With 27 queens appearing in over 185 different terror films collectively, The Terror Trap gallery of horror heroines is a diverse gathering of the genre's best. Unlike the soft porn/trailer trash/vacuous starlet wannabes that pass for today's horror scream sirens, the following offering represents a formidable spectrum of talent and experience able to convey everything from fear to feisty independence to intimidation to ruthless survival...and everything in between.

Immortalized in the cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, the conventional image of a damsel in distress (a la Fay Wray in 1933's King Kong) had been one in which the woman stood passively by, waiting for her knight in shining armor to save her. But by the 1960s and 1970s, the archetypal notion of a helpless scream queen had been forever squashed.

Most notably, Janet Leigh's performance as the tainted but sympathetic Marion Crane in PSYCHO ushered in the modern horror heroine. Although the character didn't make it through the entire film, she decidedly set the tone for the future. Imperfect, individualistic...real. Henceforth, sisters would be doing it for themselves.

And after all, what would a horror movie be without beautiful women in danger? These are the women for whom we root. Sexy. Vulnerable. Clever. Insidious. Unpredictable. And in the case of most of our picks, they're also a little tougher than your average female. Peruse the roster and see if you don't agree.