appear on it.
📺 Horror Crush Database — The Biggest Horror Shows
| Rank | TV Show | Horror Crushes |
|---|
| 🥇 | The Vampire Diaries | 5 |
| 🥈 | The Twilight Zone | 4 |
| 🥉 | The X-Files | 3 |
| 🥉 | Supernatural | 3 |
| 5 | American Horror Story | 2 |
| 5 | Creepshow | 2 |
| 5 | Twin Peaks | 2 |
| 8 | Dark Shadows | 1 |
| 8 | Bates Motel | 1 |
| 8 | Freddy's Nightmares | 1 |
| 8 | Scream: The TV Series | 1 |
| 8 | True Blood | 1 |
And, the winning series with a total of 5 Crushes is The Vampire Diaries!
The funny thing is that I had a feeling it would sink its fangs into the top spot. I based this prediction solely on how many times it has come up in the write-ups for the actresses. Even more hilarious is that it's the only show on the above leaderboard that I have never watched a single episode of!
That said, The Twilight Zone and its various incarnations were only one number behind. Meanwhile, long-running favorites The X-Files and Supernatural tied for a very respectable third spot.
And now it is time to find out what type of actresses dominate the database. Are they from the Hollywood mainstream, are they scream queens/horror specialists, or do they actually come from the underground/extreme side of the genre? Let's find out right now!
| Category | Count | Percentage |
|---|
| 🏆 Mainstream | 46 | 48.9% |
| 👑 Scream Queen / Horror Specialist | 39 | 41.5% |
| 💀 Underground / Extreme | 9 | 9.6% |
| TOTAL | 94 | 100% |
At 41.5%, Scream Queens/Horror Specialists come screaming for vengeance into second place amongst the Horror Crushes. But in the end, the Hollywood machine pushed right through them to take the top spot, with Mainstream actresses making up nearly half of the inductions. Showing just how diverse the Crushes are, those from the Underground/Extreme side of horror pulled in close to 10% of the remaining results.
Now, it's time for a classic throwdown as Final Girls battle Killers/Villains/Antagonists, while Other Survivors/Supporting characters look on, waiting to see if they can make a run-in and pull off a sneaky victory. Meanwhile, the Victims hide in the corner, desperately hoping they make it out alive! Who will win?
🥊 The Ultimate Horror Showdown
🏆 FINAL GIRLS 33 — 35.1%🩸 VICTIMS 31 — 33.0%🔪 KILLERS / VILLAINS / ANTAGONISTS 17 — 18.1%👻 OTHER SURVIVORS / SUPPORTING 13 — 13.8%94 actresses — 100%
And, just like in the movies, the
Final Girls fight their way through the incoming challengers and take the top spot! What's most interesting is just how close the battle with the
Victims was: 33 vs. 31 Crushes. That means that while they're usually on the sharp end of the blade, dealing with maniacs, monsters, killer animals, and whatever the fuck else comes after them in their flicks, they actually managed to win the silver medal here!
It is important to mention that these results were based on what each actress is
best known for within the horror genre. Some actresses have played multiple types of characters, which made them a little harder to pigeonhole. Take
Lorraine De Selle, for example. Throughout her horror/exploitation career, she has played characters that fall into just about every category. But, once again, I asked myself:
What is this lady's most iconic role, or what is she overall best known for? I went with that.
Remember, if I had counted every single role for every actress, the numbers would be as insane as the maniacs some of these ladies have faced—or played themselves!
Now, what about the ladies who have had to deal with killer animals? How many of the Crushes have faced deadly creatures from nature? Which terrifying beasts have they encountered? And, most importantly, which of these critters is the one that the most Crushes have crossed paths with?
