Name Shannon Lark | Role Writer | |
Movies I Am Monster, Psychic Experiment, Disciples, Flying Saucer Rock 'n' R Similar People Jeff Dylan Graham, Eric Callero, Adam Cardon | ||
Shannon Lark (born July 16, 1982 in San Diego, California) is an American writer, dancer, director, producer, professional scream queen, and film festival director. Lark was the first ever Fangoria Magazine Spooksmodel and has publicly advocated the advancement of the female role in horror cinema as the founder of The Chainsaw Mafia, a website dedicated to lesser-known artists in the genre to collaborate and showcase their work, and the Viscera Film Festival, a non profit horror film festival for women (ended in 2013).
Contents
Career
Lark spent the following years studying the formulas of horror film, as well as investigating the various aspects of filmmaking itself while working at REEL Video in Berkeley, CA. Teaming up with the Primitive Screwheads, Lark performed as Annie in "splatter theatre" productions of "Evil Dead: LIVE" for two years in a row. She also starred as Elsa in "Re-Animator" and "Little Red vs. the Undead" as Little Red Riding Hood. In 2006, Lark left the Primitive Screwheads and ventured onto directing, producing, and starring as Nancy Thompson in "The Elm St Murders," which used 18 gallons of fake blood sprayed at the audience, custom Freddy Gloves by Special FX Artist Devon Ryan, and the audience was pulled out of chairs, thrown in Freddy's path, and covered in pillow feathers. The show ran for 6 months at the DNA Lounge and Club 6 in San Francisco, ending with a Halloween show at Stanford University.
Her second attempt at the art of filmmaking was with the short Babies For Breakfast, followed soon by Marburg, a 16-minute horror docudrama about an ebola-like disease. From those early cinematic experiments Shannon has moved on to appearing within numerous independent and short films such as The Cleaner, Rated R for Zombies, and It’s My Birthday. Her feature films include Mr. Cleaver, Retardead (2008), and Walking Distance (2009) in which she stars alongside genre veterans Reggie Bannister and Debbie Rochon. Dubbed “San Francisco’s gore gore girl” by the media, Shannon is an established advocate for the female presence within horror cinema. The first ever women only horror film festival, Viscera Film Festival, is an annual event showcasing horror cinema as exclusively created by women.
From the years 2005-2008 Shannon was a featured dancer in the Living Dead Girlz, a horror themed troupe combining burlesque and choreographed dancing arterial splatter theater. The troupe was featured in the 2007 film Brains. Shannon runs The Chainsaw Mafia, a production company focused on horror film and splatter theater. The Chainsaw Mafia is also a website for networking writers, filmmakers, and various artists within the horror genre. In 2008, Shannon became the first ever “Spooksmodel” for Fangoria Magazine, ruling with its crown of gore from 2008-2009. The “Spooksmodel” appeared at every Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention as well as appearing in the printed magazine promoting its various functions. In 2011, it was announced that Shannon would star in Towers of Terror, a zombie film set in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.