50
Great Scream Queens Part 4 of 4: The Queens of Scream
In part one of this series we looked at European Scream Queens of the 70s and 80s. In
part two we looked at those actors who are known for creating memorable
characters. Part three was devoted to those Scream Queens that maybe don’t get
all of the credit they deserve.
This
last installment is a kind of best of the best list. Every genre has them,
those indispensable actors without whom the entire genre would be different.
Imagine Westerns without John Wayne or Clint Eastwood? Imagine martial arts
without Jackie Chan. Imagine science fiction and fantasy from the 80s and 90s without
Schwarzenegger or Tim Burton’s career without Johnny Depp!
Horror
is a much more diverse genre and would survive even without its major players
but the impact would have been felt on the subgenre’s and niches. How would the
vampire genre have evolved without Bela Lugosi? Think about the impact that
Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal had on thrillers. Likewise, the actors below have had
immeasurable impacts on the genre. All
of the women below have devoted major chunks of their careers, in some cases
their entire careers, to horror. For a few of them that started in childhood!
You’ll
notice a disproportionate number of 80s Scream Queens on the list. That’s not
coincidental. Horror experienced a kind of renaissance in the 1980s thanks to
the proliferation of video stores. Genre movies that would have had a hard time
finding theatrical distribution found a new way to reach the public. As a
result, there were a lot of high quality horror movies (and by extension, a lot
of great Scream Queens).
If your
favorite Scream Queen isn’t on this list, there are 35 others on the preceding
volumes of this series. Check those and you may find her there.
The
Queens of Scream
-Brinke Stevens- Brinke’s
career began with a small role sharing the screen with Orson Welles in
Necormancy. Her next horror outing was over a decade later with a small but
memorable role in Slumber Party Massacre. She appeared in the sexy Slave Girls
from Beyond Infinity before starring in a pair of films with Michelle Bauer and
Linnea Quigley, which cemented her legacy as a scream queen.
She has been a favorite of Jim Wynorski and
Fred Olen Ray, appearing in numerous films by each. She has stayed busy and is
still knocking out films, often several per year. Some of her other notable
appearances are in Delta Delta Die and Transylvania Twist.
-Michelle Bauer- Along with
Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley, Michelle was one of the more prominent faces
in 80s and early 90s horror. Her best role, in my opinion, was as the sexy
murderous cult member in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. She shared the screen with
her fellow 80s Scream Queens, Linnea Quigley and Brinke Stevens on multiple
occasions.
She has been a favorite of
director Fred Olen Ray, starring in Dinosaur Island, Beverly Hills Vamp, Evil
Toons and more. Other highlights of her career are Puppet Master 3 and Demonwarp.
-Veronica Cartwright-
Veronica’s horror career began as a child actor in Alfred Hitchcock Presents
and The Twilight Zone and then Hitchcock’s The Birds. She is best known as Lambert, one of the
doomed crew members in Alien and for her role in the 1978 version of Invasion
of the Body Snatchers.
She had a memorable supporting role in The Witches of Eastwick and revisited the body snatching genre with 2007’s The Invasion. She’s had several modern TV horror appearances including Supernatural, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and several episodes of The X-Files.
-Danielle Harris-Danielle
was one of the youngest scream queens ever (though I think Veronica Cartwright
has her beat by a year or two), making her first horror movie at the age of 10.
She starred as Jamie Lloyd , the niece of ,Michael Meyers, in Halloween 4 and
5. She stayed busy starring in mainstream productions over the course of the
next decade before returning to horror in Urban Legend.
For about the next decade
she starred in several forgettable movies all the while making herself a
permanent fixture in the minds of children everywhere as the voice of Debbie
Thornberry in The Wild Thornberrys cartoon series (how’s that for versatile!).
Danielle returned to horror
in a big way in 2007 starring in both of Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies (though
not as her character Jamie Lloyd). Since
then, she seems to have embraced the scream queen mantle and stayed busy making
numerous horror films including Stakeland and playing the protagonist in three
of the four Hatchet films.
-Winona Ryder- Winona is
very familiar to horror fans for her appearances in the dark comedies
Beetlejuice, Heathers and Edward Scissorhands. Even if she had never made
another movie, her character of Lydia Deetz would be a fan favorite forever.
But Winona also has some
impressive roles in actual horror films. She was the protagonist and love
interest in Francis Ford Coppolla’s opulent Dracula and she starred in the turn
of the century thriller, Lost Souls. For the last few years, she has starred as
Joyce Beyrers in Netflix’s excellent horror series, Stranger Things. Though not
one of the more prolific scream queens, she has maintained a loyal and ever
growing fan base for the past 30 years.
