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Remember When Jamie Lee Curtis Hosted “Saturday Night Live” in the ’80s?!
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!
Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor best known for his role in 1993’s Jurassic Park, has passed away this week at 78 years old. In a statement shared on Neill’s Instagram page this morning, the actor’s family said that his passing was “sudden and unexpected.”
Neill had been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2022, but stated the following year that he was in remission. The family notes that he “remained cancer free” at the time of his passing.
The family statement reads, “It is with immense sadness that the whānau of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July, in Sydney Australia. Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life. The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free.
“They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care. More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”
In addition to his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in the original Jurassic Park and the sequels Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World: Dominion, Sam Neill left an indelible mark on the horror genre with memorable roles in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession, The Omen: The Final Conflict, John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness, and sci-fi horror favorite Event Horizon.
Sam Neill’s vast resume in film and television began in the early 1970s and also includes the films Sleeping Dogs, Enigma, The Good Wife, A Cry in the Dark, Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Hostage, The Jungle Book, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, The Horse Whisperer, Bicentennial Man, Daybreakers, Escape Plan, and Thor: Ragnarok.
Sam Neill is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.
Steven Spielberg said in a statement to Variety, “I owe a debt of gratitude to Roger Donaldson, Gilliam Armstrong, Graham Baker and Phillip Noyce for casting Sam Neill in the roles in which he was so brilliant that brought him to my attention and led to his playing Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park. Sam was exceptionally collaborative. It was a stretch for him to play a character who acted as though children were messy and smelly because this was the opposite of the loving father he was to his children. I adored making all the Jurassic movies with him.”
Spielberg adds, “Along with Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, we will always have our Jurassic family and Sam will never be forgotten by us or his many millions of fans around the world.”
Sam Neill in ‘Event Horizon’
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