Why Anne From Jakob's Wife Looks So Familiar

Some streaming services attract audiences by filling a niche. For example, Disney+ has the complete collections of everything currently owned by the entertainment giant, including Marvel movies and shows, while Shudder is your go-to platform for anything horror-related. Shudder even produces its own exclusive shows, including the exhumed classic horror anthology "Creepshow," as well as movies. The latest movie to grace Shudder's unhallowed halls is "Jakob's Wife."

The film revolves around the character Pastor Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden) and his wife, Anne Fedder (Barbara Crampton). According to the trailer, Anne feels dissatisfied with Jakob and wants to cheat on him, but things go wrong when she is bitten by what may or may not be a vampire. She doesn't immolate in the sun, but she does develop an insatiable taste for blood ... and earthworms. Jakob will have to decide which is stronger: his love for his wife or his love of doing what is right.

While Crampton also serves double duty as the movie's producer, you might recognize her from other films and shows. Some of her past roles might surprise you.

Before Crampton became associated with horror films, her first big role was as Trista Evans in the soap opera "Days of Our Lives." However, in what is best described as prophetic irony, Crampton's tenure as Trista might have painted her horror movie future. In the show, she couldn't escape murder. She saw her mother killed; she dated and married Eugene Bradford (John de Lancie), who was surrounded by mysterious deaths; and eventually, Trista herself was murdered by the Salem Slasher.

While Crampton would go on to play various characters in one-off TV shows and movies, she also found a ton of success in soap operas. Crampton portrayed Mindy Lewis in "Guiding Light," Maggie Forrester in "The Bold and the Beautiful," Dr. Leslie Bogan in "Spyder Games," and Leanna Randolph in "The Young and the Restless." However, Crampton apparently left the soap opera game in 2007, as she has mostly appeared in movies ever since, with the occasional dip into tv shows for one or two episodes.

Barbara Crampton's first movie role was as Carol in "Body Double," but it wasn't the film that put on the horror movie map. That honor goes to the 1985 classic "Re-Animator."

Based on the H.P. Lovecraft novel "Herbert West–Reanimator," the movie stars Jeffrey Combs as the belovedly campy Herbert West, Bruce Abbott as Dan Cain, and Crampton as Megan Halsey, Dan's girlfriend. In the film, Herbert tries to perfect a serum that brings the dead back to life. In his attempts to find more guinea pigs, Herbert ropes Dan into his scheme, which eventually involves Megan. "Re-Animator" comes to a head, figuratively and literally, when the decapitated body of the villainous Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) kidnaps Megan and brings her to, well, his severed head. While Megan ultimately serves as the damsel in distress in "Re-Animator," she is still a strong and intelligent character throughout the movie.

Combs went on to revive his role as Herbert West in subsequent "Re-Animator" films, but Crampton did not appear in them. She did, however, find herself walking through numerous horror movie role doors. These included Suzie Lynn in "Chopping Mall" and Susan Reilly in "Castle Freak."

Every so often, a cast captures lightning in a bottle so efficiently they get to reconvene and try to make lightning strike twice. This happened to the actors of "A Fish Called Wanda" when they came back to film "Fierce Creatures," and when the players of "Re-Animator" tried something similar with "From Beyond."

Like "Re-Animator" before it, "From Beyond" was based on an H.P. Lovecraft novel, and many actors in the former film returned for the latter, most notably Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. Instead of playing one of the protagonist's girlfriends, though, Crampton stepped into the shoes of Dr. Katherine McMichaels, who is the psychiatrist of Combs' character, Crawford Tillinghast. Dr. McMichaels is tasked with determining if Crawford, who went insane after murdering his colleague, Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel), is fit enough to stand trial for that murder.

Because Crawford seems completely sane and totally insane at the same time (credit to Combs' acting talent, especially when he compares corpses to gingerbread men), Dr. McMichaels investigates his experiments. Her curiosity leads to a series of events that involve extradimensional creatures, an actually very alive — and very monstrous — Dr. Pretorius, and prehensile pineal glands. And, this time around, Crampton finishes the film embodying a different classic horror movie trope: the final girl.