we need to talk about skippy

"Why can't you just be normal!?"

Five years before I actually came out, I wrote two gay fan letters.  
One was to "Norm" from the first season of The Real World.  I must have been around 12 at the time and I near lost my mind seeing a chic queer person with a dog and a burgeoning career in Art on MTV.  I loved him.  I still do.  I love how he was aloof and kind and clearly got lots of dick and I love that he was an activist and he appreciated gay rollerskating nights at Limelight set to CeCe Peniston songs.  Dreamboat.  So, using my Star Wars VHS collection as a desk, I wrote him a thank you letter in my bedroom after mom had gone to bed.  He never replied.  

The second gay fan letter I wrote was written with many different colored markers.  I remember writing it in class after the Rodney King riots - the teacher was talking about football or something so I took it upon myself to be productive.  This time my letter was for Taj Johnson from Parker Lewis Can't Lose.  I loved him because he looked like a tall skinny vampire who would be mean to me - thirteen years old and already my type was already set in stone!  He never replied.

About 200 years later, I was at an opening party that TJ also attended and I just stared at him the whole time like I was watching television until he left.

As with all my significant life experiences, there's a gay horror movie about this.

Trick or Treat (1986) is a movie where Skippy from Family Ties gets bullied at school for being queer so all his attention goes to obsessively stanning a hair metal glam-rocker named Sammi Curr.   

Skippy isn't an instagram hot kinda gay like Love Simon - he's a normal, struggles with his body type and can't quite figure out what to do with his hair kinda gay (you and me both, sis').   

He lives in a converted attic with his single mom where he spends his time writing in his diary and listening to music and making mixtapes and finding new places to hide his sex toys.

Dream life. 

Basically, I was Skippy from Trick or Treat, only I didn't have the steady stream of residuals to put towards leather gear or his revolving door of stories about Justine Bateman.

Well, faster than you can say Freddy's Revenge, Rockstar Sammi Curr dies and he comes back from the dead to haunt his #1 fan.  Thus prompting a romance for the ages!  

Let me tell you, if that guy from Parker Lewis Can't Lose mysteriously died and came back to my momma's house to haunt me and started killing all the people who were mean to me in high school, you wouldn't see me complaining about it!  But Skippy's a square.  I probably would have made fun of him too.  

Like Brainscan and Christine, Trick or Treat comes from a genealogy of films where outcast high school kids unleash vengeance upon their peers who mistreated them via demon avatars only to wind up compromising everything that made them special in the end by rebuking their avatar in order to kiss girls and participate in pyramid schemes on facebook to support dead-eyed children they never should have had in the first place.

All these years, I had been operating under the assumption that Skippy from Family Ties was a gay, but the most cursory youtube search of his more recent stand-up "comedy" sets has proved he's not gay.  He's not even gay-adjacent.  Good to know.  Still, there's something unmistakably queer about this film, so I dug a little deeper.  

Behind all the hairspray and eye makeup, I couldn't help but notice a spring in Sammi Curr's step -  a wink and tone in his overall performance that could only come from a fellow home of sexual.  So, like Tom Cruise and prenatal vitamins, I did the research. 

Skippy isn't gay, but Sammi Curr was.  He was played by musical theatre performer Tony Fields who started his career as a backup dancer for Debbie Reynolds before starring in the not-good-but-nonetheless-high profile Chorus Line movie.  A Queen for the ages.

Trick or Treat proves that horror is a great catch-all for marginalized communities.  While adored by the straight horror die-hards because of a Ozzy Osborne cameo and its soundtrack (the same soundtrack that now makes distributing this movie on blu-ray nearly impossible because of rights and clearances), this movie is also super gay.  Skippy's character is clearly a surrogate for gay teens, perpetually outsiders, even in their own homes - bullied and left to hero-worship - specifically a hero in which he can see himself reflected.  Representation matters.

Who knows how many more iconic roles Tony could have created if he hadn't, like so many gorgeous and successful artists of the '80s, passed away from HIV related illness in 1995. 

RIP, legend.  Your work lives on.

Shame, Shame...

Take it from me, if you're not careful, being a gay man in your thirties can lead to some pretty reckless behavior.  One minute you're cancelling plans so you can lie on the sofa and catch up on the Betty Draper Chronicles, sitting there stone-faced, binge eating marshmallows and drinking Miller 64s (they delicious with just a spash of bloody mary mix - try it!) - the next minute, you're passed out with a black eye wearing a soiled, over-sized cashmere sweater in some stranger's bathtub.  Tricky.  Very tricky.

