The horror genre is packed with great heroines that have been brought to the screen by actresses who have earned legions of fans through their awesome performances. So to celebrate the fact that one of the genre’s most famous heroines / scream queens is back on the screen in this weekend’s release Halloween Ends, we here at Arrow in the Head have compiled a list of some of the Best Scream Queens. To see who made the list, keep scrolling! Then let us know who you think the greatest scream queens of all time are by leaving a comment below.
JAMIE LEE CURTIS
Her work in the Halloween franchise alone would be enough to earn Jamie Lee Curtis a spot on this list. She has gone up against Michael Myers in seven different films over the decades. She has (appeared to have) killed him, she has been killed by him – and like him, she has even returned from apparent death to be in more Halloween movies. Her character Laurie Strode is considered to be one of the greatest heroines in the genre. The mousy girl who goes through extreme trauma and finds the inner strength to stand up to her attacker and fight back. But that’s not her only work in the horror genre. There are also her performances in The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train, Road Games, Blue Steel, Virus, the TV show Scream Queens – and the thriller Mother’s Boys, where she played the villain!
NEVE CAMPBELL
Neve Campbell makes this list primarily due to her work within one franchise. Over the course of five Scream movies, her character Sidney Prescott has been the target of nine different people wearing the Ghostface costume. Nine maniacs have failed to take her down. So obviously Sidney is ranked highly as one of the genre’s best heroines. She was an average teen girl when she first crossed paths with Ghostface killers, and her experiences have turned her into a hardened warrior. Campbell has done an awesome job of playing the character and showing the journey she has endured. She also appeared in a horror film called The Dark and an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, but her most notable non-Scream genre work was in the teen witch movie The Craft, released the same year as the first Scream.
LINNEA QUIGLEY
No one else on this list of the best scream queens has as many horror credits as Linnea Quigley. If you watch a lot of ‘80s horror, you’ll be especially familiar with her work. That’s the decade when she made her biggest splash, appearing (often topless) in films like Silent Night, Deadly Night; Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, and Night of the Demons, among others. She’s a soul trapped in Freddy Krueger’s chest in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, and her most famous role is in The Return of the Living Dead, where she has a memorable cemetery dance scene. Quigley has continued working steadily in the decades since. She has 170 screen acting credits now, with four horror movies in post-production and another filming. She has a special place in the hearts of many horror fans, as she has helped bring us a lot of entertainment over the years. She even made the Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout video.
HEATHER LANGENKAMP
Several of the genre’s iconic monsters and madmen come with their own iconic nemeses. Michael Myers had Laurie Strode (and Dr. Loomis), the Ghostface killers have Sidney Prescott. And over on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger has Nancy Thompson. Nancy didn’t fare as well as Laurie and Sidney, she didn’t even make it out of her second Nightmare on Elm Street movie alive, but the performance Heather Langenkamp delivered as the character in the first Nightmare movie and Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was enough to make her an icon. Langenkamp then returned to play herself in the meta follow-up Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. She has shown up in a few other horror projects here and there, mostly in quick cameos, and was recently given a prominent role in the Netflix series The Midnight Club.
MARILYN BURNS
Marilyn Burns didn’t accrue many screen acting credits over the course of her career, but she only needed one acting role to land a spot on this list. That was the role of final girl Sally Hardesty in the 1974 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now, Sally wasn’t the greatest character ever. She didn’t go on the journey of self-actualization other heroines on this list did. But the performance Burns gives is a very realistic portrayal of a person who is scared out of her mind and in way over her head. She also might do more screaming in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre than any other scream queen on this list has done in their career. Burns went on to appear in a handful of other genre projects, including Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive, Future Kill, the Helter Skelter mini-series, and a couple more Chainsaw movies.
AMY STEEL
Enemies of Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers are on this list, so it’s only right that an enemy of Jason Voorhees land a spot as well. Jason’s most frequent opponent was a male character, Tommy Jarvis, but he went up against some great heroines as well… and the most popular of the bunch might be Ginny Fields, played by Amy Steel in Friday the 13th Part 2. Steel made sure Ginny came off like a very intelligent and capable person, so it makes total sense when she manages to outsmart Jason and gain the upper hand in their confrontation. Steel went on to play the heroine in the horror comedy April Fool’s Day as well. In that one, she played Kit, who has to solve a mystery while it appears that someone is picking off her friends one-by-one.
DANIELLE HARRIS
For a while, it looked like Jamie Lee Curtis would never return to the Halloween franchise. So they had to find another heroine to put him up against – and even though Danielle Harris was only 10-going-on-11 when she was cast in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, she did a great job of making her character Jamie Lloyd an endearing, worthy successor to Laurie Strode. Things fell apart for Jamie Lloyd in the sixth film, which didn’t even bring Harris back – but she did make her own triumphant return to the franchise in the Rob Zombie movies. Harris has also given the slasher Victor Crowley some grief in the Hatchet franchise, and has racked up a whole lot of horror movie credits over the decades. Many horror fans rank her as one of their favorite actresses and scream queens, and have ever since Halloween 4 was released in 1988.
BARBARA CRAMPTON
Well, first we have to apologize to Barbara Crampton for even including her on this list, because she has said that she doesn’t like the term “scream queen”. She thinks it’s cheesy and diminishes the merit of their performances. But it’s meant to be a compliment, a way to say that fans see them as queens of movies that happen to have screams of terror in them. And Crampton definitely qualifies as one of the best scream queens, having had memorable roles in many horror films over the decades: Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, From Beyond, Castle Freak, You’re Next, Tales of Halloween, Beyond the Gates, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, Reborn, Into the Dark: Culture Shock, Jakob’s Wife, the list goes on. You can always rely on Crampton to give an excellent performance in the midst of bloodshed and madness.
DEE WALLACE
Linnea Quigley may have the most horror credits on this list, but the scream queen with the most overall screen credits is Dee Wallace, who is closing in on 300 as of this writing! Wallace has been a regular presence in the genre ever since the 1970s, when she appeared in The Stepford Wives and The Hills Have Eyes. She was in the ‘80s classics The Howling, Critters, and Cujo – and Stephen King felt she should have won an Oscar for her work in Cujo. Many more horror roles have followed, in the likes of Popcorn, The Frighteners, The House of the Devil, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn, 13 Fanboy, and multiple Rob Zombie movies: Halloween, The Lords of Salem, 3 from Hell. She even returned to the Critters franchise for Critters Attack! It’s always great to see Wallace show up in another horror film.
LIN SHAYE
Lin Shaye appeared in several horror films for her brother Robert Shaye’s company New Line Cinema back in the 1980s – Alone in the Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Critters, The Hidden, Critters 2: The Main Course – and had a memorable role in 2001 Maniacs a while back, but it wasn’t really until the last decade, when Shaye was approaching her 70th birthday, that it really became clear that she is one of our greatest scream queens. Just in the last twelve years she has played the character Elise Rainier in four Insidious movies, while also showing up in other horror projects like Chillerama, Big Ass Spider!, Ouija, Tales of Halloween, The Grudge, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, and more. Shaye is a great actress, and it’s always fun to see her put her skills to work in a horror project.