Editorials
A Queen of Ice and Fire: Celebrating the Many Characters of Lena Headey
For the past eight years, actress Lena Headey has been intertwined with her character on Game of Thrones; the icy and ruthless Cersei Lannister. Easily one of televisions most hated characters of all time, Headey still brought humanity and depth to her character, making her greater than what could’ve easily been a caricature of a villain. A fiercely protective mother and a tragic past made her the most dangerous character in Westeros. Cersei is a wild card in the upcoming final episodes of the popular series, and so is Headey’s bright future after. Her lengthy list of credits has brought a wealth of characters made more unforgettable by her range and versatility. While we wait for the final episodes to arrive, we look back at some Headey’s best roles in genre and genre adjacent film. These characters were improved by her performances, all standouts even if them films themselves weren’t quite as memorable.
Dr. Katheryn Jennings – The Cave
This PG-13 action horror film mirroring Pitch Black followed a group of scientists and spelunkers as they’re trapped in a subterranean system and forced to fight off bizarre creatures isn’t very great. It’s full of fun monsters and entertaining enough for a popcorn flick, but it’s full of eye-rolling moments, too. But it is the film that put Lena Headey on the map, from a horror standpoint. Headey plays Katheryn Jennings, the “Final Girl” so to speak, and the scientist who figures out the cause and workings of the creatures down below. Headey gave it her all, even when the script meant she didn’t have to.
Angelika – The Brothers Grimm
Terry Gilliam’s fairy tale origin story rendered the Grimm brothers as bumbling con-men forced to confront actual creatures due to an ancient curse. Gilliam’s unusual style of not so coherent storytelling made even more complicated by creative differences with the studio, making The Brothers Grimm a tough one to fully embrace. The bright spot, though, is Headey’s performance as Angelika, the savvy huntress who’s the straight man to the comedic brothers. She saves their skin many times over, and her fearlessness is charming.
Queen Gorgo – 300
Hell hath no fury like a Spartan queen scorned. While the bulk of this violent, stylized Zack Snyder actioner centered around the Battle of Thermopylae and the 300 Spartan warriors, lead by King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), that held off thousands of Persians, it was Queen Gorgo’s struggle to rule in her husband’s absence that proved just how much mettle it took to be a Spartan. Headey breathed fire and ferocity into her character, making Gorgo someone you both sympathized with while never, ever wanting to cross her. Gorgo was strong enough to hold court on her own, and slaughter anyone that would dare cross her.
Gina McVey – The Broken
With Us now in theaters, it’s a perfect time to revisit The Broken considering its central theme of doppelgangers. A sort of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, existential style of horror thriller, Headey plays the lead role, Gina McVey. McVey is a radiologist who’s first introduced examining x-rays of a patient with Sinus Inversus, a condition in which someone is born with their organs reversed in mirror to where they should be. Mirrors are integral to this, as McVey soon discovers a woman identical to her, and her life, which sets her down a path of paranoia as she seeks answers. I’m a sucker for these types of horror movies, and Headey deftly holds the weight of the story on her shoulders.
Cindy Smith – Laid to Rest
Headey’s role in this gore driven slasher is small, but it’s a memorable one nonetheless thanks to both her performance and the character’s brutal demise. When her husband, truck driver Tucker Smith, brings home the amnesiac Princess in the middle of the night, Cindy vocally raises understandable concerns. But, like her husband, she’s a decent human being and relents with promises to go to the Sheriff’s office first thing in the morning. Too bad Tucker unwittingly lured the killer home, too. This role may be small, yet Headey proves how versatile she can be in it.
Elizabeth Clemson – Tell Tale
Based very, very loosely on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Tell Tale follows a recipient of a heart transplant whose new heart thumps him on a journey in solving the previous owner’s murder. Headey plays Elizabeth, a physician to the transplant recipient’s ailing daughter and his lover. Headey’s role is mostly relegated to peripheral, doting girlfriend type and yet she imbues the character with layers anyway. The detached doctor type, this character gives hints of cunning beneath a serene façade. Not unlike Cersei Lannister.
Sarah Connor – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Thanks to Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Linda Hamilton left massive shoes to fill as the tough as nails yet vulnerable Sarah Connor. Headey was quite aware of the iconic status of her character, and had an uphill battle in convincing viewers she was worthy of the role. Yet she did, at least for those that watched the series. Headey cut right to the heart of the character, opting to hone in on Sarah’s single motherhood while knowing the future is precarious at best. Her resilient, strong yet sullen performance centered the show in a way she didn’t get nearly enough credit for.
Ma-Ma – Dredd
If ever Dredd were to get a follow up, it’d be difficult to top the film’s central villain Ma-Ma. A scarred drug lord that presides atop a 200-story high rise, Ma-Ma is chillingly calm and aloof despite being surrounded by brutal violence. Then again, she’s often the cause of that violence. The backstory behind her scars sets up all you need to know about this compelling, merciless antagonist. Headey drew inspiration for her performance from punk singer Patti Smith, and a great white shark. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.
