i only make passes at guys who wear glasses

Once upon a time, I talked about prolific queer filmmaker David DeCoteau and his particular brand of direct to DVD horror movies in the aughts.  David appears to be a sweet man in real life and one can't help but respect how specific his work is (i.e. hundreds of films that feature shirtless straight boys right off the bus from Iowa willing to do anything on camera for their big break even if that means doing crunches while delivering wooden line readings to fifty-something character actresses in the same post-modern valley house film after film).

When I wrote about Decoteau before, I had never seen his best film.  I thought I was so cool by not paying him the respect he deserves.  I was stupid. 

Thanks to Shudder and Joe Bob Briggs, that's all changed.  I will now and forever bow down before David Decoteau because I finally saw Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama!

"You gonna suck 'em all up by yourself?"

Before today, I only knew Sorority Babes as the movie that Andras Jones was in before he was in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4.  I'm happy to be enlightened.  It's much more.

This is a movie about hot guys who dress like nerds.  That is my favorite trope in media.  There was a boy on NBC's Passions who was a 6'3" twin and a runway model with 4% body fat, but they'd wet his hair and make him wear glasses and we were supposed to believe he was a mega-nerd.  Nothing in the world is hotter.  This is a whole movie of that.  It's a queer director making a film in the exploitation medium, so it's a rorschach experience - the audience dictates what they want it to be. For the average straight guy, it's got tons of boobies and gratuitous sex, so it was prominently featured in the late night cable roster, but it's very much shot from the queer lens.  The camera lingers on the male form at every opportunity and, when coupled with its overall heightened tone, that makes this film a gay horror classic.

The S&M fixation of Decoteau's later works is already firmly in place here - this movie's super porny.  I actually wouldn't have been able to handle it in my pre-teen years - it would have given me a sexual heart attack.  There's a good seven minutes of paddle spanking.

I remember there was this kid named Bard in my high school who had elderly parents who were always going away for some reason.  Junior year, he started feeling pretty cute because he did a school play and lost his baby fat and he would have these pervy parties at his house where kids would pretend to get beer drunk as an excuse to hook up with each other.  This was NOT my scene.  I remember crashing once and being mortified by how gross straight people were and I never really talked to any of those people again.  I mean, there were wolf paintings and mounted swords on the wall.  I should have called the police.

This story is relevant because Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama is about a sex party gone wrong.  From what I can ascertain from what I saw of this film while occasionally looking up from my Taco Bell, it's a movie about teenage boys who get caught watching a lesbian sorority hazing and have to go on a treasure hunt in an after-hours bowling alley haunted by a little muppet demon who grants wishes.   Legendary Scream Queen Linnea Quigley plays Jerri Blank from Strangers with Candy: the early years and she makes gay besties with Andras Jones and they have a real lesbian/gay boy dynamic that assures me they'll be friends through many breakups and hairstyles to come.  Also, she steals things from corporations, which I respect.

I love this movie.  It captures that very specific and elusive mid-late 1980s Southern California vibe that I'm obsessed with (as seen in Teen Wolf, Once Bitten, Saved by the Bell, etc).  There should be Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama coloring books, promotional Pepsi tie-ins, a Universal Horror Nights maze and a Starz limited series based on the making of the film immediately.

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

"Everyone has an opinion.  As long as they keep renting the movies I couldn't care less."

                                                 -David DeCoteau

For anyone who has the audacity to suggest that horror movies aren’t consumed as ravenously by the gay community as a broiled chicken breast buffet at a Fire Island barbeque, then I ask you to turn your attention to the work of David DeCoteau.  

David DeCoteau movies are the black sheep of horror sub-genres; chock full of shirtless Canadian men who feign interest in barely-there girls and often dabble in the occult.  Sometimes the protagonists are witches, sometimes they're sadomasochists - they're usually brunette.  

Invariably, these young men come close to kissing as the camera lingers on their tighty-whities. Blackout.  The end. DeCoteau movies are completely unconcerned with plot or crossover appeal beyond the gay/fangirl market.  But the same could be said for those Twilight movies and look what happened there!

Cut from the same Roger Corman cloth that produced James Cameron, David DeCoteau got his start making direct to VHS schlock in the 1980s (most notably, Sorority Babes in the Slime Bowl-O-Rama which starred scream queen Linnea Quigley and Andras Jones from Nightmare on Elm Street 4).  

Akin to the B-movies coming out of Troma, DeCoteau films have always veered inexplicably towards the homoerotic.  This was something I understood even at twelve years old when I'd sneak downstairs with all the lights off to watch  USA's Up All Night with the volume turned way way down so Mom couldn't hear me being gay!

Well, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but this queen isn't even pretending anymore!  Dont believe me?  Just pop over to netflix and check out his adaptation of House of Usher (2008).

A man with dated lesbian dive-bar hair pulls up to a bed and breakfast on his motorcycle.  He's greeted at the door by another man dressed in his best Victorian-era Matrix attire.  They speak of life during wartime. Neo has turned himself into quite the shut-in, as alluded to by his LatinX, man-servant.  Soon enough, the two men are hugging each other good night when the impossible happens: they actually kiss! Then they are unbuttoning their pants.  Then they strategically pull their underpants down and the camera focuses on their bare bottoms... I don't remember this in the Edgar Allen Poe story!

From what I understand, there's a problem - something about the gay with the dated lesbian dive-bar hair being reluctant to give up the contents of his cookie jar.  He takes a bubble bath and gets mysteriously felt-up by a pair of ghostly man hands coming from inside the tub.  Good problems to have. But then, over his morning French press coffee, he starts having debilitating visions of Neo in the throes of passion with the help and what would normally be a colorful exploration of the supernatural laced with a few lingering glances and strategically placed abs has given way to a full blown soft-core porno! 

Apparently the House of Usher isn't about a haunted house as much as it's about a gang-bang after a freshpair.com sample sale.  Who knew!?

Is this a scary movie? Not at all.  Are the shots in focus? Usually not.  Does the cast deliver all of their lines with the cadence of dead-eyed Eastern European porn stars?  They absolutely do. So, how can a movie be so unabashedly gay and yet be so joyless? I have no idea.  The camera spends so much time fetishizing these boys that there's no time for any plot to develop. In fact, nothing happens at all.  I had sworn up and down to eschew this sort of faggotry here, but it was somehow at the top of my queue and next thing you know, I watched the whole damn thing!  Looks like I'm only human after all. It's still better than Twilight.  

FaggotyassDrinkingGame:  Every time a character pretends to go down on the guy with lesbian hair, take a shot. Like my favorite barmaid says at my favorite bar (the local bowling alley) whenever I order a long island ice tea: "It'll get you fucked up!"