817 The Craft (1996)

This  was  a  successful teen horror about  four  girls who  dabble in the supernatural to achieve,. in three cases at least , fairly normal teenage ends. Of  course there's a  price to pay for  the  witchcraft. It's not very scary and there's no gore at all bar a few scratches bu  it's  moderately thrilling teen  entertainment.

Robin Tunney ( as Sarah )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Robin  is  from Chicago and of Irish heritage. This was her third film and first starring role. She had a strong  run in lead female roles  in the following  decade probably peaking with End  of  Days in 1999. As she started slipping down the cast lists in the late noughties she went into TV with a long run in The Mentalist. She is still active in both media.

Fairuza Balk ( as Nancy )

Sex : Nancy has sex with Sarah's boyfriend in her guise

Death : Survives but her mind has gone

Fairuza was born in California but  moved to Canada at a young age. She made her film debut at 11 as Dorothy in Return To Oz and kept things bubbling until this role brought her stardom. She has  worked steadily since but is somewhat typecast in darker roles. She  also  dabbles in music and art.

Neve Campbell ( as  Bonnie )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Neve  was born in Canada  but moved to America after her success in the TV series Party Of Five. Her  success in this role was immediately dwarfed by  the  impact of Scream where she played teen heroine Sydney Prescott, a role she has returned to in all but one of the sequels..Away from Scream , her star has dwindled on film but she has found plenty of TV work. She has been married twice.

Rachel True ( as   Rochelle )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

The  least well -known of the quartet , Rochelle is from New York and found her feet in TV roles on The Cosby Show, Beverley Hills 90210 and  The Freah Prince of Bel Air  before making her film debut in CB 4 in 1994..She  had a couple of good roles following  this  one but  has more  often  been  seen on TV. She  has a  genuine  interest in Tarot  cards  and  has moonlighted as a reader and  published a book on the subject.

Christine Taylor ( as Laura )

Sex :  No

Death : Survives

Christine is from Allentown,Pennsylvania. Her acting career began on TV with a two year run in the comedy western series Hey Dude . Her  film career took off  by landing the role of  Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie and its sequel. In 1999, she was working on a failed pilot with Bem Stiller and married him the following year. They have appeared in four  films together including Zoolander. They have two children.

Assumpta Serna ( as Lirino )

Sex: No

Death : Survives

Assumpta is  from  Barcelona  and her career began in Spanish language film in  the  late  seventies. She  appeared in Crime  Story and  Falcon  Crest and then  the British  series  Sharpe  where she met  her husband Scott Cleverdon.She has worked exclusively in Spanish cinema and TV for the past decade.

Jennifer Greenhut ( as Laura's friend 1)

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Jennifer  was  a  former gymnast  and  worked on three films as a production assistant before her film debut in 1994. She was never more than a bit part actress and  her last role was in 2000.

Elizabeth  Guber (as Laura's friend 2)

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Elisabeth made her screen debut as a baby in the 1973 TV movie Go Ask Alice .She  too was  a  bit part actress whose career ended in 2000.

816 Hellraiser IV : Boloodlines (1996)

 Doug  Bradley  returns as Pinhead once more in the fourth instalment of the Hellraiser franchise but  can't lift it out of the doldrums. The narrative shifts between the eighteenth century, 1996 and the 22nd century as  Bruce Ramsay plays three members of the Merchant dynasty facing off against Pinhead and  female demon. It's a neat device but you soon realise there's nothing new in the story as various characters you couldn't give a stuff about  get skewered and torn apart and it just becomes a tedious retread.

Valentina Vargas ( as Angelique )

Sex : Angelique has sex with her master Jacques and attempts to seduce the first  two Merchants

Death : As a human she is fayed alive, as a cenobite she is destroyed by perpetual light

Valentina is  a Chilean actress who  trained in France and made her debut in a French  film. She made an impact in her second film as The Girl in The Name Of The Rose. She  is  still active.

Kim Myers  (as Bobbi)

Sex : No

Death : Survives

This  is  Kim's last horror film to date.

Christine Harnos ( as Rimmer )

Sex : No

Death : No 

Christine is a Canadian actress who made her film debut in teen thriller The Rescue in 1988. After half a dozen  more films , she made her name on  TV as Sarah Greene in E.R. In 2003 she  gave up acting to  study child development, In 2006 she  started the charity Circus Remedy with friends.