🦖 Horror Crush Database — When Nature Attacks
17 of 94 actresses — 12.90%
In what amounts to about
one in ten Horror Crushes have crossed with a nature amok/ killer animal acting credit. And the complete list of animals accompanied by how many actresses encountered it are:
Animal breakdown by qualifying actresses
-
🦈 Sharks — 7 actresses
-
🐒 Primates — 1
-
🐀 Rats — 1
-
🕷️ Tarantulas — 1
-
🪱 Worms — 1
- 🪲 Giant Insects / Beetles — 1
- 🪳 Giant killer cockroaches — 1
-
🦑 Sand-dwelling marine creature — 1
- 🐍 Giant mythical Amazonian snake — 1
- 🐋 Killer orca — 1
- 🐊 Crocodile — 1
- 🦖 Dinosaurs — 1
- 🐾 Rampaging zoo animals — 1
In a result that surprises no one, sharks are by far the winning animal. Ever since Jaws scared the living shit out of moviegoers and made sure they kept their asses out of the water, these apex predators have been the most-used animal in the genre. There is perhaps no better proof of this than the fact that 7 shark-related movies are represented in the database, as opposed to 1 for every other kind of creature. Bruce the Shark and friends absolutely devoured the competition here.
And, speaking of sharks we have a tie for what Crushes have encountered the most amount of deadly animals. Our first lady crossed paths with a giant prehistoric shark and a killer croc!
JESSICA McNAMEE
🦈 Shark — The Meg (2018)
🐊 Crocodile — Black Water: Abyss (2020)
Meanwhile, Brooke Butler also encountered sharks and whatever fuck lives in The Sand.
Brooke Butler
🦑 Sand-dwelling marine creature — The Sand (2015)
🦈 Shark — Ozark Shark (2016)
Queen of Nature Amok: VACANT — Jessica McNamee & Brooke Butler tied for the most animal encounters. 🦈🐊🏆
Just a friendly reminder: the animals have to be the actual source of the danger, and they have to be naturally occurring. That means no human-to-animal transformations, whether we're talking panthers, giant mantises, werewolves, or anything similar. This also includes someone being turned into a roach by Freddy Krueger!
Also disqualified are rats being used as torture devices in women-in-prison flicks, as well as birds that are supposedly there to kill but ultimately don't do squat. I'm looking at you, Zombie 5: The Killing Birds!
And now we move on to a section filled with enough weird and wild shit to have you going WTF?! multiple times over!
🤯 Horror Crush Database — What the Fuck?!
- 🧠 Mindfuck/reality WTF: Triangle, In the Mouth of Madness, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, The Scary of Sixty-First
- 🩸 Extreme/underground WTF: Nekromantik 2, Bad Biology
- 👹 Full Moon/B-movie WTF: Bad Channels, Dark Angel: The Ascent, The Wasp Woman, The Sand
- 🦎 Premise WTF: Meet the Applegates, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey
- 🤘 Cultural/era WTF: Trick or Treat-adjacent territory was considered but rejected because its weirdness is historically contextualized
- 🔪 Franchise/production WTF: Debi Sue Voorhees and Friday the 13th Part V
- 🎭 Arthouse WTF: Isabelle Adjani in Possession
- 💋 Tonal/genre WTF: Lorraine De Selle in Emanuelle in America
- 🐦 Title/franchise WTF: Zombie 5: The Killing Birds
- 😈 Monster-romance WTF: Wishmaster: The Prophecy Fulfilled and Leprechaun 2
- 👻 70s exploitation WTF: Nurse Sherri
- 📖 Surreal/gothic WTF: Parasomnia
- 🦖 Premise WTF / WTF Sci-Fi: Tammy and the T-Rex
🏆 Final 2026 WTF Horror Tally: 26 actresses
This 2026 WTF Horror Tally comes courtesy of 26 Crushes but 27 qualifying WTF credits. We counted each movie individually, and the Crushes' induction into this category ran the gauntlet of weirdness, shocking content, hilarity (both intentional and unintentional), absurdity, and so much more.