Mary Sandin – The Purge
The first entry in this series was a confined home invasion thriller that honed in on the Sandin household during the government-sanctioned Purge. Anchored by patriarch James (Ethan Hawke), creator of a security system company that provides safeguarded homes against unwanted Purgers, the Sandin family devolves into a mess once invaders slip past openings. James soon proves to be responsible for a lot of the family’s problems. Luckily there’s Mary, the level-headed mother/wife who provides balance and diplomacy where her husband couldn’t. She’s also not afraid to break some noses when necessary. It was Headey as Mary that earned back a lot of goodwill toward the Sandin family, and delivered one of the most cathartic moments of the film.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Based on the Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel, which parodies Jane Austen classic Pride and Prejudice, this movie is as intentionally silly as it can be gory. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a character of aristocracy and privilege; she’s the aunt to Mr. Darcy and disapproves of him marrying beneath his station. In this incarnation, de Bourgh also happens to be a celebrated zombie slayer. Headey flexes her deadpan muscle as the pompous and battled-hardened lady that challenges her nephew’s suitors to duels. We knew Headey can play tough, but this role also lets her sense of humor shine through that hard exterior.
I’m relatively new to the Bloody Disgusting family, but I feel the need to admit something that you might find disturbing, distasteful, and downright disappointing. Basically, and with the utmost respect for your feelings, I’m of the opinion that Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead is the best entry in the entire franchise.
To be clear, I like Sam Raimi’s original trilogy well enough, especially 1987’s Evil Dead II, but the zaniness can’t help but neuter the horror for me. They’re fun movies! I’m entertained by them, but I’m just drawn to Alvarez’s meaner, gorier, and more tonally unrelenting take on the same material.
A new Evil Dead film is now in theaters, and just as 2023’s Evil Dead Rise followed this same brutal vibe, Evil Dead Burn is continuing that wet slide into utter carnage.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Evil Dead (2013)
Commentators: Fede Alvarez (director/co-writer), Rodo Sayagues (co-writer), Jane Levy (actor), Lou Taylor Pucci (actor), Jessica Lucas (actor)
1. The family watching in the basement at 3:11 includes producer Rob Tapert’s son and a local actor from New Zealand, the one with the disfigured face, who has survived two separate plane crashes.
2. The decision to flip the opening shot (post title) upside down came in editing as Alvarez recalled being unsettled by a shot from Raimi’s original Evil Dead. “Something that really impressed me about the original was all the camera work, and there’s a moment… where Bruce [Campbell] runs from one side of the room to the other, and the camera looks back and upside down.”
3. It was composer Roque Banos who came up with adding the siren sounds. His inspiration came after living in Los Angeles for a short time and hearing many, many sirens.
4. It was Pucci’s idea for his character, Eric, to have a beard and long hair – partly as a visual nod to the film’s 1970s vibe, and partly because “you never have to do anything” with it.
5. “In any good story you have one of the main characters taking a bad step in the beginning,” says Alvarez as David (Shiloh Fernandez) fails to simply turn around and apologize to his sister Mia (Levy). “He makes another mistake,” adds Levy when he ignores her pleas for help after she’s been assaulted by the tree, but Alvarez says that choice is far more understandable.
6. Pucci is asked if it was his choice to be playing with the deck of cards on the porch swing, but he says it was Alvarez’s suggestion. The director adds that he had just tried impressing Pucci with a card trick – turns out they’re both amateur magicians – and Pucci carried it into the scene. It’s also a nod to the original film.
7. The clock at 14:56 is the actual one from the original film.
8. Most of them agree that the blood would send them packing in real life well before the book would. They’d be curious about the latter.
9. “It smells like burnt hair” was improvised by Pucci.
10. The script called for dead crows in the basement, but Tapert suggested they try something different, so they went with cats. A dead one had been found “in an alley” somewhere, and they took a mold of it to craft additional prosthetic cat corpses.
11. All of the closeups of people touching the book feature Alvarez’s hands.
12. Mia’s front yard vomit consisted of cold soup.
13. Early scenes of a wet and angry Mia were preceded by her doing sprints or jumping jacks offscreen to make her seem more exasperated. She was so amped up while driving the car that Alvarez, who was hidden in the backseat, was scared “while Jane is going crazy.”
14. Levy recalls Alvarez suggesting a similar scene from Wild at Heart as a reference point for her own performance after crashing the car into the pond.
15. They shot the film mostly chronologically, and that left producers a little concerned as they were seeing a lot of character drama. “They didn’t know what we were doing, and they were really anxious to get to the horror.” Those concerns were put to rest when they saw the dailies for the assault and bunkbed scene that follows.
