Top 10 Most Terrifying Female Horror Movie Killers

Pregnant women are usually off-limits as victims in horror films. The extreme French horror film Inside embraces that taboo completely, with a baby-snatching villain who doesn't care that the baby is still in the womb. Protagonist Sarah is stalked by the mysterious La Femme, menacingly played by Béatrice Dalle, who will stop at nothing to get her unborn child. Ruthlessly killing anyone in her way, she's a seriously sadistic killer.

Most movie fans instantly recognize slasher legend Jason Voorhees and his hockey mask, but many forget who the killer was in the very first Friday the 13th. As the opening of Scream reminds us, it was Jason's sweet old mother, Mrs. Voorhees, who started the tradition of picking off Camp Crystal Lake counselors one by one. With plenty of gory deaths by arrows, axes and knives, it's clear where Jason learned his creative killing skills.

Few horror killers evoke sympathy, but it's hard not to feel for Carrie in Brian De Palma's classic adaptation of Stephen King's novel. Played with wide-eyed innocence by Sissy Spacek, Carrie is shunned by her classmates for her plain appearance and strict religious upbringing. When she finally snaps, she unleashes her telekinetic powers at the prom, turning the school gym into a torture chamber.

Plenty of horror films show partying teens picked off one by one, but this one adds a new twist. The outsider who suddenly blossomed over the summer, Mandy Lane (a rising Amber Heard), targets the popular crowd that ignored and shunned her for years. The twist is skillfully executed, and like all good slasher killers, she gets away with it.

The premise of Audition could be a lighthearted romantic comedy. Widower Shigeharu is persuaded by his son to hold fake auditions to meet a new wife, and he falls for the beautiful Asami. In the hands of cult director Takashi Miike, this leads to painful scenes involving piano wire and needles. Miike relishes building dread as he reveals Asami's true nature as a sadistic black widow with a taste for slow, methodical torture.

Horror is always scarier when it feels like it could happen on your own doorstep. Cult filmmaker John Waters goes a step further by completely inverting the façade of suburban bliss. In this dark comedy, Kathleen Turner plays housewife Beverly Sutphin, who settles the most trivial disputes with murder. She even kills a juror during her own trial because the poor woman committed the fashion sin of wearing white after Labor Day.

The Child's Play films proved that even an innocent-looking doll can become a terrifying horror icon, and the series got a welcome boost with the introduction of Tiffany. Chucky and Tiffany are the perfect bickering, mismatched couple, and this dark comedy is part strange romance, part killer-doll movie.

This shows how easy it would be for aliens to take over the planet if they looked like Natasha Henstridge. Sil is the result of combining human and alien DNA. After escaping from a government facility, she goes looking for a mate and starts seducing unsuspecting men, leading to some memorable scenes in which she reveals her alien form and impales her victims.

The third installment of the Spanish REC zombie series wisely abandons found footage halfway through, allowing for a wider range of gory kills. When their wedding party is disrupted by demonic zombies, newlyweds Koldo and Clara are separated. But Clara rejects the screaming-woman stereotype: in the film's most memorable scene, she takes on a horde of zombies with a chainsaw, still in her wedding dress, like a bridal Ash from Evil Dead.

Rob Zombie's brand of hillbilly horror always delivers memorable characters committing despicable acts. In The Devil's Rejects, Zombie focuses on the psychopathic Firefly family from House of 1000 Corpses. As the three remaining members flee across the country with the police on their tail, the manic Baby Firefly (Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie) cheerfully leaves a trail of bodies behind.