(Credits: Far Out / Cinerama Filmgesellschaft / Exclusivas Floralva Distribución S.A / Tigon Pict…
Mon 25 August 2025 22:30, UK
With the sexual revolution in full swing, cinema became much less sexually restrained in the late 1960s and 1970s, while horror also progressed in tandem to become much more explicit, gory, and socially conscious.
Horror is arguably the greatest genre out there for responding to socially relevant topics, taking the things we fear the most and condensing them into blood-filled metaphors. Thus, with the increase in feminist activism and increasingly liberated attitudes, it wasn’t long before female sexuality became a common theme within the cinematic landscape of rebellious vampires who sucked the blood from those easily bewitched by them and notorious killers with a thirst for revenge.
Historically, the sexually liberated woman has been condemned – especially under religious and patriarchal society – and many of these films depict the fear and fascination wrapped up in the female body, which often seems to pose a threat to the supposedly indomitable power of masculinity. In these films, female sexuality is often a form of rebellion, a transgressive reaction to oppression, whether that be through disregarding tradition in the form of marriage or heteronormativity.
While It’s important to remember that movies featuring female sexuality, nudity, and particularly lesbianism, were even more fetishised in the ‘70s than they are now, I’d argue that the films listed below all depict female sexuality and societal oppression with complexity, subsequently opening up a discussion about the way that women’s bodies are both fetishised and feared.
So, from The Vampire Lovers to Alucarda, here are five great movies from the 1970s about female sexuality.
Five great 1970s horror movies about female sexuality:
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