Michelle Bauer, one of the best-loved B-movie scream queens of the 1980s, was spotted dashing around her native Los Angeles this week.
She draped her still lithe physique in a flowing tan T-shirt and a sleek pair of black cutoff leggings as she surfaced in her hometown on Tuesday. Her face was partly obscured by a set of cat-eye sunglasses, though her features remained recognizable from her showbiz heyday.
Bauer, with Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley, became an underground icon in low-budget 1980s horror movies directed by maestros of kitsch like David DeCoteau and Fred Olen Ray. The pictures earned a fanatical cult fanbase on home video.
Bauer was the surname she adopted from her first marriage. After that marriage failed, she was credited under her second husband's name in several pictures, which is why some fans may remember her as Michelle McClellan. The Daily Mail has contacted her representatives for comment.
Early life and first roles
Bauer was born and raised in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley and developed an interest in the horror genre as a child. She recalled in the 2011 documentary Screaming in High Heels that she used to stay up until the early hours of the morning watching the 1963 Japanese feature Attack of the Mushroom People.
She was discovered as a model while working at a car wash in the San Fernando Valley, which led her into acting. She earned an uncredited role in a dream sequence for the 1982 sex comedy Homework, which featured Joan Collins as a woman attempting to seduce one of her child's high school classmates.
Fred Olen Ray launched Bauer in B-movies with his 1986 release The Tomb, in which she played an Egyptian vampire priestess. She came recommended to Ray by his executive producer, who told him, "Fred, I have this girl I want you to meet. She knows all the best dirty jokes."
"I had no desire," Bauer said, looking back on the film decades later. "It was just working, another job that came through the door. So this was the first for-real thing that came along my way, and Fred opened up lots of doors for me."
A run of cult horror films
The Tomb kickstarted Bauer's consistent run in the genre through the 1980s and 1990s, fronting films with titles including Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Demonwarp, Beverly Hills Vamp, Virgin High, Bikini Drive-In and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold.
Some of her releases, including Nightmare Sisters and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, united her onscreen with Stevens and Quigley. The films were made on shoestring budgets, shot over five to 10 days apiece, with directors, casts and crews who overlapped and shared equipment.
Meeting the fans
"Both Linnea and Brinke were very focused on where they were going and what they were doing. They actually introduced me to the circuit of the conventions," Bauer said.
"I had no idea. I didn't have a fan club. I was just working. And I really grew to appreciate the fans at that time and knew that they were what was keeping me alive, that here I was working, working, working, going crazy, and now I just realized why."
She said some fans became "a little kooky" and "a little obsessed," but added that some people who began as admirers of her work became "very close friends."
Bauer remains active in low-budget horror to this day, with upcoming releases including Death B**** 2 and Nightmare Party! Twerk of Terror.