16. It was Tapert who suggested they include the tree vine assault, and Alvarez was happy to see it used as more than just a shocker. “Being raped is her being injected with the devil,” says Levy, and he adds that it moves the story forward rather than just disturb.
17. The shower burn was the first bit of graphic mutilation that the writers conceived when they started working on the script.
18. The attempted escape in the Jeep after Mia is burned originally included a shot of David trying to call for help on his cell phone only to be stymied by a lack of service, but Alvarez took it out. He doesn’t think the audience needed it, and he didn’t want it to knock viewers out of the scene’s intensity.
19. The flooded river at 35:16 “is a real river.” It’s the same one the Jeep passes through at the beginning, and they simply waited for a heavy rain and then filmed the result.
20. Alvarez asked the sound department to come up with a unique sound for the Deadites, and the result was the crackling, “bug in a jar” noise.
21. “This was the hardest thing ever,” says Levy at 37:54 as her character projectile vomits blood onto Olivia’s (Lucas) face. They did four takes of the scene with Lucas having to be completely rinsed off and reset each time.
22. That’s not digital trickery at 39:32 as Olivia’s reflection gives an evil grin. “This was a timing thing because the mirror had to go away from me, and as it went away from me I had to actually do that face.” We see mostly the back and slight side of her outside of the reflection at this point, and the result is a cool little shot.
23. The bathroom encounter between Olivia and Eric originally ended with her hitting her head, but Raimi watched the dailies and asked Alvarez to milk the horror and gore a little bit longer.
24. “So everyone actually kills each other,” says Levy, “Mia never kills anybody in this movie.” Alvarez adds, “That’s the whole beauty of the story; Mia is the only innocent person, she’s a victim all the way.”
25. Alvarez recalls that one of Raimi’s “three rules of horror” is that “the innocent must be punished.” Does that contradict the point immediately above? Maybe, but she went through hell, and at the end of the day, are any of us actually innocent?
26. He acknowledges that the film, like many horror movies, is filled with characters making questionable choices, but he defends most of them as being understandable given the context.
27. “It’s my first sex scene,” says Levy at 1:31:11 as her character licks Natalie’s (Elizabeth Blackmore) leg. “This one was her stunt double’s leg.” She adds that “Kiss me, you dirty cunt!” is the favorite thing she’s ever said.
28. Natalie’s attempt to rinse her hand wound was originally written to include a black worm coming out of the gash, “but we didn’t want to be too supernatural.” Mr. Alvarez, my good man, have you seen your own movie?
29. Alvarez sees the theme of the movie as accepting that sometimes the only way out of a problem is through it – and here that means killing your friends before dismembering or burning their bodies. A good lesson for us all, really.
30. Eric’s laughter at Natalie saying “My face hurts” was real as Pucci found the line – one that Alvarez added on the fly – to be very funny given the situation and the fact that both of her arms are gone.
31. “Those woods were really, really creepy,” says Pucci, and Lucas adds that their New Zealand filming location was near a Maori burial ground.
32. Mia, gasping for her life in the hole with the plastic bag over her head, was apparently Levy’s audition scene.
33. They see Mia’s resurrection – the real Mia coming back to life after her brother’s janky defibrillator attempt – as a reward from beyond for David finally apologizing to her like he should have done from the start. I don’t mind saying that this is an odd take given how clear this film (and franchise as a whole) makes it that there’s absolutely no good supernatural entity looking out for these characters. Characters in these movies are absolutely and utterly fucked, and they should probably just accept that. Alvarez ultimately concedes that you can also just believe that the defibrillator actually worked.
34. For those who missed it, the necklace chain on the ground at 1:16:51 is in the shape of a skull as a nod to the scene in the original film where Ash (Campbell) goes for a necklace and sees a skull.
35. The machete comes through the wall at 1:20:10 and slices Mia’s leg, and they used Natalie’s prosthetic arm for the shot – it’s getting cut at the elbow.
36. They went through various versions of the Abomination Mia (Randal Wilson), including one that was made up of all five of the friends.
37. The original ending saw Mia walking on the road, but they cut it. The image still made it into the one-sheet poster.
38. The end credits feature extremely bloody shots filmed at high speed and meant to reference various beats from the film itself in tighter, close-up detail that viewers might have missed.
Quotes Without Context
“You kind of want to put the rape idea in people’s minds.”
“The car, of course.”
“I would definitely open the book.”
“Swimming through the swamp was fun.”
“Duct tape fixes everything.”
“How come David is such a bad boyfriend?”
“This kiss, I was really suffocating her.”
“I’m such a perv.”
“It’s like Beetlejuice.”
“Fede kept telling me this is my Bruce Willis moment to pump me up.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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