Director/Producer – Dave DeCoteau, Screenplay – Kenneth J. Hall, Photography – Voya Mikulic, Music – Del Casher, Songs – Haunted Garage, Animation Effects – Bret Mixon, Makeup Effects – John Criswell, Scott Coulter, Cleve Hall & Denny Powers, Production Design – Royce Mathew. Production Company – Cinema Home Video Productions.
Cast
Linnea Quigley (Melody Hoffmeyer), Brinke Stevens (Marci Feinberg), Michelle McClellan [Bauer] (Mickey Johnson), Richard Gabai (Kevin), William Dristas (Duane), Marcus Vaughter (Freddy), Timothy Kauffman (Phil), Matthew Phelps (J.J.), C.J. Cox (Bud), Jim Culver (Lanchester Perrin), Sandy Brooke (Amanda Detweiler), Dukey Flyswatter [Michael Sonye] (Omar)
Plot
Melody, Marci and Mickey, three nerdy girls at the Tri Eta Pi sorority house, are left alone for the weekend. Melody calls up Kevin, a guy she went on a date with from a neighbouring fraternity, and tells him to come over and bring two guy friends. Kevin puts the idea to his two fellow fraternity pledges Freddy and Duane. However, their plans to head over to the sorority are stopped in their tracks by the bullying heads of the fraternity who confine them to their room. The three guys instead sneak out the window. At the sonority house, the girls decide to hold a séance but this causes them to be taken over by a demonic force that makes them sexually aggressive. The guys are witness as the fraternity heads who have followed them to the sorority house are devoured by the possessed girls. They try to resist the girls and figure out what to do.
David DeCoteau is a prolific B-budget director. DeCoteau came to prominence in the video era of the 1980s. He began working for Charles Band at Empire Productions and continued at Empire’s successor Full Moon Productions. There he made a steady output of low-budget horror and occasionally science-fiction films with titles that include Creepozoids (1987), Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (1988), Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991), Beach Babes from Beyond (1993) and Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000 (1994), among others. Towards the end of the 1990s, DeCoteau came out as a gay director and almost all of his output since then consists of horror films that have one foot in softcore gay erotica. DeCoteau currently has over 170 films to his name (frequently made under a bunch of different pseudonyms). A full list of DeCoteau’s other genre films can be found at the bottom of the page.
Scream Queens were a fad that took off during the 1980s. Although there were others that have retrospectively been given the label from Fay Wray to Jamie Lee Curtis, the Scream Queen became a marketing phenomenon during the 1980s and would feature actresses appearing in low-budget horror films where they would divest their clothes at the drop of a hat. In this case, DeCoteau has brought together the three acknowledged Scream Queens of the era – Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer (who is listed under her maiden name Michelle McLaren, under which she appeared in seven films between 1988-9 after her ex-husband filed a suit against her using his name, before she reverted to calling herself Michelle Bauer).
In its opening scenes, Nightmare Sisters has a level of badness that makes you wince. The first scene is a crystal ball séance that features Michael D. Sonye (hiding behind the name of Dukey Flyswatter) with an atrocious Indian accent. We then cut to the three Scream Queens playing sorority sisters who have left alone for the weekend. All of them are initially dressed down – Michelle Bauer is bulked up, Brinke Stevens plays a nerdy bookworm, while Linnea Quigley plays with a hayseed accent that makes her seem intellectually handicapped.
(l to r) Michelle Bauer, Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley take a very long bath together
The tone throughout is one of cartoonishly exaggerated farce. Indeed, what we really have with Nightmare Sisters is Revenge of the Nerds (1984) rewritten in terms of a Scream Queen film. The girls conduct a séance, which seems a perfectly normal thing to do when bored at a 1980s party. This causes them to become possessed where they go from nerds and hayseeds to the Scream Queens we all know.
Thereafter there are lots of scenes of the three girls throwing themselves at the guys, smearing cake over their bodies, in dominatrix gear cracking whips. Oh and a scene that goes on for a very long time with the three girls all together in a bath soaping each other up. The guys try to prevent the girls from seducing them after seeing that this turns other guys into ash, before bringing in an exorcist. That is really about all there is to the film.
David DeCoteau’s other films of genre interest are:– Dreamaniac (1986), Creepozoids (1987), Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1987), Dr Alien/I Was a Teenage Sex Maniac (1988), Murder Weapon (1990), Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991), Beach Babes from Beyond (1993), Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000 (1994), Blonde Heaven (1995), Prehysteria! 3 (1995), Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island (1996), Bikini Goddesses (1996), Lurid Tales: The Castle Queen (1996), Petticoat Planet (1996), Prey of the Jaguar (1996), The Journey: Absolution (1997), Shrieker (1997), Skeletons (1997), Beach Babes from Beyond 2 (1998), Curse of the Puppet Master (1998), Frankenstein Reborn (1998), The Killer Eye (1998), Talisman (1998), Alien Arsenal (1999), Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy (1999), Witchhouse (1999), The Brotherhood (2000), Frankenstein and the Wolfman Reborn (2000), Prison of the Dead (2000), Voodoo Academy (2000), Final Stab/Final Scream/Scream 4 (2001), The Frightening (2001), The Brotherhood 2: Young Warlocks (2001), The Brotherhood 3: Young Demons (2002), Wolves of Wall Street (2002), Leeches (2003), Speed Demon (2003), Ring of Darkness (2004), The Sisterhood (2004), Brotherhood IV: The Complex (2005), Killer Bash (2005), Witches of the Caribbean (2005), Beastly Boyz (2006), Grizzly Rage (2007), The Raven (2007), House of Usher (2008), Alien Presence (2009), The Brotherhood V: Alumni (2009), The Brotherhood VI: Initiation (2009), Nightfall (2009), The Pit & the Pendulum (2009), Son of a Witch (2009), Stem Cell (2009), 1313: Giant Killer Bees (2010), Puppet Master: Axis of Evil (2010), A Dream Within a Dream (2011), 1313: Haunted Frat (2011), 1313: Actor Slash Model (2011), 1313: Boy Crazies (2011), 1313: Wicked Stepbrother (2011), 1313: Bermuda Triangle (2012), 1313: Bigfoot Island (2012), 1313: Cougar Cult (2012), 1313: Frankenqueen (2012), 1313: Hercules Unbound (2012), 1313: Night of the Widow (2012), 1313: UFO Invasion (2012), A Halloween Puppy (2012), Immortal Kiss: Queen of the Night (2012), Santa’s Summer House (2012), Snow White: A Deadly Summer (2012), 2: Voodoo Academy (2012), Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft (2013), My Stepbrother is a Vampire (2013), A Talking Cat (2013), A Talking Pony (2013), 3 Scream Queens (2014), 3 Wicked Witches (2014), 666: Devilish Charm (2014), 666: Kreepy Kerry (2014), 90210 Shark Attack (2014), Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper (2014), Knock ‘Em Dead (2014), Asian Ghost Story (2016), Bloody Blacksmith (2016), Evil Exhumed (2016), Sorority Slaughterhouse (2016), 666: Teen Warlock (2016), The Wrong Child (2016), The Wrong Roommate (2016), Swamp Freak (2017), The Wrong Crush (2017), The Wrong Man (2017), The Wrong Student (2017), The Wrong Cruise (2018), The Wrong Friend (2018) and The Wrong Teacher (2018). DeCoteau has made films under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ellen Cabot, Richard Chasen, Julian Breen and Victoria Sloan.