Movies represented include mind- and time-bending experiences; a wonderfully romantic love triangle, except that said triangle includes a decayed corpse; the heartwarming story of a girl with seven clitorises who gives birth to mutant babies and a dude with a sentient, drug-addicted schlong; the wonderful world of Full Moon flicks; families—including the cute girl next door—who turn into giant mantises; Winnie the Pooh and friends becoming psychotic killers; plots that defy explanation; a zombie movie sequel whose title promises killer birds but delivers neither killer birds nor very many zombies; monsters who try to romance their gorgeous blonde protagonists; last name of an actress that happen to coincide with the world's most famous hockey masked slasher, only for her character to be killed by his wannabe; and so very much more.
Yeah.
What the fuck?!And, through it all, we have one Crush who earns the title of WTF Horror Queen, thanks to two qualifying movies.
In one of them, Leprechaun 2, the diminutive, evil, wise-cracking, gold-hoarding monster himself—Warwick Davis as the Leprechaun—falls in love with her and decides he wants to make her his bride!
Then there's Tammy and the T-Rex, where she plays the female member of a gang who has a crush on its leader, Billy. The gang kills his ex-girlfriend Tammy's (Denise Richards) boyfriend, Michael (Paul Walker), who is then brought back to life when his brain is transferred into a robotic T-Rex! Oh, and the surgery is performed by none other than Terry Kiser, the Bernie of Weekend at Bernie's!
Yes, those are indeed real plots, and those are indeed the actual people who are in them. 😂
And who is this actress? Why, it is the lovely Shevonne Durkin!
👑 WTF Horror Queen — Shevonne Durkin!
And now let's see how many of our Crushes have appeared in documentaries, participated in DVD/Blu-ray/4K bonus features, appeared on podcasts, given interviews, and otherwise talked about their horror roles and/or careers within the genre.
🎥 Horror Crush Database — Behind the Horror
| Result | Actresses | Percentage |
|---|
| YES — qualifying material | 64 | 68.1% |
| NOPE — no qualifying material found | 30 | 31.9% |
| TOTAL | 94 | 100% |
One rule that I stuck to was that promotional material did not count. All interviews and appearances had to be retrospective in nature. This meant that more recent physical releases consisting solely of promotional material were immediately disqualified, unless the actress did something like a running commentary specifically for the release.
It's also worth mentioning that there were performers I genuinely thought had never so much as talked about their horror careers. This was particularly true for many of the ladies from Euro-horror or those with only one or two horror credits to their names. But, lo and behold, an interview would turn up, and suddenly her name was added to YES!
Among the ladies whose interviews I discovered, there were several that I had absolutely no clue even existed:
Vicky Dawson — virtually absent from the old Prowler material, then all of a sudden we have a 2025 hour-long interview with Happy Horror Time!
Olga Karlatos — while not found on the Blue Underground
Zombie releases, a dedicated interview exists elsewhere.
Lara Wendel — seemingly impossible to find, then a 2025 audio retrospective appeared on
The Perfume of the Lady in Black called "The Memories of the Lady in White"! Booyah!
Almanta Suska — while there is no
New York Ripper interview on the U.S. release, a substantial European one does indeed exists.
Lucy Martin — bare-bones
The Seed releases, but later interviews discussing the film and her horror experience, including one with Cryptic Rock.
Riley Dandy — promo-heavy physical material, but plenty of substantial horror conversations elsewhere.
Marina Zudina — she has an interview on the
older Arrow Blu-ray, but mysteriously absent from the later 4K!
Emma Fitzpatrick — She has a big one here-
55-minute Horror Hour interview, in which she discusses
The Collection,
Take Back the Night,
The Summoned, and her relationship with horror.
Still, there are ladies who have yet to talk about their time in the genre. They range from actresses as varied as Katherine Heigl, Lorraine De Selle, Patricia Pearcy, and Charlee Danielson, among others. Hopefully, someday, they and others like them will have the opportunity to share their experiences and join the YES group!
And, now it's time to move on to our second-to-last section, as we take a look at the Crushes who not only had more than one franchise under their belts, but also which ones had the most! Along the way, we'll declare our Franchise Crossover Queen and take a look at some cool, fun, and surprising bits of trivia.
