Ladies Night Part III

Part III (of four): Maneaters

Oh here she comes
Watch out boy she’ll chew you up
Oh here she comes
She’s a maneater

from Hall & Oates 1982 song "Maneater"

Mathilda May, a Paris-born actress whose father is a Greek-Turkish playwright and mother a Swedish ballet teacher-choreographer, starred as a bloodsucking extraterrestrial who terrorizes modern-day London in "Lifeforce," based on Colin Wilson’s 1976 cult novel The Space Vampires, directed by Tobe Hooper. The 1985 film proved to be a disappointment for both critics and fans, who were expecting something more frightening from the director of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "Salem’s Lot" and "Poltergeist." The first sign of trouble should have been having the protagonist played by Steve Railsback, an offsetting actor whose résumé includes portrayals of Charles Manson and Ed Gein. "Lifeforce" probably doesn’t get aired much on TV because May is completely naked for most of the film’s running time, "to no purpose," one reviewer remarked, "beyond our voyeuristic delight."

In the 1995 science-fiction thriller "Species," Earth scientists tune into a galactic radio transmission that includes a formula for alien DNA and instructions for combining it with human DNA. The result is a hybrid with a spectacular growth rate who rapidly matures into a startlingly beautiful woman dubbed Sil, portrayed, in her screen debut, by professional model Natasha Henstridge (below).

As well as possessing superhuman strength and astounding regenerative powers, Sil frequently transforms into her hideous alien shape, a tentacled aberration that was created by H.R. Giger, the macabre Swiss artist responsible for the initial design of the creature in "Alien." The genetically engineered alien-human escapes from the laboratory, relentlessly driven by an instinctual need to mate with (and then kill) human males, while a team of scientists - depicted by such noteworthy thespians as Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker and Marg Helgenberger - along with a government hit man (Michael Madsen), pursue the man-hungry succubus before she can produce progeny that could wipe out humans altogether.

Roger Ebert dismissed "Species" as a slick addendum "to the basic horror vocabulary of things jumping out from behind stuff." Critic Christine Jones, writing in Box Office magazine, described the film as "‘Alien’ meets ‘V’ meets ‘Splash’ meets ‘Playboy’s Erotic Fantasies: Forbidden Liaisons,’ diluted into a diffuse, misdirected bore."

Natasha Henstridge won an MTV Movie Award for "Best Kiss," specifically for a lip-lock with an unfortunate sap whose head is impaled on her rigid tongue. "Species" was a hit, but when Hestridge portrayed a genetic variation of her original character three years later, "Species II" failed at the box office. She subsequently had a cameo in the straight-to-home video "Species III" (2004).

One year after directing "Gothic" (1987), a fevered hallucinogenic trip that re-imagined the summer evenings at a Swiss villa in 1816 when 19-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (portrayed by Natasha Richardson) invented the ghost story of Frankenstein and his creation for the amusement of husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and Byron’s personal physician, Dr. John Polidori, British filmmaker Ken Russell turned his attention to The Lair of the White Worm, the last novel written by Dracula author Bram Stoker.

Roger Ebert once noted, "Every one of Russell’s films has been an exercise in wretched excess…Russell loves the bizarre, the gothic, the overwrought, the perverse." "Women in Love" (1969), based on the controversial novel by D.H. Lawrence, earned its notoriety for a grappling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed that featured male frontal nudity (below).

Oliver Reed subsequently starred as a 17th century priest accused of witchcraft in Russell’s "The Devils" (1970), a work so controversial that its American distributor, Warner Brothers, still will not release it uncut. Russell’s most popular film remains his over-the-top screen version of The Who’s rock opera "Tommy" (1975), with an all-star that included Ann-Margret (below), Oliver Reed, Roger Daltrey, Tina Turner, Jack Nicholson and Elton John.

Russell’s campy script for "The Lair of the White Worm" updates Stoker’s tale to the region of Derbyshire in England, where a Scottish archaeologist discovers the skull of a giant snake-like creature in the garden of the inn he’s visiting. The inn, coincidentally, is situated on a site that was a convent when Roman armies occupied Britain. According to local folklore, the land was terrorized by a gigantic worm in ancient times. An annual festival celebrates the supposed slaying of the monster by the ancestor of a local nobleman, the latter played by Hugh Grant (in one of his earliest roles but already exhibiting his trademark disarming - and stammering - charm).

