Peter Sobczynski at Hollywood Bitchslap checks in with the towering Mary Woronov as the inimitable cult queen prepares to spend the weekend in Chicago, at retrospective screenings of a couple of her drive-in classics, Rock 'n' Roll High School (at the Music Box Theatre on May 9, with music critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot) and, on May 10, Death Race 2000, as part of the annual Sci Fi Spectacular. Woronov entered movies through the side door after working with "the Theatre of the Ridiculous in New York, which was majorly cult--it was hardly Broadway theater or even off-Broadway," and then with Andy Warhol, which led to her getting a show-stopping role in the breakout Warhol factory picture The Chelsea Girls. For much of her movie career, Woronov seemed joined at either hip to the late Paul Bartel, who directed her in Death Race 2000 and co-starred with her in Rock 'n' Roll High School, and Roger Corman, on whose nickel both pictures were made. (She also appeared in the Corman productions Hollywood Boulevard and Cannonball, a follow-up to Death Race 2000, which she describes as "just the worst movie" and which she says inspires this outburst from Bartel, who directed it: "What is happening to me? I don�t like cars--I hate cars!�") and acted for Bartel in such labors of love as Eating Raoul and Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.) As she explains it now, it was a natural fit in both cases because Bartel "really liked camp acting and that was really who I was, a camp actress," and because Corman "didn't care as long as the movie got made." Which in many ways makes him the producer of many a film crew's dreams.

By the way, about her and Bartel? "I was not married to him." Apparently this is a misconception that has come up fairly often in Woronov's experience, even if to some of is it does sound a little like Liberace being besieged with people asking when he was going to meet a nice girl and settle down. Apparently the sexless but loving relationship between their characters in Eating Raoul--"Paul and Mary Bland"--grew out of people's perceptions of them as a couple, which in turn grew out of their being teamed in so many Corman movies directed by other people, who felt the two were simpatico. Her role also grew out of her fear that, after her Nazi-dominatrix-style school principal in Rock 'n' Roll High School, she'd be typecast forever in "reeling bitch" parts. Eating Raoul, which, she says, was shot "in 28 days" over the course of year--Bartel would shoot until he ran out of money and then "would call me months later and go, 'You know that scene--we can shoot it now' "--gave her chance to show that she could flash a friendly smile to go with her mile-long gams, albeit while beating people to death with a skillet. In between such dream jobs, Woronov kept busy with work in such films as Hell Hole, in which "I run this asylum that has nothing but big-titted girls in sneakers." She's slowed down in recent years--the last time we saw her was in Joe Dante's Looney Tunes: Back in Action, where she brightened up the boardroom as Acme Vice-President in Charge of Bad Ideas. But the good stuff stays good. Or as she puts it, her movies "are so weird that they don't age."