KRISTY SWANSON
THEN: If there is one thing that I love, it is all things Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The series, created by one of my favorite human beings Joss Whedon, was a breath of fresh air back before television was uber cool. Yet, I wasn’t simply a fan of the television show, it was the quirky little movie of the same name that started off one of my all-time great crushes. Sarah Michelle Gellar rocked it as the “Chosen One,” but frankly, Kristy Swanson was one hell of a teenage dream when I caught this flick for the first time. Whether this beautiful blonde was throwing a punch or a one-liner, it was love at first sight and then some. Yet, before there was Buffy, there was Samantha.
I learned many things from the Wes Craven thriller DEADLY FRIEND (1986). First, that a basketball can squash someone’s head if thrown hard enough. Second, if you are a loner and you build a robot friend, bad things may happen. And third, if your deadly robot friend looks like Samantha (Swanson), who cares if she is going after a bunch of a-holes? If she is that cute, she can do whatever the f*ck she wants. This strange horror flick may not have been well-received for it’s time, yet it is hard to resist the lovely Ms. Swanson in robot mode, or charming teenage girl who has a dick of an abusive dad mode either. It was Kristy and her lovely performance that made me give a crap about what happened… And yes, I was rooting for her the entire time.
Speaking of teenage love, did you ever read the novel “Flowers in the Attic” by V.C. Andrews? Well, I didn’t. That sure as hell didn’t stop me from my continued worship of the painfully cute Kristy. While this could have been super messed up movie isn’t great, it only helped cement how awesome the actress was. Truthfully, I sat through it when I was young, and I have a feeling it wouldn’t have near the impact today as it did back then on late night cable. Yet it was too late, I was far too infatuated with the girl in trouble dealing with some really bad guardianship.
After finding herself in a couple of genre friendly flicks, Kristy continued to work in television a lot, including the short-lived series about nurses called Nightingales in 1988-89. In the early Nineties, she appeared in flicks like DREAM TRAP and DIVING IN in 1990, as well as the not necessarily needed sequel to MANNEQUIN, MANNEQUIN: ON THE MOVE in 1991. Yet she remained busy. She took the HIGHWAY TO HELL in 1991, and that same year she appeared in the wacky TOP GUN parody HOT SHOTS! with Charlie Sheen. And then came that totally cool vampire slayer. I’m talking the original BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. I loved her in this flick so much, that for me, she automatically earned a very special place in my Whedon loving heart.
While horror wasn’t necessarily Swanson’s forte, she worked a ton. She once again starred with Charlie Sheen in THE CHASE in 1994. She was featured in the football movie THE PROGRAM a year before. And she took on a little HIGHER LEARNING in 1995. The actress even played a bit in the comic book world with THE PHANTOM opposite Billy Zane and Treat Williams in 1996. With her wonderful work in BUFFY, I was always surprised to not see her in bigger and better projects. Every once in a while she’d appear in a hit flick including the 1999 Adam Sandler comedy BIG DADDY and DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? in 2000 opposite Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott – I always forget that Jennifer Garner was in that movie as well. That’s just nuts!
With the new decade, Kristy Swanson found herself in a ton of B-movies. She battled a shark in a Louisiana river in the made for cable Red Water in 2003. She helped protect a young girl who witnessed a murder in SILENCE. And in 2006 she found herself facing off against THE BLACK HOLE and later, her own masochistic self in LIVING DEATH. And for the love of bad sci-fi, she was not satisfied with one Louisiana shark, she went back to cheesy man-vs-nature movies with SWAMP SHARK in 2003. And in 2006, the actress found herself on ice for the reality game show Skating with Celebrities. And she won, so there you go!
NOW: The original Buffy may well be all grown up, but man is she still smoking hot. And frankly, she continues to work consistently. In 2014, the actress appeared in a number of TV movies – she seems to dig Christmas flicks – including A BELLE FOR CHRISTMAS and MERRY EX-MAS. And remember that big dog named BEETHOVEN? Well, she was in BEETHOVEN’S TREASURE TAIL. She appeared on the quirky little show Psych on the USA Network for about six episodes and she was awesome. And at some point, you may be able to find her in a half hour comedy about country music called Stageville Inc. which to be honest, I’d never heard of before – you can find out more about it on the official Stageville, Inc. Facebook page.
While the actress may have tried to shed her sweet image years back with a Playboy pictorial in 2002, she is still the blonde cutie that I fell in love with years ago – but perhaps a tad hotter. And thankfully, according to IMDB, she is working on a horror flick called MIMESIS 2 that has an expected release date of 2015. I’ll always love Kristy Swanson. From BUFFY to Playboy to SWAMP SHARK, the actress is a stunner and she could be my chosen one any time. Let’s hope that we get to see her on the big screen more often. If you’d like to find out more about what she has been up to, you can check out her official website here, as well as Facebook and Twitter.