-Adrienne Barbeau-
Adrienne’s career has been long and varied but she will always live in the
hearts of genre fans for her 80s work, specifically Creepshow, Escape from New
York, Swamp Thing and John Carpenter’s creepy ghost story, The Fog.
Adrienne’s buxom silhouette
coupled with her own screen assertiveness made her a perfect leading, She
bucked the tendency of genre films to feature 20 somethings, as Adrienne was in
her late 30s when making all of those films. In the modern era she had a
memorable regular role in the unfortunately short lived Carnivàle.
-Lina Romay- One of those
most prolific performers in exploitation cinema, Lina made over a hundred
movies, most of them with her lifelong partner, Jess Franco. Her first
appearance was as the Countess in Female Vampire. She didn’t drain her victim’s
in the traditional way.
The heyday of Lina’s career
was the 1970s and early 80’s when porn and art mingled and there wasn’t much
difference in production values between a Hollywood B movie and an upper tier
porn movie. Most of her roles involved
nudity and often sex.
Some of the highlights of
her career include;Barbed Wire Dolls, Exorcism, The Perverse Countess, the
aforementioned Female Vampire and starring opposite of Dyanne Thorne in Wanda
the Wicked Warden
-Dee Wallace- Her most
famous role is as the mother in Stephen Speilberg’s family film, E.T., but
horror fans know Dee as a pure blood scream queen. She has starred in many
horror films, her most famous being Critters, Cujo and The Howling. She was perfect as the emotionally unhinged
reporter that finds herself in the middle of a werewolf conspiracy. She
continues working steadily and has become a favorite of Rob Zombie, starring in
many of his films.
Barbara Crampton- Barbara took
her place in horror history with her very first horror film, Re-Animator. The
unforgettable scene where she is molested by a decapitated head held by its
headless body is one of the high points of 80s horror.
She quickly followed that film with a kind of
spiritual sequel, From Beyond, where she was also unforgettable. Since then,
Barbara has graced two of the venerable franchises of B-movie cinema, starring
in installments of the Puppet Master and Trancers sagas as well as the much
beloved Castle Freak. Though her most famous work was in the 80s, Barbara has
continued to work and contribute steadily to the horror genre.
Caroline Munro- Caroline is
one the more widely recognized of the Hammer starlets due to her extensive work
outside of the studio. She had roles in both of Vincent Price’s Dr. Phibes
movies. She had two memorable non-horror appearances; the so bad its good Star
Crash and the genuinely excellent Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
Unlike a lot of the other
Hammer starlets, she continued to act in horror films after her stint at
Hammer, most notably the exploitation film Maniac. That movie was a big switch
for her, lacking any of the good natured camp of some of her earlier work. In a move that would have made Steve McQueen
proud, she played a high school student in the 80s slasher , Slaughter High,
even though she was already in her mid-30s (good genes)!
Like a lot of other Hammer starlets she was also a Bond girl, though more prominently featured than most. However, her most beloved work is from her two Hammer appearances. She was ChristopherLee’s first victim in Dracula 1972 A.D. Her role was small but images from the film have filled horror blogs and magazines for decades. She had a much bigger role in the vampire action film, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter.
-Evelyn Ankers- One of the
first women to devote a sizable chunk of her career to horror movies, Evelyn is
one of the first scream queens. She’s
also one of the most prolific in terms of quality films that have remained
relevant, decades after their release.
Her most famous role is
starring opposite of Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolfman. Evelyn starred in several movies with Lon Jr.
over the course of her career including The Frozen Ghost, Weird Woman, Ghost of
Frankenstein and the very gloomy Son of Dracula. Supposedly, despite so much
work together (or perhaps, because of it) Ankers and Chaney Jr. didn’t get
along well. I suppose this either speaks to their professionalism as actors or
maybe they were sublimating that conflict into on screen chemistry.
Besides Lon Chaney Jr. she
also starred in movies with Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Lionel Atwell, Bela
Lugosi and Abbott and Costello. Along
with the aforementioned films, she also appeared in The Mad Ghoul, Captive Wild
Women, Jungle Women, and The Invisible Man’s Revenge.
The concept of “final girl”
didn’t exist in Evelyn’s time. She’s one of the first scream queens to serve as
a leading lady in most of her films. All
of her horror/ mystery work was with Universal and she had as many Universal
screen rolls as her better known male counterparts. So while Bela, Boris and
Lon are the names that come to mind when folks think of Universal Monsters, a
place needs to be reserved for Evelyn Ankers.
-Hazel Court- One of her
first horror roles was a leading part in the wonderfully titled Devil Girls
from Mars, in 1954. A few years later she had the honor of a leading role in
Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein, which was kind of an inaugural film for the
studio’s decade long dominance in horror. She returned to Hammer two years
later for The Man Who Could Cheat Death.
