The horror of Kristina Klebe

Horror fans will most likely recognize actress Kristina Klebe for taking over the role of Lynda in Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween. But Kristina has been racking up plenty of horror. I covered Halloween here if you really feel the need to read anything more about it. She was also in my least favorite segment of the horror anthology Chillerama, which I cover here.

As for this blog, these are three other horror flix in which Kristina has appeared, and I hope there are more to come because she’s a pretty awesome scream queen.

BreadCrumbs (2011)

In BreadCrumbs, Kristina loses the spotlight to another Halloween franchise alum. She is seriously only in the first few seconds of the film as a screaming victim wearing a badge and listed in the credits as “Deputy” Nelson. However, her existence is never even referenced again in the movie.

The main girl is actually Marianne Hagan, best known as the lead in The Curse of Michael Myers. It is great to see her in action again, but she managed to step into another convoluted mess of a slasher with this one.

Marianne plays an aging porn star who heads to a house in the woods with a cast and crew to make one last film. Despite one sex scene with plenty of male and female body parts, this is surprisingly not a raunchy or comic horror movie. And it’s actually quite creepy at first as the gang finds themselves being stalked and killed by a brother and sister they run into in the woods.

While the beginnings of BreadCrumbs deliver perfect slasher stuff, the movie quickly falls apart, with every character making unforgivably dumb moves. It’s just too much to accept in one movie. And the worst offender is Marianne! She deserves to fucking die here. But instead, she takes us all the way to the end, dealing with her maternal issues by trying to protect these evil children that look like college graduates.

There’s also a painfully bad attempt to shoehorn the Hansel and Gretel story into the plot. But hey. The director, Mike Nichols, plays the porn director in the movie, and he’s pretty cute.

2012: APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD (2002)
(aka: Zone of the Dead)

Kristina Klebe gets main girl status in this zombie flick…alongside Ken Foree of the original Dawn of the Dead! They play agents supervising a police escorted prisoner transport. When the zombie outbreak hits, they must work together with the prisoner to survive.

Okay. There is absolutely nothing new here and the movie runs about 20 minutes too long thanks to an excruciating dialogue-heavy section in the middle of the film, but the zombie crap is delicious. We get classic slow movers with gnarly faces and oodles of gore and gut-munching. The movie takes place almost exclusively at night and there’s atmospheric fog machine overload.

There’s also a naked zombie who just did her hair (it’s seriously wrapped in a towel) and a God-freak prisoner on the loose to add to the main group’s problem. And of course, one of their own is bit—and takes approximately 100 times longer to turn than anyone else who gets bit. Finally, Foree naturally gives a speech that is a total in-joke mirroring his speech from the Romero days.

There’s nothing particularly scary in 2012: Apocalypse of the Dead, but it makes up for it with a whole lot of zombie action and zombie hordes, especially near the conclusion of the film. And of course, there’s a self-centered dick character. Make sure to sit through the credits to see his fate.

KILLER MERMAID (aka: Nymph) (2014)

The director who brought us 2012: Apocalypse of the Dead casts Kristina as the main girl once again. Killer Mermaid definitely looks like it has a bigger budget…and CGI that was absent from the zombie film. So pick your pleasure.

The odd thing about Killer Mermaid is that a majority of the film is nothing more than a slasher, with Kristina and her friends getting trapped on an abandoned prison island with a killer with a big grappling hook. It’s slasher fun but kind of ridiculous when they find a lair in the prison filled with—what else?—newspaper clippings and photos. UGH.

Meanwhile, the guys start getting drawn to a voice they hear underground and we finally get to see the mermaid and her CGI tail. And as beautiful as she is, it’s really just an illusion because she’s actually a fricking sea hag.

This is a fairly entertaining creature feature (I particularly enjoyed the cutie in his tight blue square cut Speedo), but you can’t help wonder why no one is screaming when a mermaid suddenly makes an appearance. Or why the flashlights of two people go out at the same time. Or why they would bother banging desperately on a locked door on a deserted island as the killer approaches. Or even better—why someone actually fucking answers. Or why they paddle a boat almost right up to a dock when the mermaid is pursuing them…and then stop to fight her rather than just jump on fucking land.

If the ending of the film has anything to say about it, there will be a Killer Mermaids (aka: Nymphs). Wonder if Kristina Klebe will return.