Photo by Ward Boult

LINNEA QUIGLEY

By Mike Watt

LINNEA QUIGLEY She's been impaled on antlers and improperly assaulted by giant mutant rats; she put a tube of lipstick through her breast while possessed by demons and danced naked on a tombstone before being devoured by zombies. Considered by fans to be one of the original 'Scream Queens' (alongside frequent co-stars Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer), Linnea Quigley is credited with legitimizing the sexy fun horror movies of the mid-80s and early-90s. The sweet and petite blonde lady has been victimized in virtually every way possible, but never really lost her sense of humor about the industry that loves to see her die.

Though the era of the Scream Queen has pretty much ended, Quigley has remained active in the filmmaking community, but devotes more time as a spokesperson and activist for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

I had the good fortune to catch up with Linnea at the Horrorfind Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, this past September. I found her nestled beside Phantasm's Reggie Bannister, across from Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes), cattycorner to Brinke Stevens and Tom Savini. And while the room quickly filled up with those hoping to meet "Ash" himself, Bruce Campbell, Linnea never found herself wanting for a good-sized line of fans waiting to shake hands with the Scream Queen herself.

GC: So, Linnea, what'cha been up to lately?

LINNEA QUIGLEY: I did a film in London in February through March called Kannible. That's going to be really good. I play a Russian woman who is a second-generation Russian, and I am the head of this whole drug and pornography cartel. I have an acquaintance that got released who shouldn't have been released. And, as you can guess, that's not too good. It's very Silence of the Lambs meets Basic Instinct. It was shot on 35mm. Done really, really well. Really good people involved. I got to work with some people that I really like - Irene Daily - the Redemption Girl - best known for Razor Blade Smile.

GC: Did you do a Russian accent for this?

LQ: Yep, accent and all. That was fun. I just picked it up. I'm supposed to be second-generation, so I didn't speak Russian, but I have a hint of an accent.

GC: I was happy to see you had a cameo in one of my new favorite movies: Kolobos.

LQ: Isn't that a great movie? I thought they did a great job. My part got cut a lot. We filmed that in Nebraska. So I flew out there for a couple of days. And then something happened to the film - it got wrecked somehow. And they couldn't get everyone back. It was a huge - everybody in the movie - type thing. Some people were still in Nebraska, some people had moved to L.A. It would have been a complete disaster to reshoot. So they had to come up with something to cover what they had lost.

GC: It was a good, old fashioned creepy movie.

LQ: It was just done well. It was very atmospheric and scary. I haven't found anything like that lately.

GC: What do you think of horror movies now that they're popular again?

LQ: Looking on the shelves, I've noticed that there are a lot of movies out there, but none of them have been very good. I rented a couple recently, and they were terrible. I can't even remember what they were, but they had a couple of big name actors. I don't know what's going on with these movies these days. They're either really horrible, or really great, but there's nothing in between. Nothing that's just fun, you know? A lot of people [in the industry] probably got really psyched when The Blair Witch Project came out. They thought they could make movies just like that. After a while I wanted to kill someone! There were two hundred parodies - after a while it was just 'enough!' And the Blair Witch people had great P.R. behind it. That movie would have come and gone.

GC: What do you think put an end to the 'Scream Queen' era?

LQ: Oh, everything. (laughs) Too many people trying to do it, too many movies out there. It became too much. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many people saying 'Let's shoot this with your video camera, make it just like such-and-such, get it out there, people will buy it!' Everybody had a movie they were going to do. And the movies were usually horrible. People decided they weren't going to watch them any more."

GC: Ex-strippers deciding that if they did one horror movie they were 'Scream Queens' all of a sudden.

LQ: That's still happening, actually - which is why I've avoided the Chiller convention for so long. It got to be a joke. It was very weird. People were getting their wives, girls doing their own videos - it almost became a prostitution ring, women becoming 'Scream Queens'.

GC: Were you proud to be a 'Scream Queen'?

LQ: Oh yeah. At that time, nobody really wanted that label. It was the kiss of death - 'Oh god, you don't want that. It limits you and it's not cool'. Everybody wanted to be known as a serious actress. I remember when Michelle and Brinke and I were doing these things, people would get down on us - 'Oh, you do those types of movies'. We had fun - we became like a little family while doing these crazy movies. It wasn't cool to be a ' Scream Queen' at all. But then I did the People and Premiere Magazines and a lot of national tv shows and all of a sudden it became popular and everyone else wanted to do it too. I think it was suddenly the hip thing to be. I don't think a lot of them had ever watched the movies or got into the genre, it was just 'Hey, that's in, let's do it!' .

GC: Do you see Brinke and Michelle at all?

LQ: Brinke I just saw at Horrorfind - obviously. It's hard at conventions, to really catch up. I moved away from L.A. about a year ago, so I don't see her very much. I know she works and does cons a lot. Michelle has quit the business, so I don't see her at all. I know she's really busy because her daughter just turned into a teenager. I can't believe it! She always put being a mom first.

