Tag Archives: Queer

Pride and other feelings: Cruising

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Well June has come around again, bringing me to another installment of “Cis-Het Horror Guy writes a Pride post.” I don’t know – is it strange? I don’t always hit all the other calendar connections. There’s often something for Christmas, but not always. I occasionally have done some other themed month, like Black History, for example, but I don’t even usually manage to honor Halloween, the high holiday of the horror-blog year. Still, each June, I do tend to mark Pride.

I think beyond the fact that I have enjoyed many examples of “queer horror,” I do feel that there is a strong kinship between horror as I enjoy it and the notion of queerness. Sure, horror in its classic reactionary mode (“monster” disrupts status quo, causing fear, and is either defeated, reifying social norms, or terrifyingly triumphant, resulting in mourning the loss of said norms) can be good fun, but the stuff that always gets its hooks into me, that I most often return to, is more complicated, richer, more seductive, queerer than that. We fear the monster (interpreted as broadly as possible), but we also love the monster. Maybe we are the monster and we have to reckon with our own identity. Maybe the disruption the monster brings is preferable to the tyranny of normie stasis. Maybe we as viewers or readers need to navigate a nuanced relationship to the horror – loving and fearing the same things, identifying with both victims and aggressors, experiencing both earnest sympathetic fear and distanced ironic appreciation of tropes, beloved failings, absurdity, and camp.

So, yeah. I dig scary stuff that’s queer and though I’ve got no letter in the LGBTQ+ alphabet, I do enjoy specifically considering it each year for at least one post in June.

So, this year is no exception and I’ve watched a few things looking for what I’d like to dig into. I think I’ll just touch on three briefly that I very much enjoyed and which are good inclusions for a “Pride” theme, but then I want to really dig into another film which doesn’t suit Pride all that well, but which I do consider outstanding Queer Horror.

So first the Pride Party runners up: I recently watched or re-watched three flicks that have a lot in common: So Vam (2021), Queens of the Dead (2025), and Slay (2024). I’m not going into deep individual detail on them, but I think they are all pretty fun, rather lively and funny, have tons of heart, and while they all deal with some horror creature (vampires, zombies, and vampires respectively), none of them are particularly scary. All are made by queer filmmakers. All three feature drag performance as an emancipatory act. All three have campy qualities. All three are warm celebrations of queerness through a horror monster lens. But again, they all lean more into comedy and there’s not that much horror to them.

So Vam

But not much is not none. It’s just that the horror they feature is less that of their given monsters, and more the fact that even now in the enlightened 2020s it can still be hard as a gay kid in a small town in Australia; drag performers in a rural dive bar may be in danger from the locals; and even a young queer person in a Mecca like NYC can still struggle with fully loving themselves as they are and living life authentically. Plus, there are zombies eating guts and vampires tearing out throats – just enough fictional violence to make the heartwarming character dramedy go down well without feeling too saccharine.

Queens of the Dead

Anyway, they all entertained me, at times touched me, and had good fun with their horror elements. Check ‘em out. Of the three, I think my favorite was Slay – kind of a combination of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and From Dusk Till Dawn, but all have something to recommend them. (As of writing this, So Vam and Queens of the Dead are on Shudder and Slay is on Tubi)

Slay

But while they all center queerness, and they all are clearly horror movies (I do big tent classifications – if you’ve got a zombie eviscerating someone, even if it’s not scary, as far as I’m concerned you can call your flick “horror”), they don’t feel much like horror, so I’d like to dig into a very different work that is arguably not a horror movie, but feels like it. It also isn’t made by anyone who identifies as queer, and was even protested by the gay community at the time of its filming and release, but I think it is really worthy of time and attention – it’s a rich and very effective piece of queer horror, and in my opinion, just one hell of a film. So let’s get into it…

Cruising (1980)

Of the films I watched with this post in mind, this was the only one that pulled me in so fully that the moment it was over, I immediately wanted to rewatch it, consider it, and write about it. William Friedkin is most famous in the world of horror for The Exorcist (1973), and among general audience cinephiles for The French Connection (1971), but this later work of his is far more my speed. Essentially an art house flick featuring hardcore shots of gay sex and fetish activity, ostensibly a serial killer procedural, oneiric as all get out, ambiguous and intentionally frustrating for any viewer who craves narrative certainty, it is almost unfathomable that this was a wide release with a big star (Al Pacino) from a major studio (United Artists) almost 50 years ago. I will get into spoilers, so if you haven’t already seen it, go seek it out first. It’s available for rent on Prime and Apple TV.

In short, this is the story of Steve Burns, an NYPD officer who goes deep undercover in the gay BDSM scene of New York in the late 70s to lure and catch a killer who’s been targeting gay men who are into “heavy leather.” Steve is specifically chosen because he physically fits the profile of the victims (but to be fair, “late 20s, 140-150 lbs, dark hair, dark eyes” must have described a huge number of officers at the time, so maybe Captain Edelson, who recruits Steve (an excellent Paul Sorvino), sees something else in him to suggest him for the assignment).

Once on the case, Steve just seems to dive in with no evident preparation. He simply says goodbye to his girlfriend (Karen Allen), takes on the pseudonym of “John Forbes,” and moves into a flat in the West Village, where he starts hanging around a gay fetish bar and other places that gay men cruise each other, such as the Central Park Rambles. Mostly he lurks and watches, not explicitly engaging with anyone except bartenders that he asks for information (until one night, when he sniffs poppers out of some dude’s hanky and finally cuts loose). The one exception to this is his relationship with his neighbor, Ted, a playwright whom Steve/John befriends (or more?). Ted, however, is very much not a part of that scene, and describes how scary he finds cruising to be. He’s in a long-term relationship, which while not always evidently warmly loving, does appear stable.

Eventually Steve does identify one suspect, but the cops botch the stakeout when he brings his mark to a cheap hotel for a hookup. Because they don’t seem to know how to use their surveillance equipment properly, they burst in before Steve can confirm the suspect has done anything wrong and end up interrogating both of them, abusively in the case of the suspect.

But in the end, Steve does chase down a bit of evidence connected with an early victim, identify a more likely killer, and meet him for a tense tryst in Central Park in which, once the pants come down, knives come out and an arrest is made.

Steve makes detective and moves back in with his girlfriend and a killer is off the street. Hooray.

On its surface, this is such a simple “cop chases a killer” movie with a straightforward story, filmed in ultra-realistic fashion, but I love it because it’s actually none of those things. Really, this is a film of mirrors and doppelgangers that plays out much more like a dream. And the thing is, while filmic dreams often present an over-the-top surreality, in my personal experience, that isn’t really how most dreams work. Generally, dreams feel entirely real while you’re dreaming them, but things can change and don’t always behave as they do in the waking world. So everything here feels solid and “real,” particularly in its sweaty and tactile presentation of a late 70s/early 80s grimy, gritty, excitingly dangerous New York City, but everything is unmoored, uncanny, doubled.

And sometimes absurd. One notable example is the interrogation scene in which Steve and his first suspect are being berated by the cops and out of nowhere, a huge, muscular Black man in a jock strap and a cowboy hat walks into the room and calmly clocks Steve out of his chair before leaving without saying a word (later, he’ll return for the suspect). It’s never explained – even to Steve. It feels so out of left field, so odd, like an incongruous element to make something weirder, surreal. The crazy thing here though is that apparently Friedkin got that bit from interviews with actual officers. It’s the sort of thing they would orchestrate in an interrogation to abuse information out of a suspect – the absurdity is the point – if the suspect told anyone about it, no one would believe them.

So the realistic elements become surreal if you sit with them long enough, but the absurdities are based in facts, in research (also, I’m no expert in 70s police movies, but are they generally so very anti-cop? This is one gritty, masculine 70s cop movie that just screams “ACAB” – if the cops aren’t inept, they are lazy or corrupt or abusers, or worse).

Joe Spinell stands out as a closeted, abusive cop, lashing out at the objects of his lust.

On the uncanny, one neat trick (which David Fincher borrowed for Zodiac (2007)) is that in each kill scene, the killer is played by a different actor (always dubbed with the same voice), though he is always filmed in such a way that it’s difficult to tell if it’s the same person or not. I had to go through on second viewing to take screen shots each time we see him to confirm that the actor does in fact change. That’s disorienting enough for the viewer, but on top of that, the actor that plays the killer in the first scene (which is frightening enough to earn the film inclusion on this horror blog on its merits alone – truly scary and upsetting) then plays the killer’s next victim in the subsequent kill scene. But there’s more.

