It looks like Linnea's appeal to the Cellmates worked, because Trash won the "sexiest zombie in the Return of the Living Dead series" vote by a landslide! Yes, she beat Mindy Clarke as Julie from part 3 by a vote of 14 to 5. Congratulations Trash. Personally, if I were voting I would have had to go with Mindy 'cause I'm into redheads and for the kink factor, but that's neither here nor there. So, as per the rules of the giveaway, all of you who voted for Linnea had your names thrown into the cauldron (actually that's not true, I used random.org), and a name was chosen. The winner of the More Brains documentary and the Lionsgate Zombie 6-pack is...
Mark Schemanske
One of my Atlanta horror homies got this one. He's the one with the balloon and the camera. I'm stoked that he won for two reasons. Number one, he's a cool guy. Number two, I don't have to pay shipping! I can just give it to him next time I see him. Thanks to everyone who entered. If you didn't win this time, never fear, I'll be announcing Son of Celluloid's next horrific giveaway later this week.
Either Christmas is fast approaching, or mankind really
should have been my business, or Tiny Tim REALLY needs that operation, or
something, because The Ghost Of Horror Past has visited me yet again.This time around the spirit has taken the
form of Breaking Glass Pictures.As I
look around, I realize that I have been whisked away to the days of big box
VHS, slasher flicks, and scream queens.Yes folks, we’re headed to the 80’s.Please spirit, show me more…
Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer.What do these three women have in
common?If you said that they all
participated in my What Halloween Means To Me event…well, you’d be wrong.Only Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley did
that, but hey, two out of three ain’t bad.Unfortunately, Michelle Bauer never got back to me.Maybe next year.Anyway, the answer that I was looking for is that these three
women are the lovely subjects of a documentary entitled Screaming in High
Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era.Yes Cellmates, these are the women that defined what it meant to
be a scream queen, and they’re finally being given their proper respect.The flick follows the careers of the
gruesome threesome from their beginnings in the film industry, some by design
and some by accident, through their glory days in the 80’s, through the “scream
queen dark ages” of the late 90’s, and into their resurgence in popularity
today.
If you grew up on 80’s horror cinema, then the three afore
mentioned ladies need no introduction.The flicks they’ve been in read like a “Must See” list from the video
store era. Nightmare Sisters and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball
Bowl-o-rama may be the only two movies to feature all three of them, but Hollywood
Chainsaw Hookers, Silent Night Deadly Night, Haunting Fear, Return of the
Living Dead, Demonwarp, Evil Toons, Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity, Night of
the Demons, and literally hundreds more feature at least one of these
ladies.We’ve seen them die, we’ve seen
them kill, and for many of us growing up in the days of VHS, we became men
watching them undress.
The documentary is very well done.The three actresses are, of course, interviewed extensively.They’re all very candid, not only talking
about their glory days, but also holding nothing back on subjects like the
effects of aging on their careers and those thatthey feel are merely pretenders to the “scream queen” title.Additional interviews with filmmakers like David
DeCoteau and Fred Olen Ray (another What Halloween Means To Me alumni) are very
informative, shedding a lot of light on the way these films were made.There are plenty of clips from the movies
themselves (offering up the prerequisite blood and boobs), as well as some cool
footage of the ladies at conventions, accepting awards, being on the news, and
meeting heads of state.
This isn’t the first time that director Jason Paul Collum
has taken on the subject of women in horror.In 2003 he made another documentary about horror actresses called Something
to Scream About, hosted by Brinke Stevens.While I do like that documentary (aside from one of the worst closing
credits songs in the history of closing credits), this one shows a lot of
growth from him.While STSA
followed the “Brinke introduces a topic, the talking heads sound off on it,
repeat” format, Screaming in High Heels carries a really nice through
line.I don’t know about the current
availability of his earlier documentary, but I have it on one of those cheap
Brentwood 4 movie collections called Skinned Alive.Its “disc-mate” is the infamous, hilarious, and
only-watchable-when-heavily-intoxicated Midnight Skater.You know, I need to review that
sometime.It’s Suburban Sasquatch bad.
