Horror fans might know Barbara Crampton for her roles in iconic horror classics like Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, From Beyond, and many of the films produced by iconic filmmaker Charles Band. Now an icon herself, Crampton has spent the last decade producing a new generation of cult films of her own, including her latest project, Jakob's Wife.

Crampton stars as Anne, the eponymous housewife who can't help but be bored by her status in life, married to a Christian minister (Larry Fessenden) who is much happier with a boring suburban existence than she is. When she embarks on an ill-fated tryst with her high-school crush, Anne is attacked and empowered by a chance encounter with a vampire. Newly armed with incredible strength, bloodlust, and a gorgeous goth-tinged makeover, one thing is certain: the status quo in Jakob's house is going to change. Directed by Travis Stevens (The Girl on the Third Floor), Jakob's Wife tells a realistic love story about the restlessness that comes with middle-age and how "women of a certain age" are still people whose voices deserve to be heard... Of course, this particular love story also includes vampires, brutal kills, and some delightfully over-the-top practical blood effects!

Related: Why Barbara Crampton Retired From Acting (& How You're Next Brought Her Back)

While promoting the SXSW release of Jakob's Wife, Barbara Crampton spoke to Screen Rant about her work on the film, as well as her decades-long career as a horror movie icon. She discusses how 2011's You're Next (directed by Godzilla vs Kong helmer Adam Wingard) inspired her to develop her own movies, and how she wanted to deliver a poignant, personal message with Jakob's Wife; like all the best horror movies, Jakob's Wife succeeds by delivering its message with sincere purpose without skimping out on the delightful gore and grisly antics horror fans have come to expect.

Jakob's Wife releases in theaters, VOD, and Digital on April 16.

Jakobs Wife Upcoming Horror Movie Travis Stevens

I'm so excited to get to talk to you, not just because you are you, but because I just saw your movie, Jakob's Wife, and it knocked my socks off, I loved it so much.

Oh, that's so nice to hear, thank you so much, I'm so glad! That means so much to me, Zak!

I feel like I can make inferences about this movie, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's something that's always bothered me about how women reach, quote-unquote, a "certain age," and are expected to just go away and retire, even though they're more beautiful, more creatively engaged, and more able to tell their stories than ever... I imagine that had something to do with your excitement to do this movie, right?

When I hit my middle and late 30s, I wasn't getting a lot of offers. I wasn't getting a lot of auditions. My career dried up, shriveled up. There was nothing happening. I didn't work for a very long time. I think. over the years, things have changed a little bit. Stories have opened up a little bit more. We're seeing more stories told from an older point of view, and women are now allowed to be in stories about older women! Where the major protagonist role once went to a male actor, we're now seeing more stories about women. I think things have changed. We're now caught up, hopefully, with real life.

I'd like to think we're getting there, little by little, thanks to movies like yours.

This was a script that was very attractive to me when I read it. I felt like it did kind of mirror my own life. I took a break from working because there wasn't anything for me to do. I had a family, I had young children, and I was just concentrating on making my home life the best it could be. Then, because of a chance call to do You're Next a number of years ago, it rekindled my love for acting. I thought I really wanted to rededicate myself to my career and come back if I could. So I'd been working on that for a few years. Then, in 2015, I got this script sent to me through Denise Gossett at the Shriekfest Film Festival, it had won Best Screenplay, and was written by Mark Steensland. I read it and I said, "This is my life. This is me." I understand what this woman is going through and what her issues are... The newness, the hope, the renewal she has for her life after undergoing this tragic happening. And I really worked hard over the last five years to bring this to the screen.

Sometimes I complain about the death of the mid-range blockbuster. Nowadays, everything is either insanely expensive or done on a very low budget. But now I'm thinking, maybe people like you and Mark and Travis don't have to deal with the kind of oversight that a big studio project would mandate. I imagine this movie wasn't run by an old guy with a cigar through whom all financial decisions had to be made. You don't have the same rules.

I think audiences are more sophisticated now, and I think storytelling has gotten more nuanced. We're exploring areas we haven't explored before, and different people are coming to the forefront of saying, "Yeah, I want to greenlight this, or I'll give you money for that." I think things are expanding for the better, in ways we didn't expect. Look at television, it's just blown up over the past year, and it was already going that way, even before the pandemic! There's only so many stories you can tell about the human condition, and if you're just concentrating on a young male character all the time, you're going to run out of things to say after a time... So the fact we're exploring other areas of the human condition, and especially with this story, exploring the marriage of an older couple and what happens to them when something tragic occurs, and how that changes and alters both of them, I hope it's refreshing to the people who watch it.

Jakobs Wife Upcoming Horror Movie Travis Stevens

Oh yeah. Tonally, it's so delightfully all over the place. Not in a wishy-washy way, but in that it takes you on an emotional journey and fear and excitement and empowerment and the freedom that comes with that, with playing outside the lines.

I think that was intentional on Travis' part, to add a lot of humor and fun and excitement to it. There's an abandoning quality to the characters and to their stories. When they accept what has happened and they don't shrink, they expand, they rise up to meet what has happened to their lives. So many times, things happen in our life and you have to say "yes'" to what happens in order to get to a new place. You have to be excited and creative about your life, and I think this film explores that.

I'm 30, and my best friend in the world is a 60-something lady named Claire, and she's not a horror fan, but she's going to watch this movie.

