DinaMeyer Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I admire the pluck of the Starship Troopers franchise. Most films that are destined for the DVD bin have an aura of shame about them -- you rarely see Steven Seagal out granting interviews for his latest straight-to-DVD action movie or any significant extras on the disc for such a movie -- but one glimpse at the website for Starship Troopers: Marauder gives the impression of a well-oiled machine that's catering to a fan base and has excited and interested people behind it. There are all kinds of interviews, production and fan art and sketches, news updates, cast biographies and other things for you to sample. Also, the names behind this thing aren't anything to sneeze at either: the movie marks the directing debut of Edward Neumeier, writer of Robocop and Verhoeven's original Starship Troopers, and it will star Starship's Casper Van Dien and Jolene Blalock, so I'm officially declaring this movie to be worth a viewing.

I'm not really sure what to think of USA Today's unexpected list of up-and-coming scream queens, but I have to start by pointing out that they felt it necessary to consult a representative from Troma on this matter. I mean, come on -- Troma? Are we really looking to the geniuses behind Poultrygeist for insights into future of the horror genre? Has it come to that? Okay, moving on. The first choice on their list is Rob Zombie's 36-year-wife, Sheri Moon, who has appeared in some of his movies, I guess. I don't know how that qualifies her as a scream queen in any way -- it seems like the simplest requirement of a scream queen is that she's college-age or thereabouts. If we're going to shoot for late-30s, then Dina Meyer should be on the list. Also on their list is Cerina Vincent, who I have the vaguest memory of in Cabin Fever and who co-starred in an Edward Furlong horror movie called Intermedio, which I've heard about but haven't seen. Then there's Tiffany Shepis, a bonafied Troma girl whose IMDB credits include Pauly Shore is Dead, Hoodoo for Voodoo and National Lampoon's Boobies. Yeesh.

I think a more useful definition of a scream queen than someone who has racked up four or five straight-to-video credits in the last two years is an actress who has actually given an impactful, memorable performance in a horror film that was actually scary. With that in mind, I would nominate Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi, the female leads from Wolf Creek, for any scream queen title. Wolf Creek was a movie where the screaming came fast and furious and in a truly horrifying situation -- I still have nightmares about that one and a lot of its success was because of those performances. Also, how about Jess Weixler, the star of the Sundance hit Teeth, or Amber Heard from All the Boys Love Mandy Lane? I haven't seen either of those films yet, but I've at least heard a lot about them -- more so than 99 percent of the credits listed in this article.

If you're not down with the Decoys, they are a race of blonde babes from a dying planet who have traveled to Earth dressed in their best silver leather jackets and sparkle eye-shadow in order to mate with unsuspecting men, in the hopes that this inter-species collaboration will stave off Decoy extinction. Since they all look like Playmate of the Month, finding willing partners is easy, but the mating sessions usually end badly for the Earth men, because a Decoy hides within her ample bosom a tangle of ultra-cold tentacles that digitally explode from her chest mid-coitus, wrap around the man's torso and freeze him solid. Got all that? Good. The second installment of this horror-comedy series, Decoys: The Second Seduction, finds the Decoys -- once again led by the bespectacled honey-blonde brain of the bunch, Constance (Kim Poirier) -- descending on some sort of low-rent liberal arts college with an abundant supply of walking hard-ons that can be lured away from their dorms and turned into satisfied popsicles with little fuss.

The Decoys don't aim to kill their sex partners -- the pregnancy is worthless if the man dies -- but they don't sweat it much when it happens. One of the film's oddest scenes has them holding an impromptu strategy meeting on campus to discuss how they might go about improving the survival ratio of their mates. One of those male survivors from the first film, Luke, (Corey Sevier) returns in this film, to take on the 'Linda Hamilton in T:2' role -- presumed crazy and ordered to stay on meds, lest he start with the insane rantings about dangerous alien sex-kittens again. Luke's mandatory therapy sessions are presided over by the world's hottest psychiatrist, Dina Meyer, who is doing someone an enormous favor by appearing in this film, along with her Saw co-star Tobin Bell, who plays an anthropology professor with a blow-dried, loose-collar appearance fit for a drug kingpin on Miami Vice. The only other cast notable is Sam (Tyler Johnston) a kid whose resemblance to a very young Tom Cruise is almost weirdly distracting.

When it comes to exuding evil out of every pore, either you have a knack for it or you don't. Some actors are just good at being bad, to the point that they seem miscast when playing a hero. For the life of me, I cannot fathom what Gary Oldman is supposed to be doing in the new Batman series, playing a kind-hearted desk cop who pops up every now and then to tell Batman he's doing a heck of a job. If Oldman's character doesn't turn into a bedbug-crazy villain by the end of The Dark Knight, I'm cashing in my chips. John Travolta is a good example of an actor who can swing both ways -- he played a perfectly good villain in two John Woo films, but doesn't carry any of that over to his comedies or dramas. He has the knack, and can turn it on and off.

Of the younger generation, Tim Olyphant is an up-and-coming actor to watch for his villain-chops. He tested them out as a memorably slimy porn-guy in The Girl Next Door and as the shiftless drug-dealer in Go. He'll next be testing his mettle as a traditional kingpin villain in Live Free Or Die Hard, or as the rest of the world knows it, 4.0. Today, I'm making a list of actors who fit a particular mold -- the ones that do villainy superbly when they do it, but hardly ever do it. Maybe they don't realize how much eye-gouging, evil-eyeing, venom-spewing potential they have, or maybe they just need new agents who will give them a great horror or action script that requires an awesome antagonist.

1. Drew Barrymore

The only thing I could think while watching the Pyro character do his thing in X-Men: The Last Stand was "why don't the X-Men track down Charlie McGee, who is probably some 30-year old scarred-up outlaw biker chick/freelance hitwoman, and have her show up and fire-battle this guy into the next life?" There's nothing I'd jump in line to see faster than a hard-edged sequel to Firestarter, with Drew Barrymore's character now completely warped by her childhood experiences, and basically available to flame-broil anyone you please, if the price is right. I didn't exactly dig Barrymore's trailer-park-Lolita Poison Ivy phase, but I maintain that she has some great villainy in her future. There's something in her eyes that screams the polar opposite of the hippy-dippy, bright-eyed 'human sunflower' image she so aggressive pushes on us. We're talking about Drew Barrymore here -- doesn't anymore remember 1985 through, like, 1996? She still has major issues, and she needs a role that will give her a body count.