Editorials
“I’m the Thing Monsters Have Nightmares About” – Making the Case for Sarah Michelle Gellar as a Horror Icon
Jamie Lee Curtis was not the first horror heroine to make an impact, but she’s largely considered the quintessential scream queen. Following the success of her 1978 debut in John Carpenter’s Halloween, she starred in an unparalleled run of horror cult classics between 1980 and 1981: The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, Road Games, and Halloween II. Not wanting to be typecast, she moved onto other genres (until Michael Myers pulled her back in 1998’s Halloween H20) and found great success, but her horror legacy was sealed.
With the validity of the term “scream queen” up for debate – some actresses embrace it as a badge of honor, while others believe it diminishes the merits of their work – it’s easy to adopt the gender-neutral “horror icon” for Curtis and her ilk. From Fay Wray and Elvira to Barbara Crampton and Danielle Harris, plenty of actresses are just as deserving of the title as Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Tony Todd, et al.
In revisiting the Scream franchise ahead of the new entry, I couldn’t help but notice a worthy contender who is rarely brought up in the horror conversation. Certainly Neve Campbell and even Courteney Cox fit the bill, but Sarah Michelle Gellar deserves recognition as well.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer alone should be enough to cement her horror icon status. For seven seasons between 1997 and 2003, Gellar slayed in her breakthrough role as Buffy Summers, a high school cheerleader who discovers she’s a chosen one gifted with the skills to fight the forces of darkness. As the character puts it, “I’m the thing that monsters have nightmares about.”
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”
Not unlike Curtis’ 1980-81 run, 1997 saw Gellar appear in three iconic horror properties. In addition to Buffy‘s premiere in March, she received second billing in I Know What You Did Last Summer for her role as beauty queen Helen Shivers in October, and she played sorority sister Cici Cooper in the highly-anticipated Scream 2 to cap off the banner year in December.
Perhaps the reluctance to classify Gellar as a horror icon stems from the fact that she was not the final girl in either of those films, as their respective villains added her to their ever-growing body count. But she was more than mere slasher fodder; her chase scene in IKWYDLS was arguably the highlight of the movie, and her demise in Scream 2 echoed Drew Barrymore’s shocking death from its predecessor. Regardless of whether they made it to the end credits, her characters were intelligent, resourceful, and empowering.
After Buffy wrapped, Gellar starred in 2004’s The Grudge, which had the highest grossing opening weekend for a horror remake at the time, and returned (albeit to get unceremoniously dispatched early on) in its 2006 sequel, The Grudge 2. While not strictly horror, she also donned Daphne’s purple dress in 2002’s live-action Scooby-Doo movie and its 2004 followup, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. She went on to star in 2006’s The Return and 2009’s Possession, neither of which were particularly well received but still furthered her genre ties.
‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’
In a 2004 interview promoting The Grudge, Gellar spoke about her connection to horror. “In TV women are the stars, but in films we’re still struggling to play the leads. This particular genre is where women seem to get the best roles and can really shine. And I like films that are challenging – I couldn’t just be the girlfriend or the wife in a film. So I’ll be wherever the good female roles are. I like horror.”
Gellar later voiced herself in the 2011 Call of Duty: Black Ops video game zombie expansion “Call of the Dead” alongside fellow genre veterans Robert Englund, Danny Trejo, Michael Rooker, and George A. Romero. On the subject of voice acting, among her numerous guest spots on Adult Swim’s stop-motion sketch comedy show Robot Chicken were Ellen Ripley from the Alien franchise, Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, Samara from The Ring, and tongue-in-cheek reprisals of her Buffy and Scooby-Doo parts.
More recently, Gellar revisited her horror roots in an Olay commercial that aired during the 2019 Super Bowl in which she’s chased by a masked killer, played by her husband (and IKWYDLS/Scooby-Doo co-star) Freddie Prinze Jr. It’s a fun send-up to her past, but I would love to see Gellar make a cinematic return to the genre that made her a household name.
