Review by Karolina Gruschka
Invasion of the Scream Queens is a feature length documentary about a few actresses from the VHS generation that made a career out of performing in low budget horror films. It features short informal interviews with Michelle Bauer, Martine Beswick, Janus Blythe, Veronica Carothers, Ruth Collins, Monique Gabrielle, Marya Gant, Katina Garner, Liz Kagan, Elizabeth Kaitan, Melissa Moore, Tammara Souza, Deborah Stern, Brinke Stevens and Mary Woronov. The girls talk at the camera individually or in pairs, explaining how they got into B-movies, who they have worked with and how that turned out to be, who they would like to work with and their future career goals, their attitude towards nudity and exploitation as well as share little anecdotes about their on-set experiences. Invasion of the Scream Queens also contains footage from the movies the above mentioned scream queens have played in.
To scream is to give a loud, high noise in response to experiencing the emotion of fear but also in excitement. Just like there is a fine line between the scream of pain and the scream of pleasure, horror filmmakers tend to make use of this relation to further challenge audience responses. Especially horror B-movies are well known for making blood and nudity the center of attention and point of sale. Even the press release for the re-release of Invasion of the Scream Queens plays on the exploitative nature of B-movies by proclaiming that “[a]ll the babes and the blood are on full display…” in the documentary. Women are often stereotyped as sexy, young, but dim-witted damsels in distress that get murdered violently as a result of their wrong decisions; they are simply being dismissed as ‘babes’ or ‘bimbos’. Scream queens are then actresses that perform this role well, memorably and have a frequent appearance in this type of movie.
However, the notion of ‘scream queen’ can also be employed synonymously to ‘the final girl’, a term coined by Carol Clover in the early 1990s, in response to the emergence of the contemporary slasher movie. At first sight being the sole survivor that prevails all acts of violence might seem like a more empowering role for female actresses, but unfortunatelly ‘the final girl’ also carries its fair share of negative connotations. According to Clover , the final girl usually is a virgin with a unisex name, since sexual availability is severely punished within slashers. In her final confrontation with the villain, the use of a phallic shaped weapon (machette, knife) then leads to her femininity being undermined even further. Invasion of the Scream Queens groups together the ‘sexy bimbo’, ‘final girl’ and also the female villain under the term of ‘scream queen’.
Despite its negative stigma, one should not underestimate the performers behind those roles. Yes, the girls in this documentary have a personal background that does not aid in bettering the stereotype: most are former beauty peagants or Playboy/Penthouse models and some of the girls would do whatever it takes to booster their career including nudity and accepting pretty much every film job offered. However, as Lloyd Kaufman puts it, there is more to being a scream queen “…than just crying and having ketchup thrown on you. You not only have to be attractive, but you also have to have a big brain.” Acting is an art of communicating a character’s emotions in a realistic manner and on demand to deceive the spectator into believing it to be true. The emotion of fear, in particular, is deeply intense and uncontrolled in nature and therefore very difficult to conjure up genuinely on the spot. What is more, aura is something that not every performer automatically has, but something that requires a lot of work. One has to agree that the ladies in Invasion of the Scream Queens have a special kind of presence or else they would have not remained in our memories and received the title of scream queen.
I really enjoyed watching this historical gem; the girls are genuine, narcissistic, eccentric, maybe a little mad and sure as hell captivating to watch. There is also a slight tragic element to Invasion of the Scream Queens, as we hear past voices of girls with big dreams and full of ambition to graduate into A-movies; yet, as often is the case with B-movie cast, one becomes easily stuck on this level of film production. But that said, they all are proud of their work, open-minded and seemed to have a lot of fun working on B-movies.
Invasion of the Scream Queens is a relic from an era where film production as well as consumption started to enter our personal sphere. This resulted in our present generation of horror film viewers that perceive themselves “… as fans of the genre, who intrinsically [understand] the textual and extra-textual meanings of the films and their making.” And considering that original and real scream queens are a rare occurrence in times of pastiche, this documentary becomes an interesting document from horror history for fans!
Originally published in 1992 on VHS, Wild Eye are re-releasing this documentary on DVD as a 20th anniversary special edition. The DVD will include special features such as a recent interview with the director Donald Farmer, further interviews from the original production that did not make it into the final cut and an excerpt from the out of print book ‘Invasion of the Scream Queens’ (presented by Linnea Quigley).
Wild Eye release Invasion of the Scream Queens to DVD on 17th June 2014.