By J.R. TaylorThe lovely Debbie Rochon doesn't usually inspire grisly thoughts--even when she's the one hacking away in low-budget horror films such as Bleed (2002) (Picture: 1 - 2) and American Nightmare (2002) (Picture: 1). In fact, Debbie is usually the most pleasant attribute of her many, many low-budget efforts. This is especially true whenever the boobalicious brunette demonstrates her ability to play an impressive variety of characters in different stages of undress.
Debbie is certainly in demand as the rare name-brand actress who'll grace micro-budget films with her maxi-sized talent and beauty. Sadly, Debbie recently became another kind of Scream Queen. After decades of hard work, this pin-up girl found herself as the reluctant poster girl for inept low-budget filmmaking.
Fresh off another weekend charming her fans at a comic-book convention, Debbie sits in a Manhattan bar and recounts her terrible tale. "It was my last day of shooting on this film called The Legend of Crazy George (2002), and we had the big finale where I go crazy and kill the person in the scene with me. We'd been using a prop that was kind of like a machete. They took a break to tweak the lights and decided the prop wasn't reading well on the monitor. It looked fake, so they switched it with a real machete."
This led to the one time when Debbie's dedication and energy would work against her. "I came back and they said, 'We're losing the sun, we know the scene, go ahead and shoot it.' Then they added it was a different prop sitting in the same place as the last prop. Okay, fine. I went through the scene, pulled my arm back to hack downward on the fake body, and there was no hilt or brace. My hand slipped off the handle and ran right down the blade. My fingers were completely cut to the bone."
You don't have to be a Mr.Skin.com subscriber to dread the thought of trauma to your right hand. We'd be proud to handle it as well as Debbie. "In those kinds of situations," she explains, "you sort of say, semi-calmly, 'I've basically cut my fingers off. You need to get me to a hospital.' We were in a very small town in Tennessee. Doctors and nurses kept coming in, pouring water on my hand to see the injuries--and that really hurt. Doctors would ask me to move my fingers. In my mind's eye, I was moving my fingers, but obviously nothing was happening. I could read in the doctors' faces that they were completely freaked out."
Subsequent events inspired Debbie to become a spokeswoman in an industry which jokes about no actresses being harmed during filming. "As much as it'll get me hated at the micro-budget level," Debbie explains, "my theory is that you can't afford to make a movie if you can't afford insurance. The filmmakers dropped the ball in every shape and form. I was in that hotel room in Tennessee packing up my bags with one hand. They drove me to the airport, but I had to pay to get the earliest flight back home. The doctors in this small Tennessee town had, very wisely, told me to get back to New York. I had about five days to get surgery to repair the tendons and nerves before I lost the use of my hand."
Keep in mind that Debbie augments her income by signing autographs and writing articles. The injury took Debbie out of the biz for about a year and a half--she was only in ten films released in 2003--and left her in severe financial straits. It's not like those Tennessee filmmakers had bothered to get insurance on their production.
Debbie isn't delusional, though. She's very much aware that her cause is like attempting to regulate backyard wrestling. "I have this terrible feeling that I won't change anything," concedes the amazing actress, "because everyone's so desperate to be famous, even in this sub-sub-culture. I'm looking at these contracts being sent to me, and they repeatedly have clauses that say I won't hold the filmmaker or the location responsible for my safety. It's very disturbing."
Debbie was also initially reluctant to talk about her injury, trying instead to concentrate on a return to normalcy. "Making all these movies," she explains, "you don't get paid a lot of money. You have to be prolific to live month to month. I was on all kinds of medications that messed with my weight. Only now, years later, am I truly coming out of it. I'd look at pictures of myself at conventions and just see someone who was either clinically depressed or just not there."
Debbie's own career is now doing well, despite--or probably because of--her renewed sense of discrimination. She helped launch Fangoria TV while hosting the network's Halloween Parade coverage and gets to show off her comedic skills while introducing classic Coming Attractions on the network's Trailer Park. There's also early work to be discovered, with the Media Blaster label about to release Banned (1989) on DVD--featuring Debbie's first-ever nude scene.
"I was doing a tiny extra role for [director] Roberta Findlay in Lurkers (1988)," she recalls, "and the writer told me that their next movie was about a nice jazz musician who's taken over by the spirit of this hardcore Sid Vicious-like punk rocker. The only role left was as this possessed musician's new, bad-girl girlfriend. It was only about three scenes, and one required nudity. I decided to do it. The writer was surprised. He said he didn't think I would take that kind of role. I felt a little embarrassed, like I was letting him down."
That's the kind of story you might get in Debbie's upcoming autobiography, which is also slowly coming along. "It's not easy to type with a semi-clawed hand," she notes.
That should help ensure the book's realistic attitude. Still, the story's heroine is feeling very upbeat. "I never did that one major cult movie," Debbie says. "Some people are really into the Troma films, but I never made a Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes. I'm really excited about my film Nowhere Man (2004), which is finally going to open in New York next year. It's a great role in a really good film--and that isn't just me trying to end on a positive note. I show a lot of skin doing these very daring, almost pornographic scenes. I may never get a single role from Nowhere Man, but at least I have that performance."