Charlotte Chatton ( as Genevieve )

Sex : Genevieve is pregnant

Death : Survives

Charlotte  is  an  English actress who  made  her screen debut as a child in Dramarama in 1988. She had a very minor role in Titanic  and  a  recurring role in Dr Quinn Medicine Woman  but  gave  up  acting in 2001  to pursue a career in screenwriting. She co-wrote the  film Women Of The White  Buffalo.

815 Screamers (1996)

 This  Canadian sci-fi/horror  film  based on a Philip K Dick story was a box office bomb and, though it's not  entirely without merit, it's easy to see why. On a grim radiation-poisoned  planet, there's a civil war  dragging on between a heartless mining company and an Alliance made up of former employees and scientists. The latter have held their own by developing an autonomous killer weapon, the Screamer but  these have started to reproduce by  themselves - how exactly is only one of many plotholes which plague the narrative - and now pose a huge threat to both sides. Peter Weller plays the  Alliance commander  Henricksen who occasionally finds time to be a hero when he's not explaining the plot to the other characters. It looks very good and is intermittently exciting but it makes no sense whatsoever.

Jennifer Rubin ( as Jessica )

Sex : No

Death : Fatally wounded by a lookalike screamer

Jennifer  is the love interest in the film but  there's no instory explanation for why she's there.

Liliana Komorowska (as Landowska)

Sex : No

Death : Presumed killed when the Screamers overrun the alliance base

Liliana was born In Poland  and started acting there in the late seventies. She came to America to feature in the film War And Love , decided to stay there  and  found plenty of work on Tv  and in films such as Her Alibi. In 1991 , she starred in Scanners III : The Takeover  and subsequently married  its director Christian Duguy  who also directed this film.

Leni Parker (as McDonald)

Sex : No

Death : Presumed killed when the Screamers overrun the alliance base

Leni  is  a  Canadian actress whose screen career began in 1990, She is best known  for  her  TV work and in particular the role of Da'An in Earth : Final Conflict. She is still active.

814 Night Terrors (1995)

 This  is a really terrible Canadian shocker which sees an innocent-ish young  girl fall into the clutches of a sado-masochist cult in Egypt presided over by  Chevalier a descendant of Sade himself (Robert Englund ). Ihe  acting is woeful, the script a mess of half-baked ideasnicked from somewhere else, the  climax  dreadfully drawn-out and disappointing, all in all a complete waste of time.

Zoe Trilling ( as Genie )

Sex : Genie is sexually assaulted, has sex wthan Egyptian man  then is drugged for lesbian sex

Death : Survives

Zoe was born in Wisconsin as Geri Betlzler and worked as a juice distributor before breaking into acting. She first appeared as a dancer in Girls Just Want To Have Fun in 1985  but  rarely broke out of bit parts. Her acting career had stalled by 1977 and she became a choreographer and dance teacher. She died in 2023.

Alona Kimhi ( as Sabina )

Sex : Sabina has lesbian sex with Genie

Death : Stabbed by Chevalier

Alona  was born in Ukraine but her parents emigrated to Israel when she was 7. She had a film career in Israel from 1985 but  this  is her only film outside of that and her last screen role. She is now a best-selling novelist in Israel.

Chandra West (as Beth )

Sex : No

Death : Decapitated (offscreen)

Chandra  is  from Alberta  and  trained as a ballet dancer. She  made  her acting  debut on Canadian TV in  1990  and  has been a reliable supporting  actress in Hollywood films such as White Noise. She has been inactive in recent years.

Irit Sheleg  (as Fatima)

Sex : No

Death : Hanged (offscreen)

Irit is another Israeli actress making a one-off appearance in a Western film. She is still active.

813 Haunted (1995 )

 This  British-made  ghost  story set in the 1920s has been largely forgotten  but  it's worth a gander. Obligatory  American, Aidan Quinn plays David, Ash, a sceptical professor of para-psychology still  carrying a burden of guilt over the death of his twin sister Alice in childhood. He accepts an invitation from an old lady Miss Webb ( Anna Massey)  to come to England and investigate the ghosts that are plaguing her. Although the special effects are a  bit ropey and  the obvious use of  body doubles distracting, it's still a  good story and well acted with a twist that I didn't see coming.