GC: I talked to Brinke a few months ago, and I saw the same thing on her filmography that I'm seeing on yours: when you first started out, you did "Walk-ons". Now that you're famous and few people can afford you, you do "Cameos".

LQ: (Laughs) That's the fun part. It's fun to have a cameo in a big film.

GC: Oh, I meant to tell you that I'm quite angry with you by the way.

LQ: What did I do now? (laughs)

GC: I sat all the way through Fairy Tales and you don't show up until the end.

LQ: Oh my god! You know, I found my diaries from back then - I burned them. But all through them I'm writing 'I'm going to be a movie star! I'm going to be in this movie Fairy Tales!' And I was so excited. But when I started shooting, they gave me the script, and all of a sudden I'm terrified. I had to be nude, and the script said I had to act like I was having an orgasm. I was like 'Oh my god!' I didn't think I would be able to do this. I was all of 18 or 19. I remember doing push-ups in order to not think about it. Get some energy. It completely embarrassed me. I was so scared it wasn't even funny. I was trying to act cool. But I was just terrified. But in the diaries I acted like it was so important!

GC: Well it was a big deal! It was your first movie.

LQ: All actors are weird, you know that? It's not like most of the parts I've done were, you know, hard. They were fun, though. For the most part. In Creepozoids, after I'd done a bunch of things, I remember laughing - not at her, but Ashlyn Gere was in it and she was new at the whole acting world. She went on to do porn later. She had studied theater and drama, and had a whole breakdown of her character for Creepozoids. Who her mother had been, what she'd done to get to that point in the script. And I was inside laughing at all the work she'd done. I'd met other actresses who'd done the same thing for little tiny roles in movies! I don't get it, really.

GC: Even extras do that - I'm sorry, "background talent".

LQ: I want to do a documentary on extras. They can be so funny. I love to talk to extras. They're so interesting. There are some that's all they want to do. They have no aspirations beyond doing extra work. I was talking to Duane Whittaker, who was in Pulp Fiction. He knows a guy who works as a telemarketer but he's also an extra, and he got a call for Titanic. There's a scene where a bunch of people are in an elevator and he actually got a line. So he was on the set, they didn't use him, they didn't use him, they didn't use him - but he and James Cameron would talk about white water rafting. He was there for months doing nothing and he made thousands of dollars!

GC: What's coming up for you?

LQ: I have a number of different things. A couple of things I can't talk about - the deals aren't done. Things I'm still thinking about. I'll probably have another book out there - try to beat that Bruce [Campbell]! I'll have a big long line too!

GC: Did you talk to him yesterday?

LQ: Yep. Had him sign my book. Bruce Campbell and Clive Barker are two guys who are just so sweet and so nice. Especially to their - I hate to call them 'fans'. That's not the right word. Acolytes, maybe. That's a nice word. I like that better. They're so great, and then you get jerks who demand attention, nasty to the people who come to see them. It's the ones that don't feel very good about themselves who are nasty to the fans to make themselves feel better. But they're few and far between. Most of them are very nice. Stephen King is great! So many others.

GC: You haven't been doing cons much these past few years.

LQ: PETA takes up a lot of my time. This weekend I got no sleep. I rescued all these dogs that they were going to put to sleep. And it's difficult to travel with all these animals, plus get them into good homes. We've gotten pretty good at placing them. I did one in Orlando last August. I've been busy. I moved - so that's a big thing. I went from L.A. to Ft. Lauderdale - traded one coast for the other. I don't like to go to every single con, so I'll do one or two a year. Fangoria just asked me to do one up in New York in January. I'll probably do that one because I like Fangoria. Cons can get so weird. It's depressing in a lot of ways. Sad. There are people who used to be on "Dennis the Menace" - and it's weird to see them. Some of them are reliving it and having a great time. And others are just sitting there looking miserable - they have no line. Whereas at one time they would have had a huge line. But they sit there all alone thinking 'what happened to my life?' At one time they would have had chauffeurs and photographers, now they're sitting looking miserable. And it just made me think, 'I can't go to these anymore'. They're scary and sad.

[Above Linnea's table is a sign that reads: "Sorry, but Linnea cannot allow any photos to be taken of her. Polaroids with Linnea can be purchased."]

GC: Is this because of people selling your pictures on the Internet?

LQ: That's been a huge problem for the last couple of years. We'd send pictures to magazines and we'd never see them - and then later Brinke and I would discover that certain editors were selling them! Now you have eBay. It just infuriates me.

GC: Is that the reason for the 'members only' section of your website?

LQ: That's for people who wonder how I got into everything. There are pictures from my first modeling gig. It's designed to help people who are considering getting into the business. All the different things that went on - with captions for the different pictures. It's really taking a look into my life from when I started, different little stories.

. GC: Most people see 'members only' and think, you know, porn.

LQ: (laughs) I know! A lot of girls have a 'members only' sites for the racier photos' and that type of thing. But I wanted a place where special fans could go and they could see where I was going to be, and actually go through my scrapbook - see the different things that I wouldn't show to the mass public.

For more information, please visit Linnea on the web at http://www.LinneaQuigleyCircle.com.