Los Angeles, CA – A cultural phenomenon born in the mid-1980s reached its peak in 1987 with the trifecta of actresses Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer – beautiful women who screamed their lungs out in a series of campy b-movies that helped fill then-empty video rental shelves. In honor of the era, filmmaker David DeCoteau has produced and directed Cougar Cult, reuniting the leading ladies responsible for creating the modern “Scream Queen.”
With DeCoteau’s cinematic gems like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama and Nightmare Sisters, Quigley, Stevens and Bauer thrilled and titillated a generation of male teen angst before the internet made T&A easily accessible. Frequent shower scenes, monster attacks and demonic possession often found the women in various states of undress, and quickly turned them into small screen starlets. With the fame came fan clubs, model kits, trading cards, comic books, and 900 #’s where a $1.50 could get you a scary bedtime story. Now the ladies have come together for Cougar Cult, DeCoteau’s campy ode to the schlock-fests of yesteryear.
Cougar Cult follows Rufus (Ryan Curry), Darwin (Bryce Durfee), and Coopersmith (Jack Kubacki) – three nerdy, but hunky, young college dudes who score themselves a dream summer job working at a swanky estate. Little do they know that the owners, wealthy and sexy middle-aged babes Clara (Quigley), Victoria (Bauer), and Edwina (Stevens) are actually a coven of witches who transform into flesh-eating cougars in need of fresh young men in order to live eternally. With screamingly outrageous special FX, dialogue with tongue firmly in it’s 80s-soaked cheek scripted by Matthew Jason Walsh (who penned DeCoteau’s hugely successful The Brotherhood franchise), Cougar Cult is already proving a great rental successor to the former USA Up All Night crowd.
National DVD rental retailer Redbox has picked up Cougar Cult for nationwide release beginning July 31, 2012. (Reservations are now being accepted at redbox.com.) Redbox currently has over 30,000 pods located outside grocery stores, gas stations and pharmacies throughout North America, meaning maximum exposure for the title. The director states, “These women still have such a solid staggering fan base even 25 years later it’ll be amazing to see how they affect a new generation of camp horror film fanatics.”
The trio of women, DeCoteau, and fellow filmmakers Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers), Richard Gabai (Assault of the Party Nerds), Jay Richardson (Teenage Exorcist) and Kenneth J. Hall (Nightmare Sisters) were the focus of Screaming in High Heels: The Rise & Fall of the Scream Queen Era, a documentary currently airing on NBCUniversal’s Chiller TV and due on Unrated DVD August 28, 2012 via Amazon.com. The parallel release of Cougar Cult and Screaming in High Heels is already regenerating interest amongst the original 1980s fans…and now their children. The entire group of filmmakers will appear at a signing event at Dark Delicacies Book Store (www.darkdel.com) in Burbank, CA at 7 p.m. on August 29, 2012.
