Meanings
- uncountablebroadcastingA subgenre of horror/thriller that features a formerly-glamorous older actress who plays an insane woman who terrorizes those around her.
This expressive, challenging and ambiguous over-production of the affectively, abundantly feminine is a characteristic of hagsploitation, which overlaps the seemingly barren and excluded with outright excess.
2017, Erin Harrington, Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror, →ISBN2 more examples
All these aforementioned films confirm that the genre still has cinematic potential. Obviously, the emergence of this "new school" of hagsploitation does not collide with the underground popularity of the retro hag movies.
2014, Justyna Stępień, Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture, →ISBN, page 50Crawford’s replacement in Sweet Charlotte was 48-year-old Olivia de Havilland, who had already been terrorised by home invaders in the surprisingly vicious Lady in a Cage (1964), though her career low point was probably being stung to death by killer bees in The Swarm (1978) as disaster movies replaced hagsploitation as the last refuge of the fading Hollywood star.
2018 January 18, Anne Billson, “'Hagsploitation': horror's obsession with older women returns”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 08 Mar 2021Synonyms: Grande Dame Guignol, psycho-biddy
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA subgenre of horror/thriller that features a formerly-glamorous older actress who plays an insane woman who terrorizes those around her.
Origin
Cite this entry
hagsploitation. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hagsploitation
“hagsploitation.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hagsploitation. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hagsploitation,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hagsploitation.
Source: hagsploitation on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.