In 1962 she joined Roger
Corman for The Premature Burial. The next year, she joined a who’s who cast of
horror in The Raven. This was all leading to her greatest horror role as
Juliana in The Masque of the Red Death. Juliana was a devotee of Satan who
spends the movie trying to convince Vincent Price to induct her into the deeper
mysteries of the Dark Prince. This was a really dark and gutsy role for 1964.
Like Evelyn Ankers, Hazel
was not background scenery, she was a leading lady. She starred with the
heavyweights of the genre; Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Christopher Lee, Peter
Cushing and Vincent Price. That’s an impressive resume by any standard.
-Linnea Qu giley- Linnea is efinitely the queen of the 80s horror scene. Linnea spent almost a decade
showing up in small parts in various B movies (including a memorable death
scene in Silent Night Deadly Night) before making herself a permanent part of
our collective unconscious with her memorable role as Trash in Return of theLiving Dead (1985).
1988 was her most prolific
year, starring in Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Nightmare Sisters (both of those movies also starred her fellow scream queens Michelle
Bauer and Brinke Stevens), Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, and Night of the Demons.
That film has developed a strong fan following of its own and is mandatory
Halloween viewing.
Other notable 80s
appearances include Creepazoids, Witchtrap and the non-horror spoof series,
Vice Academy. Linnea has had a prolific career, making movies for almost 45
years, but she will always be synonymous with 80s horror.
-Jamie Lee Curtis- Jamie has
a great horror pedigree, springing from the loins of Janet Leigh who gave us
the memorable shower scene in psycho. But Jamie has made her own indelible
mark. She has amassed broad appeal over the years with non-horror movies like
Trading Places, A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies.
But to horror fans she will
always be a Scream Queen. Her greatest contribution to horror has been as
Laurie Strode, the chief adversary of Michael Myers in the Halloween movies.
Not only has she played the part 6 times, she has played it in EVERY decade
since she started: 1978, 1981, 1998, 2002, 2017 and in the upcoming 2021
installment.
In addition to the Halloween franchise she has
had memorable roles in The Fog, Prom Night and Virus. Her career is the gold standard for Scream
Queen longevity.
-Barbara Steele- Barbara
isn’t just the greatest Scream Queen ever; Barbara is one of the pillars that
the horror genre is built on. Though she is British, she is most closely
associated with Italian Gothic cinema. Her break out role was Mario Bava’s 1960
film, Black Sunday (also known as The Mask of Satan). She played two roles
(something she did several more times in her career). She was a vampire/ witch
returned from the grave to seek revenge. The vehicle for that revenge would be
her virtuous descendant (also played by Barbara). This movie created an
explosion in gothic cinema and its impact on horror cannot be overstated. Through
the rest of the 60s, she made many more Gothic horror films playing ghosts, witches
and vampires.
Like, the importance of Black
Sunday, I don’t know if it’s possible to fully describe the impact of Barbara
on horror. She’s not like anyone else on this list. Unlike many Scream Queens
who tend to stick with a particular role (the victim, the final girl, the
temptress etc.), Barbara played everything. Sometimes she was the victim
sometimes the villain. As previously stated, in many of her films she was both,
playing dual roles.
Barbara’s movies were rather
restrained compared to the Italian cinema of the 1970s. Though her beautiful
curves were often covered by period piece dresses, she radiated a sexuality
that could be alternately demur and dangerous. Her eyes, which seem almost like
anime in their size and expressiveness, draw you in, making it impossible to
look away. She had the sophisticated sex appeal of Lugosi, but with the potential
for menace of Christopher Lee.
By the 1970s, the horror
world had changed and she was no longer a gothic leading lady. She would,
however, play a different role with supporting parts in low budget exploitation
films made by a few directors no one had heard of. She starred in Caged Heat,
Shivers, and Piranha which were made by Jonathan Demme, David Cronenberg, and
Joe Dante respectively. By the 1980s she had moved behind the camera (winning
an Emmy) and in the early 90s teamed up with Dan Curtis for a Dark Shadows
revival.
If there were a Mt. Rushmore
of horror, Barbara would be on it alongside the likes of Lugosi, Price and
Cushing. For a more detailed biography and links to reviews of her movies, lookhere.
So that’s it, that’s the end
of my list of 50 Great Scream Queens. Thanks for reading! If you want to check
out the previous volumes, just look here:
50 Great Scream Queens Part 1 of 4: The Euro Queens
50 Great Scream Queens Part 2 of 4: The Character Creators
50 Great Scream Queens Part 3 of 4