🔀 Horror Crush Database — When Horror Franchises Collide
🔥 23 YES / 71 NOPE out of 94
This means that there is a 24.47% franchise-overlap rate, and that nearly three-quarters of the database don't cross into multiple horror franchises. This despite the fact that many of them have substantial horror movie credits.
👑 Shawnee Smith — Franchise Queen, 4 franchises
🥈 Elizabeth Blackmore, Bella Thorne & Ashley Laurence — 3 each
And, with a total of four franchises Shawnee Smith is officially our Franchise Queen! They consist of:
-
🔪 Saw
-
👹 The Grudge
-
🧛 30 Days of Night
-
👽 The X-Files
Meanwhile, we have a three way tie for the silver medal with, coincidentally, three horror film credits each for: Elizabeth Blackmore, Bella Thorne, and Ashley Laurence!
🤯 Franchise Crossover Trivia
Nastassja Kinski starred in the last
Hammer Studios horror movie—and the penultimate film overall—to be released by the original incarnation of the legendary studio,
To the Devil a Daughter. Among her co-stars were horror icon
Christopher Lee and
Honor Blackman (
Goldfinger).
By appearing in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and playing the actress who portrays Donna Hayward on the soap opera Invitation to Love within Twin Peaks, Erica Anderson gets herself a Freddy Krueger and Bob connection!
By co-starring with
Klaus Kinski in the excellent 1979 version of
Nosferatu: The Vampyre,
Isabelle Adjani shared the screen with the previously mentioned
Nastassja Kinski's father.
Christina Raines starred in the 1970s satanic horror flick The
Sentinel, which features one of the most ridiculously stacked casts you'll find in a horror movie. The lineup includes Ava Gardner, Burgess Meredith, John Carradine, José Ferrer, Christopher Walken, Eli Wallach, Jerry Orbach, Beverly D'Angelo, and plenty of other familiar faces. .jpg)
Cami Cooper (AKA Camille Cooper) gets double trivia!
She played Alison in Wes Craven's supernatural slasher Shocker, which was intended to launch a new franchise centered around executed-and-resurrected serial killer Horace Pinker. Wisecracking and able to travel through electrical currents—including television shows—Pinker was clearly intended to be the next Freddy Krueger. Craven even had an idea for a sequel, but unfortunately, it was never made.
Even more fascinating is what Cooper did after leaving acting. She became a major advocate for child protection, serving as the author and chief lobbyist for the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008. In 2019, she became Vice President of Public Policy for RAINN, where she continued working on legislation and public policy related to sexual violence and child protection.
So, Cooper went from playing a good ghost who helps her boyfriend battle a resurrected serial killer, to the girl next door who turns into a giant mantis, to spending her post-acting career advocating for the protection of children. That's one hell of a career change!
wasn't just the lead actress, playing Monika, in Jörg Buttgereit's infamous—and, in my opinion, superior—sequel,
Nekromantik 2. She also composed the music for the film and has even performed it live at a screening!
Valerie Hartman's sole horror credit—and her final overall credit, out of only three acting credits—was playing Ally in
Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers. But she returned to assist director
Michael A. Simpson as a
raccoon wrangler(!) for
Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland. The two sequels were shot back to back, with production on the third film starting just
three days after the previous flick wrapped!
Suzanna Ling, who played Susan—the girl who used tarantulas to kill the bad guys—in the nature-amok horror flick
Kiss of the Tarantula, disappeared from the screen after her one and only movie, according to TCM. However, other accounts report that she went on to become a stage actress in Atlanta.
DeDee Pfeiffer starred as Bonnie McCarthy in
The Horror Show, which kicked off a strange and surprisingly short-lived little trend of horror movies featuring resurrected serial killers. Wes Craven's
Shocker followed soon after with Horace Pinker, giving us another electrically charged variation on the idea. And, of course,
Cami Cooper was right there in the middle of it as Alison!
