When describing an individual with a broad range of skills, we often call them a Renaissance man… but what about a Renaissance woman? A perfect example of the latter is Heidi Holicker, a woman who has been in the entertainment industry for over forty years as an actress (including roles in favorites like 1984’s Valley Girl), producer, writer, marketer, and special effects expert, among other things. Truly a ”jacqueline of all trades,’ Holicker has turned a passion for art into a successful career that becomes more rewarding as time marches on.
Speaking of which, in 2025, she is one of the leading creators behind a new series called Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review. A series featuring a host named Scream (played by Mimi Torres) and a scruffy little rat as her sidekick, Cry (voiced by E.G. Daily), the unlikely team sits back and watches select Horror movies from a humorous, witty perspective. Broken into twelve episodes, Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review is currently available on a list of streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, YouTube, and Sling, and is bound to connect with many Horror lovers out there. Extremely enthusiastic about everything, Heidi Holicker recently took time to discuss her diverse career in entertainment, the work put into Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review, plus more.
Cryptic Rock – You have been involved in film and television for quite a long time now. First, working as an actress, you have also done writing, producing, and many other jobs behind the scenes. How would you describe your career in the arts at this point?
Heidi Holicker – In a nutshell, as nutty as I can get it, I’ve been in the industry 35-plus years. I was an actress for about 11 years, starred in Valley Girl (1983) with E.G. Daily, who’s one of my stars in Scream and Cry, Twisted Sister’s “Leader of the Pack,” and tons of other movies, commercials, and so forth. Got out of that portion of the business, went into film production, ultimately worked for Rick Baker for seven Academy Awards, and I co-run his studio for nine years. Then I worked in marketing at Disney. Throughout this period, I wanted to produce. For the last 20-some odd years, I wanted to produce, kept optioning material. Fortunately, I got a wonderful job at Magnolia Pictures, and I have a great relationship with the team there.
As I co-developed this project, Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review, with my business partner, Reed Shelly. I brought it to Randy Wells, the president of Magnolia Pictures Home Entertainment, who got it to Jeff Cuban, and they loved it. I co-created it. I write it. I executive produce. I produce. I make the props, the wardrobe. It’s truly my baby. I’m so proud of it. I’m so proud that we actually did it, got it out there, and that it’s streaming live now on multiple streaming sites. It’s a lot of tremendous hard work and, obviously, a dream come true.
Cryptic Rock – That is fantastic to hear. Knowing a little bit about your background, it is really fascinating because you are such a multifaceted individual. Some people stick to acting, others turn to directing, but you have done so much.
Heidi Holicker – A lot of it is just keeping to the grind. What does it take? Keep going and keep learning. That’s really the key: be open to pivoting. I pivoted way before I knew what the word meant. To be open to what I can see, what I can feel might work, to go for it, and however many years it takes to put into it, whatever it is, to do the work, to do the job seven days a week, year after year, and keep going. I’m very grateful for Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review.
Cryptic Rock – It appears you have worked extremely hard. How did the concept of Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review come about for you?
Heidi Holicker – I got together with Reed Shelly at a high school reunion, and he knew I was producing. He wanted to kick around a few ideas. We discussed two different ones. One never really took hold. Scream and Cry, doing a Horror movie review, a scripted Comedy with a Goth girl who’s very smart, in an ode to Elvira, an ode to Mystery Science Theater 3000, and all that have gone before us, but our version. She’s not oversexualized. Elvira’s character is extremely smart. It was critical that we cast the right person in Mimi Torres and that the Scream character be sensitive, emotional, very smart, able to navigate situations, and basically be best friends with a physical puppet.
Once we decided it would be a physical puppet and that his name would be Cry, I went to my old Rick Baker friend, Eddie Yang, who built the puppet for us. From there, we talked to E.G. Daly, whom I’d worked with on Valley Girls. She’s a brilliant voiceover artist. It started to grow from there. We did a proof of concept and invested our own money in it. Then we finally got a deal.
We turned this thing around very quickly. In January, we closed the deal, wrote the 12 scripts, in May, filmed the next week, turned it around, edited one episode a week, went into quality control, went into publicity, did Monsterpalooza, and here we are.
