Seeds of Fear

INTRODUCTION Brinke Stevens

A strange thing happened to me during late October of 1993. For two weeks I was staying at a Hyatt Hotel near San Francisco. Every night I was top-billed as a horror movie celebrity at The Scaregrounds, a Halloween theme park. Thus, I obligingly penned my autograph and posed for countless photos. Called a "Scream Queen," I'm a popular, well-respected ac tress among all those horror B-movies fans. If you like to stay up late watching scary low-budget films on TV, you've probably already seen me at least a dozen times. often in steamy shower scenes, or murdered by a crazy driller-killer, or suddenly transformed into a bloodthirsty demoness.

At midnight the crowds wandered home at last. I traded my spike heels for sensible flats, trudged across the empty parking lot to my rental car, and drove too fast up the freeway toward «home»… my small hotel room. First, I ripped off my long raven wig and slithered out of my familiar black «Evila» costume, then washed the makeup off my face. Now I looked nothing like the glamorous vamp who'd been worshiped by panting fan-boys. Finally I collapsed onto my bed — deeply exhausted, and feeling an inevitable letdown after six hours of intense admiration. But once the outer public mask came off, I was armed and ready for.. my own private fix!

A dozen or so lurid fiction paperback books filled my suitcase. Ah, pulp fodder for my secret midnight vice! Among them were Hot Blood, Hotter Blood, and Hottest Blood. Really, who could resist such promising titles? Besides, I've known editor Jeff Gelb for almost twenty years — and so I'd dutifully amassed all his anthologies on my dusty library shelf. It wasn't until my Halloween junket that I found enough time in my busy schedule to actually read them.

Each night I promised myself I'd just read ONE story and then fall asleep. But by 3:00 A.M. (and five or six stories later), I realized my relaxation plan was self-defeating. The stories were too sexy, too exciting, too scary! The erotica bordered on pornographic (but that's not necessarily a bad thing!), and the horror was pure and unadulterated. After two weeks of devouring those tasty Hot Blood books, I lost a lot of sleep — but I gained a new obsession.

Often it seems standard B-movie fare involves nudity, terror, sex, and gore — after all, it is tried-and-true commercial formula. I've routinely worked with killers, corpses, blood, and guts. and loved every minute of it! So saying, my own films might be considered the cinematic equivalent of erotic horror literature. You may enjoy reading my own insights and perspectives on what I do for a living — as a modern woman who's written and starred in dozens of "erotic horror" exploitation films.

I believe that erotic horror stories, for the most part, are grown-up versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales (though the original stories are hardly for children, as you well know). They are little morality plays, revenge stories, tales of what happens when we lose control. Or — more to the point — when we take advantage of something that seems too good to be true. In Teenage Exorcist (a screenplay I also wrote), I eagerly rented an opulent mansion at bargain-basement rates — and soon paid the dire consequences for it, when the evil ghost of a dead occupant possessed me. And in Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, my seductively generous host, Zed, later turned the tables on me. An unfortunate case of hospitality turning to homicide!

In a similar vein, the «revenge» factor in horror fiction is a holdover from Tales From the Crypt comics of the 1950s, wherein the wronged murdered husband returns to snuff his killer (usually an unfaithful wife, you will notice). It is a zombified «karma» sort of deal, often reflected in cinema, as well. In Haunting Fear I clawed my way out of a coffin in the basement while my husband was climaxing with his sleazy blond mistress in our bed. Needless to say, I was slow, brutal, and quite exacting while taking my revenge on them both!

Sex and horror do go together. Sex is a one-way door that, once entered, cannot be exited. It is also an imitation of death. The French, after all, call an orgasm "the little death." People don't like to talk about sex any more than they like to talk about death. Sex is a part of that old reptilian brain. Seemingly, the rational mind turns off. and Something Else appears. There is a roar of a dinosaur behind every moan between satin sheets. Sex is mythic (and let's face facts, seldom as good as we think it's going to be), just like horror. You know, the truth shattering the fantasy like glass in an automobile accident. Like the supposedly vampish Brinke admitting to a preference for flannel sleepwear rather than silky lingerie… as a way of telling the reader that everyone has expectations about sex and eroticism, but they are predicated on images that may or may not reflect reality.

And no one ever tells the truth about sex. It's too personal. It is something that unfolds between lovers. Hence, even more potential horror. finding out that your true love is into really odd stuff, or is not exactly what you'd expected. How many times, in erotic horror stories and films, has this theme been a subtext? Just take a look at Nightmare Sisters, in which I'm among a trio of hopelessly nerdy college girls who are ridiculed by cruel frat boys. After holding a seance one dark night, we suddenly transform into voluptuous dolls — and then gleefully slay the same would-be suitors who once rejected us. There's a chilling episode of Dark Romances, too, wherein I play a gorgeous woman who seduces many great artists… and later collects their very souls. A hidden agenda can be a powerfully frightening thing, indeed.

We all have concrete examples from real life, too. For example, did you ever find a partner who liked to be bitten during sex? It may be something you're uncomfortable with, because it's too close to losing control of the rational mind. But you might eventually like it, anyway. That is the final aspect of the sex-horror connection. finding out things about yourself that you really didn't want to know.

