31 Screams: Venetia Stevenson

Post-1960, the free ride was over for horror heroines. Janet Leigh's onscreen murder well before the halfway mark of Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) flipped the script for Hollywood scream queens, who could no longer count on being around for the final fadeout. That same year, John Llewellyn Moxey's THE CITY OF THE DEAD (US: HORROR HOTEL) pulled a similar dirty trick on fright film fans.

While investigating mysterious goings on in the New England village of Whitewood (scene of colonial witch burnings - yeah, I know history buffs, but take the weed out of your asses for a second), plucky amateur sleuth Venetia Stevenson finds herself abducted by hooded figures. Dragged through a cobweb-lined underground tunnel...

... towards a sacrificial altar, she screams for her life but her entreaties fall on deaf ears with the resident Satanic cult (led by hotelier Patricia Jessel and college prof Christopher Lee). What elevates this disturbing setpiece above the corny tied-to-the-tracks level of The Perils of Pauline is Stevenson's reaction. Any pretense of Nancy Drew stoicism crumbles in an instant as would-be heroine Nan Barlow begs, begs for her life, reduced to a juvenile, almost infantile state by the horror of her situation.

And it goes on, that's the thing. It isn't quick. The camera lingers on Nan as her head turns from side to side, her dress coming undone in the struggle, exposing a rather naughty bodice (begging the question, who was this intended for?), humiliating this proud, intelligent and resourceful young woman who knows all too well that she is being taken to her doom.

Not a graphic or excessive scene in any way but a difficult one to watch, even after repeat viewings... probably because we all know in our heart of hearts that this is probably how we'll go to our own destruction.