Last week the Hollywood trades announced that actress Rose McGowan is treading back into drive-in territory with Black Oasis, a surreal biopic of B-movie actress Susan Cabot (The Wasp Woman) from director Stephan Elliot (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). Cabot’s film career (which ran from ’47 until ’70) ended abnormally when she was murdered with a set of nunchucks in ’86 by her own son, Tim.
Needless to say, her life was destined to be recounted on the big screen as McGowan elaborates during this weekend’s Grindhouse (opening April 6th) press junket. “Cabot was about four-foot-ten. I’m not that short, but I’m not super-tall, she’s certainly a lot smaller, and she’d wear these eight-inch platforms,” the actress says. “She had just such a sad life and she was sure she’d be an A-list actress. She was engaged to King Hussein until he found out her real name was Harriet Shapiro and that she was Jewish.” Cabot, whose credits also include The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent and the film noir classic Kiss of Death, ultimately had a child, however, her son “had dwarfism and she put him through all of these experimental treatments with shots and hormones. It was such a bizarre relationship with them. He became obsessed with Bruce Lee, hence the nunchucks, that made him feel masculine but he didn’t look masculine because of all the hormones. She was a very suffocating mother.”
McGowan hopes to begin shooting Black Oasis in the next three or four months. Hilary Shor (Children of Men) is producing Elliot’s script which, in turn, was inspired by a John Richardson-penned article in Premiere Magazine.
Stay tuned for ComingSoon.net’s new horror arm, ShockTillYouDrop.com, coming next month!