Cryptic Rock – Wow. It has been a speedy turnaround. It sounds exciting. It’s a great concept. It’s really fun, especially in a time where we’re seeing a lot of video podcasting, but this is different. It is a cut above that. There is a balance of Comedy, which is really enjoyable. The character’s intelligence is what makes Scream compelling to watch.
Heidi Holicker – I love that. Thank you so much. Every time we were editing, you were working with this material, besides writing it, creating it, all of that, and transcribing it for closed caption. You’re so involved with every moment of it over and over. I was always smiling through it all because of their relationship.
Cry is funny. He’s sarcastic. He’s emotional. He’s whiny. He’s just the perfect best friend who has to be sometimes handled by Scream. Then you’ve got 11 other characters that come in. The movie poster in the back of Scream on set, that’s me from the mid-’80s. I play, even though you only hear me do a VO once in 12 episodes, I play Scream’s Mom, Queen.
There’s always that you’ve got that character, you only hear once. You’ve got Juliet Landau playing Dark Pixie; that character was only created seven weeks before filming, because my friendship with Juliet goes way back. Her husband, Deverill Weekes, is our unit photographer. We were chatting on the phone, and he said, “Juliet wants to come play with you guys.” I said, “Okay. Let me call you back.” I called Reed, and we started writing Dark Pixie, a hybrid of a human who went through-an-exorcism-pixie.
Then you’ve got Father Bill, Bill Prokopow, who is our musical composer, all original music. There, Mimi Torres as Scream. She built the set with my assistance, including all the props. You’ve got Donte Paris, who is Hot Delivery Guy (because his name is Guy and he delivers hot food to Cry). Then, of course, VO Guy, played by the brilliant Thom Pinto, who plays four different characters. Reed Shelley voices Baddy, the insecure bat, as well as the Jackie of the Jackie in the Box. I think that’s everyone.
Cryptic Rock – There are a lot of great people involved in this whole project from top to bottom. That is what makes it even more interesting when you read about it. What led to the decision of which films to choose to curate?
Heidi Holicker – Having worked for Magnolia for the last 11 years, I know the catalog so well. We went through the whole catalog, obviously, the Horror films and Horror Thriller, and narrowed it down to maybe about 25, and then chose. One, we needed it to be “evergreen,” a term I learned through this process, meaning the film would continue to play and remain in the streaming catalog for a few years, not just that we’d do the episode and then, in December, it would be gone. You couldn’t see it. That was critical.
Then we took 18 of the outlines we were doing and narrowed them down to where our characters could play. What is the most fun for Scream and Cry? What is the scariest? The critical part for us was to have such a variety. You have 2010’s Tucker and Dale versus Evil, which is purely Comedy Horror and a great movie. You’ve got 2012’s Kiss of the Damned; pure sexy vampire. You have 2013’s The Sacrament, which is just psychological freakdom, and nine others. They’re all really strong on their own, but you put them together in this whole package so that you get a different reaction from Scream, from Cry. We have one episode of a movie called Censor, in which the main character (in the movie) has a long-lost sister.
We then created Sly, who is Cry’s brother. He’s a rat, so rats have lots of siblings. He has blue and brown eyes. We put a wonderful eye patch over his blue eye. Thom Pinto did the voice of Sly, this intensely fabulous street rodent, a sexy kind of beast. You never think of a rat as sexy, but this is a sexy rat. Cry is feeling so distraught because he’s lost touch with Sly. You find out through the episode, “Ah, Sly’s doing fine. He’s traveling the world. He’s got a zillion girlfriends. He’s all right.” You have different emotions that come up.
You also have an episode around 2014’s VHS Viral, where it’s a four-anthology movie, but we only did three. Each time, Cry’s trying to be like the person in the movie. He wants to be a magician. He wants to be a skateboarder. All chaos comes from that. With the other characters, we wanted them to have a lot of fun to play, but the nucleus is always the movie. You’ve got the movie because that’s our review, and that’s our bread and butter, and making sure that everything revolves around that.