In the 1976 remake of King Kong, there's an early scene where Jessica Lange's character, Dwan, talks about the previous crew watching an adult movie. Meanwhile, Kelly Nichols, who was an actual adult actress, served as Lange's body double on the creature feature. Nichols would later star in The Toolbox Murders, appearing in the film's most infamous and controversial scene, in which her character is brutally killed with a nail gun while nude.
Riley Dandy starred in three Hallmark-style, feel-good Christmas movies—
A Kiss on Candy Cane Lane,
A California Christmas: City Lights, and
A Hollywood Christmas—before appearing as the foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, metalhead Final Girl
Tori Tooms in Joe Begos' ultra-gory killer-robot-Santa flick
Christmas Bloody Christmas. This incredibly fun film is essentially
The Terminator meets
Silent Night, Deadly Night, with Dandy playing one of the coolest and most badass heroines in recent horror.
Sharlene Martin, who played Tamara in
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, went on to a career in literary management and producing. In 2003, she founded
Martin Literary & Media Management and later became an executive producer on projects including
Deadly Sins and
Home Before Dark. She's also the mother of
Alexander Ludwig, who starred in the excellent horror comedy and love letter to the '80s slasher genre,
The Final Girls!
Emma Fitzpatrick played the lead role of Jane, an artist living a free-spirited, partying lifestyle who is assaulted by an invisible monster, in the powerful feminist horror movie
Take Back the Night. She gives a poignant performance while also pulling double duty behind the scenes as the film's
writer AND producer!
The Scary of Sixty-First was the feature directorial debut of
Dasha Nekrasova. The film won the
Best First Feature award at the Berlin International Film Festival and was subsequently acquired for distribution by
Utopia and
Shudder. As a result, Nekrasova is the
first director represented in the database!
Daphne Zuniga is one of the few major TV and movie stars to have a movie on Britain's infamous
Video Nasty list, thanks to her acting debut in
The Dorm That Dripped Blood. Mean-spirited and featuring some decent kills, even in its truncated form, the movie earned the ire of the UK's censorship board.
She would go on to star in the fun and gory sequel
The Fly II, playing Beth, the girlfriend of Martin Brundle (
Eric Stoltz), the son of the Brundlefly. Just two years earlier, in 1987, she appeared in director
Mel Brooks' megahit sci-fi comedy
Spaceballs, which was produced by the same Brooks who produced both
The Fly movies! Brooks wanted to remain uncredited on the
Fly films so audiences would go into them expecting straight horror rather than a comedy.
Liliana Komorowska played the lead villain, Helena Monet, in Scanners III: The Takeover. She met her future husband, Christian Duguay, while working on the Canadian production. The two subsequently married and collaborated on multiple projects, including the sci-fi/horror film Screamers, which Duguay directed and Komorowska starred in.
But there's much more to Komorowska's career than her horror output might suggest. She has worked on Polish, English, and French-language productions and has extensive theatre experience. She's also a filmmaker in her own right, with credits as an actress, director, producer, and writer. Talk about a Crush with more than one trick up her sleeve!
Cheryl Lawson, who played Jane Doe, the lead protagonist in the zombie/mad scientist flick
The Dead Pit, appeared in one of those movies that became a true
video-store staple, thanks in no small part to its infamous VHS box featuring
light-up zombie eyes! She would go on to have a much bigger career as a stunt performer, working on projects including
Firefly,
Ocean's Eleven,
Spider-Man 2,
The Others,
Poseidon,
J. Edgar, and many more.
Sara Melson, whose character Coreen gets
murdered by a giant Band-Aid in Dr. Giggles 🩹💀, transitioned to a music career after leaving acting. She is a critically acclaimed folk musician, singer, and songwriter, with four of her songs even selected for inclusion in the
Arch Mission Foundation's Lunar Library. Melson has also received the
“Language of the Cosmos” artist grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Working in conjunction with
NASA/JPL, she also conceived the space-themed performance art surrounding her single,
Underneath a Big Full Moon. Her music has been featured in major television shows such as
Grey's Anatomy and prominent national advertising campaigns, including a multi-spot campaign for
Volvo Cars.