Kate Beckinsale ( as Christina )

Sex : Christina has sex with David though it might be an hallucination

Death : Dies in a house fire 

Kate is the daughter of  actors Richard Beckinsale and Judy Loe and had a disruptive  childhood following the shock death of her father when she was just five.. She made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing in 1993 and  gradually increased her profile through the nineties. At the start of the new millennium she moved to Hollywood . She had a part in the box office bomb Pearl Harbour but really came to the fore in the Undeworld franchise beginning in 2003. She is still very active  balancing big budget action movies with dramatic roles in smaller films. She was in a long term relatioship with actor Michael Sheen and they remain friends.

Victoria Shalet ( as Juliette )

Sex : n/a

Death : Drowns in a lake

Victoria was born in London and started acting from an early age, making her TV debut in a Screenplay episode aged seven. Her film  debut in The Maid came the following year although her career was mainly spent on British television  becoming well known as Harmony Parker in the children's TV series The Queen's Nose. She was less successful as an adult actress and in 2012  decided to give  it  up and train as a therapist.

Geraldine Somerville (as Kate )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Geraldine  is an Irish actress who made her film debut in Close My Eyes in 1983.She  came to attention as DS Penhaligon in Cracker , winning a BAFTA for Best Actress in 1995. She had a regular role in the noughties as the adult Lily Potter in the Harry Potter franchise but  also starred in 2001's  Gosford Park since  when she  has been somewhat  typecast in period roles.

812 Return of the Texas Chainsaw Masacre (1995)

 First time director Kim  Henkel got an unbelievable stroke of luck  when both the unknowns he cast in the lead roles  broke  big shortly after the film's release giving  it  a  publicity boost it didn't deserve. This is by far the worst film in the Chainsaw franchise. The plot is pretty much a  re-run of the first film, differentiated by camp black comedy which doesn't sit well with the amount of misogynistic violence on show. The ending which introduces a bizarre subplot about the illuminati makes no ense whatsoever.

Rene Zellweger ( as Jenny )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Well. even A-listers have to start somewhere. This was Rene's first starring role after a string of bit parts and her first chase scene (some parts of which used a stunt double ) is the best part of the film. A year later she made  her breakthrough  in Jerry Maguire  and her future was assured, In 2001, she landed her signature role in Bridget Jones Diary and has appeared in all four films of the franchise.  In 2003, she won an Oscar for Cold Mountain. After 2010  she took an extended sabbatical but returned in triumph with another Oscar for Judy in 2019.

Tonie Peresnsky ( as  Darla )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Tonie  was  a  Canadian actress who  won  early  plaudits  for  her theatre work. She crossed into  films in 1988  but  remained largely a bit part actress. She retired in 2004 following a family tragedy.

Lisa Marie3 Newmyer ( as Heather )

Sex : No

Death : Heather has her skull crushed by a mechanical leg

Lisa was a native of Texas and this was her screen debut. She made sporadic appearances including  in Sin City (2005) but disappears after 2008.

811 Mute Witness ( 1995 )

 This  is  a  good horror  thriller, set  in  Russia to save money,  which balances out  the  tension and violence with a surprising amount of black humour. Billy Hughes, a  mute make up artist  is in Moscow working on a dire slasher film directed by her sister's boyfriend Evan Richards. Revisiting the studio late at night, she stumbles on two of the Russian crew making a snuff film and barely escapes with her life but her problems are only just beginning. The film is notable for a brief  cameo from Alec Guiness filmed ten years earlier when the director buttonholed him at a film festival;that's why he addresses his Russian minion by an English name.

Marina Zudina ( as Billy )

Sex : Billy flashes her body to a peeping tom in the hope he can rescue her

Death : Survives

Marina was a last minute replacement for Gina Bellman and did not speak English . She is a native of Moscow  and  this is the only non-Russian production on hr c.v.. She  is a widow with two children and hasn't  worked since 2020.

Fay Ripley ( as Karen )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Fay was  born in Wimbledon. This was her first film, having been cut out of Frankenstein in 1994. She  made  her name as Jenny in Cold Feet  starting out in 1998 and  has never been out of work on British TV since.

Larisa Khusnullina ( as Victim )

Sex : Has Sex with her killer in the snuff film

Death : Stabbed repeatedly to death 

This is  the only non-Russian production among her 7 credits.

Olga Tolstetskaya ( as Actress )

Sex : No

Death : Survives

Again, Olga's career has been entirely spent in Russia.

Natalya Polyushkina  as Natasha

Sex : No

Death : Survives

This is Natalya's only screen credit, performing the same function on the real set as she does on screen.