Our characters’ reactions are based on what you see in the movie. We always give a bloody thumbs up at the end, but we give a reason why. We aren’t just, “Oh, yeah, it’s good because it’s Magnolia.” There’s a very specific, bloody thumbs up. That is my ode to Roger Ebert, who was very kind to me during Valley Girl. Of course, his thing was, with Gene Siskel, thumbs up, so we just did a bloody thumbs up. Everything’s tied in.
The puppet thing is tied in because my mother, Charlotte Miller, used to write for Sherry Lewis for Lamb Chop. I’ve grown up with puppets, working for the Rick Baker team, obviously, characters. Everything is just married to everything.
Cryptic Rock – It all sounds extremely creative. The more people discover it, the more they will enjoy it. Seeing your background, working with Rick Baker’s company, and being around creatures and such, doing this project, are you a fan of Horror films?
Heidi Holicker – I am a fan of Horror films. I am definitely a Comedy girl. The combination of being a Comedy writer, a Comedy actress, and delving into Horror was such a perfect blend for me.
An American Werewolf in London (1981) and The Exorcist (1973) are my favorite Horror films for many reasons. One, for The Exorcist: I really liked William Friedkin. The other: my old boss, Rick, was an apprentice to Dick Smith on The Exorcist. When I saw it, I was shaking through the whole thing. I didn’t know Rick at that time when I saw it. I was trembling. It was brilliant.
Then, in An American Werewolf in London, the comedy is a combination of brilliant Comedy and Horror. That’s really my sweet spot. Having been exposed to so much Thriller, Horror, and Comedy, The Nutty Professor (1996), and all of the Men in Black movies, working for Rick, it’s just a meld for me.
When you write, when you’re taking a Horror movie, and you’re doing something so unusual as writing a real, actual script. It’s not just sitting in a living room going, “Hey, that was cool. Yeah, scary stuff.” You’re delving in. You’re spending 25 to 30 hours going through every movie and finding the beats and finding why that character needs to kill? Why is that character so unhappy? To find the reasons why gives you a whole new appreciation that I did not have before this experience. But yeah, I do like to be scared. Not in real-life movies, though.
Cryptic Rock – That is what is great about the Horror genre in general. There is the ability to escape reality for the most part. Some Horror movies are really based on reality, especially more modern ones. That is when it gets a little uncomfortable because it feels too real. When you were watching something like An American Werewolf in London, as you said, you suspend your disbelief. It’s fun.
Heidi Holicker – In that movie, when you’ve got the Griffin Dunne character, in complete decomposition, just going, “Come on, dude. Just give it up. You’re one of me.” It’s hysterical. I do love being on the couch with all my blankies (gasping). What I find, I stay there. It’s not like it’s a jump scare, and I jump. I literally sit there, won’t move for quite a while. I love it. E.G. Daily, who I haven’t really even mentioned yet, is also brilliant playing Cry. It’s the variance between her and Mimi Torres; it’s truly a privilege.
Cryptic Rock – Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review appears to be a real work of love.
Heidi Holicker – Pure love. As I’ve said recently, a lot of blood, sweat, and a lot of fake blood, sweat, and some tears. We are very lucky to have my buds, my friends, Rick Baker and Rudy Sarzo (Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot), as well as Academy Award-winning Makeup Artist Howard Berger, Juliet Landau, and Lee Purcell, come and do celebrity promos for us. We filmed this entire thing in three days. You’re talking like a labor of love.
Cryptic Rock – That is dedication! So, will there be more Scream and Cry Horror Movie Review beyond the first 12 episodes?
Heidi Holicker – I sure hope so. It’s absolutely my desire and passion to go into season two. I have lots of really fun ideas.
Cryptic Rock – It would be interesting to see which films you choose to work on next.
Heidi Holicker – I already have a handful of wonderful contenders that would give us the same kind of variety. Let’s get this out there and get a huge audience. We’ve been building and building. We did Son of Monsterpalooza last weekend here in Burbank, which is a huge Horror convention.
Cry’s just sitting in his suitcase downstairs, and he is ready to go. He gave me a rider with all of his requirements now. He only wants French cheese, not regular cheese. It’s like, “Whatever. Cool. Dude, whatever you want. You got it.”
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