Scream Queens Part 9: 1980-1989

Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne Barbeau began her career on the Broadway stage in Fiddler on the Roof (1968); prior to that, she had been working in a nightclub as a go-go dancer while auditioning for acting jobs. In 1972, Barbeau was nominated for a Tony award for her performance (Musical) as Rizzo for best supporting actress in the original Broadway production of Grease. By the mid-seventies she was doing mainly TV work in both series and movies. From 1972 to 1978, she was a series regular on Maude. In 1978 she met John Carpenter on the set of Someone’s Watching Me! a made for TV movie with Laura Hutton in the lead role that showcased Carpenter’s talent as a director.

_{Adrienne Barbeau in The Fog (1980)}

Barbeau and Carpenter were married in 1979, and she made her feature film debut in John Carpenter’s, The Fog (1980); Carpenter wrote the part with his wife in mind.Her next film with her husband directing was the classic, Escape From New York (1981). Less a horror film than action adventure, Barbeau fit right into the exceptional cast that includes Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Earnest Borgnine, Tom Atkins, and Isaac Hayes. The film was highly rated by both critics and audiences and Russell’s character, Snake Pissken remains his best known role.

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In 1982 Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing was released, and was seen mainly as a campy version of the DC comic book, but Barbeau & Jourdan manage to lift the film above its director’s somewhat low aspirations. It is a better film than many may recall, and is a good film to revisit.

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In 1981’s Creepshow, George A. Romero presents five tales in a screenplay written by Steven King. How could you go wrong, five stories inspired by E.C. Horror comics of the 1950’s penned by the undisputed master of horror that are both creepy and wickedly funny?

Barbeau has had a long and colorful career and currently has two films in pre & post production: Hellblazers a new horror film with Billy Zane, Bruce Dern, and Tony Todd (Candyman 1982) in post production, and Pitchfork with Tony Todd and Dee Wallace (Cujo 1981) in pre production.

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She has also starred in TV shows with guest spots on Dexter (2009), Gray’s Anatomy (2009), Creepshow (TV series 2019), American Horror Stories (2021), and as a regular in 24 episodes of the astonishingly well written and produced but sadly, short lived, Carnivale (2003-2005). She has had a total of 153 screen credits to date and counting.

Lori Hallier & Cynthia Dale

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Lorie Hallier

Trapper John, M.D., The Dukes of Hazzard, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone to name just a few. Hallier also appeared in a number of TV movies. She has clocked 94 screen credits to date.

Cynthia Dale

Cynthia Dale has had a long career in both film and television as both an actress and producer. After a TV movie appearance at the age of 10 in The Wonder of It All (1971), her next was in My Bloody Valentine in 1981. She also had a part in The Boy in Blue (1986) with Nicolas Cage, Christoper Plummer, and David Naughton (An American Werewolf in London), and Moonstruck (1987), and the successful TV series, Street Legal (1988-94).

Adrienne King

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Adrienne King is best known for Friday the 13th and Friday the 13th 2. Although she has continued working intermittently, she currently has only twenty on screen credits including three that are in pre-or-post production.

Jeannine Taylor

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Jeannine Taylor has only two screen credits, and only one appearance in a horror film: Friday the 13th. The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982), a TV movie,was her other screen credit. Taylor will be forever remembered by fans as the axe victim in the former. She commented on her brief screen career, “But as far as acting in major motion pictures… I didn’t think I was pretty enough. I wasn’t tall and blonde – I didn’t ever think of myself in that way.”

Robbie Morgan

Morgan’s career on the screen was also a short but memorable one that began in 1969 with Me, Natalie with her playing the titular character along side: Patty Duke, Elsa Lanchester, Martin Balsam, Al Pacino, and James Farentino.

Her very next role was in a horror film in which she played a student at a dance studio run by, shall we say, a lunatic? In 1971’s answer to 1961’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters appear in the formulaic horror story What’s the Matter with Helen? A young Morgan does a diminutive version of Mae West in a musical interlude.

_{What’s the Matter with Helen? Poster (1971) / Robbie Morgan in What’s the Matter with Helen? (1971)}

Nine years later she played Annie in Friday the 13th and would only appear in three more projects in the 80’s, two of which were TV movies: Forbidden Love (1982) and I Married a Centerfold (1984). She also appeared in an episode of The Fall Guy “Eight Ball” (1983). Her next appearance was not until 2015 in Dutch Hollow. Most recently, her character in Friday the 13th was the focus of Episode 10 of the TV series, Coroner’s Report “Annie Phillips” (2021)

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Lauri Bartram

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Friday the 13th was Laurie Bartram’s last screen credit in another short lived career. She began with two appearances on the TV series, Emergency! in 1973.

Next, she made an uncredited appearance in The House of Seven Corpses (1974), and from 1978 through 1979 was a regular on 85 episodes of the TV soap opera, Another World.

Felissa Rose

_{Felissa Rose in Sleepaway Camp (1983)}

Sleepaway Camp is a deadpan parody of Friday the 13th as well as an original in its own right with an infamous twist ending. Unlike most of the Friday the 13th Scream Queens, Rose has had a long and eventful film career with too many projects in pre & filming & post production to name, and a total of 148 screen credits as well as 32 producer & 1 writing credit.

Barbara Crampton

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Re-Animator remains the most entertaining as well as successful film version of an H.P. Lovecraft story. Barbara Crampton’s performance gives her a special place in the Scream Queen hall of fame. She also has enjoyed a long career on screen which began with 83 episodes on the daytime soap opera, Days of Our Lives (1983-84). She then did a TV movie and a guest shot on the TV series, Santa Barbara (season 1 episode 16-1984). Before being cast in Re-Animator, Crampton appeared in Brian De Palma’s Body Double (1984) in a supporting role. Re-Animator (1985) was the film that would land her in the horror hall of fame for all eternity!

_{LEFT: Bruce Abbott & Barbara Crampton in Re-Animator (1985) RIGHT: Barbara Crampton & Gary Daniels in Cold Harvest (1999)}

Crampton has continued working in both TV & Films and to date has 69 screen credits including Snow Valley (2021) which is in post production.

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Facts, Rumors & Hearsay

Friday the 13th

Adrienne King was stalked by a fan with an obsession for her, terrified, she requested a much smaller role in Friday the 13th 2. She also refused to do horror conventions for 20 years.

Adrienne King’s scream was so good it clinched her getting the part.

My Bloody Valentine

Lori Hallier on Bloody Valentine: “I was watching it for the first time in 15 years. When I saw myself it was like watching a stranger, but I could finally watch it as a movie and see what made it cult-like.”

Creepshow

In the segment The Crate, the characters Wilma “Billy” Northrup (Adrienne Barbeau) and Professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver) are a tongue in cheek parody of the alcoholic and psychotically dysfunctional Martha and George in the film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Sleepaway Camp

Being only 13 at the time, Felissa Rose was unable to see her own movie in theaters.

Re-Animator

Barbara Crampton does all of her own screaming in the film.

Originally, the film was going to be a faithful adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft novella, Herbert West – Re-Animator, but morphed into a parody of Frankenstein.