If you're used to thinking of Brittany Snow as the blond darling of "American Dreams" and "Hairspray," brace yourself. The 22-year-old actress has a string of movies on the way that take her acting to a whole new level — a jarring one.

Her forthcoming flicks include Tony Kaye's "Black Water Transit" drama, which involves illegal firearms. "That movie is very intense," she says, "and it was the most challenging and most rewarding for me as an actress so far."

Among the scenes she was called upon to do, "there's one in particular where I am getting raped. I am actually on real trash bags full of trash as this guy is raping me in the scene. I had to sit on trash bags for an hour drenched in dirt and fake blood. We were in New Orleans, and it was sweltering hot, and I wanted to get up." Referring to filmmaker Kaye, she goes on, "But he wanted to get that intensity of how desperate I was to get out of the trash. I was hysterically crying and yelling to get up. It was so hard, but I think it was exactly what he wanted, and it will hopefully be one of those scenes people remember."

Brittany notes admiringly, "He's not afraid to go 120 percent crazy on a scene, to get dirty and uncomfortable and weird, and then, if it doesn't work, he won't use it."

She also has completed "Finding Amanda," a black comedy in which she plays Matthew Broderick's niece, a Las Vegas hooker he's trying to get into rehab — only to find he needs rehab himself. And there's her currently shooting dark family drama "The Vicious Kind."

First up: "Prom Night," which is being released April 11. Brittany relates that director Nelson McCormick invited her hands-on participation behind the scenes on the flick, and she loved it. She adds, "I'm the age where I grew up with the 'Scream' movies, with 'I Know What You Did Last Summer.' I had the big crush on Ryan Phillippe ... Hopefully, this will be thought of as one of those type of movies."

MEANWHILE: Jonathan Schaech wants us to know that Screen Gems' "Prom Night" works on more subliminal levels than most of today's graphic horror flicks. "It functions more on scares than gore. You will envision gore, but you won't see it," says Schaech, who stars opposite Snow in the feature. "It'll make you have trouble sleeping, but it won't make you throw up before you go to sleep." How, um, reassuring.

He adds the only thing the film has in common with the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis "Prom Night," about a masked killer stalking four teens, is the title. "They took the concept of prom night, but it's a completely original storyline." And he'd tell us who he plays in the film — but then he'd have to kill us. Just kidding. "I'm not allowed to talk about my character in the piece," he says. "The studio wants to keep it under wraps."

TOME TALES: "L.A. Law" and "The Unit" actress Michelle Greene reports she's already "had a lot of interest" in turning her first book, "Chasing the Jaguar," into a movie. The novel, due out April 8, is "the first in a series of books," relates Greene, speaking of the chronicles of a modern-day Mexican-American teenaged sleuth named Martika Galvez. "I'm taking meetings with people about movie development and a video game." Greene says she might include herself in any on-screen adaptations of "Chasing the Jaguar" et al, but because of her Anglo looks, "They would have to cast me as the white girl's mother. Since the book has been coming out, people are like 'Huh, Michelle Greene? Isn't she a nice little Jewish girl from the San Fernando Valley?' No, no, no. I'm a lapsed Catholic Mexican."

The native Los Angeleno adds each tome will also be an homage to her hometown. "In 'Chasing the Jaguar' a lot of it takes place in Griffith Park, but in each book I want to explore not only the mystery but the history of a lot of the city — the whole Central Avenue jazz scene, the history of Mexican landowners in L.A., the whole thing with runaways in the Hollywood era. And in each book, Martika's power gets more developed so she can do all kinds of stuff."

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: Actor John Reardon felt as if he was straddling two worlds while shooting "Son of the Dragon," the Hallmark Movie Channel HD network miniseries that wraps up tonight (4/3). "You can see how things are changing in China. Just being in Shanghai, on one side there are all these brand-new futuristic buildings like something from 'The Jetsons,' then you look to the other side and people are still pushing their food carts." Reardon plays D.B., a rabble-rouser who steals from the rich to give to the poor and is under the tutelage of the master, played by David Carradine. He says of his co-star, "He's one of the original outlaws of Hollywood, a real legend, and working with him made me feel that way more. He'd just tell stories all day that would start off with 'I was hanging out with Bob Dylan' or 'I was on location in Tibet sword fighting with a ninja … ' He's about as cool as they come."

With reports by Stephanie DuBois and Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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