Every so often I like to review the things in my life and place them into a neat ordered list, a ranking of sorts.  It helps satisfy my hyper anal-retentality.  In the past I’ve done a top five of Giant Robots, Eyepatch Owners (no pirates), and even the coolest Magical Swords.

This time, I’m visiting an area particularly near and dear to my heart: horror movies and their leading ladies.  Perhaps the first horror movies that I can remember seeing were Jaws (1975) and Halloween (1978), both iconic in their respective sub-genres and to cinematic expression as a whole.  Ever since, I’ve loved being scared.  I know, it’s a white people thing.  Couple this with the natural mix of fear with booty-love and you get the holy grail of scary movies.  The Scream Queen.

Let’s set some ground rules.  First, they actress had to play a significant role in one or more horror movies.  The more the better.  Second, the role has to be memorable if not for her acting skills than for her other assets, though to be fair, we’re really focusing on the pitch and volume of her screaming.  The actress also gets credit on the significant or greatness of the movie for which she was apart.

Honorable Mention:

• Susan Backlinie.  Best known for her performance of Chrissie Watkins in Jaws (1975).
• Sarah Michelle Gellar.  The most viable candidate for Scream Queen in the 2000s, she boasted I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), The Grudge (2004), and The Grudge II (2006).  Unfortunately, all of these were forgettable.  And she gets negative points for Buffy.  Sorry, you may be an exact clone of a girl I knew in college, Amanda Vardeman, but SMG does not make the list.
• Linda Blair.  This is a tough one, because in the horror genre she is legendary.  But … she never really played a Scream Queen as much as the penultimate evil monster, i.e. Pazuzu.  A lot of the credit for this has to go to Dick Smith, masterful FX wizard.
• Adrienne Barbeau.  The first lady of low-budget horror.  Any red-blooded boy that watched the Swamp Thing (1982) knows full well how awesome Adrienne is … I have nothing more to say.
• Neve Campbell.  She had a short, but lasting contribution with the revival of the slasher genre with Scream (1996) and its sequels.  Working under Wes Craven is a plus (see below).
• Heather Langenkamp.  Another Wes Craven creation.  She was central to the Nightmare series as Nancy Thompson and appeared in the surprisingly entertaining Shocker (1989) as well.
• Jennifer Grey.  She was never in a horror movie, but she had potential as seen when she nearly kicked off the head of Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986).
• Janet Leigh.  If you do slow frame advance you can see a nipple in the shower scene in Psycho (1960).  I’m not lying.

And now the Top Five.

5. Marilyn Burns

Before I get started – can I point out how gross it is that she has blood in between her front teeth in the picture above?  Even if it is just studio blood it makes me feel like I’m covered in bugs, crawling on my skin, just looking at her.  Get this woman some floss or I may puke.  Sorry, that’s an insight into my own personal problems.  Let’s move on.

Marilyn Burns, no relation to George, did not have a long career, totalling six films.  In fact, most people probably do not even recognize this actress.  I’ll get to her big breakthrough role that earned her the #5 spot on this list in just 1 second.  Before that I want to point out that she also played Linda Kasabian in Helter Skelter (1976).  When you’re playing one of the Manson family that’s got to be the Citizen Kane of psycho mass murderers.

Our good buddy Burns cracks the top five for having the best 5 minute scream sequence in any movie, ever.  In the classic Tobe Hooper piece, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Sally Hardesty is the last of the five friends traveling cross country in their van.  They pick up a crazy hitch hiker (dumb), stop to make out in small groups along an empty highway (dumb), enter an abandoned old house with no power looking for a working phone (dumb), and then get hacked alive by a family of chainsaw wielding crazies (karma).

Sally is the only survivor of the five.  When she is captured, Leatherface and the rest of the Saw family have her over for dinner, where she literally goes berserk in her chair restraints.  Add in some nice shaky-cam work with her torrid screaming and it will forever be emblazoned on your skull.  I can’t imagine that Burns did not have to shotgun a handful of Tylenol after every take.  I get a headache just watching the scene.

She yells so hard that the capillaries in her eyes burst and her sinuses pop a leak.  The culmination of the scene is when Grandpa tries to clock her over the head with a hammer, but he’s too weak to hold the handle and keeps dropping it to the floor.  His dutiful sons keep trying to give him the killing blow.  Finally, covered in blood and delirious from terror she escapes the house and runs to the highway where she is eventually saved by a passerby (at the expense of an unsuspecting trucker).