Just like Something to Scream About, Screaming in High
Heels is short, running just over an hour.I keep debating with myself over whether or not this constitutes a valid
gripe with the flick.When it was over,
I was left a little unsatisfied just because I wanted more.The problem is, the doc is so well paced and
constructed, and the subject is so thoroughly covered, that I don’t know what
else could have been included that wouldn’t have stuck out as filler.On the one hand, I think it’s the perfect
length to tell this story, but I was disappointed that it was over so
soon.At least there is additional
interview footage included as DVD extras to prolong your pleasure.
Some of my favorite horror discs to be released in the
last few years has come out of this wave of really good horror documentaries
that’s been going on lately.Screaming
in High Heels is a fun trip, albeit a quick one, that definitely deserves a
place in the “nonfiction” section of your genre collection.If you’ve followed Brinke, Linnea, and
Michelle’s careers, or 80’s horror in general, there’s not a lot here that you
don’t already know, but it’s cool to hear the stories first hand.In a world where every chick with one
z-movie and a headshot to her credit thinks she’s a Scream Queen, Screaming
in High Heels reminds us of who really wears the crown.Long live the true Queens.One and a half severed thumbs up.Nathan says check it out.
There’s
only one way we could wrap up Scream Queen Weekend properly, and that’s with
the Scream Queen of all Scream Queens, Linnea Quigley. What can you say about her that hasn’t been
said? I don’t have to go down a list of
her credits. If you read this blog, I’m
pretty certain that you know them already.
She’s been in some of the biggest cult hits of all time, has possibly
the most iconic horror movie nude scene to her credit, and has managed to carve
out a career that has been going strong since the late 70’s. If by some horrible drunken decision,
miracle, or product defect I ever have a daughter, I wanna name her
Linnea. Want proof that she’s a busy
lady? Look at all the stuff she has out
right now and coming up. She’s
interviewed in Celluloid Bloodbath: More Previews From Hell (that came out Oct.
8). A documentary about her, Brinke
Stevens, and Michelle Bauer called Screaming in High Heels just came out. I’ll be reviewing that in early November. Disciples, featuring an all-star cast (Tony
Todd, Angus Scrimm, Bill Mosely, etc) is coming out soon. Couger Cult is currently at Redbox. She’s contributing commentary to re-releases
of some of her classics, she’s got con appearances coming up, and today she’s
here on Son of Celluloid telling us what Halloween means to her. Take it away Linnea…
“Halloween
is a great time for me to do special things.
It went from putting on a plastic mask and running my poor mom door to
door to now just doing spiritual things on that day. It’s not about costumes for me since I’m always in costume,
hahaha. It’s just celebrating the
wonder of life. Blessed Be.”
3 more days ‘til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. 3 more days ‘til Halloween. Silver Shamrock!
This past weekend was an awakening for the Son of Celluloid.Ever since I was just a budding horror geek, a geeklet if you will, I had heard of a magical place where the horror geeks run free among their own kind.A place where the stars we’ve only seen on the bloody screen become real people that exist on the same plane as the fans.A place where everything you could ever want to buy is available.A place where drunken ramblings and impassioned debates about the most obscure b movies are the norm.Basically, there existed a natural habitat for me and the rest of the gorehounds; a place known as a horror convention.I had seen them advertised and seen glimpses of them on the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors video from long ago, but I had never experienced it.This weekend Days of the Dead finally brought a horror con to Atlanta (well, Peachtree City if you want to get technical about it), and let me tell you folks, it was everything I had dreamed it would be.Paradise really does exist.If you’ve never been to one of these, trust me, you have to.
I warn you, some of my recollections are pretty fuzzy, as there was a LOT of drinking going on, and I’m not going to bore you with my entire itinerary, but here are some of the highlights and random cool memories and thoughts…
-On the way to the room from checking in I ran into Amelia Kincaid from Night of the Demons and chatted with her for a few minutes.She was really cool, even though she kinda blew me off for an interview later in the weekend. That's ok, she was busy and I still love me some Angela.
