Scream Queens That Every Movie Fan Should Know (And the One Who Fled By Speedboat)

‘This is the Ant. Could you treat it with respect? For it may well be the next dominant life form on our planet’ intones the melodramatic, B-movie narrator of Bert I. Gordon’s 70s cult gem Empire of the Ants. You can hear echoes of Dr. Seriwaza in Godzilla in this campy horror sci-fi hybrid movie: ‘The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around’. Predator ants pursue a ragtag group of humans on a private island owned by glamorous developer Marilyn Fryser (played by the fabulously mascara-eye-lashed Joan Collins in one of her only Scream Queen roles in horror cinema). The result is a package of terror, ants, and special effects so outrageously WTF? that it almost eclipses the source material in the H.G. Wells novel of the same name. 

Six Iconic Scream Queens

Yet one of the crowning features of Empire of the Ants is Joan Collins, the quiffed Scream Queen – complete with the 70s hooped earrings – who attempts to flee the island by speedboat. Collins is the heart of the movie. She is glamourous and sporadically goofy, turning from a cunning property developer to a panicked victim in the movie and its scrappy carnival of enlarged ants ripped limbs, and science gone wrong.

Scream Queens like Collins, known for combining beauty, wit, and survival instincts, have played a significant role in popular horror cinema. While actresses like Jamie-Lee Curtis and Sissy Spacek have become cult horror legends, others have had their horror careers overlooked despite their remarkable contribution to other areas of cinema, including suspense thrillers, crime dramas, and other genres. It’s high time we celebrate the more overlooked Scream Queens and acknowledge their role in the peak decades of horror cinema. So, without further ado, here are some top actresses who deserve acclaim for their performances. 

Marianna Hill: Messiah of Evil (1973)

Starting this list of Scream Queens is Marianna Hill, an underrated actress who can turn her talents to a range of movie genres – from crime, procedural drama, and romance. But the weirdest entry in her filmography is the early 70s film Messiah of Evil. Rather like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s natural-horror film The Birds (1963), the film begins with Hill’s character, a young woman, Arletty, arriving in an isolated seaside town to visit her father. When she turns up in the town, she comes across a group of eccentric strangers investigating a local urban legend about a curse that transforms all its hosts into blood-sucking cannibals. 

With echoes of zombie films like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) with touches of more arty special effects, the film has some squeamish scenes (including a grocery store filled up with cannibals gnawing on any raw meat they can grab – whether in the freezers or on nearby human flesh and victims). Hill has the final moment of dialogue in the film that ends with a final piercing scream – so she fully captures the role of the Scream Queen until the closing scenes.

Joan Collins: Empire of the Ants (1977)

A few decades after her worldwide breakthrough in Hollywood epics, Joan Collins took on different movie and TV roles. She joined the cast of a now-forgotten science-fiction movie that follows the formula captured over twenty years later by Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). Empire of the Ants is the story of science gone wrong. Ants, contaminated and enlarged by radioactive human waste, invade a private island full of wealthy property speculators.

Collins’s character, Marilyn Fryser, is part of a band of survivors who eventually try to leave the island by speedboat. As a Scream Queen, Marilyn proves to be both cunning and hilarious – on the one hand, she’s a con artist getting her just desserts, and on the other, she gets some added sympathy as she wrangles out desperate – and ultimately doomed – attempts to escape the island.

Since Empire of the Ants, Collins has continued to build her career, transforming her into one of the most iconic figures of international popular culture. Alongside her most notable appearances in series like Dynasty (1981), Collins has a cult reputation on the British movie scene. Her other horror credit is in Tales of the Crypt (1972), where she plays a cheating wife who murders her husband and then is preyed upon by a serial killer in the disguise of Santa Claus. But while she’s kept busy, none of her projects have equaled the scares – or required so many screams – as Empire of the Ants.

Donna Mills: Curse of the Black Widow (1977)

With her wavy blonde hair and icy blue eyes, Donna Mills is synonymous with 70s sex symbols. She is also a have-a-go actress, starring on Broadway in the Woody Allen comedy Don’t Drink The Water (1966) and in Clint Eastwood’s psychological thriller Play Misty for Me (1971).

Her most provocative Scream Queen role is in Curse of the Black Widow (1977). This cheesy made-for-television series is set in Los Angeles and focuses on a series of murders in which victims are found with fanged puncture wounds on their bodies. Mills plays a potential suspect turned victim of the spider-shaped villain that stalks the film and captures prey in her web. While typecast as a damsel in distress in Curse of the Black Widow, Mills still has some legacy as a 70s horror star, with Jordan Peele casting her in his science-fiction horror Nope (2022). With her icy glamour, Donna Mills is an iconic Scream Queen who deserves credit for her versatile career.

Faye Dunaway:  Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

Faye Dunaway, most celebrated for her portrayal of the kickass outlaw Bonnie Parker in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), stars in this suspense thriller as a fashion photographer who develops a psychic ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer who is stalking her home city (Hot Movie Trivia: Eyes of Laura Mars was directed by Star Wars director Irvin Kershner, the director behind The Empire Strikes Back (1980). 

Eyes of Laura Mars is a voyeuristic Scream Queen movie, placing a psychic-murder story in a sinister and provocative setting with S&M and fetish imagery (Dunaway’s fashion photographer is known for BDSM-themed sets). The movie is peppered with close-ups of Dunaway’s eyes – often widening in terror and the soundtrack echoes with her screams. As a Scream Queen, she is one of the most vocal in this line-up. It might sound tasteless, but Dunaway’s role brings her close-up with the types of horror associated with Italian blood-and-slash giallo films of the 70s.

Tiffany Bolling: Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Tiffany Bolling might be a more mysterious entry amid this sprinkling of Scream Queen movie and TV stars. Yet in the prime of her acting career, Bolling had a solid fanbase for her starring roles in B-Movies and tasteless creature features, including Kingdom of the Spiders (1977). Echoing the trashy premise of Empire of The Ants, a small American town is overrun with killer spiders who trap town folk in a remote hotel and pick each of their prey off individually. 

Bolling plays Diane Ashley, a scientist, and arachnologist, who arrives in an early movie scene, trying to persuade the town of the threat of the venomous spiders. She perfects the role of the expert scientist who tries without success to warn of upcoming dangers engulfing the towns. A talented actor, Bolling is an unlikely Scream Queen who taps into the horror tradition of creature features that we can trace back from the 50s classic Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) to the 2023 movie Cocaine Bear.

Deborah Foreman: Waxwork (1988)

Deborah Foreman, the actress who got her first big break opposite Nicholas Cage in the romantic comedy Valley Girl (1983), is a more well-known Scream Queen for her roles in zany horror comedies of the 80s. While she may be a more well-known Scream Queen, her career seemed to stall in the 90s, leaving her overlooked on lists of iconic horror actresses and Scream Queens. Her star turns included the slasher comedy film April Fool’s Day (1986), a wicked little movie that apes the dark humor of Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and the playfully anarchic Waxwork (1988), a tongue-in-cheek feature about a dark and twisted wax museum. Fans of other horror comedies, such as Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), might want to check out these odd 80s features that have inspired modern-day horror movies.