BLOODY MARY FILM CLUB: Violent Women on Screen

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By Mary Morgan @msmarymorgan 

Give me vengeance and give me death! Give me bloody women! 

You can often find me cheering for blood as credits fade to black and the lights come up, revealing my absolute undying bloodlust. But it’s so much more than just loving my avenging women and their blood-soaked hands. I am, professionally and personally, obsessed with avenging women on screen, what they mean, why we love them, and why the critical establishment has spent decades refusing to take them as seriously as they demand. 

In fact I’m so obsessed with violent women on screen I’ve shaped an entire PhD around it — with the very chill title of “I Want Revenge” — which is all about these bloody women on screen and fantasies of vengeance. 

Bloody Mary Film Club grew directly out of this. Really it’s what happens when the research leaves the library and gets a drink in it. And a little bit of blood on its hands. Okay maybe a lot of blood. 

Bloody Mary Film Club is a curated screening series all about violent women on screen, dedicated to the revenge canon, avenging women, and cult cinema with real teeth. 

Each screening opens with an introduction: part genre history, part cultural theory, part manic love letter to the film. Without spoilers (obviously), the intros map the film’s lineage and provide the audience a lens through which to watch. And heavily encourage the audience to realllllly get into it.

The series has residencies in London at Genesis Cinema, the Vagina Museum, and at Coldharbour Blue. It goes on the road too, including a screening at the Danish Film Institute’s Cinemateket in Copenhagen. 

So far we’ve watched Jennifer’s Body (2009) devour her critics — literally. We’ve cheered along the magnificent body horror rage of Teeth (2007). We’ve burned rubber with Death Proof (2007) and dressed up to kill for Promising Young Woman (2020). 

Coming up: Ginger Snaps (2000) — puberty as werewolf transformation, lycanthropy as feminist awakening — at the Vagina Museum on April 16th. Thelma & Louise (1991) — the original girls’ trip to end all girls’ trips — at Genesis on April 23rd. And a mystery film to be announced at Coldharbour Blue in May. 

Others on the horizon: Carrie (1976), Ms. 45 (1981), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), American Mary (2012) and other essential cult classics across the full sweep of the canon.

Here’s the thing about the avenging woman: she is one of cinema’s most persistent and most misread figures. The rape-revenge protagonist. The monstrous-feminine. The female victim-hero. The woman who snaps. These archetypes run from the earliest exploitation cycles through the video nasty panic and straight into the multiplex, and criticism has fumbled them repeatedly — too quick to moralize, too squeamish to sit with the pleasure, too eager to sanitize what is actually a profound, enduring, and frankly thrilling expression of female rage.

My PhD takes that rage seriously. I’m not going to spoil my thesis, or the films, here. You’ll have to come and hear me talk blood.

And the rooms talk back! The conversations after screenings — about catharsis, about anger, about what it means to cheer for blood and feel no guilt about it — are some of my favorite things that exist. There is something quietly radical about an audience laughing, gasping, and applauding together at a woman who bites back. Something that doesn’t stay in the cinema when the lights come up.

These are films the mainstream long tried to dismiss, misread, or bury. The only thing I want buried are the bodies of my avenging angels’ assailants and enemies. These films deserve your full attention. And these women deserve their blood. 

After all, vengeance is a girl’s best friend. 

UPCOMING SCREENINGS: 

April 16, 7.15 pm: Ginger Snaps (2000) | Vagina Museum, London (TICKETS) 

April 23, 8.45 pm: Thelma & Louise (1991) | Genesis Cinema, London Genesis Cinema: Thelma & Louise (TICKETS) 

MARY MORGAN @msmarymorgan is a writer, artist, and PhD researcher at Birkbeck, funded by the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE). Her PhD, titled “I Want Revenge,” focuses on violent women in film and television and fantasies of vengeance. 

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