Sometimes, I feel out of control and reckless.  I'm starting to feel like the female protagonist in Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.  It wasn't very well publicized for fear of alienating Mr. Perry's audience base, but said film was actually a remake of Andrzej  Zulawski's Eastern European body-horror classic, Possession (1981).   

Possession and Tyler Perry’s Temptation are both histrionic explorations of the dissolution of a once happy marriage. Possession features a gorgeous actress, Isabelle Adjani, playing a woman in the final stages of a loveless marriage to the Antichrist (Sam Neill).  Temptation features a gorgeous actress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, playing a woman in the final stages of a listless marriage to a wholesome Christian pharmacist who wears sweaters that zip down the front.

"He gon' take you straight t'Hell."

To different ends, these films both brazenly assert that women have sexual urges for which they (obviously) must be punished.  Men are martyrs, victimized by women who no longer wish to be at their beck and call.  In Temptation, Jurnee is repeatedly chastised for not cooking for her husband, despite the fact that she works more hours than him in a much more demanding profession.  What a selfish bitch.

"I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself.  I'm the maker of my own evil."

Tyler Perry repeatedly allows his lens to linger on two different muscular, and oftentimes shirtless, Black men.  As noted heterosexual directors are wont to do, Mr Perry makes sure they are adequately baby-oiled throughout.  Early on in Tyler Perry's Temptation, the leaner, richer of the two shirtless muscled black men unleashes the untold fury of racial oppression on an otherwise innocent white man in the park.  Similarly, in Possession, Sam Neill drowns his rival in a public toilet after showing us his bum; he grows facial hair and lacerates himself with an electric meat carver to indicate emotional distress.   In Temptation, shamed beauty-queen, Vanessa Williams wears a poodle wig and speaks in a fake-French accent like PePe LePew.

In Possession, we track our heroine's descent into madness, watching her bring men to her rented flat across town, vacant except for a soiled mattress where she kills and feeds the essence of her victims to a monster that lives in her closet.  In Temptation, Jurnee starts wearing heels and lipstick and getting blow-outs.  Isabelle Adjani keeps leftover body parts in her refrigerator.  Jurnee Smollett-Bell stops going to church.  

Jurnee's husband forgets her birthday and shames her for wanting to have sex with him in their kitchen so she takes a private plane to New Orleans with a richer, leaner black man.  In Possession, Isabelle miscarries a malevolent entity in an underground subway tunnel - screaming and thrashing about while leaking blood and demonic ooze out of multiple orifices.

Possession prominently features a tentacled Hell-Beast that can only be satiated when devouring man-flesh.  Temptation prominently features Kim Kardassian.  They’re basically the same movie.

In Possession, Isabelle has consensual sex with the tentacled Hell-Beast and their lust manifests a dark-mirror-version of Sam Neill.  In Temptation, Jurnee gets beaten and left for dead in a bathtub after catching AIDS from getting sexually assaulted against her will on a private plane.  Rest assured, she had it coming - she drank two sips of champagne!

Tyler did change a few things to make his reboot more appropriate for his median audience.  In Possession, Isabelle Adjani has a mirror-self which is Isabelle Adjani wearing contacts and a lighter wig.  Good Isabelle attends to her son and keeps Sam Neil company while Evil Isabelle is off across town living in sin.  

Since the only actor allowed to play multiple roles in a Tyler Perry joint is Tyler Perry, the double in Temptation is played by Brandy!  In Temptation, Brandy is the dark mirror to Jurnee's character - living in a filthy garret apartment with no furniture.  Brandy was once wanton in her sexuality.  She loved getting that fine muscle dick until she wound up with AIDS - now she works at a pharmacy with Nanny Fine's mother and wears a lot of earth tones.

"Thank you so much for sharing this story with me.  I'm gonna end this almost-affair and stay with my husband."

Anyone who has survived the dissolution of a primary care relationship knows that playing victim and placing blame is commonplace.  People and circumstances change over time - both parties contribute to the equation.   Breakups induce a chemical withdrawal that can leave us feeling more than a little unhinged.   Possession is a movie for adults; it doesn't presume to dictate right or wrong.   It dives headfirst into that mania and leaves us to pick up the pieces in the rubble.   Isabelle Adjani always has the upper hand, alternatively laughing and screaming at the concept of being possessed by a man. She is no man's property.

The same cannot be said for Jurnee in Temptation, a film that posits women who are dissatisfied with their relationships are clap-having harlots who must be punished.

