What Ever Happened To Our Favorite Scream Queens?
In the world of horror, there's no one more revered than the scream queen. These actors are some of the biggest stars to ever grace the silver screen (or the VHS box), and even though many filmgoers have no idea who these shrieking, shivering celluloid stars are, they're beloved by horror fans across the world.
Many of the most well-known scream queens made their mark in the 1980s, an era when new horror films were coming out at a breakneck pace. Some of our favorite final girls and bloody victims are still acting today, but many scream queens have moved on and forged their own paths be it as an author, or painter, or even medical marijuana grower. If you ever wondered what happened to your favorite scream queen, look no further.
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Adrienne King is in rarified air when it comes to scream queens. Not only did she chop off the head of Mrs. Voorhees in Friday the 13th, but in the film's sequel, she was offed by Jason after he somehow grew from a frog-boy at the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake into a hulking backwoods monster.
King stopped performing onscreen in the early '80s but continued to do voice work well into the '90s (you can hear her in everything from Philadelphia to Titanic). Her most exciting venture is one that she undertook in 2010 when she became a winemaker in southern Oregon. You can actually buy six different Friday the 13th-themed varietals from the former actress - including Voorhees Vengeance Viognier and Cabin A Sauvignon.
Heather Langenkamp is beloved for her appearances in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, both as Nancy Thompson and as herself in the very meta New Nightmare. She still pops up in movies and on TV, but she also works behind the camera these days.
Langenkamp and her husband David Leroy Anderson have been running AFX Studio for the last three decades and quietly racking up Academy Awards and Emmys. The two met at the wrap party for Wes Craven's The Serpent and the Rainbow and married in 1989. A few years later, they started working on effects together, forging an entirely new career path for one of the most famous final girls ever.
AFX is an in-demand studio, but her most wink-wink horror work can be seen in 2011's The Cabin in the Woods where she's credited as Heather L. Anderson.
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Linda Blair is an all-timer in the world of horror. As the star of The Exorcist, she seared the image of a possessed pre-teen into the minds of audiences across the world and changed the way everyone sees pea soup, but there's another side to this actress.
In 2004, Blair started the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, a non-profit that rescues and rehabilitates animals that have been mistreated and abused. The foundation's home is in Acton, California, on a plot of land where neglected animals are given a semi-permanent home where they can grow to be happy and healthy. Even with this full-time job on her hands, Blair still finds time to pop up in everything from Supernatural to RuPaul's Drag Race.
The Blair Witch Project remains one of the most horrifying found footage films ever made, and Heather Donahue played a huge part in the film's success with her realistic portrayal of a young film director lost in the woods. However, many viewers believed that Donahue's life ended when the credits rolled on the blockbuster horror film.
That's not the case. In the decade following Blair Witch, Donahue went on to grow medical marijuana in Northern California. In 2016, she wrote and produced an independent series, The High Country, based on this experience. While speaking with the Daily Beast, Donahue explained that the series and the memoir she wrote are both about reclaiming her life:
It was about taking my story back. It’s so easy to get your whole identity invested in certain jobs, and I think acting is one of those. It was largely about creative ownership. I wanted to create something that I thought was good, positive, and helpful.
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Linnea Quigley is known as the Queen of the Bs. She started acting in 1975 but it wasn't until the '80s that she appeared in recognizable horror films like Graduation Day, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and of course, The Return of the Living Dead.
In addition to still occasionally acting, Quigley also authored two memoirs about her work in the 1980s, she plays on and off in Linnea Quigley and Men in Skirts (an offshoot of her earlier band, The Skirts), and she performs tarot card readings. Maybe the B is for busy?
Anyone who spent time in the horror section of their local video store in the early '90s knows Amelia Kinkade. Or at the very least, they know Angela, the seductive goth girl possessed by a demonic presence from the Night of the Demons series. Kinkade played this over-the-top villain in three films between 1988 and 1997, and while Angela didn't become the horror staple that Freddy or Jason did, she still holds a place in the hearts of horror fans everywhere.
No longer putting on the makeup of a possessed high school student, Kinkade now has her own business as a pet communicator, or pet psychic if you prefer. For those who wish to harness their own psychic abilities, Kinkade hosts a variety of seminars to help students learn her techniques.
How did Kinkade develop this ability? Her website states that after discovering she could speak with animals, she had a brief chat with a director's "two gorgeous Golden Retrievers," and a few weeks later, she was called to help diagnose an issue with one of the dogs she met at the party. In Hollywood, it's all about who you know.
