When you think of horror movie beauty from the 70s and 80s, you might picture screaming cheerleaders in blood-soaked t-shirts with tans, big blow dries and pearly lip gloss. Or there’s the canny Final Girls, whose fresh, minimalist faces always signalled they were likely to outsmart the killer. But there was also another beauty look popular in the slasher genre around this time: the maximalist bombshells with a touch of trash and some murderous intent.

In mainstream movie theatres, it was common to see faceless men slashing and hacking at school girls. But in underground cinema, a genre flourished where the roles were reversed. The heavily made-up scream queens of “exploitation” straight-to-VHS B-movies like Hollywood Chainsaw, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf and Cannibal Hookers were predators rather than prey, and their make-up was a testament to that fact. Full of exaggerated artifice, the bold lips, heavy blush, and graphic liner was often paired with prosthetic teeth, pointed ears, red contact lenses and spatters of blood. The meaning was clear: these women were out for men’s blood – and their hapless, horny victims begged for their lives at their feet.

Historically, visible make-up has been associated with a pronounced sexual appetite and trickery. In Ancient Greece, sex workers were mandated to wear red lipstick, while in King James I’s reign cosmetics were associated with witchcraft. Even today, there’s a snobbery around the artifice of a full face of make-up – take the TikTok trend of “Birthday Make-up”, which featured men mocking their girlfriends for the “full beats” they wear on nights out.

But in the 1980s, as women took charge of their careers and sex lives, beauty went bold. Make-up artists like Phyllis Cohen, who worked with David Bowie, Boy George and Diana Ross, saw make-up as decorative and expressive rather than “pretty”. In the horror genre (dominated by male directors), it’s hard not to see the heavy beauty of these 80s bombshell predators as being reflective of contemporary male anxiety and sexual paranoia – a deep-seated fear of women encroaching into their workspace and directing their own sex lives. Below, we select three of our favourite examples of the era’s iconic B-movies.

HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS (1988)

In this cult B-horror by Fred Olen Ray, private detective Jack Chandler finds himself on the trail of a group of chainsaw-worshipping working girls. The film opens with Lori, played by Dawn Wildsmith, who wears a dramatic lavender smoky eye, peach lips, long fake nails and a peroxide perm. Her dramatic lids and bleached blonde hair clearly reference Candy Darling, muse to Andy Warhol, who was known for her platinum perm and arched brows.

Mercedes, played by Michelle Bauer, sports a softer, less intimidating beauty look, favouring shimmering eyeshadow as silver as her namesake car. She is, as one of her clients says before he’s hacked to pieces, “an expensive ride”. Meanwhile, Samantha (Linnea Quigley) is a teenage runaway who Jack is on the tail of and, in the final scenes, she emerges with a new look, sporting a demonic mask and a twisting snake painted around her body as an allusion to Eve in the Garden of Eden. In this film, there are no damsels in distress – just Eves offering up mayhem.

HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF (1985)

The 1980s were the golden age of ‘practical effects’, and make-up artists worked with silicone moulds, prosthetics and plenty of goo and slime to gross out audiences. In Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, protagonist Ben White (Reb Brown) discovers that his deceased sister, an undercover journalist, has fallen victim to a gang of werewolves while on assignment. A mysterious she-wolf named Mariana (Marsha Hunt) is the first of the polyamorous, Transylvanian BDSM werewolves that we’re introduced to: her heavy kohl eyes and cerulean lips are as regal as Cleopatra but with a seductive edge. Her transformation involves fake fangs protruding over cherry red lips and hairy wolfish paws that end in long scarlet acrylics.

These werewolves don’t quite transform. Instead, they retain their human form while sprouting thick, thatched hair. According to Howling lore, this isn’t intentional; when director Phillippe Mora ordered werewolf suits, he discovered they were second-hand ape suits repurposed from a Planet of the Apes TV series. Instead of suiting up, the actors had wispy body hair applied to them nude. When matriarch Stirba (Stirba Danning) rolls around in erotic ecstasy, her silver acrylic nails, smokey eyes and are-they-or-aren’t-they-fake breasts, contrast with her thick hair and fangs. The effect is as uncanny as Stirba herself.

CANNIBAL HOOKERS (1987)

Werewolves weren’t the only storybook monsters appearing in B-moves. In Cannibal Hookers (1987), two hopeful LA sorority sisters are instructed to pose as sex workers as part of their initiation – and in true 80s B-movie tradition, find themselves recruited into a gang who dabble in cannibalism. The madam of the gristly brothel wears Siouxsie Sioux-inspired black liner while being brought goblets of blood in bed. These clean lines experience a certain amount of wear and tear as she hacks up pieces of man-flesh and chows down on muscle and gristle. At one point, one of the girl’s jock boyfriends picks up a nude mag from the local sex store, saying: “I bet this bitch gives some nasty head”. He’s blissfully unaware of just how nasty head can get.