Jurnee is cast out for trying to better herself.  She's publicly shamed for trying to grow and having the gall to aspire above her station.  Tyler Perry says that a woman who strives for greatness will end up alone and ugly with short hair and dark lipstick, doomed to suffer the further indignity of having to get her AIDS medicine from the pharmacy where her Good Christian ex-husband works now living happily ever after with his new, younger wife and children.  

"I hate fags who hate women."

-Madonna, Truth of Dare

My favorite moment in Tyler Perry's misguided epic, The Family that Preys, is when Miss Robin Givens - decked out as high powered executive named Abigail , says to Miss Sanaa Lathan, "It's sisters like you that give us all a bad name".  Correct.  That's exactly how I feel about Tyler Perry.  I, for one, don’t want to watch any more Tyler Perry movies anymore because, unlike Mr Perry, I don't hate myself.  Each of his "films" is more regressive than the last.  This man in a dress is actually dangerous to women.  His backwards moralizing and casual misogyny is deplorable and aggressive and could only come from the most hateful of hearts.  If you don't believe me, just check out Lindy West's brilliant piece on the subject over at Jezebel.  

Watch Possession because it's a riot.  It's the perfect Lovecraftian mash-up of Nicholas Roeg and David Cronenberg.  Find a copy and share it with your friends.   Sharing our favorite things and educating against intolerance is how we can show love and that will always win in the end.  Love is love.  So whether it’s taking a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday to eat a bag of marshmallows in front of the TV or fleeing a suffocating relationship, be sure to take good care of yourself.  No one else can tell you what’s right for you.  

game night!

eat your heart out.

"You're pissed at everyone because you're gay."

I have a complex relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer.

I hold him personally responsible for robbing me of my best slut years. While the kids nowadays can go to any bar or club or theatre festival or app to find a hot in high-waisted jeans and metallic frames, I stayed locked inside my room throughout twenties – absolutely certain that any clandestine affair with even the most devastatingly handsome investment banker was going to end with me face-down stapled to the floor of some Tribeca loft. I’m getting ahead of myself.

A while back, I was talking to my friend about the death of gay cinema and he explained that the issue at hand is not the death of gay cinema at all, but the death of independent cinema. Oh, yeah.  He's right.  We all sort of took for granted that pop culture would always be Nirvana and My So Called Life. We were wrong.

Don't get me wrong - the '90s wasn't all Crystal Pepsi and hypercolor.  Unlike the 1980s, the nineties was actually a shitty time to be a gay teen. Liberace and Keith Haring were dead. Gone were the days of jelly bracelets and pouty-mouthed camp counselors. AIDS and the recession took all the fun out of being a fag.

Queer Cinema was alive and kicking thanks to Gregg Araki and Gus Van Sant, but average kids  who were looking for role models (and who didn't live in LA or Portland) were SOL. We didn’t have Glee.   We didn't even have the questionable queer content on TV like Soap or Dynasty.

In fact, aside from Marty from Showgirls, the most famous gay of the 90s was Jeffrey Dahmer.

Despite the proliferation of queer cinema in the nineties, it wasn’t until the early aughts that a proper movie based on Dahmer would see the light of direct to Blockbuster distribution.

Dahmer (2002) is the kind of movie that Chloe Sevigny and Brett Easton Ellis watch ironically projected on a tarp in someone’s backyard thinking they're such a riot while they talk incessantly about themselves and not even bothering to learn the name of their hostess.

It is not very good, this Dahmer film, but it does teach us some very important lessons.

• Lesson #1:  Banjees are a gays best friend.

True story.  In the middle of Jeffrey's Korean phase, a lobotomized gay boy managed to escape the manse. Mute and naked, this poor kid came stumbling across a couple of Banjee girls on their way home from walking their little brothers to school.  These girls were concerned. The cops were not.  Refusing to get involved in another faggoty domestic dispute, they brought that poor boy right back to Jeffrey's house where he was promptly dismembered.

• Lesson #2  Don’t go home with any guy who talks like Emma Pillsbury.

No good can come from it.

• Lesson #3  This is what Jeremy Renner’s O-face looks like.

In case you were watching Thor and, you know, got to wondering.

• Lesson #4  If I lived in Wisconsin in the early 90s, I would be DEAD.

With his shaggy hair and lanky build, Jeffrey Dahmer was a catch!
I mean, he worked in a chocolate factory…

We got trouble... right here in Riverton City...

"Bugs dad did some pretty messed up stuff."