-The weekend really got off to a killer start on Thursday night when First Jason, fronted by Ari Lehman, played at the pre-party.I’ve never seen someone shred like that on a keytar before.Well, it’s not actually a keytar, it’s a keyboard mounted on a giant machete.They played songs like “Jason is Watching”“Living Hell,” “Jason Never Dies,” and ended with a cool Edgar Allan Poe piece.After the show, I ended up out back getting stoned with a boy in a lake and a boy with a doll (I’ll let you figure that one out).Now THAT’S how you kick off a party!
-The weekend was all about networking and I made some great connections.I converted some new Cellmates and discovered that I already have a lot more Cellmates than I would have imagined.The filmmakers in attendance gave me some cool flicks I’ll be reviewing soon.I was also given some great items to give to you, so there will be giveaways galore coming up.I’d like to especially thank Stephen Biro of Unearthed Films.He hooked me up with some awesome DVDs and a copy of his book, Hellucination.It sounds intriguing as hell and it will be SOC’s first book review.Go check out THE UNEARTHED FILMS WEBSITE and peruse all of the cool stuff they have to offer.You won’t be disappointed.
-It seemed that every other time I stepped outside for a smoke, Laurence Harvey from Human Centipede 2 was out there too.He’s a great guy, and absolutely NOTHING like you might expect him to be.Someone else I kept running into out there was Neal and Troy from Without Your Head/In Your Head radio.I’ve been listening to both of those shows for a long time, and it was cool talking to those guys in person.Although, that footage Neal showed me was sorta disturbing…
-When I first got my press pass, the one thing I told everyone is that my main goal of the weekend was to interview Sid Haig.I’ve been going on about that for months.Well folks, I managed to do it.My first huge celebrity interview EVER was Captain Spaulding himself (no offense to anyone I've interviewed before).It was Sunday morning, we were both exhausted, hung over, and barely functioning, the lights kept going out, and people kept bumping into my camera woman, but I got my Sid Haig interview dammit.It’ll be on youtube as soon as I work out a couple of camera issues.
- I also interviewed Laurence Harvey, Mark Patton, Taaffe O’Connell, Nick Principe, and Sean Whalen.Everyone was cool as hell and very down to earth.
- I got my old, beat to hell, been-watched-god-knows-how-many-times VHS copy of Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowlorama signed by Linnea Quigley.She was very sweet.Another dream come true meeting.
- While I never support heckling at comedy shows, especially if you're hammered, Daniel (of EC3 fame) did get Rowdy Roddy Piper to say his classic line "It's always been my ass" from Immortal Combat. Yet another classic moment.
- The panels were great.I enjoyed the Scream Queens panel (What was the question?) and the Sid Haig/Bill Moseley panel (especially Sid’s story about being forced to drink blood laced with hallucinogens in a headhunter village in the Philippines), but my favorite had to be the Men Behind the Mask.These guys were funny as hell.Here’s a video of almost the entire panel.What you won’t see is at the end when I asked Tyler Mane what the craziest thing he saw backstage in WCW was.He sat for a full minute in stunned silence before turning backwards and saying “Tyler Mane isn’t here any more.”It was hilarious.
- At night, the whole thing becomes a killer party.Drunken madness reigns supreme.Imagine the biggest, craziest party you’ve ever gone to.Now imagine that everyone there is a horror freak, half of them in costume.Words can’t do it justice; you just have to be there.
- The Dear God No screening was packed and raucous as expected.
- PJ Soles is a sweet lady, but she kinda looked terrified when Nicole and I charged drunkenly (yeah, that’s an understatement) at her in the hallway screaming “PJ!”
- Um, what were the Trekkie, Stormtrooper, & Darth Vader cosplayers and a Steampunk booth doing at a horror con?Eh, whatever.
- I only had 30 bucks for merchandise, but I managed to get a Hellraiser puzzle cube, a Gold Key Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery comic from 1968, a piece of the chapel from Night of the Living Dead, and a cool Bates Motel keychain.Score!My dream item:an autograph dealer had Vincent Price’s signature for $175.