There is one bright side to this story … her brother, Franklin, perhaps the least sympathy-inducing handicapped person that I’ve ever seen, is carved like a chicken in his wheelchair while the young people scream in chorus and hop on one foot.  Some free advice, the next time your brother is being torn apart by a six foot chainsaw consider two options paramount, 1) try to save your brother or more appropriately 2) run for your life.

Marilyn eventually got away – stark raving mad and giggling in the back of a pick-up truck as Leatherface did the Chainsaw equivalent of the Chicken Dance in the middle of the highway.  Good times.

4. Dee Wallace Stone

Famous for her role in ET (1982), Dee Wallace Stone has built a long lasting career in just her horror credentials.  She’s been in a ridiculous amount of movies and she is still quite active.  You might say that she’s been typecast as a scream queen for her predilection for horror movies, but I prefer to think that she’s being loyal to the genre.

There are two movies that I want to mention specifically out of 85+ movies which put her on this list, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t quickly mention some of her other career highlights: The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Critters (1986), Alligator II: The Mutation (1991), The Frighteners (1996), Abominable (2006), and Halloween (2007).

The first movie is a unique take on the modern werewolf fable in The Howling (1981).  Firstly, let me say that I love, love, love this movie.  Out of horror films, I believe that in particular lycanthrope films are a particular specialty of mine and this one still kicks ass nearly thirty years after its release.

I’ll even take it one step further, werewolf transformations are an art form and I’ll rank this as:

1. American Werewolf in London apartment change
2. The Howling Eddie Quist clinic scene
3. Michael Jackson in Thriller, though this is truly more of a were-panther
4. The surprisingly good Monster Squad phone booth scene
5. Church goes wild in the preacher’s dream in Silver Bullet

I believe this is the first movie that features a wolf transformation, sex scene.  I’m calling Guinness World Records right now.  By the end of the movie our heroine is bitten and turns into a werewolf on national television during her news broadcast.  I have to admit that in the scope of the movie, its very dramatic and scary.  But looking back, they intentionally made Dee look less menacing and more like a Wookie.  See for yourself.

I’m sorry, this werewolf is just too cute to kill.    It’s Chewbacca’s sister for Christ’s sake.  I want to feed her a biscuit and rub her belly.

The other movie truly earned Dee her spot on this list, Cujo (1983).  Remember when Steven King was scary and not campy?  The plot is fairly simple – big dog gets bitten by rabied bat and goes crazy.  It alternates between using its massive bite or its thick bludgeoning head as its weapon of choice.  Dee and wee one are trapped in a car while it attempts to pick the lock by humping the door.  I’d be screaming, too.

3. Barbara Steele

I have to admit that my movie knowledge gets really shaky before 1975.  If you’ve got a black and white movie that you want me to watch it had better have one of the Lon Chaneys or Vincent Price if you expect me to watch.  Or Doris Day, but only because her voice is just fabulous!  Um …

With all of that being said, if I think that Barbara Steele is noteworthy then I think it says even more to her enduring legacy of 1) being smoking hot and 2) being in scary movies, albeit old scary movies.  As was the custom in the old days, she was filming a lot.  In fact, IMDB has her listed in over 113,445 movies.  That’s gotta be some kind of record, excepting of course Kevin Bacon.

Here is an abbreviated list of her highlights:

• Black Sunday (1960)
• Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
• The Spectre (1963)
• Castle of Blood (1964)
• An Angel for Satan (1967)
• Shivers (1975)

There is a misnomer about 1960s and 1970s women.  It’s an idea that they were not as hot as the women of today.  This is partially true as the notions of beauty have changed.  The hottest girls of today are anorexic coke whores, go figure.  I personally prefer the curves of the 1980s.  The 70s was particularly famous for its lack of body trimming.  That’s all we’ll say about that.  But I want it known that Barbara Steele is genuinely hot regardless of her era.  Check out this pick:

Chainmail is the new suede.  There are certainly more racier images on Google if you’re so inclined to look without a Filter, but we’re a PG-13 website folks.  Go find your own porn.

2. Jamie Lee Curtis

Jamie is a perfect combination of super hotness and cinematic brilliance.  It’s really a perfect storm of scream queendom.  Her early days were defined by the masterful touch of John Carpenter with the progenitor of the slasher flick, Halloween (1978) as Laurie Strode.  I have to mention that there was a funeral home in my home town called Strode Funeral Home and in my own little kid logic, I figured that the movie makers were making an intentional reference to the funeral home by naming Jamie Lee as they did.

It was a role that she would reprise three more times. Basically, she’s a relative of mass murderer and Samhain possessed devil child, Michael Myers.  They also live in his old house, which is basically just asking for it. If you’re asking me, the Shape is the best slasher in movies.  His ability to teleport from dark place to dark place and just appear in the background with his washed out William Shatner mask with moussed up hair is truly creepy.  Also, for the record – Michael eventually won.