Wasn't coming out day a RIOT?? All those multi-colored facebook pictures crack me up! It got me in a good mood. Therefore, hot off the heels of my positive movie going experience this weekend, I am proud to present you with another edition of That Gay!

A lot happens in the first ten minutes of My Soul to Take (2010); we're immediately informed that a serial killer has been marauding the hamlet of Riverton, Massachusetts (or is it Connecticut?). But don't worry about all that, because we're established safe and sound in a pregnant Mormon lady's house. It's one of those roomy, perfectly decorated craftsman homes that you only see in Wes Craven movies - impossible to finance in real life. Nothing could go possibly wrong in such a place.

(Now get ready for the part where I yelled out loud in the theatre)... 

Meanwhile, in the basement of this meticulous abode, the Mormon lady's husband is putting some finishing touches on a rocking horse for his unborn son. Get ready for a surprise!  The pregnant Mormon lady's husband is none other than Broadway legend Raúl Esparza! My dear, is there anything he can't do?

 

In all seriousness, being a multi-hyphenate is one of the tell tale signs of dissociative identity disorder (just ask Kristin Chenoweth)!  Faster than he can say, Sybil, Raúl winds up going on a violent and bloody killing spree.  Looks like he was that pesky Riverton Ripper all along.  Oopsies!

Don't worry, dolls.  I'm not actually spoiling anything because (as is the case with most of our That Gay! gays) Raúl doesn't make it more than fifteen minutes into My Soul to Take; but it's a memorable and tight fifteen minutes that makes him more than worthy of being this month's That Gay!
Good job, Raúl, your grapefruit basket is in the mail.

If you still aren't convinced, here's a clip of Raúl wailing his weave off as Riff Raff in the Broadway revival of Rocky Horror Show back in the year 2000 (yes, that's Joan Jett as Columbia).

Who's gonna drive you home tonight?

"My mother told me never to do this."

In high school, I read a lot of books about serial killers.  It was the era of Jeffrey Dahlmer and his penchant for oversized frames and fitted velour shirts worried me.  I knew that had I only been living in Wisconsin instead of Boston, I surely would have been stapled to some floor and left to rot in a vat of acid.  I can't resist a shaggy haircut and big glasses!

In my twenties, Six Feet Under had a story line that had its main gay, the perpetually-whiney David, picking up an almost-hot drifter-in-need while getting some gas.  The drifter somehow forces him to do meth at gunpoint and douses him in gasoline. I thusly retreated back to staring at the subway floor in crowds and leaving bars the moment that anyone expressed interest.  

I just wasn't born under a good sign for casual encounters with the same sex.  But you don't have to take my word for it! Just ask C. Thomas Howell...

In 1984, C. Thomas Howell had it all.  He had been dressed to the nines in E.T.: the extra terrestrial.  He fought valiantly alongside Jennifer Grey against the evil Russians hell bent on invading his Colorado high school in Red Dawn.  Everything was coming up roses until he had to go and pick up The Hitcher (1984).

Like John Travolta after a Roland Emmerich summer pool party, C. Thomas just couldn't help himself from picking up a piece of rough trade along the interstate.  This was a weak moment that the young Mister Howell would live to regret.  

It started out fine and well, it always does - lots of lingering eye contact, a stray hand on a protruding thigh...but C. Thomas soon had second thoughts when things started getting a little too kinky, so somewhere between the next exit and getting his crotch fondled at knifepoint, C Thomas shoved his hitchhiker out the passenger door!  Not cool, bro.

"I cut off his legs... and his arms... and his head. And I'm going to do the same to you."

I feel for C. Thomas Howell. There have been plenty of almost-hookups that I had to put the kibosh on when proceedings started getting a little too intense.  Fortunately, I never came across Rutger Hauer. Rutger Hauer does not take rejection well - not one bit. One minute you’re driving up the coast thinking you may have a quick rest stop love affair, the next minute you’re being chased by a homosexual sociopath, covered in gasoline and rolling around on all fours in the sand, screaming for dear life!

Don't even get me started on poor Jennifer Jason Leigh!  Confused after the runaway success of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, she fled the Hollywood scene.  Refusing to be just another in a litany of generic starlets, Jennifer moved far away from that boulevard of broken dreams.  She got a bad haircut and was perfectly content to waiting tables and eat french fries in the desert until she found herself stuck in the middle of C. Thomas Howell's kinky role playing with Rutger.  Let this be a lesson, girls! Add The Hitcher to the long list of films proving that it's never a good idea for a girl to get in the middle of a homosexual spat.  Not only will you wind up alone in a bar full of strangers, but you may well wind up tied between two 18-wheeler semi-trucks! They should teach this in schools.

