The title of “scream queen” disappeared right along with grindhouse cinemas, but once upon a time when people thought of Jamie Lee Curtis they didn’t think of hermaphrodites, they thought of beautiful women running the hell away from knife wielding serial killers. Tarantino’s attempt to resurrect the grindhouse may have failed, but USA Today says scream queens are back.
They’ve come up with a list defining the leaders of this generation’s typecast damsel in distress royalty, and leading the pack on their list is Rob Zombie’s wife, 36-year-old Sheri Moon Zombie, a woman who can’t act a lick, but has a pretty great scream. She was last seen in Grindhouse, but you probably remember her best from The Devil’s Rejects where she plays the super-hottie member of the Firefly clan. Also on the list is 23-year-old Jamie Alexander (The Other Side, Rest Stop), 27-year-old Andrea Bogart (Axe, Dark Ride, Dark Wolf), 27-year-old Mercedes McNab (Dark Reel, Medium Raw), 27-year-old Tiffany Shepis (Abominable, Corpses), and 28-year-old Cerina Vincent (Toxic, Seven Mummies).
Now if you read though that entire actress list, you’re probably left with a big “huh?” Except for Sheri Moon, none of them has been in anything that anyone outside of obsessive, cult horror movie fanboys has ever heard of let alone seen. Granted, a lot of the best scream flicks are underground and outside the mainstream. But shouldn’t they have some sort of slight cross over before we start crowning them queens? I mean, making a few local, low budget horror flicks in some guy’s back yard hardly qualifies you as a queen of anything. Have any of these movies even had theatrical releases? Almost none of them. I can’t even get on board with their choice of Sheri Moon, since most of her noteworthy work has been done in movies where she’s the pyscho, not the damsel in distress who ends up with a knife at her neck. She’s the one doing the killing, not the screaming. Doesn’t that make her the queen of mass murderers?
