Miss Cherry Delight is serving up some wonderfully sick and twisted visuals in the new “Parasite” music video. We have the exclusive creepy crawly premiere for you below, and Miss Cherry also joins us to discuss channeling traumatic elementary school feelings, the importance of consuming horror way too young, and bringing Estrogina to life for GWAR.
But first… enjoy “Parasite.”
Well that was cool as hell and totally disgusting (complimentary). Miss Cherry Delight takes us behind the scenes of creating the “Parasite” music video and the horrors that shaped the journey.
Tell us a bit about working with bugs and brains? Were those real worms in your mouth?
As an only child, I spent most of my time alone, usually in the backyard after storms, digging through wet dirt, collecting earthworms, and playing with bugs because there was no one else around. Not even a babysitter. That kind of solitude hardens you early for the creepy-crawlies.
There are still insects I can’t deal with—I have a brown recluse scar on my right shoulder blade to prove it—but once I commit to something, I don’t flinch. For this video, I chose insects that were easy to source and, more importantly, ones I knew I could actually handle. With help from a local pet store, we worked strictly with reptile feeder insects: dubia roaches, wax worms, nightcrawlers, and mealworms.
Touching a worm is nothing. Putting them in your mouth is something else entirely. When you suck them up like spaghetti the way I did, you feel the rough, ridged segments drag across your lips and tongue, and suddenly you understand exactly how they survive underground. That physical reality was the point. *Almost* everything in the video is real.
The apple prop was already on set at Gymnopede—I pretended to bite it while already holding wax worms in my mouth, trying not to crush them or spit them out, which is why my tongue barely moves. The only other trick was the dream sequence: those arms belong to my makeup artist and costumer, Glitter Macabre. The knife, however, was very real, and I’m grateful no one slipped, or this genuinely would have been my last music video.
I’ve been using raw meat in my performance work for years. Al-Yemeni Market—666 Woodward Avenue, which feels too perfect to make up—supplied a fresh cow’s brain that was shockingly clean and beautiful in its own way. That said, it never went in my mouth. Pushing limits is one thing; knowing exactly where they are is another.
Were there any specific influences you were pulling from to create the “Parasite” aesthetic?
In no way did I want to feel comfortable or glamorous or sexy for “Parasite.” I needed to be ugly, disgusting, and in a state of anguish. My vision for this video was always very clear. I knew Dylan Mars Greenberg would push it where it needed to go, not only visually, but with the grit and rhythm I was looking for.
Floria Sigismondi’s directorial style was a major reference for this piece.
Additionally, an artist I admire, who inspired much of this look, is Missy of MM Fabrications. I dream of working with her on future projects. And though we didn’t shoot in black and white, there’s some “Begotten” influence in there, for sure. I wanted a lot of texture from the insects and my peeling skin, and an overall unsettling visual that encapsulates a feeling of self-sabotage.
There’s a lot of humiliating, traumatic elementary school feelings in that dilapidated classroom set, and a rotting dunce cap was the pièce de résistance. Above all, this song would have NEVER been written if it weren’t for the way I was spoken to with such harshness and disrespect for the first few years at my current regular job…But hey, without the job, I couldn’t have paid for the recording studio time or the video itself. Ain’t life funny?
How does your taste in horror influence your work as a whole?
I think for the most part, I gravitate towards horror that involves some humor. But more than horror, it’s true crime—real events, real fractures in humanity—that truly fuels my imagination in my music. I’ve written several songs inspired by cases I’ve hyper-fixated on for years, from Issei Sagawa to the Manson Family, and an upcoming track about the Hello Kitty Murder titled “Plaything.”
But nothing compares to my lifelong obsession with Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. That fixation runs so deep that Joe Coleman ultimately painted me as her re-animated corpse in Doorway to Whitney, a moment that felt less like tribute and more like fate. A dear friend of mine, sideshow and magic royalty Todd Robbins, once told me, “It’s very important to understand what unspeakable things humans are capable of,” and that sentiment has stayed with me—it’s the spine of my work. It probably doesn’t hurt that I was almost born on Halloween. I’m a Scorpio. I’ve always felt like a natural gatekeeper for the macabre, drawn to the shadows not to glorify them, but to stare directly into what they reveal about us.
What horror movie did you see when you were way too young? What was that experience like and how did it shape your relationship with horror?
In 1996, I was 9 (until November 4th), and it was the year I entered the horror genre. I saw Psycho, and for a month, I could only take baths with the curtain open. But then I bought the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark box trilogy at the Scholastic Book Fair, and that was what truly shaped my relationship with horror—by teaching me how powerful suggestion could be.
The quiet dread of Alvin Schwartz’s retold folk stories, and the legendary Stephen Gammell’s intensely graphic illustrations, showed me that horror works best when it lingers—when it trusts the imagination to fill in the worst parts. The main course was that summer, when I saw the regional production of Sweeney Todd at the Goodspeed Opera House, an experience that completely changed everything about me. It was incredible and terrifying and so fun.