- Did I mention that the stack of screeners I walked away with is absolutely sick?
-The favored past time of the weekend quickly became trading stories about your encounters with the one and only Gary Busey.That's Daniel with his Buseyness. People asked me about this story a few times at the Splatter Cinema screening of The Beyond last night, so here it is once and for all; my Gary Busey story.On Friday, while my friends were getting their pictures with Sir Psycho of Busey, I pointed to his 8x10s and this exchange took place…
Me: “You ought to have a picture of you and that bad ass truck you drove in Succubus: Hell Bent.”
GB: “ I wasn’t in that picture.”
Me: “Sure you were.Remember, you played the Sentinel and you had that truck with the skulls…
GB:“No.That wasn’t me.”
Me:“I watched it three days ago.”
GD: (Glaring with the Busey death stare) “I’ll take your word for it.”
I decided at that point that I’d leave it alone and walk away.Also, in the dealer’s room we saw a guy selling some really cool knives he had made from railroad spikes.That will be important later.Anyway, I had just gotten my Linnea autograph and was taking it up to the room.When the elevator opened, there stood Gary Busey, holding one of the railroad spike knives. After a moment of debate, I entered the elevator with a knife wielding Gary Busey.I only had two floors to go.He turned his head and looked at me and our eyes locked.Now, I’ve always wondered if the whole “crazy” thing was an act that he played up for TV.I can say with the utmost certainty that it isn’t an act.In that moment when I looked into the eyes of Busey, I saw true madness.That man is off his damn rocker.He stared at me for a long moment, knife still clutched in hand, until the door opened.I, hoping he hadn’t remembered me, said “have a nice night Mr. Busey” and walked away.He just gave the slightest nod and silently watched me exit the elevator.Then the door closed and he was gone.It was by far the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.I had to have momentarily stepped into a movie, or maybe the Twilight Zone, as that was just too perfectly random to have happened in real life.I went back to the room, took a big shot of whiskey, and considered just how close to death I may have just been.
In other words, Days of the Dead Atlanta was the time of my life.Considering this was my first horror con, I really don’t have a frame of reference, but from what the vets I talked to told me, Days of the Dead was one of the best.I enjoyed it more than DragonCon, which is the closest thing I’ve experienced.If you’ve never been to one of these, you absolutely must see it for yourself.If you’ve been doing it for years, then you know what I’m talking about.I’d like to officially thank Adolfo and the rest of the staff for putting on a great show and allowing me to cover it.I’d also like to thank Leah, my personal assistant/camera woman/brain for the weekend.That's her with Sid Haig. Without her following me around with that ever present notebook, my drunken schmoozing would have been lost in the ether and no progress would have been made. I seriously owe you.Well Cellmates, there you have it, the story of when I lost my horror con virginity; which is an apt analogy because I’ll never forget my first time and now I’m obsessed with finding a way to do it as often as possible.Next year it will be March 1-3 at the Downtown Atlanta Sheraton.Trust me, you don’t want to miss it.
