Girls Nite Out

All posts tagged Girls Nite Out

Va-Va-Villainess: Carrick Glenn

Published November 9, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Before she played quirkily luscious victims in a duo of slasher flicks of varying pedigrees, actress Carrick Glenn paid an interesting visit to psycho street. 

In an effort to boost ratings, The Doctors, a once popular, long running soap opera, began to embrace natural disasters, mad science and unhinged divas in the late ’70s and early ’80s. To that effect, Glenn joined the show as a short-lived character with diminishing mental returns. As Laura Young, a disgraced nursing student, she spent the winter of 1980 terrorizing the program’s longstanding heroine Dr. Maggie Powers (Lydia Bruce). Kidnapping Powers after a tornado wreaked havoc onscreen, Young was determined to prove to the powerful medical administrator that her chops as a caregiver were as keen as her clear-cut fashion sense.

Thus, labored scenes of a perspiring Powers, growing ever nearer to death, pleading with a resolute and ever more delusional Young were a staple that long January. Once discovered by Powers’ concerned friends and family, Laura went the way of most sympathetic nut jobs – the psycho ward. 

Glenn, herself, went onto to delight many a horror fan as Sally in The Burning and Kathy in Girls Nite Out. Girls Nite Out, of course, is an enjoyable romp, where Glenn energetically enacts a typical coed college casualty. The Burning, on the other hand, due to Tom Savini’s special effects and several interesting cinematic angles (including Brian Matthews’ Final Guy), has become something of a modern classic in the genre. Glenn also gives her character discrete depth. Torn between wanting to maintain her virtue while also finding herself intrigued by the thuggish Glazer (Larry Joshua) and his efforts to bed her, Glenn practically vibrates with lusty indecisiveness. Her interactions are always charmingly honest, adding real life layers to an exploitive extravaganza.

Girls, though, turned out to be Glenn’s last major credit. (A short film, according to IMDB, marked her last onscreen appearance) While I managed to track down a pre-The Doctors wedding announcement, surprisingly little other information is available about her online. That several of her major roles are readily available for consumption may be the one saving grace of that tiny mystery. *

*Glenn’s The Doctors episodes are available for viewing at It’s Real Good TV. 

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Fruity Flashback: The Loving Murders

Published May 9, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

Loving Murders

Long term cast member Randolph Mantooth has called it the show that nobody ever saw. But the ABC soap opera Loving did have plenty of loyal followers who have remembered it fondly since its cancellation in the fall of 1995. Interestingly, for a show that continually floated at the bottom of the daytime ratings, it certainly had pedigree. It was created in 1983 by soap opera legend Agnes Nixon and, over the years, it definitely had its inventive moments. A few of those even contained elements of horror and the supernatural. In one of his first acting jobs, television stalwart John O’Hurley played a devilishly evil character named Jonathan Matalaine while the program’s college age characters interacted with a tortured romantic couple, who just happened to be ghosts, in the early ‘90s. Perhaps its most genre laden plotline was the Loving Murders, the months long story arc that brought the show to a close and helped it morph into another (very short lived) soap called The City.

L-R: PETER DAVIES;JOHN O'HURLEY

O’Hurley as the satanic Matalaine

As longtime characters were murdered off by a stealthily cloaked serial killer, the show’s ratings actually rose 20%. This was perhaps due to some of the unusual ways in which the cast was offed. Longtime heroine Stacy Donavan, portrayed with heart and verve by frequent horror sweetheart Lauren Marie Taylor (Friday the 13th, Part 2, Girls Nite Out), met her end via a poisoned powder puff. Deadly candles, heart attacks and coldblooded drownings also made appearances. The most spectacular sendoff probably belonged to Jean Le Clerc’s popular Jeremy Hunter, though. Clerc’s Hunter, an important character for many years on the iconic All My Children, was a sculptor who met his demise by being turned into one of his own statues!

Notably, the producers originally planned for a former character named Trisha, who had a history of mental issues, to return as the culprit. Noelle Beck, her longstanding portrayer, nixed that concept, though. Thus, Gwyneth Alden (Christine Tudor), Trisha’s mother and the show’s diva-licious matriarch, was chosen as the villain. While Tudor did spectacular work and obviously relished the juicy emotional windfall that this turn of events brought her, it was hard for many devoted fans to buy her as the murderess. Tudor had filled Alden with such true-to-life heart over the years, it was next to impossible to believe that Gwyneth would be able to kill off her family and friends no matter her state of mind. Still, the plotline allowed her and the show a significant (if overlooked) place in afternoon television history.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Chrsrine Newman

Gwyneth/Tudor in “happier” days.