20 Scariest Female Horror Villains

Betsey Palmer as Pamela Voorhees (Image via Paramount Pictures)

5. Pamela Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

Pamela Voorhees is another one of those quasi-normal villains, though her circumstances get more and more crazy as the Friday the 13th franchise progresses. In the first Friday the 13th film, though, her role is genuinely surprising and pivotal.

As the backstory goes, fifteen-year-old Pamela becomes pregnant by a man named Elias Voorhees. She gives birth to her son, Jason, who has hydrocephalus. Pamela becomes incredibly protective of him, to the point where she refuses to send him to school or, apparently, to get him any sort of outside support.

Pamela still has to provide for her son, however, so she gets job as cook as Camp Crystal Lake. Jason, who is teased for his deformity, attempts a late-night swim in order to prove that he is good at something. Tragically, he drowns. Pamela blames the camp counselors, who were not watching her disabled son.

Soon enough, Pamela starts to her Jason’s voice, telling her to kill the camp counselors who are supposedly responsible for her death. Instead of getting mental health treatment, she starts murdering. The camp closes after the grisly deaths of the counselors, which remained unsolved for many years. When Camp Crystal Lake re-opens, Pamela is again compelled to start killing camp counselors, though they are not at all connected to her son’s death.

While I’m not trying to excuse the horrifying, grisly deaths that occurred at the hands of Mrs. Voorhees, you can’t help but feel a little bad for her. At the very least, she deserved far more support, from her teenage pregnancy, to her single motherhood, to her disabled son, and her clear struggles with mental health.