Throughout the two challenges, I’ve been trying to choose answers that aren’t the most obvious and overused one. With this one, though, I can’t help it if everyone else picked this one too. It’s the most iconic nude scene in horror history for a reason. Many a horror inclined boy became a man watching Trash dance on that tomb, but I was originally going to pick something else just because this one was used so much. Then I noticed that while I was thinking through my favorite horror nude scenes, one name kept coming up. So I decided to pick that scene from Return of the Living Dead anyway and recognize the undeniable queen of fright flick T&A not just for that scene, but for her whole…um…”body” of work. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the one, the only, Linnea Quigley! I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on her. Monstervision was showing Return of the Living Dead. After a commercial break Joe Bob Briggs was interviewing Miss Quigley, talking about her upcoming nude scene and admonishing the TNT censors for “getting’ rid of the boobage.” When the movie started again, it took me a second to realize that the punk named Trash was the same person as the sweet looking blonde I had just seen interviewed. Then she started the whole “Do you ever fantasize about being killed” speech, started taking off her clothes (again), and danced atop a grave lit by road flares to the strains of “Tonight We Make Love ‘Til We Die.” This was basic cable, though, so what I saw was a vaguely human shaped pixilated blob with a head and legs sticking out. I decided then and there that I wanted to see that scene the way it was meant to be seen. It became one of those early “holy grail” movies for me. When I finally got to rent it, I wasn’t disappointed. Linnea’s beauty, the great lighting, the set, and the soundtrack all contributed to the scene’s well deserved mythic status. Sure, I was a little disappointed when I found out that she was wearing a crotch piece, but that did explain the Barbie doll like “smoothness.” It didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the scene, however.As always, sorry for the censored pic, but i am running a semi-family friendly show here. Then we have 1988’s Night of the Demons, my second favorite nude scene. She plays the best friend of Angela, the goth girl throwing the ill fated Halloween party. After enabling her chum’s stealing of party supplies by distracting the clerks at the store with a little upskirt peek and the following classic exchange…Linnea: Do you guys have sour balls? Clerk: Why sure we do.Linnea: Too bad. I bet you don’t get many blow jobs.…they head to Hull House. By the way, if you’ve never seen Night of the Demons, skip everything between the asterixes so as not to spoil a great scene for you. *** While there, Linnea gets possessed. She rips her top open, which she’s gotten good at doing over the years, and begins to draw on her tatas with lipstick. Then, all of a sudden, she pushes the lipstick through her nipple and into her tit. Poof! Now you see it, now you don’t. Coolest magic trick ever! *** I had never heard anything about the flick when I first saw it, so that scene caught me totally by surprise. It’s quite the effective “oh my god did you just see that” moment. She also appears in the remake with a great cameo that pays tribute to one of her scenes in the original. She’s had many many other memorable nude scenes. She was stabbed in the neck by a possessed shower head in Witchtrap. Who could forget the topless and body painted “virgin dance of the double chainsaws” in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers? She was naked Sleeping Beauty in her first nude scene in Fairy Tales. Topless Linnea gets impaled on antlers by Santa in the most memorable scene from Silent Night Deadly Night. She’s been a naked soul bursting out of Freddy’s chest in not one, but two Nightmare on Elm Street movies. That’s not even half of them. This is the most complete list of Linnea’s nude scenes I could find. Strangers Online (2009) Kannibal (2001) Sex Files: Pleasureville (1999) Death Mask (1998) Jack-O (1995) Pumpkinhead II (1994) Heavy Petting Detective (1993) Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (1991) Freddy's Dead (1991) Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout (1990) Virgin High (1990) Vice Academy 2 (1990) Murder Weapon (1990) Deadly Embrace (1989) Sexbomb (1989) Assault of the Party Nerds (1989) Witchtrap (1989) Night of the Demons (1988) Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) Dr. Alien (1988) A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (1988) Vice Academy (1988) Creepozoids (1987) Nightmare Sisters (1987) Beverly Hills Girls (1986) Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (1986) The Return of the Living Dead (1985) Savage Streets (1984) Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984) Young Warriors (1983) Get Crazy (1983) Cheech and Chong: Still Smokin' (1983) Don't Go Near the Park (1981) Graduation Day (1981) Fairy Tales (1979) Stone Cold Dead (1979) Summer Camp (1979) Psycho from Texas (1975) That’s a hell of a list of credentials. She’s still got it too. Look at that first credit on that list. 2009. That means she did her most recent nude scene at the age of 51. How many actresses do you know of that are still taking it off for the camera in their fifties? Through it all, she managed to be constantly in the buff and often play slutty characters, but never seem like a slut herself. She has an air of class about her, a lot like Brinke Stevens does. These days she is still quite active in movies, but is also a fixture on the horror convention circuit, and is known as one of the most fan accessible of the scream queens. Linnea Quigley, for your outstanding contributions to the horror genre and being a pioneer in the world of on screen nudity, and for embodying everything an old school scream queen ought to be, Son of Celluloid honors you as the first ever recipient of the “Gratuitous Nekkid Scream Queen” Lifetime Achievement Award.