I’ve hinted at this, but let’s be certain.  Halloween invented the slasher genre.  The best way I can think of describing it is as saying that Halloween is to scary movies what the Laffer Curve has been to Republican economic strategy.  It’s defined the entire genre for decades.  Without Carpenter, Myers, and Laurie Strode, there would be no Freddie, Jason, Maniac Cop, Killer Santa, and Scream.

The other Carpenter film that she takes credit from is The Fog (1980).  For some reason, this movie really resonated with me as a kid.  At the time I watched it, I couldn’t think of a scarier foursome of movies than this one, Jaws, Halloween, and Salem’s Lot.  There’s on real reason for rehashing it because a pointedly bland and shallow remake was issued in the last five years as a frame by frame rip-off with face actors.  This movie was followed in quick succession with Prom Night and Terror Train.  Though the quality of these other films is debatable, she was already established as the Princess of the Horror Genre to the Queen (#1 on this list).

The big drawback with being in some of the most important horror movies in the last 30 years was that she was quickly snatched up by big Hollywood and put in action, drama, and comedy.  So we got to see her bounce around with Eddie, Arnie, MacSmalley Culkin, and even Lynsbian Lohan.  There are good and bad parts to this, of course.  The bad is that we were robbed of our Princess being typecast to a wealth of low budget, but highly awesome scary movies.  The good?  Watch True Lies and get back to me.

One more thing about Jamie Lee Curtis.  She’s actually born from scream queen royalty – Janet Leigh is her moms.  It was her destiny.  Have I mentioned that you can see her nipple in Psycho?  I swear!

1. Fay Wray

Fay Wray.

The name itself harkins back to the Golden Age of Hollywood.  Her film career started in 1923 just seven years after the first ever movie was released.  She was 16 years old.

She is considered the first Scream Queen.  There is a distinct advantage to being first.  It means that everyone that comes after you is basically trying to fill your shoes, redefine your legacy, or invent a new style.  And quite frankly, the blend of hapless female immersed in raw sexual appeal that she perfectly mastered was the perfect formula, one that was mimicked, aped, and ripped-off by every damsel in dire distress since.

Wray forever burst into the conscience of America with her portrayal of Ann Darrow in King Kong (1933).  It’s hard to properly convey the significance of this movie to what we have today.  The easiest way is to say its what Star Wars was to special effects and science fiction, what Jaws was to the summer blockbuster, and what Psycho was for horror and suspense all rolled up into one.  This movie was released four times over a twenty year period with critical success each time.

The premise of the story is well known, so let’s delve a little into the cultural legacy and symbolism in the movie.  King Kong is a lost world epic in which white men discover savages lively in close proximity and in fearful dominion of nature.  By right of assumed cultural superiority and technical advancement, they immediately begin establishing “order” and looking for opportunities for exploitation of the environment.

Historically its called “White Man’s Burden” – the duty of the civilized white society to bring the rest of the world to our same level of presumed advancement and culture.  Rudyard Kipling was a big author in this movement – the Jungle Book takes on a completely new meaning when you look at this way, despite Disney’s cute song and dance routines.  “I wanna be like you, walk like you, talk like you too.  You’ll see its true, an ape like me can learn to be human too.”

The big part of this movie is the obsession of the wild, black ape desperately seeking the beautiful, white, blonde-haired woman.  This theme was common in a lot of early movies, such as the FIRST ever movie, The Birth of a Nation (1918), in which a black rapist is righteously killed by the Ku Klux Klan in the rebuilding South.  There is a scene in the original release that was later edited out in the 1942 release of Kong undressing a scantily clad Ann Darrow.  In addition, Fay Wray wore a blonde wig to hide her naturally dark hair to better create the contrast to Kong.

King Kong is also famous for stop frame animation and other techniques that were either pioneered in the film or used most effectively and set the standard for the next thirty years.  There is no way to tell what the exact gross of the movie has been, but when released it broke all ticket sale records and was highly successful with each release.  It could be argued that the King Kong series of movies when adjusted for inflation is the most successful franchise in movie history with its seven movies.

All of the movie history aside, Fay Wray was the second most famous character to come out of the movie, only beneath the enonymous ape.  And for that reason as well as being the first of the Scream Queens, she makes the top ranking on this.

By the way, have you seen her movie that came out last year?  Me neither, she died in 2004 at the age of 97.  Don’t you feel bad for poking fun at the dead?  Apparently, John McCain was her college sweet heart.

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