for an hour, because I had to have this particular evil thing. And somebody said, “Martine, you’re holding up the production.” I heard that, and I had my hair in rollers, and I came storming down the stairs in my black outfit, with my cape flying, the rollers in my hair—and I roared, “WHO SAID THAT!?!” I was like this black monster with curl­ ers in my hair! Everyone went [CRINGE]. I became this... monster.
Was that the makeup used at the end of the
film? Yeah, that took about two hours.
I didn’t like it. Too chalky. Yeah, neither did Oliver. Oliver went crazy, he
wanted to kill. The other thing, too, when they were filming
me going out the door, with it slamming behind me. They had to slam the door very fast, and my cape got caught in the door! It almost whipped my head off my shoulders, ’cause it was tied around my neck. They didn’t know what hap­ pened because they slammed it from the other side. But I was out there going “Akkkakkakk!" getting choked to death. I almost passed out. They took me and said, “Are you all right?” and I had this red welt across my neck.
Y o u 'r e been stereotyped in some ways, as an actress, always playing powerful and often deadly women. Yet you always man­ age to keep your different roles fresh. How do you manage? Because they are all different. They really are
all different; they’re not all the same character. Like I was saying about Kali the Queen of Evil, and Sister Hyde—with Sister Hyde, it was a constant battle to exist. With Kali, she was, and that takes away the pressure right there, almost to the point I think it made my performance suffer a little bit, because I didn’t have to do anything, really. I just had to be there, to put my presence out.
How would you describe the differences between, say, Kali, the Queen of Evil, and Kari (similar name!) in PREHISTORIC WOMEN aka SLAVE GIRLS? There are differences, big differences. Actually, there are similarities. Like, for in­
stance, Kali has a line in SEIZURE which was one of my favorite lines in the movie: “Through the ages, no man or woman has ever refused me.” It was kind of like that with Kari, too. As far as she
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was concerned, she could have anything she wanted. She had all her men, she wasted them and locked them away in this little dungeon after she had finished with them. And she had the women, too; the women were strong, they were around her. They were her slaves. But the men were to be used and thrown away. Somebody said to me today, “Do you know you
made the first feminist film?” I said, “You’ve got to be kidding, what are you
talking about?” She said, “Martine, PREHISTORIC WOMEN! It
was so Women’s Lib.” I said, “Oh, come now, it was the B-film of all
time!”
Kali and Kari are self-contained, self-confi­ dent women, unlike Sister Hyde, who isn’t self-assured unless she’s completely Sister Hyde! Yes, very assured, but also there was the
conflict. Kari had the conflict, too. First of all, she didn’t get the man that she wanted, I mean [Michael Latimer’s character], the one new thing
that comes in and she wants him. Then she finds out one of her little girls is having him. She is not pleased at all. So she has that little kind of thing going there, she’s not really—a little paranoid there, except that she is the great Queen.
How did you feel about the way SEIZURE turned out? First of all, I was really pleased that it came
out the way it did, but I was disappointed with the impact of it. The script had an incredibly power­ ful force, but because of all the lack of... Because it was a first film for Oliver, it was very tough, and his backers really didn’t care. It was not a good position to have, and not a good back-up to have. First of all, there wasn’t any publicity at all. It
wasn’t sold, nobody cared about it. And I saw blood, man! People gave their blood for that film! I put a lot into it—Oliver put half his life into it! I saw a lot of people put a lot into it. So it was disappointing to see how little people cared afterwards.
It seemed to me that I heard or read that it was a rather important film, or a critical release at the time for the Canadian film industry, so it seems strange that it wasn’t better promoted. The title was changed, too. The title! As soon as I heard SEIZURE, I said “Bad mistake.” To have a title like SEIZURE—
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