B-Movie Queen : Brinke Stevens Knows Secret to Dying in Shower

Brinke Stevens, biologist turned B-movie queen, offers some tips on how to do shower scenes, which invariably end in the character’s horrible death:

“First of all, you have to look totally blissful and unaware,” she said, describing a staple of her industry. “Then you have to act like you hear something, you slowly glance over your shoulder, but then you realize you only thought you heard something.

“You look back and by that time you’re dead meat.”

Stevens, a San Diego native who once dreamed of “cracking the language of the dolphins” and purports to speak six languages, is an expert on shower scenes and everything else that goes into B movies, having disrobed, screamed and played crazed murderesses possessed by demons in such genre classics as “Slumber Party Massacre,” “Bad Girls from Mars,” “Attack of the B-Movie Monster,” “Nightmare Sisters” and two-dozen other low-budget films.

In the B-movie industry, which boasts its own conventions, cults and media, Stevens is a star. She is currently featured on the cover of “Femme Fatale” magazine, which focuses on the “luscious ladies of horror, fantasy and science fiction.” Meryl Streep may win Oscars, but a toy company has designed a model after one of Stevens’ characters, a bloody, terrified figure trying to escape from a hand reaching out of a grave.

Tonight at the Spirit Club, Stevens--who will admit only to being “somewhere in her 30s”--will be reunited with her old friend Jose Sinatra, the lounge singer from hell created by Bill Richardson, for a minor tribute to her career. Clips from her films will be shown, and she’ll do a talk show-style interview segment with Sinatra as part of the club’s weekly, free “Buddy Blue’s Throbbing Thursday” segment.

“Bill was my first real boyfriend,” said Stevens in a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles, fresh from an audition for “Warlock II.” (“It’s a really good part. She gets her head ripped off.”)

Although she can scream with the best of them, physically Stevens, who is neither blond nor busty, doesn’t fit the bimbo stereotype associated with the “luscious ladies of horror.” Her resume suggests that there is more to her success than her ability to shiver on cue. True fans will recall that she wrote “Teenage Exorcist,” in which she also starred. And certainly few of her peers can boast of a masters degree in marine biology.

“Local girl makes bad,” is the way Richardson jokingly characterizes Stevens’ story.

While attending Granite Hills High School in El Cajon and San Diego State University, Charlene Elizabeth Brinkman, who would go on to star in “Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama,” was a member of Mensa, as well as several other academic societies. Her idea of fun was to attend conventions for “Star Trek” and comic books. She was even known to dress up as “Vamperella” and other campy horror characters at gatherings of horror enthusiasts.

After earning a masters degree from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1978, she moved to Los Angeles with her new husband, comic artist Dave Stevens, who would later go on to pen “The Rocketeer,” using Stevens as the model for the Betty character. But the marriage lasted only six months, and Stevens found herself stuck in Los Angeles, unable to find work in the field of biology.

She started working as an extra, which eventually led to her first major role--playing a doomed student in 1982’s “Slumber Party Massacre,” in which her character was dispatched with an electric drill.

Now, Stevens is firmly entrenched in the world of low-budget thrillers, where she battles the likes of Linnea Quigley, Sybil Danning and Barbara Crampton for the title of “Queen of the B Movies.”

“I believe that there are archetypal creatures inside all of us,” Stevens said. “I was very studious, and somehow I think all of this was repressed inside of me.”

Her latest feature is “Haunting Fear,” in which she plays a tormented housewife who likes to take long baths. Jan Michael Vincent and Karen Black are the big name co-stars. In another recent film, “Spirits,” she worked with another star who has seen better days--Erik Estrada.

“We either get the big stars on the way down or new stars on the way up,” Stevens said.

These days, most of her films bypass theaters and go directly to video stores, the route taken by “Haunting Fear,” in which Stevens’ character transforms from a sweet innocent woman to a knife-wielding psycho, which represents something of a trend for her. Her early roles often revolved around getting mutilated in some way, often by power tools and almost always in a shower or locker room.

However, in recent years, she has frequently been cast as a nice, innocent woman led astray by the forces of evil, who suddenly becomes possessed by demons or goes insane or comes back from the dead to murder people in some horrible, gory fashion.

In the realm of B movies, this change represents an important leap. At least she’s playing strong females, instead of the floozies usually featured in these films.

“Brinke transcends the whole scream-queen syndrome,” said Bill George, editor of Femme Fatale and a longtime friend. “She has aptitudes other than simply lapsing into the stereotypes.”

That’s not to say that Stevens hasn’t played her share of bimbos. Shower scenes and similar cinematic titillating sequences are a requisite part of most low-budget horror and adventure films, and Stevens’ career is no exception.

“The nudity doesn’t bother me,” Stevens said.

To survive in an industry that requires nudity from almost all actresses, Stevens said, “You have to feel comfortable with your body. It’s not so much how busty you are, it’s how you use your body.”

Though women characters are not victimized as often as when slasher movies were in vogue, bimbos and defenseless screaming women are still the norm in these films. Stevens acknowledges that her work is “extremely politically in correct,” considering the strides of the feminist movement, but she makes no apologies.

“They’re just good entertainment,” she said of her films. “They’re not pornographic.” Critics of her genre of films are widespread, though “Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity,” was the target of attacks by conservative U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

“I feel OK about it. I don’t feel like I’m warping any minds,” she said.

Buoyed by her ability to sell “Teenage Exorcist” and another script, “The Recruiter” (which hasn’t been produced), Stevens also continues to write. Her experience in the industry helps; she knows the formula. Keep things cheap by limiting the action to one set, preferably a house--house movies are cheap to produce, which is why so many haunted-house movies get made. Start the film with someone dying--”hopefully horribly”-- and move right into a roller coaster of sex, violence and special effects, she said.

“As pleasing as she is to see in front of the camera, I think her real talent will be behind the camera,” said George, who is using Stevens as writer for his magazine, and thinks she would make a good movie producer.

Unfortunately, the B-movie business, like the rest of the industry, is in a recession. Fewer companies are willing to take a risk on low-budget films. They’ll spend $50 million to make a movie with a big star, but they’re reluctant to spend $1 million on a B picture, Stevens said.

With fewer roles available, Stevens has diversified. She invested in a restaurant and has set up a 900 horror-phone line. She spends much of her time traveling to the many horror and sci-fi conventions staged around the country, where she signs autographs and meets her fans.

Stevens’ fans, and fans of low-budget screamfests in general, are “a small percentage of the public, but they’re rabid and obsessive,” Stevens said. Her West Los Angeles neighbors may get tired of hearing her practicing screams into the night, but her fans are loyal.

“I am what they are--a nerd,” Stevens said. “They are incredibly intelligent people, just a little nerdy like me. I’m the nerd queen.”

* “Buddy Blue’s Throbbing Thursday” begins at 9 p.m. at the Spirit Club, 1130 Buenos Ave. Besides Brinke Stevens’ appearance, the evening will include performances by Buddy Blue, Jose Sinatra and Troy Dante, Mitchell Cornish and Foul Mouthed Darryl Monroe. Admission is free. For more information contact the Spirit at 276-3993.