Brinke Stevens
She trained as a marine biologist. Stevens took a biology degree at San Diego State and studied at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, could not find work in the field, and started modelling in Los Angeles in 1980 while picking up extra work on films. It is a strange origin for one of the recognisable faces of American low-budget horror, and it explains the intelligence she brings to material that rarely deserves it.
The early credits read as a record of what the industry offered a young woman in Los Angeles at the time. Look at the billing: Girl in Bathroom number three in Body Double, a shower girl in Savage Streets, a school girl in Private School, a girl in a hot tub, a body double in Psycho III, an uncredited silent-movie actress in ¡Three Amigos!. Parts defined by a room rather than a person.
The horror scene is what gave her actual roles. Linda in The Slumber Party Massacre in 1982 was the start, and the run that followed made her a fixture: Taffy in Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Marci in Nightmare Sisters, Shala in Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, the witch in Jack-O. The films are cheap and wildly uneven, and she is almost always the most committed person on screen, playing them straight while the budget falls apart around her.
She never stopped. Doctor Banks in Death House, Zelda in Amityville Apt., Sally Hallett in Ed Kemper: four decades in, she is still turning up and still doing the work properly.
Movies (30)
- Auditions from Beyond (1999)
- ¡Three Amigos! (1986)
- Body Double (1984)
- Private School (1983)
- Emmanuelle 4 (1984)
- Night of Something Strange (2016)
- Psycho III (1986)
- Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)
- Surf 2 (1984)
- Savage Streets (1984)
- Vicious (2003)
- Nightmare Sisters (1988)
- Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
- The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
- Munchie (1992)
- Death House (2018)
- Jack-O (1995)
- Masseuse (1996)
- The Seduction (1982)
- Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (1991)
- Love Scenes (1984)
- Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988)
- Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989)
- Amityville Apt. (2025)
- The Jigsaw Murders (1989)
- Submerged (2000)
- Fatal Games (1984)
- Ed Kemper (2025)
- RoboWoman (2019)
- Zombie Jamboree (1993)
Where to start with Brinke Stevens
The Slumber Party Massacre is where the real career starts, and it is also the best film she is in: a 1982 slasher written by Rita Mae Brown that is sharper and funnier about the genre than its title suggests. Watch it first and you will understand the next thirty years of her filmography.
From there, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and Nightmare Sisters are the pure late-1980s low-budget items, cheap, silly, and carried by a cast that knows exactly what it is making. Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity is the science-fiction variant.
For the earlier work, Body Double and Psycho III show her on the edges of studio films. Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies is the documentary where she gets to talk about all of it, and Death House is the modern reunion picture.