Selecting the top 3 Scream Queens of Horror-Wood is never going to be an easy task. After all, how do we compare what made a lady scare and panic in the 1930’s to the bloodbaths of modern cinema? So instead the focus must be on the development of the development of the Scream Queen as a part of the history of cinema. Given that with the likes of Get Out, It, and of course the more sinister Gerald’s Game all having featured leading ladies playing the Scream Queen role over the last year, horror movies are certainly back in vogue. So it’s certainly time to pay homage to three of the best ever!
Fay Wray (King Kong, 1933)
Fay was quite possibly the actress who defined the role of female leads in horror movies over the 20th century. She’s best remembered for her iconic role in the original King Kong, when she befriended the misunderstood giant ape, but many forget her career spanned for close to sixty years after that performance. Some roles were certainly better for her than others, but when times went tough she could always pull in a performance as the damsel in distress. They weren’t all monster capers either. She was an expert at switching between sheer panic and a much deeper psychological role. Quite simply, when it comes down to defining how an actress should feature in horror she set the template.
Janet Leigh (Psycho, 1960)
Nearly sixty years later it can be difficult to gather quite how Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ made an enormous impact on how horror movies became mainstream. Despite the very low budget (many suggest it was a vanity product bankrolled by the director himself), nobody could deny that Alfred had an eye for talent. Janet Leigh – an actress previously known for playing much easier roles, was cast as the everyday well-meaning lady who would become the victim. Few movie fans will not have seen the infamous ‘shower scene’, but the real credit has to be reserved for the performance in building up the tension. In such an everyday context, the thrill of Psycho at the time it was released made everyone start looking over their shoulders/locking the bathroom door a little more often. Exactly the result that Hitchcock was hoping for.
Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, 1978)
Curtis made her name thanks to (mostly) avoiding Michael Myer’s carving knife. Even though it was young director John Carpenter’s own little project, it basically set the market for ‘home invasion’ movies. Curtis was absolutely key to this because she could play the role of a casual suburban girl so well. The slowly built up tension would only work with an actress capable of shrugging off the news reports that a murderer had escaped nearby. After all – it’ll never happen to me – right….? May as well settle into some TV and ice cream. Many have tried to imitate her success in getting that performance just right – but few have come close to matching the sheer terror and flair of Jamie in what must be considered a true classic of the genre.
Given that Halloween was released 40 years ago, it may seem unusual to the regular reader to gather that these are the three key actresses who created the Scream Queen role. Sure there’s been countless others who have performed the role since, alongside many great horror movies, but there’s very few who have come close to emulating the above. Perhaps the most notable thing to take away from this selection is that all three were highly accomplished actresses in their own right. Being able to perform the role of Scream Queen without being typecast is quite possibly the key to their art.