Just as the second kill scene culminates in its inevitable stabbing, we cut to a shot of Steve walking down the street, dressed exactly the same as we just saw the killer. Steve was apparently chosen for this undercover work because he resembles the victims, but the victims also resemble their killer, and so, therefore, does he. This is a world where everything looks like everything else. The penetrator seems identical to the penetrated. The cop is a killer. The killer is a victim. The straight officer is gay. The Police are fetishists, and the kinksters are authoritarians. Cops cruise trans streetwalkers to pressure them for sex and gay men dress as cops to get off on the sexual frisson of fascism. Everything is a mirror for everything else and nothing can be pinned down. It presents as so “realistic,” but there is no center.

Steve

This ties in thematically when we do learn about the man identified in the end as the killer – clearly he is self-hating, not accepting his own identity, driven to kill in others what he hates in himself, rooted in deeply unhealthy daddy issues. He seems to be murdering his own reflections.

Furthermore, once the “killer” has been put away, Ted, the friendly neighbor, is found murdered in his flat and a final sequence (Steve mysteriously staring into the mirror, his interiority fully off limits to the viewer as his girlfriend has fun playing dress up in his fetish-gear-killer drag) seems to suggest that he may be responsible for Ted’s death. Reportedly, Pacino was really frustrated with the ending, complaining that Friedkin never explained it to him, leaving him unsure if he was simply gay or was in fact a killer. For my part, I think Friedkin knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t need Pacino to know the answer because there is no answer. We don’t and can’t know. And somehow, answering that simply isn’t the point. Looking in the mirror was all Pacino needed to do – and maybe it was even better that he didn’t understand. Neither do we.

The whole film is the not knowing – looking at reflections that seem familiar, but hide unknown depths – the mirror always being an object of the uncanny. I don’t think the film is interesting because Steve might actually be gay (though he might) or a killer (that too), but because of how unknown he is, to us, but also himself. He is submerged in an unfamiliar world where he could fairly expect to feel out of place, but clearly something resonates inside him.

And that resonation, those vibes are so much of what makes the film spark. The whole movie, the whole leather scene, the whole undercover assignment feels so very dangerous and sexy. I say this as a pretty vanilla cis-het guy, but the sequences of Steve hanging around the fetish club are just hot – the whole space so suffused with lust and flesh and sex in a way that is really alluring, but also threatening – and we see Steve react to it – however he may or may not identify, the thrilling sexuality works on him, at once turning him on and making him uncomfortable, unsure in his own skin, as that skin reacts to its surroundings. In one striking scene, Steve comes home briefly to visit his girlfriend and they have what seems to be far more intense than usual sex. Clearly, he is worked up by his assignment and bringing it home with him.

Steve’s neighbor, Ted, speaks of how he’s terrified of cruising and I get it – I can’t imagine the vulnerability that goes with picking up and being picked up like that – it has not been my experience, to be sure. In many ways, this would correctly be classified as a detective thriller, but its intersection of compelling desire, genuine fear, and the needs and pains of the body just feel so much like horror to me – the kind of horror that really gets under your skin and works its way into your mind.

Which does bring me to something I want to touch on: the controversy at the time of filming and release, and my decision to include this as a Pride/Queer Horror post.

Released ten years after the first Pride march, Cruising came out as the gay rights movement was fighting (for people’s lives) to convince the general population that gay men and women were “normal people,” deserving of the same rights and respect as everyone else, and not some kind of sexual deviants, too weird to be trusted in the house next door, or teaching your kids, or working for the government or whatever. Along comes this movie, set in this somewhat extreme fetish scene (whips and chains, public sex acts, fisting, golden showers, etc), and my sense is that the gay community at large felt that the film was exploitatively shocking, and thus, counterproductive, serving to plant a “freaky” image in the minds of the public, in addition to drawing a line between homosexuality and mental illness that would lead one to victimize or offer himself up for victimization. I get how this material could have been viewed as harmful to the cause.

But watched from a 2026 perspective, I feel that the scenes in the club or in the Rambles don’t really come across as all that outré (I’m only shocked that they were included in such a mainstream release). Maybe over time, the world has just become more kink-positive, but while the aspect of opening yourself to a stranger still feels frightening (as in the terrifying first kill scene where the victim invites his killer home and discovers who he’s let into his space), the behavior modeled in the club all seems entirely positive and consensual, and fully above board. I particularly like a couple of moments when Steve runs afoul of the rules, eliciting anger from other patrons, and one time, getting kicked out because he wasn’t properly dressed (ironically, it was “precinct night” and if he’d been dressed as a cop, he would have fit in). If you didn’t know that the specter of an as yet unheard of HIV (people would start to learn about it about one year later) was lurking over it all, it rather comes across as a sexy, but utterly respectful good time for all involved. Notably, I feel that there is a greater degree of explicit consent on display here than in any “straight” meat market disco where men would go to pick up women. Also, in the film’s defense, all of the extras in the fetish club were patrons of a popular leather club at that time – they were willing to make the movie and I’ve read that they were happy with their own portrayal, even if the wider gay community was not.

But there is a real horror here, and it is clichéd and believable and sad. As at least superficially presented (again, the film is more slippery and ambiguous than that), the killer is motivated by self-hate, instilled in him by a stern, homophobic father. He hunts down others who resemble himself, to kill in them what he can’t eradicate within. This is as much of a cliché as the “straight” killer obsessed with “mommy,” slaughtering the “bad girls” that turn him on. The thing is, though, I generally buy both motivations as distressingly common in life and I can’t really fault the film for leaning on one of them (a cliché simply means we’ve repeated an idea so often that it doesn’t feel  true – it doesn’t mean it actually isn’t true). The world is full of self-recrimination and shame. This is one of the reason “Pride” events and materials are important – not merely to demand acceptance and equal rights from the rest of society, but to help people accept and love themselves for who they are, not letting internalized hatred poison their souls. It is easy to dismiss it as a cliché, but how many virulently anti-gay politicians devote decades to harming the LGBT+ community before getting caught cruising an airport men’s room with their wide stance (ok, maybe in that case, exactly one, but you get the picture – a common tendency)? Perhaps it’s only a difference of degree between that and the kind of serial killers who people thrillers such as this.

Returning to criticisms of the film, as with many other similar issues (misogyny, racism, etc.), I don’t think the presence of homophobia (externalized or internalized) makes a work homophobic. I understand why people objected to this on release, and I make no claim that Friedkin’s heart was in the right place – he may have only sought evocative, thrilling, “shocking” subject matter around which to build a good, artsy thriller. But I really feel like the film treats its characters respectfully – as people, not as stereotypes, and certainly not as objects of ridicule or disgust. I’ve read a number of negative reviews from the time of release that bemoan the fact that there’s no one to identify with or that all of the characters are so ugly and unlikable or that the setting is just too hellish and vulgar, but I think that may point to the prejudices of the reviewers rather than the content of the film itself, as that sure wasn’t my viewing experience.

And so yeah, rooted in such self-destructive internalized homophobia, this is not much of a “Pride” flick (for that kind of celebratory vibe, watch any of the three movies I mentioned at the top), but it is Queer horror. The killer’s horror is his own queerness and that individualized horror makes him a danger to others (as with everything else in this picture, everything is a series of reflections, a vicious circle – his fear of his own queerness threatens the wider queer community). He is caught in the end. But was he really the killer – of all the victims? Was there ever really just one killer? The worm of his self-hate is not so easily eradicated – it can pass from one to another; destruction and self-destruction eternally surfacing, internalized violence exploding at the world without, maybe even infecting anyone who stares close enough to see that reflection in themselves; Steve, we’re looking at you.

But also, that is just one reading, and maybe it’s a stretch. Friedkin has built a Rorschach test of a film here – the viewer’s perspective defines the image seen. And I love it for its ambiguities. So, yeah – this is a strong recommend – rich and evocative and intriguing, but also always engaging – not merely an abstract mood piece.

—

So, that’s one more June in the books (and of course, this is getting published in July, but I spent the last couple of weeks thinking about it, so it counts). I guess before I’m done, I just have one more thought I’ve been chewing on about the label “Queer Horror.”

It’s been a number of years now that I’ve regularly engaged with this as a lens through which to view horror content, and there is so much that I’ve really enjoyed, but I have to say, all of my favorites are older works. This one, sure, but also, especially, really old pieces, like Cat People (1942), Dracula’s Daughter (1936), or anything from James Whale. I enjoy the degree to which it was sometimes daring to include even the suggestion of queerness in an older work, but I also just really enjoy the viewing strategy of “reading” the queerness in a film (or anything else, for that matter). With contemporary work, while I think it is great, and truly good for people that there is now actual representation in the genre that doesn’t need to be hidden in code (signaling much needed social progress), I don’t always enjoy the engagement in the same way as in something older where it isn’t obvious and you have to know what you’re looking for.

And so I have wondered what the future is for films thus identified. It is one thing to have LGBT+ creators making something – does that exactly make it “queer?” I don’t think it always feels like that. And it is another thing to have explicit representation of LGBT+ characters, but if the story isn’t about their queerness, it also doesn’t feel particularly “queer.” As society moves forward, will this cease to feel like a kind of sub-genre?

I don’t know, but I don’t think that’s happened yet. For example, the three films I discussed briefly at the beginning, So Vam (2021), Queens of the Dead (2025), and Slay (2024), all fully celebrate their queerness, not only featuring representation in front of and/or behind the camera, but making it a central aspect of the film itself. And I think that is something people still need and will still need for a while.

On Saturday, there was a Pride march in the town where I’m spending the summer, Ocean City, MD. It was only the third year that the event had taken place and I’m glad I was there. It was really good and needed in what is essentially a small town like this. During the summer, this place is packed, but the population in the off season is teeny and it can be pretty conservative – I can only imagine how hard it might be, even in 2026, to be gay or bi or trans or what have you in OC.  But the march, though small, was joyous and overwhelmingly positive – and the excitement I could see in it was really moving. I think as long as kids in small towns still need to have such an event to celebrate their existence and refuse to cease existing, in the realm of horror, there will still be a place, and need for work that centers queerness as a theme, as a site of exploration, growth, and even fear – it’s all part of that full spectrum of human experience.

Happy Pride, everyone. See you next month.

Accidentally backing into positive messaging: Sleepaway Camp

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So it was June, “pride month,” (or at least it was when I sat down to start this post weeks ago – this is certainly coming late, but things last forever on the internet, so whenever you read this, imagine it’s still June), and I always try to mark that with some LGBTQ+ related content. Frequently that means checking out some good “Queer Horror” that I’ve not yet seen, but as alluded to in my last post, life is currently more than a little difficult (an understatement) and surveying a bunch of stuff I haven’t watched before in the desperate hope that some of it will be worth writing about is honestly more work than I’m currently capable of putting in.

But you know what I can do? Re-watch a flick I’ve seen again and again a couple more times, a picture that I love, a movie that could be termed a “problematic favorite,” but which I think, while it could be read as harmful and mean spirited, comes across as almost weirdly progressive and open minded – ah yes, the eternally watchable paradox that is Sleepaway Camp.

And I think this will be short. While there is so much to vibe on in this odd, endlessly sleazy, entirely lovable little gem, and there are one or two “big ideas,” mostly I’m just going to rave about it a bit and put myself to bed.

But I must issue a big spoiler warning on this one. It is literally impossible to discuss the significance of this flick without alluding to “the twist” that comes at the end. If you haven’t seen it yet – go, go, go! Watch it first and then come back here. It is more fun than you can imagine, and it’s streaming for free on Tubi (probably other places too) and I know it’s hitting Shudder in July. I probably won’t even summarize the plot – just give it a watch and come back (please come back…).

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

How is this movie so good? It doesn’t at all seem like it should be. And I don’t even mean good in terms of representational issues for its gay and trans characters – a surprisingly positive element which I really don’t feel was intentional, but no, I mean the movie itself, as a whole works. From what I’ve seen, the writer-director, Robert Hiltzik (whose only other credit, outside of producing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movies in the Sleepaway Camp series, is writing and directing the 5th movie, Return to Sleepaway Camp from 2008), wasn’t particularly a horror guy, so much as for his first feature, he simply wanted to do something cheap that would make money. He filled his movie to the gills with elements intended to get a rise out of people, almost all of which are, to some degree, in poor taste. While some performances are solid, plenty are, let’s say, unique. There are weird continuity issues. Some dialogue stretches credulity. So many elements seem like they should only be able to be appreciated as unintentional camp, something “so bad, it’s good.” But somehow this movie is so much better than that. Is it campy? Yes. Does it have weaknesses? Yeah – but a) they’re fun and b) who cares?

I guess she cares…

So what makes it so much fun, and beyond that even, what makes it so good? On one level, the outré nature of it all, the over-the-top willingness of Hiltzik to take things to shocking extremes, is genuinely a hoot. I love that this is one of the few camp based slashers that is really about the kids at camp, where one of them is the killer, and most of the victims are kids as well. You don’t often get that and, on a horror level, it’s striking. I don’t know that it’s ever scary, but it does “go there” shamelessly, time after time, and that feels special. I also love how terrible so many of the adults are, like Mel, the camp owner (Mike Kellin, a real treat), who covers up all the murder cause he doesn’t want parents to find out, and who is at least in his 60s and is all a flutter cause he’s going to have a date with the proudly bitchy counsellor, Meg (“M.E.G., Meg”), who’s probably 16 or something. But age inappropriate discomfort doesn’t stop there – we also have the head cook, who is a legitimately predatory pedophile and doesn’t care who knows it, openly lusting after the pre-pubescent children at the camp, all of the other adults mostly ignoring him with a shrug, and laughing it off with a “man, you sure are a creep, ha ha ha.”

And the element with the truly repellent cook brings me to the other side of this movie. While it is definitely campy as all get out and has some weird turns of performance and loads of things that are so much fun because they’re kinda silly (of special note is the cop who in his first appearance has a real mustache, but in his second, it is clearly fake because the actor got another role between shooting days that required him to shave it off), it is surprisingly grounded and weirdly believable.

This facial hair, however, is weirdly unbelievable.

The kids generally know the adults are awful – they get that the cook is dangerous and should be avoided, but they don’t talk to other untrustworthy grownups about it – what would even be the point? – they just have to navigate the dangerous world in which they live. They feel like real kids (and the native Long Islander in me gets a kick out of their accents). And one of the other things that makes the film so ‘real’ is how terrible the kids can be too. They swear a blue streak with great verve and creativity – they are cruel to each other – they bully and belittle – and then they largely get their comeuppance.

Mean girls – Judy and Meg.

And in those scenes of revenge, the movie earns its horror movie street cred – the budget was clearly not large on this one, but the kills (and/or mutilations) are really excellently staged and the practical effects read very well – and this flick has a significant body count. The movie isn’t scary per se, but its gore is solid and its suspenseful kill scenes are legitimately exciting. Scalding burns, death by bees while on the john, decapitations, water bloated bodies with snakes squirming out of their mouths, Judy’s hair curler shoved…someplace left to the imagination – the effects do not disappoint, nor their filming.

But then we get to the heart of it – the characters at the core of the story, and with them, the inclusion of this sleazy little slasher in the ‘queer horror’ canon. I said I wouldn’t really summarize, but the film centers around Angela, a young girl whom we first meet (as a young boy) in an opening scene in which her father and sister are killed in a terrible (and (unintentionally?) hilarious) boating accident. She’s taken in by her aunt Martha, a delightfully odd character (played by a woman, but who comes across as a drag queen presentation of some kind of dissociative state) who decides that though Angela is a boy at the time of adoption, she has always wanted a little girl and so that is what Angela will be (none of this is revealed until a flashback in the last couple minutes of the movie – until then, the viewer is meant to assume that Angela was the little girl at the beginning of the movie and that it had been her brother that died).

Aunt Martha, lost in, let’s call it “thought.”

By the time we meet Angela presenting as a girl in her teen years (Felissa Rose), when it’s time to go to camp for the first time with her cousin, Ricky, she is a girl – there is no sense of a “boy” passing. But she is not well – quiet, withdrawn, and painfully shy, she is a target for the cruel bullying of the worst elements of childhood. Clearly she has been damaged by the loss of her family in such brutal fashion before her eyes, and more, which I’ll come to in a bit. But that doesn’t stop her from enacting her bloody revenge throughout the film on everyone who harms her or is even a little bit mean to her.

Of course the film doesn’t come out and show her doing it – it tries to maintain suspense until the very end as to who is doing the killing, leaving at least some breadcrumbs leading to her cousin – who has a short temper, and is touchingly protective of his vulnerable younger cousin. And I kinda love him for it. He’s been coming to this camp for years. He has friends and a sense of status in the pecking order of the Lord of the Flies dynamics of kids, supervised by slightly older kids out in the middle of nowhere. He could so easily be as terrible as so many of his cohort, abandoning his delicate cousin/adopted sister to the pack of wild dogs (meaning middle-school aged monsters), or even turn on her to gain points – but time and time again, he is willing to throw down at the drop of a hat with anyone who looks at her funny. For a mean little bastard, I find him really sweet, and good. I believe he really cares about her.

But by the end, Angela’s secrets come to light as some of the older counselors (the two who seem to care the most about their young charges) find her naked on the beach, cradling the severed head of Paul (Ricky’s best friend, who’s been courting Angela all summer and finally got her to meet him on the beach after the social – he generally seemed like a sweet kid, but could also get a bit sexually pushy). After a quick flashback of Aunt Martha informing her mutilated and emotionally scarred young adoptee that they will have to change genders because “another boy in the house simply would not do,” the counselors see Angela’s penis (a local college student stripped down and put on an Angela mask for the scene) and utter the shocked line, “how can it be? My god, she’s a boy!” We zoom in on Angela’s wild, mad, iconic face (which Felissa Rose does to pose with fans at conventions to this day), the music stingers rise, we fade to green and the credits start rolling to the tune of the super groovy “Angela’s Theme (You’re Just What I’ve Been Looking For).” It is an intense, wild, really quite surprising ending to a very weird, and utterly watchable film.

So in the end, it is clear that the movie falls in with the unfortunate trope of the ‘trans killer’ (see Dressed to Kill, Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, etc.), which can be seen as really quite dangerous and harmful in an age of moral panic fueling “bathroom bills,” demonizing particularly trans women as a threat to cis women in ‘women’s only spaces.’ And yes, the movie can fairly be accused of that. But upon first watching it, I really had a different vibe. As a cis-het guy, I can’t claim anything about how a trans person would read this film (but I know it is embraced by some), but I immediately and strongly felt it was (probably accidentally) quite progressive, and offered an argument for trans rights. Yes, Angela has been deeply broken, both by family trauma and by a forced gender swap, but that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? Being made to live as someone who she isn’t has irreparably damaged her. Forcing someone to present as other than themselves is deeply psychologically harmful – and it’s something that as a society, we should not do.

And at the same time, when we meet Angela as a teenager, I feel she is a girl; I don’t feel there is coercion at the moment, and then, as a trans character (and not simply someone forced to transition), she is such a sympathetic figure. Beyond gender issues, it’s hard not to side with her, though by the end, we understand she has killed or at least mutilated a lot of people, some just for the infraction of being irritating little kids. In her weird, socially awkward way, she serves as an identifiable stand in for every young person who feels on the outside, who feels uncomfortable with the other kids, who feels “queer” in any sense of the word (having to do with sexual identity or otherwise). I never went to a sleepaway camp and I can’t imagine having done so (quoting another camp movie, Wet Hot American Summer, I was one of “the indoor kids”) – but I can only think that I would have felt as awkward and uncomfortable as she seems to. In the end, we understand that she is the killer, but she has always been the protagonist, and I feel the film is rather on her side (even if it also feels like every choice was made simply for shock value – and in a weird way, that makes its progressive messaging feel more pure and affectingly effective than something that actually set out to make a ‘positive statement’ and that therefore comes across as lame and pedantic).

Furthermore, in looking at this as a movie for ‘Pride Month,’ I feel there are so many other elements that speak for its inclusion. First of all, there is the much above-referenced ‘camp’ quality of the whole film. It navigates the outrageous and the absurd and the taboo in a way that I most associate with artists who identify as queer, ala the John Waters voiced character on an episode of The Simpsons defining camp as “the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic” – this movie does that (e.g., Aunt Martha the female drag queen, the extreme, and often fun and funny murders of small children and predatory adults, fake mustache cop, the teen girl on water skis, screaming, for what feels like forever, for the other teens to turn the boat before they run over Angela’s family, the over-the-top, nigh glorious, bitchiness of Meg and Judy, the artsy quality of Angela’s character explaining flashbacks). But past that, it almost seems that there is a kind of ‘gay male gaze’ in terms of the camera. I find it striking that in a movie that goes so far out of its way to be taboo and controversial, there is absolutely no female nudity, but you get a bunch of boys going skinny dipping together (and when they’re not naked, they are all wearing the shortest shorts and crop tops). And finally, there is Angela’s father. We learn over the course of the movie that he was gay and we see him with his lover in one flashback that I suppose is intended to show Angela and her sister being psychologically scarred by seeing their dad in such a sexual situation, but which really comes across as tender and loving and entirely positive. He is no ugly stereotype – in what little we see of him, he seems like a good dad who loves his kids and who is in a healthy, loving relationship. I think maybe this is supposed to shock, but mainly I’m just shocked that it all seems so warm and affirming.

And somehow this whole ridiculous, sordid, disreputable film feels just that way throughout – warm and affirming, while being filled with a superabundance of gory little kid murders, pedophilia, cruelty, and child abuse. It’s great. From the very first scene, seemingly after the events of the film had concluded, showing a broken down, abandoned summer camp where something terrible must have happened, overlaid with the sounds of children playing, I feel that pretty much everything just works – a creepy atmosphere is laid down, and I am ready for it – we are then treated to a cavalcade of laugh out loud moments of violence and pain, and ultimately, it all culminates in an (apparently) inadvertently positive message about allowing children to live as they are (specifically, expressing the gender they themselves feel to be accurate) – it’s better for them (and safer for us).

Mel agrees.

This really has become one of those warm blanket movies for me over the years and it has been a pleasure to spend a little time revisiting it right now. Sometimes life can really get difficult (see the fact that it’s been more than 5 weeks since my last post), and it might be hard to think you can handle it all, but if Angela can persevere and thrive (she goes on to do quite well for herself in the rest of the movies – all of which are more intentionally campy than this, but aren’t nearly as satisfying for me), so can we all.

Happy summer everybody – if you go to summer camp, don’t be mean to anyone (for that matter, if you don’t go to summer camp, don’t be mean to anyone either) – or else…

Lesbian Vampires 5: Spanish Sexploitation in the 70s

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So last week, I had planned to cover four films in my ongoing series on the Lesbian Vampire Subgenre, but I really fell down a rabbit hole on the first two selections (Requiem for a Vampire and Alucarda), wrote my longest post to date, and ran out of steam before I could cover the next two. So this week, we’re just going to plow ahead and get some first impressions out there on my next two entries: Daughter of Dracula (1972) and Vampyres (1974).  For all that I loved last week’s films, they only nominally featured “Lesbian Vampires.” The same cannot be said for today’s entries.

As mentioned last week, if you’re interested in the rest of the series, I invite you to check out Part I (Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, The Blood Spattered Bride, and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary), Part II (The Vampire Lovers, Daughters of Darkness, The Shiver of the Vampires, and Vampyros Lesbos), Part III (Nadja, Blood of the Tribades, and Bit), and Part IV (Requiem for a Vampire and Alucarda). Also, perhaps stick around and have a look at some of the other, non-Lesbian Vampire offerings on the site. 🙂

There will most likely be extensive spoilers ahead (also, if you’re in an office or something, there could be a stray nipple if that’s an issue for you), so enter at your own risk…

Daughter of Dracula (1972)

This Jess Franco flick was released one year after his superior Vampyros Lesbos and circles many similar images, themes, and impressions (it was also one of 11 films he directed in 1972 – the man worked). That said, for all that there are elements here worthy of one’s time and discussion, it must be said that this is not the place to start with either Lesbian Vampire movies or Franco’s catalogue. However, I think it does probably encapsulate much of what a Jess Franco picture is like: languid, gorgeous, moody, fleshy, erotic, occasionally absurd or campy, and ultimately utterly unconcerned with clarity, consistency, or even character (alliterate much?). His work is not for everyone – and that is certainly true of this early 70s sexploitation outing.

It is a vampire movie, but I’d be hard pressed to call it horror. The story is hard to follow at best and non-existent at worst. And while it devotes a significant portion of its runtime to the naked female form, during which its nominal “story” screeches to a halt (often a defining trait of ‘exploitation’ work), I’m not even sure that it’s ever particularly “sexy” at least not as conventionally understood.

Franco would reportedly shoot multiple movies at the same time and stitch them together in the editing booth (getting more than one picture on the producer’s dime and only paying actors and crew for one film) and this could result in a disjointed feel – as if the film we’re watching had been assembled out of a couple of different pictures (which sometimes is exactly what he did – it’s one of the ways that he was credited as having directed more than 200 films), and that is certainly the case here – it feels as if the main character is never in the same room as most of the rest of the cast, but is following her own story, separate from the giallo-esque mystery that occupies the rest of the players. And her story is barely even a ‘story,’ so much as it’s just her seductively playing the piano or making love to her beautiful cousin in long sequences which aren’t even always exactly ‘sex’ scenes so much as ‘squirmingly lounging in bed together, naked, slowly flopping about before the fangs come out’ scenes. But hey, they do look like they’re having a good time, which is often more than you get with mainstream sex scenes.

All of this may seem pretty negative out the gate, but I did actually rather like the film, particularly on a second viewing (during the first, I was just too sleepy to put myself in the right headspace to enjoy this kind of movie making). I’ve only seen maybe 5 Franco films so far, but my impression is that to appreciate his talents (and I do believe he was talented and had something artistic to offer the world), you have to watch the films differently than most typical narrative cinema. It’s not the abstract surrealism of Rollin, but it is a step removed from narrative arc, more simply luxuriating in the richness of the seen. While he seemed obsessed with certain themes or images (vampires, Poe, old crumbling castles, the sea, death, the body – particularly women’s), I suspect ‘telling stories’ per se just wasn’t that interesting to him. And it doesn’t need to be. Can’t a film be of value based on a different rubric? Can’t he just make beautifully shot films with gothic themes and loads of nudity because that’s what he loves – and well, there was a market for it?

In this case, the minimal story, such as it is, concerns Luisa Karlstein (Brett Nichols), her name our requisite connection to Carmilla, who comes to her mother’s death bed to be told that the family has long been cursed by vampirism and that the original count can still be found, undead, in the nearby family crypt. Concurrently, there is a police investigation into the many beautiful naked women that are being found with mysterious and fatal neck wounds, seemingly carried out by a perpetrator in a long coat with a wide brimmed hat, face covered with a black scarf, and carrying a cane.

This investigation largely feels like its own separate film and though Luisa is eventually revealed (unsurprisingly as we see her flash her fangs and bite women throughout the film), to be the killer in question, it feels as if she isn’t even in that detective film. Most of her time is spent striking up a sexual/bitey relationship with her cousin, Karine (Anne Libert), a childhood friend with whom she’d always shared an attraction. Also, we occasionally see her eye, in very giallo fashion, through the crack of a door, spying on some unsuspecting woman who’s getting undressed and will soon be bitten.

For all of the issues one could have with this film, no one could say it isn’t a Lesbian Vampire movie (which could be argued about both of last week’s movies). Honestly, on some levels, it is more of one than many much better films that I’ve covered in this series, given how so many of the vampires in question also engage in sexy time with men (Bisexual Vampire erasure is a thing). Luisa, however, is only ever shown to take interest in women, either sexually or as food. But beyond ticking boxes to be thus designated, I do also want to underline the merits of this piece.

First of all, it is simply, beautiful. The on location photography along the coast of Portugal is frequently breathtaking, whether viewing a crumbling castle, seagulls on the beach where a nude corpse will soon be found, or the ornate Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra (which I was excited to spot because I’d been there on vacation a few years back and it really is a very cool, interesting place – it’s always fun to see in person a historical sight used for a Lesbian Vampire movie).

Franco catches light and warmth and texture so evocatively – water sparkles more brilliantly that it does in life, old buildings loom with delicate menace and tired grace, and flesh seems so soft, full of life, yielding, sanguine, and lovely. From the snap zooms and play with focus to the sensuality of night shoots by natural light, everything about the film is just so aesthetically crafted and captured.

Otherwise, there are loads of moments that really click. Some performances are surprisingly effective, such as Alberto Dalbés who plays the inspector with such weary, bemused exasperation, or Daniel White as the current Count Karlstein, who is suspected of the murders, but is really just running around on his wife. And of course, Franco himself plays the cuckolded assistant, obsessed with the looming threat of supernatural danger.

While the narrative is clunky and hard to piece together, there is a unifying theme of attraction-desire-need-betrayal, and the whole piece works as a series of evocative glimpses into these emotional states.

Most striking is the above-mentioned repeated motif of Luisa’s eye in the crack of a door. There are a few extended sequences, obviously targeted at a sexploitation market, of women stripping down in an unhurried, surprisingly non sexual fashion, as they prepare for bed or a bath, before they finally see their assailant and scream as we cut to black. Each time, we jump repeatedly, over the course of multiple minutes, between the image of the nude woman at peace, unsuspectingly going about her business, wholly relaxed, all accompanied by some gentle, easygoing music, to an extreme close up of Luisa’s eye, as open as it can be, appearing shocked (as if she really hadn’t expected what was revealed under various discarded undergarments), along with an intense musical stinger. Then we return to the intimate relaxation of a woman simply taking her time. I find it interesting that the eye does not indicate lust or arousal, but rather being overwhelmed by the immensity of what is seen. This is a film that wants to look, that takes pleasure in looking. And what it sees is often slow and unperturbed (both in terms of sexuality and in the face of imminent death). But if this was being sold to shock and titillate, it tracks that the observing eye would be that image of intensity, of more than what can be expected or contained.

And speaking of ‘more than,’ there are some delightfully campy moments, such as the few appearances of Franco regular, Howard Vernon, as the decrepit, undead progenitor of the family line. Occasionally his coffin lid raises, his eyes pop open, and, if he’s lucky, he manages to sit up, sometimes very suddenly. And that is all he ever does. He never gets out of his coffin. He never has any lines. He never does anything at all. His biggest moment of action is when he just lies there and Luisa drops a topless woman on top of him so he can have something to eat. Then she closes the lid. Can he get up? Is he supposed to be an image of broken age, impotent, but evil, infusing the land with his darkness, but unable to take actions himself? Or did Franco just bring his friend in for a day, slap some fangs in his mouth, film him looking creepy in a coffin a few times and send him home, and this is what he had to show for it? Either way, it is a fun, campy element, which may also carry a touch of something evocatively tragic.

This is certainly a peculiar little film, and I think few would exactly call it “good,” but if you are open to its pleasures, they are there to be had, and I think it’s interesting to take in what might be deemed a ‘lesser feature’ by this intriguing euro-sleaze auteur. But again, don’t watch it yet if you don’t already like Franco. If, however, you do and want to see more, seek it out.

Vampyres (1974)

José Ramón Larraz’s film is a bit of a departure from much of the Lesbian Vampire canon. While it does directly feature women who are clearly lesbians (or at least bisexual) and are also clearly vampires (but maybe ghosts as well?), it strikes a different tone from so many of the other entries on this list. A bit of an early seventies exploitation piece, it is filled with the gratuitous nudity one might expect from the genre, but more than most, it really leans into being a horror film (rather than a moody, somewhat abstract fever dream); and it is a fun one at that. It has ominous, spooky atmosphere, people exploring scary places they shouldn’t, a real sense of threat, and while I feel the audience is situated more on the side of the Sapphic vampires in question, when violence finally strikes, it is brutal and gory, and those pretty ladies are really frighteningly monstrous. It’s all pretty great.

In short, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) rise from their graves every night to go hitchhiking along remote country roads to pick up men, take them back to an abandoned mansion, sometimes bed them (hence the bisexuality), get them wasted on fine (possibly drugged) wine from a ‘remote region near the Carpathian mountains,’ slice them open, and feast on the wet, red stuff within, leaving their naked, bloody bodies in their own crashed cars on the side of the road. Our story centers on one such man, Ted (Murray Brown), whom Fran picks up and decides to keep for a few nights (which makes Miriam nervous), and also a pair of young campers, John and Harriet, who have parked their camper on the grounds of said picturesque abandoned mansion to do some fishing and painting.

We regularly shift perspective between Fran and Miriam, living their best unlives together, seemingly taking great pleasure in their nightly games, and in each other (though they occasionally sleep with these men, it really feels like their only real relationship is with one other – the men are meat); Ted, as he is trapped – sexually, emotionally, and eventually bodily, slowly realizing his own impending doom as his life is sapped away; and the young camping couple, with Harriet as the classic horror movie wife who realizes that scary things are afoot only to be consistently disbelieved and belittled by her husband, or boyfriend as the case may be.

Off the bat (boom, tish), the film really feels like a horror movie. From the double murder in the cold open (more on that later), to Harriet’s immediate discomfort with their campsite, a hand slapping against their window in the night (presumably a victim trying to escape), to Ted’s first morning after sleeping with Fran, waking in an empty bed as she’d disappeared before morning light, feeling weirdly drained and discovering an ugly gash on his forearm.

The music builds tension. There are legitimate jump scares. And there is violent, gory death that, while still sexual in its way, is a far cry from the more artistic offerings in most other Lesbian Vampire pictures. I mean, I don’t want to set expectations too high – this is surely not the scariest movie you’re ever going to see, but it does go for the dread, the terror, and the shock of the body viscerally reduced to flesh and blood.

While I really do like this film, one criticism I can make is that it does drag a bit in the middle, and I think that may be to do with the absence of a clear protagonist to follow, though the shifting perspective does make for a very interesting film. The easiest character to identify with, I suppose, who really feels the most like what we will come to know as a ‘final girl,’ is Harriet (Sally Faulkner). She just wants to have a pleasant holiday with her partner, but creepy things are happening, she notices, and ignored or mocked for her insight, she takes some initiative and investigates. It does not end well for her (understatement), and she has one of the smallest parts in the film.

Then there is Ted. I don’t like Ted. Sorry. I can vicariously get creeped out along with him, going along on his ride into dangerous circumstances, feeling his dread as he senses that all doors are slamming shut around him, but I just don’t feel like rooting for him to live. Interestingly, I’d say this is true of all the men we see taken home and victimized, and he’s just the one we spend the most time with. None of them are shown to be ‘bad guys’ per se – Fran and Miriam are not exclusively preying on rapists or abusers (ala a more recent Lesbian Vampire picture, Bit), but they all feel like people I wouldn’t really choose to hang out with. Entitled, pushy, know-it-all guys, it’s hard not to feel like they all ‘have it coming.’ But then I have to second guess myself – why do I feel that way exactly?

Sure, they meet some beautiful women on the road, give them a lift and it turns out that these lovely ladies want them to come back to their place to drink fine wine and have sex. Nothing is wrong with any of that, right? They aren’t shown to be predators. We aren’t even informed that they are cheating on their wives or anything. And yet, it’s hard to be on their side. While I don’t want to fall into a Reagan-era slasher-esque sex-negative judgmentalism, I just don’t like them and I’m perfectly glad for the girls to drink their fill. Thus, since Ted, our primary male victim, is essentially also our main character, the story loses some drive in the second act due to my ambivalence regarding whether he lives or dies.

Maybe it’s just that the film really does rightly belong to Fran and Miriam, as does the audience’s sympathies (at least mine; I can’t speak for the majority of viewers in 1974). And they are easy to love. Fran has this sardonic, worldly, knowing charm as she lures these men home and it is a pleasure to accompany her in this pursuit. Without being overly arch, her whole character seems to grow out of Dracula’s iconic “I never drink…wine.” In contrast, Miriam just plays everything so genuinely, so sweet. She can really sell her interest in whatever some guy is blathering on about. Light and dark in their respective personas, they make a nice pair. And it is interesting the degree to which they really have no interpersonal drama. No one seems tortured by eternity or the need to kill and feed, and beyond Miriam urging Fran to finish Ted off before he becomes a problem, they seem happy together.

Maybe there is a dramatic flaw in that they don’t seem to especially want anything they don’t have, and they aren’t in any way pressed to change. They like hunting and killing these men – so they do. They like squirming about in bed, naked and bloody, having torn some guy apart and then having sex in the shower. They do that as well. One might expect an element of jealousy to enter the picture – either about Fran’s pet blood cow, Ted, or about one of them seducing Harriet. None of that happens. So while for Ted, there is drama in his capture and torment, and while for Harriet, there is suspense in her investigations, the characters we most enjoy watching (again, I should really only speak for myself) are oddly content.

But, hey – good for them. The movie begins with the two of them making love on a bed before some shadowy male figure barges in and shoots them over and over. At the very end of the film, we hear from an estate agent that this scene had happened many years ago in the house and that the unknown murdered girls had been buried here, such that this old mansion is enticingly haunted. If their inciting event, their bloody, cruel murder, probably by some jealous boyfriend or husband, is what somehow made them into vengeful, misandrist, undead killers, then they deserve a modicum of happiness along the way.

It’s nice that they get to have that with each other. The gentle love and contentment here even sets us up for a shock when we finally see the blood flow – when push comes to shove, they are really and truly scary monsters. This is especially true close to the end, when they dispatch Harriet – not their typical target, but necessary under the circumstances – it is quite a rough scene, especially as it takes on a sexualized component, stripping her as she screams and begs, before slashing her throat.

Whereas the last few entries in this series were simply unconcerned with plot or continuity (and therefore, it felt pointless to pick them apart), this feels more like a conventionally told story and hence plot inconsistencies draw more attention to themselves. Were they actually made vampires when murdered years before? If so, why the implications that they are from Transylvania (the small region near the Carpathian mountains)? If not, were they already vampires when the shadowy figure shot them? Who knows? Why does a hotel clerk recognize Ted from the distant past? It’s almost as if it’s implied that he had been the long ago killer, doomed to return to them – but I don’t think he was; it just feels that way. Why do their victim’s watches all stop at midnight? That’s an intriguing detail that I don’t know from any other vampy content. Maybe that was when they were shot? Also, if every single morning the local police find another dead naked man in a car on the side of the road, someone is gonna get curious. Has this been happening every night for 30 years? Men might stop driving through this region. But all of these questions don’t really interfere with my enjoyment of the picture. Sometimes they offer an enjoyable moment of “hey, what?” But mostly, I’m happy to let them slide right by as the rest of the film is generally so very enjoyable.

All in all, this one comes highly recommended. It really blends much of the atmospheric, sensual pleasure of the Lesbian Vampire genre with an entertainingly sleazy exploitation horror flick, filled with spooky atmosphere, rampant sexuality, fairly rough violence, and solid horror beats.

—

And there we have two films with a fair amount in common, but which are also strikingly different. More so than some I’ve covered, the element of same sex desire and even love is explicitly present, as is the vampirism. Both come from a Spanish director working in another country and another language. Both have a kind of sexploitation charm – clearly including extended sequences of nudity and sex which are not strictly needed for the story telling, but was being sold in the marketing, and as sexuality makes up a pretty large portion of human existence, it’s a pretty legitimate thing to focus on in its own right. For whatever reason (a subject for a future post), I have a soft spot for that sense of good-old fashioned, honest sleaze – there is something charming in its directness. I recently discovered a new podcast I’m enjoying, Girls, Guts, and Giallo, hosted by Annie Rose Malamet, and I really appreciated in her discussion of Hellraiser, her statement to the effect that she hates misogyny, but she hates prudishness more. I can dig it.

But then again, these movies just feel so very different from each other. Franco’s is this languid, gorgeous, weird, erotic art piece, indulging in a death tinged sexual meditation, whereas Larraz’s is a down and dirty horror movie, ticking all the boxes of Lesbian Vampires and of horror, but maybe not really getting into anything deeper than that – an emotional character piece this is not – but it is fun and satisfying.

That said, maybe we’re good on this genre for a while. There are still others I’d like to write about, but I’ve covered 15 so far, and maybe it’s time for a break. I started last post discussing how these Lesbian Vampire posts bring more readers to this site than anything else I’ve written. Exactly why is an ongoing mystery, but I sure do love them myself. That said, there are so many other things I’m looking forward to delving into. Let’s see where we go next time…

Queer Horror II: A Small Shudder Roundup

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Chasing the annual event calendar, I think I’m just barely going to slide in under the line to do a Pride Month post for June (though last week’s film did have a clear queer reading, so that’s something). I do try to mark occasions of note, and as discussed last year, I have an appreciation for “Queer Horror,” the argument easily being made that with its focus on the outsider/the abject/the other/the outré, Horror as a genre is usually fairly “queer” (both in the original sense of the word and as a self-identifier used by those who have historically been othered for their sexual/gender identity). That said, I must again admit that I am not of the LGBT+ community and come to this from without, using the term “Queer” with all intended respect in reference to a film classification, a body of theory, and an identity.