She'll love it, I bet she'll love it! That's great, you'll have to show it to her.

Let's talk about your career. Are you over being called a "Scream Queen?" Are you done with that?

Yes, I am! I wrote an article for Birth Movies Death on the title of "Scream Queen," you can look it up if you Google "Barbara Crampton Don't Call Me A Scream Queen." I wrote it almost five years ago, just about the term. I know a lot of people use the term as a term of endearment, but it seems a little limiting to me. It doesn't really get to the heart of what women do and what they have done over the years in the horror genre.

It's reductive.

Yes, it's reductive. The types of roles we can play, and the things we go through on screen, that's too simplistic of a term. So I do cringe a little bit when somebody calls me that. But I know they're saying it with love, so I have to hold my tongue most of the time. (Laughs) But in my heart, I feel like there's no equivalent term for a man who's in horror movies, so why are we calling a woman a "Scream Queen?" What does that really mean?

Beyond the Gates Barbara Crampton

Totally. And let the record show, play back the tape, I didn't call you a Scream Queen, I said, "People call you that," just saying... (Laughs) Tell me about the expectations you had when you came back after You're Next, when you embarked on Barbara Crampton 2.0, as it were. Is it everything you were hoping it could be? Where do you see yourself in the next few years?

Well, thanks for asking that. When I came back with You're Next, it was a surprise to me. I got a call out of the blue to be in that movie. I was in Missouri to shoot that, just ten or eleven days after I got the call. I did it as a lark, I thought it would be fun! It was a small, independent movie, and I wasn't thinking that my career was going to pick back up again. I just thought, oh, I'll do this fun movie and that will be it. But when I got on the set, I saw that everybody who was working on the movie was a hyphenate; they were all doing different jobs. Ti West was acting in the movie, but he was also a writer and a director. Adam Wingard was an editor and a cinematographer and a director. Joe Swanberg was a writer and a producer. Amy Seimetz was an actress, but became a producer and a writer herself. It was a life-changing experience for me. It opened my eyes to what all these young people were doing, and how they were making the independent horror scene their own by working with their friends and being so creative! They were just getting it done, no matter what.

Gotta make your movie, exactly like you said, no matter what.

When I was a young actor, I would just receive a phone call for an audition or a job, and I "stayed in my lane." Since I've come back, everyone I see who is successful, they really started making movies doing it themselves, as a DIY experience. Look at the careers of these people now. Look at Keith Calder and Jessica Wu, who produced that. They're producing huge movies now! And Adam Wingard has the biggest blockbuster of the year about to come out in a few weeks! It was inspiring to me. It made me think, maybe I need to reinvent myself if I want to stick around, because I had so much fun on that movie! That's what initially gave me the thought that, if I want more roles for myself or more opportunities, I've got to make them happen for myself. That's when I started dabbling in producing and looking for material.

And you've clearly made it work for you. Obviously, you're a producer here, and you've produced other movies in recent years. At this point in your career, are you only going to do something if you really want to do it? Are you done with the idea of doing whatever gig for the paycheck?

Yes. Oh yes, absolutely. I'm not doing anything for the paycheck anymore. I'm only doing projects that I want to because I believe in them and I love them and I feel like I can help others. I really like helping young filmmakers realize their dreams. There's a movie I did... That I can't talk about, but I just signed on to do it, and it's with a first-time filmmaker who has been a writer for a while, a very successful writer. But this is his directorial debut, and the script is amazing, it's wonderful. I have a really fun part. I want to help others realize their dreams as other people helped me when I was younger, so... I only want to do projects that I feel like I can add to, or that I believe in. I'm so jazzed by all the young filmmakers today, and I'd say that's been continuing on since I came back with You're Next. I feel like the young people have been taking this genre by storm, and I'm excited that they're still asking me to be a part of it.

 

Barbara Crampton Re Animator

When you were hanging out with Charles Band, making those movies that inspired s whole new generation of filmmakers who run with that blend of grisly gore and cozy vibes... Did you know those Full Moon movies would become such a cornerstone for so many of the young people who grew up at the VHS rental store?

Before they were Full Moon, they were Empire Pictures, that's what they were when I was doing the movies with them. And a lot of these younger filmmakers grew up on the 1980s horror movies, and now they're filmmakers themselves so they're looking at us and asking us to be in some of their films. Yeah, I do think that a lot of those Charles Band movies had a lighter touch to them, but I think the ones that I was most involved in, Re-Animator and From Beyond, specifically, they had some deeper things to say about the human condition. I feel like the stories today, especially Jakob's Wife, I think it's a fun story, but at it's heart, I also think it's a really human story that has a lot of empathy to it, and has the potential to really look at a couple, an older couple who are sort of stuck in their marriage, and how they are able to recapture something that they lost during their youth. It's a really vibrant, resonant, emotional story. There's a lot of fun, but there's a lot of truth about the human condition that we're revealing through the story. It's peppered in with some of the classic things you might have seen in some of the earlier work from the 80s.

Absolutely. In this movie, you give a voice to a group of people who are so often not heard, and it's in a movie that other people might get to see, and in seeing, realize and understand what the women they know in their lives are going through. It's really magic. I can't stress enough how much I liked it.

Thank you, Zak! I appreciate all the great questions and thoughts about the film.

Next: Director Travis Stevens Interview: Girl on the Third Floor