A returning neighbor, the mysterious Lady Marsh (Amanda Donohoe), wastes no time in revealing herself to be a fanged, blood-sucking seductress who likes to spend a lot of time naked, worshipping and offering human sacrifices to an existing worm that lurks in gaping tunnels beneath her mansion.

"Given a distinctly playful treatment by Russell, who fills each frame with all manner of phallic snake/worm imagery," the editors of The Horror Film noted, " ‘The Lair of the White Worm’…delights in breaking every taboo known to man…" which includes a deliriously twisted dream sequence depicting ancient Roman soldiers assaulting nuns while the enormous worm strangles Christ on the cross.

Asked about her role, Amanda Donohoe (above) commented, "I’m an atheist, so it was actually a joy. Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages. And that persecution still goes on today all over the world."

In 2001, special-effects makeup wizard Stan Winston, along with Lou Arkoff (son of legendary B-movie mogul Samuel Z. Arkoff) and actress Colleen Camp (best known for her roles as a Playboy Playmate in "Apocalypse Now" and as the gun-savvy Sgt. Kirkland-Tackleberry in a pair of "Police Academy" pictures), produced a series of made-for-cable TV films called "Creature Features," each bearing the title of one of Samuel Arkoff’s drive-in movies from the 1950s - "Earth vs. the Spider," "How to Make a Monster," "Day the World Ended," "Teenage Caveman" and "The She-Creature" - but with new, completely different plots.

Winston’s "She Creature" features actress Rya Kihlstedt (above) as a hypnotically alluring mermaid abducted by a married pair of carnival performers in Ireland, circa 1900, who want to smuggle her into America. As the ship loses its way at sea and heads for the creature’s ancestral waters, the mermaid exhibits deadly tendencies and eventually transforms into a full-blown, man-killing "Alien"-like monster (below). Writer-director Sebastian Guitierrez manages to evoke a chilling, H.P. Lovecraft-like atmosphere, aided in no small part by Kihlstedt’s mesmerizing presence as the otherworldly siren.

After his successful collaboration on "Juno" (2007) with Minnesota stripper-turned blogger-turned Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, producer-director Jason Reitman said he wanted to make "unusual films." In 2009, he co-produced "Jennifer’s Body," a darkly comedic horror movie directed by Karyn Kusama ("Aeon Flux") and written by Cody, who claimed she wanted to create a story that addressed female empowerment and explored the complex relationship between female best friends.

(Above) Megan Fox ("Transformers," "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen") stars as a popular high school cheerleader in a small Minnesota town who is abducted by a Satanic bar band. Sacrificed as a virgin to the devil, the not-so-virginal flag girl is possessed by a demon and becomes a succubus who must consume the fresh blood of boys once a month. (Below) It’s up to her "plain Jane" friend, nicknamed "Needy" (Amanda Seyfried, of "Mamma Mia!"), to not only end Jennifer’s bloody rampage but, as well, to go after the Satan-worshipping musicians. "As a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader," Roger Ebert said in his review, "it’s better than it has to be."

In an interview with MoviesOnline, Cody Diablo stated, "I was simultaneously trying to pay tribute to some of the conventions that we’ve already seen in horror, yet, at the same time, kind of turn them on their ear…I grew up watching these amazing ‘80s genre movies like ‘The Lost Boys’…and I wanted to honor that, and at the same time, I had never really seen this particular subgenre done with girls, and I tried to do a little of both."

"Karyn Kusama and I are both outspoken feminists," Cody noted. "We wanted to subvert the classic horror model of women being terrorized…I want to tell stories from a female perspective, I want to create good parts for actresses where they’re not just accessories to men." According to her, "a key reason for writing the film was to bring to the screen a new way of expressing the intensity of female bonds."

A moment in which Jennifer and Needy share a passionate kiss was, Cody said, "intended to be something meaningful." She added, "Obviously, we knew people were going to totally sensationalize it…There is a sexual energy between the girls which is kind of authentic, because I know when I was a teen-aged girl, the friendships that I had with other girls were almost romantic, they were so intense…I wanted to capture that heightened feeling you get as an adolescent that you don’t really feel as a grownup."

Director Kusama told MoviesOnline, "I was blessed to read this script at a moment when the producers were meeting with directors, and it just knocked me out. It was just so original, so imaginative. That’s what it is about this script and the world is that it feels like a fairy tale gone psycho, and I think that’s what most fairy tales actually started as."

To be continued...