The Burning

All posts tagged The Burning

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!

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The Horrific Mummification of Nancy Karr

Published July 19, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

Being on a soap opera isn’t always glamorous- just ask Ann Flood! Perhaps one of the most elegant and refined daytime performers from the golden era of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Flood played The Edge of Night’s industrious, very lady like reporter Nancy Karr for twenty-two years. One of Flood’s more unusual plot lines, though, found her practically mummified for the majority of its runtime.

While investigating a tip about the true paternity of the offspring of a potential home wrecker, Karr was kidnapped and held hostage at a mysterious spa. The lair of a doctor who performed plastic surgery on high profile criminals, she was soon terrorized and wrapped in bandages to hide her identity by the surgeon’s very villainous thugs. 

Flood, naturally, enacted Karr’s hysteria over these horrific circumstances with justified aplomb. Further fueling the Mansion of the Damned, Poe-like circumstances of the plot, actor (and famed As The World Turns producer) Chris Goutman, who ably portrayed the heroic lead of Joseph Zito’s acclaimed slasher The Prowler, also brought a gleeful villainy to his characterization of Matt Sharkey, one of the goons torturing Karr. His joyously dark enthusiasm imbued the proceedings with a definitive macabre essence, resulting in a gothic adventure that fans of the show never forgot.

Side note: This story also introduced actress Leah Ayres, one of the ‘80s most earnestly recognizable performers, to the series. Best known to horror fans as the lead female camp counselor in The Burning, Ayres’ character Valerie Bryson was the confused offspring of the industrious, face changing doc here. Interestingly, both The Prowler, Goutman’s flick, & The Burning featured top of the line gore effects from the legendary Tom Savini, another one of the many circles of familiarity that often occur among afternoon television actors. 

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan