THE POWER OF PINK
Experienced in ridding Earth of alien scum, Erin Cahill packs a punch.

This Creature Unknown cast member should have no problem with tackling a rampaging monster. After all, Erin Cahill played nothing less than the Pink Power Ranger in the series Power Rangers Time Force. But we have to admit that Erin totally blew our concept of what goes on during a Power Rangers shoot.

We always assumed actresses like Erin were in there beating up on guys in monster suits and stuff, but it turns out a large portion of Power Rangers is actually shot in JAPAN!

"About 60 percent of the show is what we shot in the States. Of that, 40 percent is monster stuff and wearing the helmets and flying around," Cahill admits. "About 10 percent of that is shot in Japan. That's almost like stock footage, because they're a year ahead of us. So when we started doing Time Force, the season was already over in Japan. After we got their footage over here, we changed their story lines to fit our story lines, but still used some of their monster footage."

We're never going to look at Power Rangers the same way again.

Nevertheless, Erin says her particular Power Rangers show was more fun to shoot than most. "The show was set in the future - like 2140 - and I was engaged and we were going up against this evil guy who, for the first time in the history of the Power Rangers, was actually a man, not like a big scary costume. He was played by Vernon Wells [the Mohawk-haired Wez of The Road Warrior], who was just awesome. He's a big guy. Long story short, we chased him, almost caught him, he killed my fiancé and then he went back in time - which was all cool because we found out my character could cry."

Hey, we'd cry if the evil Vernon Wells killed OUR fiancé, too.

Despite her previous experience in dealing with monsters, Erin gets mowed down by the nameless title beast of Creature Unknown pretty early on. But, fortunately, she's used to being pounced on by animals with large teeth, as she has two Doberman Pinschers at home.

"You have to train a Doberman to be aggressive because they're pretty sweet naturally," she says as we slowly back away. "If you say, 'Have you been a good girl?' to one of our dogs, she'll just smile. She looks like she's going 'Grrrrrrr,' but she's really smiling. It looks scary, but once you get used to it it's really cute." Uh huh.

Cahill embraced her role as creature fodder for the film's opening scene with costar Lori Shiers. "I'm the second person to get killed in the movie," she says. "We're two best friends out camping and we have some cute dialogue. Then we find a house in the woods, but before we go in, we hear a noise and run. We spent half a day just running around while filming."

Sadly, Erin doesn't die on camera, but she does get to scream a lot. "Lori falls down and we get a big close-up of her screaming and then it cuts to me. I run back to find her and all I see is blood. At that point, I look up, you see the creature's shadow come at me - you can just get a glimpse of him if you pause the tape - and then the camera pushes in up close and goes into my mouth while I'm screaming."

The actress also discovered she was a little bit lacking in the scream department. "By the fourth take I was like 'Ahhh...' But Lori is a great screamer - she's really good."