Greetings Nerds and Geekgirls, it’s time for the official
Halloween countdown to begin.
Last week
we talked about Zombies and this week I want to move in the same general scary
direction but talking about that most delectable of horror movie archetypes:
the
Scream Queen.
Down
through the ages – as long as there have been horror movies, there have been scream
queens.
Usually with one raining supreme
with lesser scream queens – scream princesses? – filling the sidelines (rather
than give examples here, I’ll discuss the biggies in a moment down below).
Early scream queens tended toward damsels in distress types, needing
rescued by the films “knight in shining armor” or even falling under the knife,
not surviving the film.
Later, the
slasher film’s
Final Girl replaced the classic model, more
often saving themselves than waiting for a rescuer – most outlived their
romantic interests.
So here are my
Top Ten Scream Queens (With a Few Honorable
Mentions), presented in chronological order based on years of reign.
Criteria is based as much on importance as anything
else; however, hotness and coolness – which often come hand in hand – are both
factors.
1.
Mary
Philbin (1903-1993)
Reign: Silent Era - Mary
Philbin wasn’t necessarily the first of the
“silent screamers”
, but she is by far the most notable.
Everyone remembers the “red” of the blood in the
Psycho
shower scene, and everyone remembers the “sound” of Mary’s
Phantom of the
Opera scream.
Not her only
foray into horror, she also appeared notably in
The Man Who
Laughs.
2.
Fay Wray (1907-2004)
Reign: 1932-1934 - Also
appearing in
Doctor X,
The Vampire Bat,
Mystery of the Wax Museum, and
The Most Dangerous
Game, Fay Wray is best known as a scream queen due to her high decibel
appearance in
King Kong as the love interest of a giant ape.
3.
Evelyn
Ankers (1918-1985)
Reign: 1941-1945 - The disputed
queen of Universal Horror, Evelyn Ankers starred, usually – but not always – opposite
Lon Chaney, Jr., in classics ranging from the Abbott and Costello comedy
Hold That Ghost to
Captive
Wild Woman to
Mad Ghoul and appeared along with
the
Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster (in
Ghost), Dracula (in
Son), and the
Invisible Man (in
Revenge).
Concurrent to Evelyn (1940-1944)
and also mostly at Universal,
Anne Gwynne (1918-2003) is our
first Honorable Mention.
She appeared
opposite Lugosi and Karloff in
Black Friday, shared screen
time with Evelyn in
Weird Woman, and tangled with Dracula
but neither the Wolf Man nor the title monster in
House of Frankenstein.
4.
Julie Adams
(b. 1926) Reign: 1954 - Though her only significant horror
role was
The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Julie Adams
legacy as a sci-fi/horror icon lasts well into the present and her place as
scream queen is insured by that performance.
Though not groundbreaking – all of our previously mentioned scream
queens played to same “Beauty” to the monster’s “Beast” role – Julie set the
tone for all the other short lived screamers of the 1950s Atomic Age Sci-Fi/Horror
films.
5.
Janet Leigh
(1927-2004) Reign: 1960 - Like Julie Adams before her, Janet
Leigh was a one scream wonder, but oh, what a scream.
The star and heroine of Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho,
Janet -
SPOILER ALERT! - dies a third of the way into the
film in a blood bath (blood shower?) that is one of the first “graphic” scenes
of violence in movies.
SPOILERS
END Janet’s scream is among – if not
the – most famous
screams in motion picture history.
6. Tie:
Barbara Steele (b. 1937) Reign:
1960-1969 and
Ingrid Pitt (1937-2010)
Reign: 1964-1973) – Two British scream queens, one an export more
famous for her Italian and American films, the other the ultimate
Hammer
Girl.
Barbara Steele stole the
crown from Janet Leigh as it was still settling on her head and she and Ingrid
Pitt have overlapping claim to it for most of the high of their careers.
Barbara starred notably in Mario Bava’s
Black
Sunday, Roger Corman’s
The Pit and the Pendulum,
and
Honeymoon with a Stranger, alongside Janet Leigh.
Ingrid appeared in Hammer’s
Vampire
Lovers and
Countess Dracula, Amicus’s
The
House That Dripped Blood and
The Wicker Man.
Honorable Mentions: It’s hard to
narrow a list like this down, and it’s hard to decide who counts.
Linda Blair (b. 1959) for
example was only 14 when she starred in
The Exorcist, the
role that most qualifies her for scream queen status, but that seems too young
to wear the crown.
Marilyn
Burns (b. 1950) seems like the next choice to replace Steele/Pitt,
but like Julie Adams and Janet Leigh, her contribution of only one significant
film
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a drawback – as significant
as the film is, Marilyn role isn’t that significant as a scream queen.
I don’t mean to say Marilyn wasn’t a scream
queen, but she just wasn’t one of the greatest, in my humble opinion.
7.
Jamie Lee
Curtis (b. 1958) Reign: 1978-1984 - If only one
name had been mentioned in this blog, only one scream queen named, this would
be she.
Jamie Lee Curtis: The Scream Queen.
It almost feels cheap to bother naming her
films:
Halloween and
Halloween II,
The Fog, Prom Night, and
Terror
Train.
The 80s were
the age of the scream queen.
Brinke Stevens,
Adrienne Barbeau,
Michelle Bauer,
Julie Strain, picking the
greatest is enough to make someone scream themselves.
But…
8.
Linnea Quigley (b. 1958)
Reign: 1984-? - Linnea Quigley, the ultimate – disputed –
scream queen of the 80s.
Her numerous
films – including
Return of the Living Dead,
Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (best B-Movie
name of all time?), and
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers to name
but a few – are genre classics, she even briefly appears in a Freddy Kruger
movie.
9. Drew
Barrymore (b. 1975) Reign: 1991-1996 - In what I expect
to be the most disputed name on the list, Drew Barrymore’s horror films are
limited but significant.
Her earlier
films included
E.T. (though not horror, a very significant
Sci-Fi film and like other Sci-Fi film before it –
The Day the Earth
Stood Still comes to mind – a major influence on horror movies to
come),
Cat’s Eye, and
Firestarter (both from
works by Stephen King).
She became a
scream queen thanks to film like
Poison Ivy and was
significant enough to be offered the lead role in
Scream
which she passed on choosing instead to be
SPOILER ALERT! the
“First 15” victim
SPOILERS END.
10.
Neve
Campbell (b. 1973) Reign: 1996-c. 2000.