This isn't your usual slasher fare.  Exploding gas stations and helicopter crashes aside, it's an effective psychological exploration of a boy who is questioning his sexuality.  C. Thomas Howell is like Miss Janet Leigh in Psycho, driving all night on a mission.  He's leaving a life behind and heading for a fresh start in sunny California until a maniac takes him off course.  Without being overly esoteric, this entire film could very well just be a dream. Maybe he never picked up a John on the side of the road.  Maybe he's not really gay. Maybe it was all in his head, like Soul Man...either way, The Hitcher is definitely worth picking up.

Can we gay it up a notch?

"His whole life is a movie!"

As much as I try to be graceful and understanding, I have a hard time with the gays who can’t deal with being gay. Whether it’s the Disney Channel star who pretends to have girlfriends in other countries or the kid on twitter who fixates on actresses (“I’m saving myself for Heather Langenkamp”), this kind of self-hatred is dark-sided and I don’t like it.

The not-gay gays always end up letting their darkness fester until they’re wearing khakis and voting against their own interests. Hard pass.  It’s tough enough to like ourselves after eight years of George Bush telling the nation that the gays were responsible for 9/11 and an election cycle here in California that put our civil liberties up for a public vote, encouraging people to openly discriminate against their gay neighbors (and which may or may not have ended with me throwing a hot coffee at an Evangelical “ activist” who called me a sodomite). 

 It’s impossible to rationalize with these not-gay-gays because their whole world-view is a lie.  Imagine hanging out with Paul Lynde and he’s riding big pink and purple elephant and you’re not allowed to give the elephant peanuts!  That doesn't make any sense, it's impossible! That’s what it’s like being around these not-gay gays. No, thank you. It's not for me. This brings us to Fade to Black (1980).

You ever wonder what happens when a boy refuses to participate in the outside world - choosing instead to live in the land of comic books and horror movies and the rent free confines of his elderly parents' house? He becomes a sociopath. That’s what happens.  Fade to Black explores the dark side of being a fanboy with its tale of Eric Binford who lives in Los Angeles with his crippled aunt, Stella. 

Eric's far too old to still be living at home, but ambition is waylaid by his obsession with old movies. He just sits in his dark, smelly bedroom day after day, night after night, chain-smoking in his underwear and pawning over old videos (taking the occasional break to masturbate to Marilyn Monroe cutouts and Meryl Streep fanzines). It's a lot.

When Eric meets a lady who looks like Marilyn at a diner, he decides that they're meant to live happily ever after together and reality comes crashing in on him. Marilyn can smell the crazy on him from 6 feet away, the rejection of which causes him to go on a killing spree. Conveniently enough, Eric has a degree in cosmetology and begins dressing up to reenact scenes from his favorite movies, whether the Mummy or Dracula or Jimmy Cagney... the movie kind of ends there. Eric doesn't even physically kill most of them, he just happens to "scare" them to death. He shoots Mickey Rourke for no good reason other than Mickey being more attractive and popular than he is. Rude.  Without any keys to Eric's childhood or him having a clear objective, this whole bloodless affair is pointless.

Fade to Black was one of those movies that had such an evocative VHS cover that I felt it must have been really important.  At the end of the day, the movie's poster is better than the movie. A sociopathic loner becomes a serial killer who stages scenes from classic movies sounds great on paper, but it necessarily well executed. It plays like an old movie of the week. Plus, it stars an openly gay actor, Dennis Christopher. When you're a gay kid starved for representation, you can spot that energy a mile off! I can't get mad at a movie with an openly queer actor in the lead role. Talk about versatile!

It bends over backwards in trying to make Eric Binford a sympathetic, heterosexual character - an underdog victim of a culture obsessed with media consumption - and it doesn't work. Aside from a clever finale shot inside the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Fade to Black is a pass.

I do think there's an important lesson to be learned here, though: when making a horror movie, don't shy away from the fact that losers are losers and they kill people with no remorse. There's a genuine horror in fandom, in people who obsess over strangers and project onto them all their wants and desires. Whether Britney Spears fanatics or that guy who tried to shoot Reagan for Jodie Foster, this happens in real life and this movie misses the mark of all the genuine terror embedded in its premise. 

Tuesdays with Hitler

“This concludes our week on the holocaust.”

