Helen Curtis (Tales from the Crypt/The Vault of Horror)

Helen Curtis (Mimi Rogers) is the villainous protagonist of "Beauty Rest", the forty-third episode of HBO's television horror series "Tales from the Crypt". The episode is based on the comic book story of the same name from "The Vault of Horror #35".

Tales from the Crypt[]

An aspiring model, Helen worked for years in order to get her big break, but something always came long to thwart her efforts. Upon hearing that she lost the part for "Ball Buster Perfume" to her roommate Joyce Palmer, she returns to the apartment with accusations that she slept her way to the top. Helen is further disgusted when Joyce tells her that she's going to be crowned the winner of a beauty pageant since she's been dating Tom, the man in charge of it. In a fit of despair, Helen rushes to the bathroom and contemplates swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, but instead, she decides to lace Joyce's tea with them. To Helen's shock, however, the pills quickly kill Joyce, and the jealous woman is left with no choice but to forge a suicide note.

Helen shows up to the pageant to take her roommate's place, and gives the note Tom had written for Joyce to George, the MC. While there, she meets another contestant, Druscilla, who looks down on her, assuming she had slept her way into the competition. In truth, Druscilla did this herself and plans to blackmail George with a sexual harassment suit if she isn't crowned the winner. George gives in, and to further botch things for Helen during the Q&A segment, he asks her a very personal and inappropriate question about her past. In a fit of rage, Helen confronts Druscilla and proceeds to strangle her to death.

His hands no longer tied, George asks Helen if she still wants the prize, and after she accepts, she's led to a dark back room where a makeup artist begins applying heavy cosmetics to her face. As she struggled to break free, George injected her with a glowing blue liquid. In the pageant's finale, George sings a twisted coronation song to Helen's lifeless body in the center of the stage. Sliced open with her internal organs exposed, it is revealed that the title of this pageant was in fact: "Miss Autopsy 1992."

The Vault of Horror[]

The EC comics version differs in a few notable ways. Here, Joyce is straight up told that she'll be competing for "Miss Corpse 1954" though she believes it to be just a publicity gag put up by the "Undertakers' and Embalmers' Association". Helen also chalks her roomate's success up to luck, rather than promiscuity, and there is no second rival (Druscilla) for her to contend with. Lastly, the presentation of Helen's corpse is not depicted after she is killed.