Historically, much of the canon, so to speak, consists of pieces with gay-coded characters, or from LGBT+ creators (who may or may not have been open about their sexuality) fueling queer readings of the films even when sexuality is not explicitly present, but I think in contemporary times, the work has really opened up – it’s easier to find explicit LBGT+ characters and stories, and elements of “queerness” have spread through much of popular culture (though I feel camp as an aesthetic is still pretty niche). So, briefly, this week I’d just like to go over a few films I’ve recently watched (one of which I’d seen before, but rather love and would happily watch again). Somewhat coincidentally, these are all on Shudder (I pay for this service and do try to get my money’s worth). They are, in the order of watching: Spiral (2019), Knife + Heart (2018), and Death Drop Gorgeous (2020). I rather enjoyed all of them (in sometimes very different ways), and I think they represent very different approaches to how a contemporary film might present as “queer horror.”

Spiral (2019)

On one level, this is a fairly rote supernatural thriller. Sometime in the late 90s, a couple moves, with their teenage daughter, to a small town where everyone seems quite friendly, but there is clearly a sinister plot at work under the surface. Odd, spooky things start happening which only one member of the couple is witness to. That one starts panicking that a nefarious cult is targeting their family and that they are in grave danger if they stay, but the other partner sees nothing wrong, and is even irritated at all the craziness. Finally, head swimming with conspiracies and threats, the first partner takes drastic measures, there is a revelation of occult shenanigans, and things go real south real fast, landing with a severe, downbeat ending.

This summation could surely be applied to countless films, but this one comes with one small difference – the couple are two men (crazy, right?). On paper, this choice seems like it could have come from a calculating studio exec, seeking to tap into the current moment and exploit the real life difficulties such a couple would face relocating to small town America, making easy emotional hay out of real traumas to which they might have previously been subjected thanks to their identity. And after watching the film, I read plenty of negative user reviews which said exactly something to that effect. However, I’ve got to say that for me, it really clicked.

We see in multiple flashbacks how Malik (Jeffrey Bowjer-Chapman, who’s great), the partner who sees the danger, was attacked for being gay when younger, seeing his lover murdered before him. This early trauma has shaped him in many ways: making him more of an activist than his current partner and possibly giving him an impulse to live more openly, proudly embracing his identity in defiance of those who would abuse him for it, but it has also disillusioned him of any expectation that others can be trusted, that he will ever really be safe. He knows that though some things have seemingly improved, the world is still the world and there are still people who hate him (because he’s gay, because he’s black, because he’s an outsider from the city invading their small, insular town), who would hurt him (or worse) and his family if given half the chance. His partner, Aaron (Ari Cohen), has just not had the same scarring experiences and thus plays the role of the disbelieving husband demanded by a film like this.

The supernatural-paranoia-cult movie of it all generally works fine (though I suspect some plot elements might not hold up well to scrutiny, and to harp on just one of my least favorite genre tropes, when oh when will helpful ghosts finally learn that the way to issue urgent warnings to a protagonist is not to jump scare out of the shadows, making a creepy elongated face, and shrieking? It. Is. Not. Helpful.), but the addition of the “gay” element really makes the whole film feel like so much more. Malik’s apprehension and dread is palpably grounded in the very realistic possibility that he/they are actually being targeted for being gay (and early on, he does have to deal with their living room being vandalized with homophobic graffiti). This social-emotional grounding lends weight to everything that happens, taking this straightforward cult movie and turning it into a social horror that feels like it’s “about something.”

But this doesn’t reduce the whole film to a mere drama. It is still a horror movie and Malik’s justified and understandable fear, informed by his own terrible experiences, really does make it all scarier, granting a kind of instant pathos as we feel how close these fictional creepy events could be to something all too real and terrifying, as well as giving his character realistic reasons both to trust his gut terror and to deny it, knowing that he could easily just be paranoid following his earlier trauma. Our viewpoint character, we are with Malik as he fears for his family in the face of this looming, mysterious menace, and we are also with him as he doubts his own senses, memories, and judgements – coming unmoored, ‘spiraling’ out of control. We have no better idea of what is real than he does, and his alarm is contagious.

In the end, we learn that they have in fact been targeted for being gay (though not hatefully as one would expect, so much as coldly and opportunistically), that there is actually a dark magic at work, and that Malik was both paranoid and right, and then the movie crashes to a close with a greater commitment to horror than I’d expected of it, both on the immediate, personal level and writ large.

From what I read online, I have the feeling that this one wasn’t super popular with audiences (which quite surprised me given how I’d taken to it), but I have to say it worked for me – both as a supernatural and a social horror film. Admittedly, the first half played better when I was still unsure what was going on and was quite pulled in by its emotional weight, but after growing somewhat shambolic in later scenes, in the last minutes, it stuck the landing. Also, I think this offers an interesting example of one way to do “queer horror” – a more or less by the book horror movie, following the tropes of its given sub-genre, but the central characters are gay, and that gayness is actually part of the plot and not simply incidental. This may still be a case of blatant opportunism following the success of a film like Get Out (I didn’t find much about Spiral’s development), but even if it is, I still found it quite moving, at least a bit scary, and consistently engaging.

Knife + Heart (2018)

Described as a French “neo-giallo,” this is a beautiful, erotic, brutal, confounding, hypnotic, peculiar film that is alternatingly blisteringly intense and dreamily hazy. It gets all the adjectives. Some adverbs too. Set against the backdrop of the French gay porn scene of the late 70s, we largely follow Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis), a director of low budget, but artistically ambitious, gay porn films as her actors start getting picked off one by one by a mysterious masked killer in often disturbingly sexualized fashion. It is all stylish and atmospheric as the day is long: moody scenes at night in the rain, neon lit discos, a constant play of light and shadow and color and sweat, and so, so many cigarettes.

Directed and co-written by Yann Gonzalez, this can be bit of a difficult film. Anne, and through her, we are led on a wild goose chase that takes some weird turns here and there (one key to her investigation turns on feathers found at the crime scenes that a bird psychic with a twisted claw hand identifies as being from the seemingly extinct birds of a forest out of an old legend where she then travels, wanders drunk into the woods until finding an expository graveyard, and learns the killer’s history – ok, sure, why not…) and furthermore, Anne, while magnetic on screen, is a hard protagonist to like. Much of the film revolves around her abusive, drunken, obsessive stalking of her ex-girlfriend, who still works as her editor and puts up with a lot from her. As a viewer, it’s difficult to process this often unpleasant person, so driven by want and artistic ambition, but also so clearly harmful to this woman she purportedly loves (and in one scene sexually assaults) and so coldly willing to exploit the deaths of her ‘friends’ as fuel for her filmmaking (as her co-workers are being hunted down, she begins making her new film – all about a masked killer stalking gay men, recreating the real life deaths of her employees and really upsetting some of the survivors in the process). She is a complicated person whom we spend the whole film with but who is always a bit unknowable. And she’s just not a ‘nice’ person.

Past that, as referenced above, this is a movie that in dreamy fashion is very willing to take its time. It has periodic bursts of violence and flashes of passion, but more often moves at a rich, molasses like pace. This is not to say that it is boring or poorly paced, but you have to be in the right mood to go on its particular ride (and the first time I saw it, back when it was released, I wasn’t quite there). Much of this plays out in Anne’s investigation, one feature that links this to the giallo genre – wherein so often an artist or writer finds themselves, for some reason, investigating a series of murders you might otherwise expect to be police business. In this case though, it is clear why it falls to her – the victims all gay men or trans women, porn actors and prostitutes, the police will not work this case. It’s a joke for them. And as the fear grows around her, Anne finds herself the only one who will make the journey into understanding.

All of that said though, I love it, and I’m so glad I watched it again for this post. I love any film that can so envelop me in its mood, in its setting, in its vibe – however ambivalent that might be. I love the places where it touches horror – there are some absolutely top shelf sequences and we’ll deal with them shortly. I also love a quality here that I’m having trouble putting my finger on – though it sometimes feels like a long walk to get there and some character motivations and emotions feel obtuse, somehow it really got to me and in a final coda (featuring an impossible reconciliation and a loving warmth absent from much of the preceding film) I found myself in tears and not even really understanding why. It’s as if the gestalt of the film’s play of mood and look and mystery took me on an emotional journey more powerful than that of the plot or characters.  There is an almost subconscious emotion suffusing it all that I found very affecting.