When reflecting on Buffy‘s legacy with W in 2019, Gellar was hesitant to be labeled as a ’90s icon. “I think that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show is iconic. I can say that,” she explained. “I don’t know where I fall.” Respectfully, I say she falls among the genre royalty that have earned the title of horror icon.
Genre fans rejoiced this week as Peacock finally released a teaser trailer for the upcoming Crystal Lake TV series starring Linda Cardellini as horror’s favorite killer mommy. This sneak peek is actually the first footage of an official Friday the 13th project since the Platinum Dunes remake came out over 17 years ago, so it makes sense that we’re all incredibly hyped for this long-awaited prequel.
While we’ve since received more information about the show -including how all eight episodes will be released at the same time on October 15– fans wasted no time in speculating about the direction they think showrunner Brad Caleb Kane intends to take the franchise next. After all, Kane’s team is free to adapt elements from the entire Friday the 13th franchise, so it seems that anything goes at this point. That being said, I doubt we’ll be seeing young Jason depicted as a fun-sized killer with an affinity for hockey masks, as I’m of the opinion that the show is likely reaching back to the original actress behind Pamela Voorhees herself in order to fill out the prequel’s story.
You see, after sifting through behind-the-scenes interviews and plenty of special features from my own Friday the 13th collection on physical media, I learned that the late, great Betsy Palmer had come up with an elaborate backstory for Ms. Voorhees that was never properly explored in the films. She may have only accepted the iconic role because she needed money for a new car, with Palmer notoriously referring to Victor Miller’s original script as a “piece of shit”, but that didn’t stop her from taking her work seriously – and eventually even warming up to the now-iconic film.
Trained in the Stanislavski Method, an infamous system where actors use the “art of experiencing” to more realistically portray their characters, Palmer decided to build off of Miller’s script and make her own notes in order to characterize Pamela as a more complex and arguably sympathetic figure, even if only a fraction of her contributions would actually make it onscreen.
The only real information she found in the script concerned her character’s prominent class ring, and from there Palmer extrapolated an entire backstory where Pamela had a high school boyfriend during the 1940s that got her pregnant and then skipped town. This led to Pamela being forced to raise her child all on her own during a deeply conservative period in American history – another reason why the character is so bothered by the camp counselors’ promiscuity.
It was Tom Savini who first revealed to Palmer that Jason was going to be depicted as being disabled (an idea that wasn’t in the original screenplay), with this crucial addition making the actress realize that Ms. Voorhees was already overburdened even before the death of her son. The tragedy only pushed her over the edge as she became a puritanical vigilante attempting to shut down Camp Crystal Lake at any cost.
For Palmer, this means that “Camp Blood” never had any curse, as the multiple fires and poisoned water incidents that kept the camp from reopening before the summer of 1979 were merely part of Ms. Voorhees’ years-long vendetta against the property’s owners. Palmer also insisted that the killer in the sequels isn’t the original Jason, as he definitively drowned at the bottom of Crystal Lake. According to her, having Pamela’s child return even as a killer revenant would undo her entire character arc, meaning that the masked murderer who takes over her legacy must be someone or something else entirely!
CRYSTAL LAKE — (Photo by: Matt Infante/PEACOCK)
These ideas match up with most of what we’ve heard about Peacock and A24’s plans for the upcoming series, which is set to follow Linda Cardellini as Pamela after she gives up a career as a singer in order to take care of her disabled son, played by Callum Vinson. That’s why I wouldn’t be surprised if the writing team decided to borrow from the woman behind the machete in order to make the series more authentic to the source material.
Of course, there are rumors floating around that the show could also feature a teenage Jason in some capacity, so we’re still not sure about how exactly Kane and company plan to adapt their project to the franchise’s ever-changing mythology. That’s why I’d like to invite fellow readers to comment below with your own theories about where you think the prequel show is headed!
For now, I think it’s safe to say that Friday the 13th fans are more than ready to binge-watch Pamela’s bloody origin story when it finally drops this October. And who knows? Maybe the show’s success could finally lead to a new mainline film…
CRYSTAL LAKE — Pictured: Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees — (Photo by: Peacock)
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