Throughout the month of February, FEARnet will be profiling Women Who Make You Scream in celebration of Women in Horror Month. Read our first interview with writer and WiHM founder Hannah Neurotica, our second interview with Jovanka Vuckovic, our third  interview with filmmakers Jen and Sylvia Soska, our fourth with Viscera Film Festivals’ Shannon Lark, our fifth with blogger Heidi Martinuzzi, and our final interview with Director Elizabeth Fies below.

If Elisabeth Fies could pick one secret society or cult to join, she would pick the Talamasca.

If you are at all familiar with the writer/director (and sometimes actor) of The Commune: A New Cult Classic,  Psychosexual, Pistoleras, the upcoming I Hate LA and and co-producer of BleedFest this will make some sense to you. Anne Rice was her gateway to the wonderful and frightening world of horror and she’s a constant student of the genre. She’s always watching. That means Hollywood and that means genre filmmaking.

Fies doesn’t want horror fans to get too comfortable, and, quite frankly, she isn’t making films for everyone.  She wants to reverse gender roles, upset the genre norms and make movies for people who like to think about what they’re watching.

Her film The Commune garnered a great deal of positive response. Centering around a young woman who spends a nightmarish summer with her hippy dad in a commune, it’s been compared to Robin Hardy’s surrealist, folk-horror classic, The Wicker Man. High praise, which Fies is ecstatic about as Hardy is, admittedly, an inspiration, “We played at the absolutely amazing Bram Stoker Film Festival last fall and won the Best International Picture Award. I was given this gorgeous bronze statue designed by Neal Harvey in front of Robin Hardy, then went and had dinner with Mr. Hardy and was invited to his house to interview him about The Wicker Tree. I thought I was going to faint,” she said.

While The Wicker Man might have influenced certain themes in her film, Fies’ interpretation is quite a bit different.

“With The Commune my entire goal was to make a movie where a horrific rape happened to a girl we empathized with and cared about, so that instead of taking the violence for granted the audience was impinged. 1 in 5 women will be raped in their lifetime, with a startling number of these rapes committed by relatives. Yet you can’t turn on nightly TV without seeing a top-rated procedural show whose bread and butter is making sport of violence against women and desensitizing audiences to the reality of the dangerous world we aren’t taking responsibility for,” she said.

Her other goal with The Commune was to offer fans something she felt was missing in horror, a brain. (And not one that’s meant to be eaten.) Not everyone is going to like it, or understand it, and she’s OK with that because she wants to make a movie that she would love to watch.

“From what schlock-identifiers who've seen The Commune have told me I don't think there is anything for the fan of slashers or schlock to like in The Commune. In fact, one of the only bad reviews we've received was from someone totally peeved because they mysteriously went into it thinking it was a slasher movie set in the ‘70s, and they couldn't let go of their disappointment that instead it was a modern mystery thriller with mythical undertones,” she said. “I definitely intended The Commune as highbrow horror for an underserved population of movie lovers who miss intellectual and challenging films from the ‘70s:  Jodorowski, Russell, Polanski, Cavani, Romero, Roeg, even early Carpenter and DePalma.”

Fies just started principal photography on her short Psychosexual and I had the pleasure of seeing a few minutes of it. As the name suggests, it combines elements of classic thriller motifs -- an unseen heavily breathing killer with a blade, a wet and bloody death scene -- but there’s a twist.

“The short just world premiered in San Diego at Horrible Imaginings, and it got a fantastic response from the crowd. It's a classic shower scene stabbing, with the gender roles reversed and male frontal nudity,” she said. “The audience loved it, and I got many volunteers for more nude male death scenes. We're running an IndieGoGo campaign for fundraising for the movie that includes great perks like dying onscreen or being an associate producer.”

Like a few of the other Women in Horror we’ve chatted with, Fies has a constant collaborator in her sister Brenda. Both have worked as producers on multiple films together and on BleedFest, a monthly (get it?) horror festival that showcases women who write, produce and watch “badass genre movies.” The event came about when the Fies duo took The Commune on the festival circuit and met fellow female filmmakers.