But it is in the places that horror meets queer that this movie shines. Central to the killer’s story and motivation is a mixture of repressed homosexual desire, self-hatred, and resentment for those he lusts after, those who can live in the world, as themselves, without shame. Thus, all of the kills are infused with an erotic charge and also a deep emotional weight. Every kill is exciting and scary, as is fitting of a horror/giallo, but it is also terribly sad, a tragedy that does not go unmarked. Generally in your classic slashers, everyone died before the final girl had any inkling that anything had happened. Here, a community is threatened, and they know it. Their friends are dying horribly, and there is room for mourning and dread (though not so much room that Anne can’t take advantage of the tragedy to inspire her new pornographic opus, “Homo-cidal”).

Two deaths bookend the film, making such a deep impression at the beginning and the end that I’d probably love it regardless of whatever else happened between them. Early on, we see a young man in a dark, seedy club, the music pounding, half-heartedly dancing with a couple of guys while he makes eyes with the mysterious figure across the room in a kinky leather mask. He goes with the stranger into a back room and there is a frisson of want, desire, and risk – the thrill and alluring sexiness of putting yourself in the hands of a stranger. He finds himself stripped and tied down to a table, still unaware that anything is awry, so turned on, so up for the sexual adventure. And then it all goes wrong and as he’s being savagely stabbed, the sounds of his dying bring tears to the eyes. Trust given is betrayed. Desire led to vulnerability led to death. It is rough, violent, and sexual; and it just breaks your heart.

All of the intervening deaths have a similar blend of horror and eros, need and trepidation, beauty and tragedy and it is really something special. This leads (via a long and winding road) to a final death, the dispatching of the killer in a porn theatre, where he had been stalking his next victim in a dark room in the back. Having finally unraveled the mystery of who and what and why he is, Anne identifies him and the men in the cinema close in. This is the killer who had been terrorizing their community, and knowing how the police had been so uninterested in offering protection, they move to eliminate the threat themselves. It’s not important that they understand his internalized homophobia, that they sympathize with his childhood trauma and mutilation – they have to defend themselves and each other against those who would erase them from existence – and they do. Finally, one young man, similar in build to the first victim, picks up a knife the killer had dropped, approaches him, and tentatively presses the blade into his chest, before continuing to stab and stab and stab. As he kills the killer, the young man whimpers and cries, echoing the sounds of the first victim’s death. There is tragedy not only in the dying but also in the killing, in the horror he must carry out to know that he and his community will be safe, or at least safer.

It is just freaking gorgeous. And sad. And it sings with pain. And is just so very, very cool. Not all of it feels like a horror movie per se, but the parts that do are extraordinary, and the film as a whole is really special – a rich, sad, evocative piece that worked on me in ways I can’t quite puzzle out, but which left a deep and lasting impression. Beautiful.

Death Drop Gorgeous (2020)

On some levels, this has similarities to the previous film. Again we have a story centered entirely around a queer community, with both LGBT+ victims and killer. Someone is murdering employees and visitors to a drag club in Providence, Rhode Island, and no one knows who or why. But past that, these films couldn’t be more dissimilar. Whereas Knife + Heart is highly produced, artful, and deeply earnest in its emotion and weight, Death Drop Gorgeous is totally independent, low budget, enjoyably trashy, and entirely camp, which is more or less the opposite of earnestness.

From the Providence based queer gore film collective, “Monster Makeup,” this is real indie, regional cinema. Reportedly crowd funded and filmed over a year and a half of weekends, with the writers, director, editors, sound mixers, and producers all playing leading roles, thus minimizing costs, this is clearly a labor of love – it may be a bit rough around the edges and the performances may be broad, but in many ways, they are supposed to be. Plus, the filmmaking is quite strong (really, better than the trailer had led me to expect) and the camp of it all justifies any other apparent weaknesses.

Basically, in high camp style, this is a classic whodunit slasher, though in the final act it takes a turn for the supernatural. The kills are all executed at a high level, both in filmmaking and in practical effects, and they’ve got a surprisingly realistic, visceral quality that I hadn’t expected given the deliberate unreality of much of the rest of the film, making this a stronger slasher than I’d hoped for. In many ways, the kill scenes could have come out of any conventional slasher (but some of the content therein, such as a penis being thrust into a glory hole only to graphically get mulched in a meat grinder, might not be featured in more mainstream fare).

On the mystery level, we’re presented with loads of red herrings as to who the killer might be. Is it the aging drag queen, in danger of losing her edge, who feels pushed aside by a culture and clientele obsessed with youth, beauty, and novelty? Is it the young bartender with a short temper? Is the sleazy, coke pushing club boss somehow behind it all? Could it be the aspiring, but untalented performer who faces rejection at every turn? The movie does maintain a degree of suspense for quite a while, and my only real criticism is that I wish it had waited to reveal the actual killer a bit longer as I felt diminished tension from that point on.

But once we do know the identity of the murderer, the film shifts in surprising fashion, adding a kind of Elizabeth Bathory, drag-vamp note to the final proceedings, which also includes an extended fight scene that goes much longer than one might think, bringing to mind the alley fight in They Live. And when this happens, in spite of the inherent irony of the camp, there is a depth of feeling rooting the killer’s murderous rage. In fact, the film manages to drum up some legitimate emotion all along the way among its cast of comically overplayed queens, pushers, dreamers, and club boys.

Whereas Knife + Heart felt like it was recreating a real community in a time and a place (Paris, the gay porn scene, 1979), Death Drop Gorgeous feels like it comes from a real community in a time and a place (Providence, a group of queer artists, 2020). It may not be realistic in its presentation of community, but it feels truly rooted in the lived experience of its creators. And its ‘faults’ make it all the more lovable. The presence of so many ‘non-professional actors’ (a term which, as someone who has long worked in a kind of pro-am theatre scene, kind of irks me) brings an amateur charm (by which I do not intend  ‘unprofessional’, unskilled, or untrained, but rather, following the etymology of the word, from the Latin “amator,” or ‘lover,’ from “amare,” ‘to love,’ I mean to say one who does an activity for the love of that activity as opposed to purely for a profit motive). Though charm is also brought by the surprising cameo of 80s horror mainstay, Linnea Quigley (who’s brief presence really took me by surprise).

There are also other elements that could seem like a fault, but learning more, just give the film more character. Notably, as so much of the drag performance involves lip syncing, I was puzzled at first that the sound seemed out of sync a number of times during the drag shows (and at no other times) – weird given that it makes it seem that the performers are not lip syncing particularly well – and then I read that the performers had done songs they didn’t have (and couldn’t afford) the rights to and that the filmmakers had to record new songs to match their lips as best they could – which is rather a loveable element that I enjoy more than perfectly synced lips (necessitated creativity more interesting than boring perfection). Also, there are precious few “death drops” in the film (a move from ballroom voguing involving the dancer falling back very suddenly, which should apparently more accurately be called “dips” but come on – “death drop” works better for a horror title), but the one that occurs earns its name.

In the end, this is a fun, personal, idiosyncratic movie that manages to deliver some emotional heft through the campiness. Furthermore, that camp offers value in and of itself, bringing a stylized-vulgar-comic-grotesque-fabulous and inherently queer aesthetic to the film which, regardless of how much more common LGBT+ characters have become in popular media, is still rare and characteristic. This film is all the way over the top, embracing every flaw as a feature of high art. And finally, it really does commit to the horror, going for the gore, for the intensity of the kill in a variety of inventive, gruesome, and delightfully cringe inducing ways.  It’s a good time.

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And so there – I’ve caught up with a few films from the “Queer Horror” collection on Shudder. And there are many other titles there worth the watch, some of which I’ve already discussed here, such as Daughters of Darkness and Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary. I also recommend there After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (an odd French sci-fi trip), Demons of Dorothy (also French – very campy short), Hellraiser (a classic though I think mainly considered “queer horror” due to its maker), All About Evil (a fun quasi-John Waters-esque romp starring Natasha Lyonne), Tammy and The T-Rex (a surprisingly gory kids movie), and Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl (an intimate chamber piece of modern gothic). It’s a good collection and there are others I still intend to check out one of these days.

Also, I’ve managed to publish this while it’s still June – so hey, good for me. Now to figure out what I’m writing about next…