With the release of Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis became an instant horror icon, but 1980 was the year she became a bona fide scream queen. That 12-month span saw the release of The Fog, Prom Night, and Terror Train, firmly establishing Curtis as THE horror actress of the time.
And she capped off that year with her first appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Airing on December 13th, 1980, the Season 6 episode kicked off with a segment that saw Jamie Lee Curtis treat the Saturday Night Live audience to her money-making scream, which we’ve embedded for your viewing pleasure below. For her monologue, Curtis rocked an outfit that can best be described as “sexy Michael Myers,” and tribute was paid to her most iconic role with a series of bumper photographs throughout the episode that reunited Michael Myers and Laurie Strode; one of those photos (seen above) put the two in bed together, and we must remind that this was a year before Halloween 2 informed us that they were actually brother and sister!
One of the most notable skits in Jamie Lee Curtis’ Saturday Night Live hosting debut was a horror movie spoof titled “Attack of the Terrible Snapping Creatures,” wherein Curtis played a young woman whose apartment is besieged by evil clothespins. In another skit, she played a poet who could only get people to read her poems by committing suicide.
Fresh off her role in the comedy Trading Places, Jamie Lee Curtis returned to Saturday Night Live as host of the February 18th, 1984 episode, and she was joined on stage by co-star Eddie Murphy for her opening monologue. Of note during that episode was a skit wherein Curtis essentially played herself: a horror actress who was looking to take her career down a different path. She auditions for a musical, but quickly realizes that it’s a chainsaw-filled horror musical. Her co-star? A knife-wielding dude in a mask.
Check out the ’80 and ’84 monologues below, along with the horror musical sketch!