“Until we met these women, we'd also bought the BS we're told about there aren't any women making cool movies, or the ones made aren't as good as the men's. Once we saw the proof that that wasn't true and realized there was systematic discrimination against female filmmakers, we decided to do something proactive and positive and fun instead of sitting around bitching about it,” she said. “The ultimate goal involves Hollywood becoming an equal opportunity employer. We're totally inclusive of male viewers and filmmakers, and are establishing a monthly meet-up for a community of people who want to change how women are perceived and want to make future movies with us.

Fies has two other films in the works. One is a Second Wave Spaghetti Western, called Pistoleras and the other, I Hate LA , is a collaboration between the Sisters Fies and several other female filmmakers, in the vein of Paris, Je T'aime …  A far more disturbing and blood-filled Paris, Je T'aime. Perhaps she should have called it LA, Je Vous Tuer?

Read on to find out what other fiendish things Fies has up her sleeve and why Terminator 2 is just shy of perfection.

FEARnet: Most horror fans have their thing – Giallo, Hack n’ Slash, Satan, Evil Babies, Scarotica … What’s yours?

Elizabeth Fies: Psychosexuals. Can't get enough of them. Sisters, Maniac, Dressed to Kill, Sea of Love, Angel Heart, Peeping Tom, Psycho. So many wonderfully Freudian Psychosexuals. My next favorite is any of the psychic movies. The Fury, Carrie, The Craft, The Wicker Man, Suspiria, Season of the Witch. We need more witches/psychics in our horror.

Whether it’s because of the blood or the boobs, there's a popular notion
that horror movies belong to men. But you and I know more than a few women who embrace them wholeheartedly. What do you think it is about horror that specifically appeals to women?

People like to see stories told about their lives, and horror is the only film genre that has to a hire female protagonist ratio than the usual 1 in 10.

Do you feel like it's necessary to balance the "gore" and the "whore" in your work? If so, how do you go about doing that?

I tell the story as it needs to be told. I've never added a gore or whore element in a calculated way, except in Psychosexual to comment on the accepted sexism of these elements being used against women through our media.

Historically, women have carved out a space for themselves in the genre
through playing the victim.  Have you seen a change in that over the last few years and how do you view your place in the annals of horror?

Oh wow, I totally don't see it that way at all. What about the Final Girl? What about the dozens of female killers we've seen in the last decade? Offhand, I can't think of anyone who's carved out a significant role for themselves playing victims over and over again. If anything, victims are the supporting roles go to the lesser actresses who haven't achieved a higher status in the genre yet.

If you could cast a spell and change one thing about the genre right now,
what would it be?

Female filmmakers would be given equal pay, financing and distribution opportunities for their work.

Who do you see as the up-and-coming woman to watch in the horror?

We are hosting a retrospective of Maude Michaud at our April 3rd BleedFest. I'm also proud to have shown movies by Caroline Du Potet, Amanda Gusack, The Soskas, Barbara Stepansky, Julia Camara, Marichelle Daywalt, Carly Lyn, Lori Bowen and Tyrrell Shaffner.

Laurie Strode, Ellen Ripley, Jennifer Hills, Jennifer Corvino, or Rhoda Penmark?

Laurie Strode.  I was an intern at Debra Hill's office in undergrad. Laurie Strode is everything.

Speaking as a fan, what horror film is a must-see?

May. I adore May. And I make everyone watch the original uncensored The Wicker Man.

What’s the all-time greatest Final Girl moment?Ripley in Aliens. I put it on every time I need to get pumped. My one beef with Terminator 2 is that they didn't let Linda Hamilton kill the T-1000. If that had happened...Terminator 2 would be perfection.

If you are interested in attending BleedFest or getting involved, the next event is on March 6th. According to Fies, it costs only ten bucks to get your picture taken on the red carpet and posted to PRPhotos.com and The Getty, enjoy an open bar, networking with working industry people, and almost five hours of films.  That’s a killer deal.