Meanwhile,
Dr. Giggles is yet another horror movie that was intended to launch a franchise centered around a wisecracking doctor who makes
Freddy Krueger-style medical jokes while dispatching his victims. There was even a
Dark Horse comic intended to help expand the franchise. Unfortunately, the movie was a box-office bomb and didn't begin gaining a cult following until its arrival on home video.
So, from getting killed by a
giant Band-Aid to having her music selected for a
Lunar Library and collaborating with
NASA/JPL—Sara Melson's post-acting career went in a hell of a direction!
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, who played Final Girl Nancy Osborne in the tense home-invasion flick
The Last Straw, also voiced the character of Kat Thomas in the horror survival game
Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul. Based on the popular supernatural horror franchise, this makes her one of the few
Crushes in the database to lend her voice to a video game!
JJ North, a popular '90s scream queen and star of such cult favorites from the era as Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold and the remake of Psycho Sisters, appeared on the cover of the celebrated starlet magazine Femme Fatales twice: Winter 1995 and April 1996. The magazine was a major influence on me and, ultimately, the Horror Crush Database itself.
Jill Jacobson, who played the titular character of
Nurse Sherri in Al Adamson's infamous cult favorite, unfortunately passed away on
December 28, 2024, after a long battle with esophageal cancer. She was
70 years old. Heartbreakingly, this makes her the
first Crush to have passed away.
And, now it is time for what we've all been waiting for! Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Main Event! Who are the Top 10 Horror Crushes with the most horror movie credits? And who among them takes the championship by having the Most Horror Flick Credits of them all?
Let's find out right now!!!
🏆 Horror Crush Database — The Main Event: Top 10 Most Horror Credits
| Rank | Actress | Horror Credits |
|---|
| 🥇 1 | Scout Taylor-Compton | 25 |
| 🥈 2 | Ginger Lynn Allen | 14 |
| 🥉 3 | Shawnee Smith | 10 |
| 4T | Vera Farmiga | 9 |
| 4T | Bella Thorne | 9 |
| 4T | Mary Elizabeth Winstead | 9 |
| 7T | Alexandra Daddario | 8 |
| 7T | Jennifer Rubin | 8 |
| 7T | Agnes Bruckner | 8 |
| 7T | Rachel Nichols | 8 |
| 7T | Ashley Greene | 8 |
With a total of
25 Horror Movie Acting Credits, she absolutely obliterated the competition! And, the fact is, Compton is still young and will surely continue adding more horror films to her résumé. It'll be interesting to see how many more movies she collects in the years to come—and whether a future inductee will ever be able to challenge the reigning champion!
Pulling in the silver medal, we have Ginger Lynn Allen! With her deep-cut exploitation résumé, she racked up a total of 14 credits! I have to say, from the get-go, it always felt like Allen was going to be among the top contenders. And, for a while, it looked like she might actually take the championship—until Compton's numbers came in!
Nonetheless, she takes a very respectable second place with a total that isn't exactly easy to beat.
Meanwhile,
Shawnee Smith, with her very strong mainstream horror presence, pulled in double digits with a total of 10 Horror Film credits! I mean, she is our Franchise Queen after all, so she was always going to be tough competition. And let's not forget—she took on
The Blob!
And, so concludes our first annual Horror Crush Database!
I really had a fun time compiling all of this information, and I learned so many facts and numbers about not just the Crushes as a whole, but about them individually as well. I hope you guys—my readers, both new and old—had the same experience while reading both parts.
Until next year, when we do this all over again! And, be sure to keep following, because I will continue to induct more Crushes in the days, weeks, and months to come!
The Official Horror Crush Database — Part 1: The Numbers Behind the Crushes (2011–2026)
A Note on the Research: The statistics in this article were compiled from my Horror Crush Database and researched with the assistance of AI. It was used as a research and organizational tool to help analyze the data, cross-reference information, and crunch the numbers, while the final classifications, methodology, and decisions regarding the database remain my own.
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