Possibly, it was a bold stroke to write a bondage scene for myself in Teenage Exorcist. But you'll also see me tied to a pillar on the video box cover of Ladies of the Lotus. In Slave Girls, I was chained to a dungeon wall in black lingerie. A year later, in Warlords, I was bound topless to a cross. The director, Fred Olen Ray, cocked an eyebrow and queried, "What is it with you, Stevens? Do you ask for these parts?" No, it must be a mere coincidence… yet I can only think I've come to enjoy it a little too much, perhaps. We naively think we know ourselves, and we do not. The comfort of our identity is twisted by something that's beyond our control. The Beast is always there — it is a wild heat that stays in the veins. And supposedly, we take off our chains along with our clothing. In my business, I apparently look for others to put them on me.

Until about 1980, sex was definitely guilt-free. It was the era of Erica Jong's infamous "zipless fuck." Sex without fear, and often without much emotional commitment. Then AIDS reared its retroviral head. Once described as "the little death," sex could now be death for real. Sex became even more mythic, even more linked with the symbolism of death. All we had to fear before was rejection, or the occasional scary partner (the Date from Hell is another fecund horror theme, right?). Now we had real death confronting the threat of ego-death.

So the concept of a femme fatale — a beautiful, sexually aggressive woman — becomes very important to men. And because it is (quite frankly) uncommon, it makes the mind revolve around such cautionary-tale archetypes as lamias, vampires, succubi, and so on. Writer Hazel-Dawn Dumpert said: "Murderers, vampires, ghosts can be frightening, yes. A crazy dame? Now that's scary." She also suggested that family values define woman as a nurturing force. A woman is an element of the earth itself — they don't call it Mother Nature for nothing. She's the link to physical and emotional survival. If a kink throws the womanly works off kilter, if they're perverted in any way, the results can be catastrophic. We all know what horrors are unleashed when bizarre circumstances transform beneficent babes into creatures of evil.

In fiction, a feminine monster is generally not brought into the world in the usual way. Instead, her origin lies in some pagan effrontery — or in the release of an ancient malevolence, now free to violate the nubile bodies of innocent coeds. Consider that disastrous seance wherein I evoked a succubus in Night mare Sisters. And that ugly, vicious imp I accidentally freed from a bowling trophy in Sorority Babes. In Dark Romances, my own bloodthirsty immortality was the result of a vile pact with a demon.

In movies and literature, it's always a good idea to ask: Why is this gorgeous woman coming on so strong like that? If it's too good to be true, there must be a catch. In real life, I believe this is a major psychological difference between men and women: ego reinforcement. That isn't to say the majority of men will turn down sex when it's offered to them, even by strange women. But don't think men aren't suspicious of the situation. Even for the most testosterone-driven men, sex is scary. You are going off into the metaphorical dark with someone you don't know well, and getting as close to her as is physically possible. Vulnerable. Sex and death… as in Ramsey Campbell's cleverly titled book, Scared Stiff.

That is why sex is always more than simply sex. It ties in with all kinds of issues. It is a big deal. Remember what Woody Allen said about sex and death? "Two things that only happen once in a lifetime." We joke about it, but sex is scary. These concerns about sex and death, about the Beast within, are all throughout our popular culture: in songs, books, and films. In this decade of white-trash glamour, we even get it delivered to us daily by Hard Copy and Oprah inside our own living rooms.

Men's erotica is more broadly humorous, while women's erotica tends to be more philosophical and high-minded. Truism: different strokes for different folks. And it isn't just men, of course. Women have their own kinks in their psychological garden hoses, too. It reminds me a bit of the Victorian female attitude about sex, and why Count Dracula was so appealing both then and now. Victorian women weren't supposed to like sex, or to be wanton. It was control, then as now, that was important. Stephen King described the underlying theme thusly: The vampire was saying to these chaste Victorian ladies, "I will fuck you with my mouth, and you will love it."

He is right, too. For both sexes, the concept of losing control in romance is somehow very attractive. I couldn't help myself becomes a catch phrase. I was drunk. It is the most human of states: to want to feel good, to feel better, or to not feel at all. We learn secrecy, new definitions of the truth. And a certain sense of assault develops in whatever mirror we choose to look into. because we take off many thousands of years of civilization when we dive be neath the sheets.

I doubt women can appreciate how scary sex is for men. Perhaps this is why erotic horror pretty much revolves around a male readership. Since much of horror has gone the rather messy splatterpunk direction, that may be a limiting factor for some women's appreciation of the genre. But I think there are a lot of females who, like myself, enjoy erotic horror immensely. What about Camille Paglia, the bogeyman of feminism, admitting to a great love of bodice ripper novels, complete with the bare-chested man bending the gasping maiden near double over a stone bench! And THIS from a committed foe of the paternalistic, woman-bashing status quo?

Guiltlessly, I'll admit my obsession for these wonderful erotic horror stories. So it's my great pleasure to welcome you to another spectacular volume of Hot Blood. Right now it is time to dim the lights, pull the covers up to your chin, and delve into these little gems of exotic terror (and if you're in bed with a significant other, be sure to check for fangs first!).