CHRIST, the sheer amount of stage blood—— the most I’ve EVER seen in live theater, aside from GWAR—— was shocking, but so exhilarating, transforming the kind of private, internal fear I’d known as a child into something communal, theatrical, and cathartic. That cemented my love for horror as an art form that can be both grotesque and deeply human, and was the real reason I started becoming fascinated with cannibalism. My horror fixation has, of course, followed me into adulthood today, right down to the Bates Motel–themed bathroom in my apartment.
Best needle drop in a horror movie:
Oh, please. Do I even have to say it? The best needle drop in ANY horror movie is the cemetery zombie scene in Return of the Living Dead set to “Partytime” by 45 Grave. It’s outrageously funny, and it’s punk rock chaos at its dumbest and smartest at the same time—stripping on tombstones, zombies popping up like party crashers, and the movie fully cracking itself up while the world ends. The song turns the whole moment into filthy, high-camp slapstick, where horror stops pretending to be serious and just commits to being loud, stupid, and hilarious. Chef’s kiss.
Best horror movie soundtrack:
The best horror movie soundtrack, in my opinion is House of 1000 Corpses. It feels diseased in the best way, like it’s rotting from the inside out. Rob Zombie didn’t just score a movie; he built a filthy sonic world out of warped Southern rock, psychobilly, radio samples, and noise that sounds like it was dragged through the back alley of Hell. It made me understand that sound is just as important to horror as blood or imagery.
My passion was fed early by the horror-adjacent soundtracks to The Crow and Lost Highway, which taught me how music can be oppressive, romantic, and violent all at once. Those albums didn’t just influence my taste in movies—they rewired how I experience atmosphere, identity, and decay, and now they echo in the music I write.
Best horror score:
The best horror film score ever made is Psycho—those shrieking strings are pure panic, permanently burned into the language of horror. Right behind it for me are Hellraiser and Pearl, two scores from two movies I adore. They couldn’t be more different, but hit so hard. Hellraiser is operatic, doomed, and almost sacred in how seriously it treats suffering, while Pearl lures you in with glossy, old-Hollywood sweetness that slowly festers as the character does.
Those scores are absolutely my gold standard: music that doesn’t just underscore the horror, it corrupts the entire film. (Ps: Special shout-out to the symbol crash for the Grady Twins reveal in The Shining.)
If you were the final girl in a horror movie, what would your kill song be?
“Who’s Sorry Now” by Connie Francis is perfect for me to have a revenge-kill scene in a horror movie because it’s painfully sweet, polite, and dripping with irony. That soft, wounded croon playing over something brutal would turn the scene into high camp—it’s not about rage, it’s about closure.
The contrast makes the violence feel intentional, theatrical, and mean in a wink-at-the-audience way, like the character has already won and this is just the punctuation mark. It’s saccharine, it’s cruel, and that’s exactly why it works for Miss Cherry Delight.
If “Parasite” were featured in a horror movie, what would that look like ideally? What kind of scene, subgenre, etc?
I feel like “Parasite” is built to crawl under a horror film and live there. I think it belongs in a break-in scene or an opening character montage where you’re watching someone quietly ruin their own life, especially in a scene involving a mental breakdown or physical self-harm. It should be hard to watch. The song is meant to grab you while letting the tension come to a boil in real time, mirroring the character’s bad decisions and unraveling headspace.
My goal with this track, and with my music career overall, is to be a well used pin-drop in film and television where it feels right.
Can you share anything about your time bringing Estrogina to life?
When GWAR and Matt Miner hired me to help develop and portray Estrogina for the Orgasmageddon comic series, it was a massive honor—not just creatively, but personally, as a devoted GWAR fan. Estrogina is a younger character, built as the polar opposite of the self-obsessed GWAR woman, Slymenstra Hymen. Estro was partially raised by Oderus Urungus with a personality rooted more in the anarchic, feral and sarcastic, often goofy spirit of Tank Girl. She is a special heartfelt part of the Scumdogs’ vengeful mission to find Mr. Perfect and destroy him for killing Oderus.
Getting to shape her for live appearances and comic book signings felt like being trusted with a piece of GWAR’s chaotic mythology. That period also gave me something I didn’t expect: mentorship. Chuck Varga—GWAR’s founder and the man behind “Le Sexecutioner”—took me under his wing and showed me the ropes, offering guidance that carried real weight coming from someone who helped define an entire underground culture.
Deliberately, it was a brief chapter in my life, but a meaningful one, because it proved to me that I had the vision, confidence, and chops to stand on my own—and with additional encouragement from his wife, my first mentor, Bambi The Mermaid — it directly gave me the push I needed to pursue my solo music career without hesitation.
