By LINNEA QUIGLEY (Draculina Publishing; 1995)

A slim but reasonably satisfying mini-memoir by Linnea Quigley, the most prominent of the 1980s and ‘90s scream queens (a coalition that includes names like Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer and Monique Gabrielle). Her movies were by and large nothing to shout about, as she admits in this book (wherein she claims not to remember many of the pictures she headlined), but she’s got quite a story to tell.

I’M SCREAMING AS FAST AS I CAN serves as an excellent guide to the pratfalls of the no-budget horror scene. Quigley claims to “love” making movies, yet what’s described here is a nonstop carnival of degradation and bad luck, contained in the making of grade-z epics like YOUNG WARRIORS, PSYCHO IN TEXAS, HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS and CREEPAZOIDS.

Quigley’s “good” film roles included a bit part in AMERICAN GIGOLO that due to scheduling conflicts was never filmed, and a hefty role in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. She singles out the latter as the pinnacle of her film work, despite the fact that it entailed having a mold made of her private parts (“Do this in any other profession and you’d be in for a long jail term”), being pawed by “overzealous” extras and having a mask glued to her face. Understandably, she tried to leave the film industry in the mid-1980s, and returned only because the profession she attempted in its place—that of a cocktail waitress–was even more unpleasant.

Also included is a spot-on depiction of a has-been celebrity autograph session of a type that tends to proliferate at horror conventions, in which “stars” like Ellie May, Jay North and Adam West “were trying to sell themselves, but nobody was buying.” The fact that Linnea herself was part of that session isn’t lost upon her: “I didn’t want to see myself a decade or two down the road sitting there forlorn and alone with nothing better to do with my life than live in the past.” Compounding the embarrassment was the fact that the ageing Mr. West creepily came on to her.

At just 90 pages, at least a third of which are taken up with photos and reproductions of some of Linnea’s freakiest fan letters (excerpt: “I’m a belly lover so I like to see naked girls get stabbed in the bare belly-button but I want to point out that it’s only in fantasy that turns me on…”), the book is clearly too short. It’s been said that as of 2018 Quigley was working on a second, far more comprehensive tell-all memoir, but it has yet to appear. Hence, I’M SCREAMING AS FAST AS I CAN will have to stand as the foremost Linnea Quigley biographical resource, for better or worse.*

*It may not be biographical, but Linnea Quigley’s 1995 photo book SKIN, a horror-tinged spoof of Madonna’s SEX, is an impressive accomplishment, succeeding as both an on-target spoof of Madonna’s opus and an enormously enjoyable piece of work in its own right.