A week ago the American Film Institute released a list of the 100 greatest American films as chosen by over 1500 industry professionals. I was curious to see how Horror did in the rankings, but not enough to post the results here. A new development has made me change my mind.

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists compiled their own top 100 list. It’s interesting to see the differences, and similarities, between the two lists, though considering that the AFI took votes from a wide range of people in the film industry, and the AWFJ list is composed entirely of journalists, it’s not exactly a controlled experiment.

I wasn’t expecting any horror to make it to either list, and was pleasantly surprised to see a few entries sneak in. What’s even more surprising is that there doesn’t seem to be any overlap between the two lists in regards to horror.

AFI - Psycho, King Kong, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs.

AWFJ - Alien, Carrie, Rosemary’s Baby.

Kind of puts the lie to the idea that women aren’t really into horror. Gender studies isn’t really my cup of tea, but I wonder if a case can be made for the differences between these two lists and what it means concerning men, women, and their approach to horror. For example, two of the films in the AWFJ list have something to do with body horror, specifically child birth (all three if you want to stretch it), compared to zero in the AFI list.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.