that I missed, in general I have focused on women whose work extends across multiple iconic entries in the genre, rather than more obscure titles or a single slasher work. Thus, we won’t be seeing directors like Home Sweet Home’s Nettie Peña and Rocktober Blood’s Beverly Sebastian, editors like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Sallye Richardson, and so on. That would be its own separate list, which I would absolutely also like to compile someday. But one thing at a time.

Ranking this list would be both impossible and disrespectful, so I’m presenting each entry in loose chronological order, based on when their contributions to the development and continuation of the genre were most prominent.

10 of the Most Important Women in Slasher History

Stage and Screen, Personalities, pic: circa 1961, American film actress Janet Leigh in a scene from the film “Psycho” from Alfred Hitchcock (Photo by Haynes Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images)

#1 Janet Leigh (Actor)

Besides a cameo in Halloween H20, Janet Leigh never made another proper slasher after starring in 1960’s Psycho. And yet that one appearance gave us so much. Without her agreeing to use her star power to sell the movie, only to have the rug pulled out from under the audience when she is murdered halfway through in one of the most memorably shocking scenes of the century, it is very probable that Psycho would not have been the hit that it was. Sure, Hitchcock’s name would have put butts in seats, but even he knew what he had with Leigh, to the point of employing William Castle-esque gimmickry around hiding that particular surprise.

If Leigh hadn’t had the humility to say yes to being murdered onscreen in what was – at the time – a reasonably grubby little horror picture, this seminal work would have been very different, and the entire slasher genre might have died on the vine as a result.

#2 Edwige Fenech (Actor)

Before the idea of a “scream queen” had really even been floated, Edwige Fenech brought audiences back to the giallo genre time and time again with her roles in titles like Five Dolls for an August Moon, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Bloody Iris, Strip Nude for Your Killer, and Your Vice is a Locked Room, and Only I Have the Key. She played a key part in the Italian genre’s domination throughout the 1970s, leading directly into the North American slasher boom of the 1980s.

#3 Debra Hill (Producer/Writer)

The unsung heroine of the Halloween franchise, Debra Hill co-wrote Halloween and Halloween II with John Carpenter, in addition to producing both films and the unrelated sequel Halloween III: Season of the Witch. In addition to being at the core of one of the most iconic slasher franchises, her work on the 1978 original cemented the rules of the slasher film in a way that early proto-slashers like Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Black Christmas simply didn’t. She helped set the template for nearly every slasher movie to come, particularly every slasher movie worth its salt released between 1979 and 1984, before Nightmare on Elm Street added a new flavor to the mix.

#4 Jamie Lee Curtis (Actor)

Unless you stumbled on this site by accident, you know Jamie Lee Curtis. She cemented the idea of the scream queen and, frankly, in my humble opinion, no actor since her has really been able to carry that torch properly. After leading 1978’s Halloween, she went on to star in a variety of other slashers, helping add powder to the keg right at the beginning of the slasher boom with titles including Prom Night, Terror Train, Halloween II, and the hopelessly underrated Roadgames. Showing the same humility as her mother, who you may remember from three entries above, she has returned to her Halloween role multiple times, resurrecting the iconic franchise no less than twice, in addition to paying homage in other projects such as the Ryan Murphy horror-comedy series titled, what else, Scream Queens.

#5 Annette Benson (Casting Director)

I feel like casting directors get short shrift. Sure, directors and producers frequently have a hand in choosing who stars in what. However, even for roles where that is the case, casting directors are responsible for cutting the wheat from the chaff and putting those people in front of the directors and producers in the first place as well as – frequently – manipulating them into making the right decision and feeling like it was their own idea.

Thus, without the work of the great Annette Benson, whose best-known slasher project is the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, we wouldn’t have Robert England, Heather Langenkamp, or (for better or worse) Johnny Depp. She went on to cast the next four installments in the Elm Street franchise (hello, Patricia Arquette) as well as bringing us Viggo Mortensen in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. And before all that, she cut her teeth as a casting assistant on the early parody National Lampoon’s Class Reunion.

#6 Rachel Talalay (Multi-Hyphenate)

Rachel Talalay is probably best known as the director of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, making her the first woman to helm an installment in a major slasher franchise. And still one of the only women. But she didn’t get that job out of nowhere. She rose through the ranks on previous installments, going from being an assistant production manager on the original Elm Street to production manager on Freddy’s Revenge to line producer on Dream Warriors to producer on Dream Master. After (wisely) skipping out on Dream Child, though she did receive special thanks, Talalay returned with a vengeance to make slasher history.

Her journey also extends into other iconic slashers far from Freddy’s reach. Her slow rise above the line included eclectic stints as a production accountant on New Line’s pre-Elm Street slasher Alone in the Dark, a script supervisor and apprentice editor on The House on Sorority Row, and a first assistant director on Return to Horror High.

#7 Fern Champion and Pamela Basker (Casting Directors)

This dynamic duo is to Friday the 13th, what Annette Benson is to A Nightmare on Elm Street. In addition to casting slashers including Fade to Black, Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse, and April Fool’s Day, they collaborated on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, A New Beginning, and Jason Lives, bringing us every version of Tommy Jarvis (therefore, Corey Feldman) as well as handing out early roles to Crispin Glover and Tony Goldwyn.

They also handled the L.A. casting for Friday the 13th: The Series, which isn’t really a slasher project, but helped beef up the franchise, which counts! And Pet Sematary, which also isn’t a slasher, but brought Miko Hughes to the horror genre five years before New Nightmare.

#8 Carol J. Clover (Academic)

In her 1987 essay “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” which was later published as part of her 1992 compilation Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover coined the term “final girl,” and discussion of the slasher genre was forever changed. I think it is entirely fair to say that, without her keen analysis of the slasher, a genre which few academics had the gumption to take on at the time, we wouldn’t have had 1996’s Scream and its further dissection of the final girl trope. And without Scream, we wouldn’t have I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Bride of Chucky, the latter-era Chucky franchise in general, and an untold number of post-millennium slasher works.

#9 Marianne Maddalena (Producer)

Wes Craven called this woman his “guardian angel,” what more evidence could you possibly need? Just to be thorough, though, I’ll share a little bit about iconic producer Marianne Maddalena, who founded the company Craven/Maddalena Films with the master of horror. After producing Craven’s unique but ultimately unsuccessful Shocker, she went on to collaborate with him on New Nightmare and the entire Scream franchise, which she continues to steward to this day.

#10 Jennifer Tilly (Actor)

Without Jennifer Tilly, we simply wouldn’t have one of the best late-period slasher franchises in the business. Her character Tiffany Valentine, who was introduced in the fourth Child’s Play installment, Bride of Chucky, is a crackling inferno of charisma without whom the franchise would be hopelessly bereft. She has also been a fierce advocate for Chucky off-camera, unashamedly parading her association with the franchise around in other properties (including new promos for her appearance on Real Housewives). This fierce loyalty to Tiffany is likely the reason that half of the Chucky projects that followed were even allowed to be made in the first place. For that, and for everything, we must thank Jennifer Tilly from the bottom of our hearts.