Bryan Singer is messy.  Self-loathing coupled with white male arrogance and privilege is never a cute combination and usually leads to public disgrace sooner or later. That said, Hollywood literally has no values and there was a period when he had a lot of power in Hollywood - so much power that he was able to remake Dennis the Menace, only set in 1984 with Dennis played by Brad Renfro (RIP) and this time Mr. Wilson is a homosexual Nazi who lives next door.

Horror movies have always examined the darker side of the human experience, holding a mirror up to society and our fears. When our nation was obsessed with communism, the horror of that period focused on aliens and pod people taking over our collective consciousness. After Dawn of the Dead, it’s impossible to see zombies as anything but a metaphor for our mindless acceptance of capitalism. When hippies like the Manson family threatened the security of our homes, the horror evolved into slasher films of the 1970s (Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper exploited this best with Last House on the Left and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, respectively). The female protagonists (“final girl”) of these slasher films echoed the feminist movement; woman surviving and thriving in a world of abuse and sexual violation. Yet, despite all that horror has been able to touch upon, there have been a few subjects that have been conspicuously verboten. Specifically, the horror of the Holocaust.

Apt Pupil (1998) sets out to examine the holocaust as well its social and emotional ramifications that were felt a full 40 years later. Except something gets in the way of the narrative…Apt Pupil is super queer. 

Brad Renfro plays a boy who has no interest in dating girls because he only cares about the Holocaust. Brad could have been a brilliant documentarian for the Shoah Foundation if he wasn't so darned sadomasochistic.   This sixteen year old boy takes it upon himself to conduct a yearlong series of interviews with his elderly, seemingly retired-Nazi neighbor. Brad's interest, however, is not out of empathy - he is almost gleeful in being regaled with stories of Jewish corpses and suffering. But the roleplay is not at all one-sided in this bizarre little movie (adapted from a 1982 Stephen King novella); the Nazi next door has just as much power in this game. When Brad gets into cosplay, making Ms Mckellan wear her old S.S. uniform, Ian one-ups him by going off and masturbating in it.  I’m not one to kink shame, but Jesus.

Apt Pupil forces us to ask ourselves who is more evil - the man who oversaw the death of thousands or the apathetic little fuck who fetishizes him. They are two peas in a pod, these two. Ian is soon tutoring Brad in his studies, both academic and personal. When things get a bit too intense between them (read: gay), Brad takes a break, goes back to school, starts kissing a girl.  He seems to be on the mend until he's drawn back Ian like a moth to a pedophilic flame. Evil ensues.

"Oh, my dear boy, don't you see? We are fucking each other."

Why is Brad so fixated on Ian? How can so much evil come from a boy brought up with money and education in an all American suburb? How can one feel no sympathy for being the cause of death and pain to thousands? Why do people with all the privilege in the world feel the need to play “devil’s advocate” in the paper and online when people are dying as a result of every election?  None of these questions are answered in this film because none of these questions are answered in real life. Apt Pupil, while much more psychological than physically violent, is as much a horror film as any Saw movie. 

This movie is pervy for sure and does Singer no favors with regard to distancing himself from abuse allegation against minors as his camera lingers on every detail of Renfro's lips and torso. It’s creepy, but the movie is supposed to be creepy so what is the truth?  Apt Pupil is contextually dense, dealing with issues of dominance and submission, masculine and feminine, and good and evil. What a man is capable of doing to another man can be terrifying, just ask Bryan Singer.

(Horror Nerd Alert: Be sure to keep an eye out for Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood 's main gay turned cabaret singer turned Broadway producer, Kevin Spiritas, as paramedic #1!)

Gross Anatomy

"You stole the secret of life and death, and here you are trysting with a bubble headed co-ed!"

For every fabulous gay that can be found regaling his friends at dinner parties with stories of Sharon Stone and sample sales, there is a schlubby and socially awkward gay, holed up in his parent’s basement eating Doritos and looking at internet porn and writing misogynist rants in the comments section of youtube videos for hours at a time until he no longer feels anything. Whether by shame or lack of social skills, I find these gays are to be avoided at all costs! And that’s not coming from a place of elitism, it’s coming from experience.  Even though you saw it on an episode of Will & Grace, don’t think you can help them transform into a Pygmalion Adonis with just a little cetaphil and a gym membership – no, sir. This kind of basement gay is a succubus who won’t be stopped until everyone is as miserable as he. 

This is the Evil Gay.

Take, for instance, the story of Herbert West in Re-Animator (1985).  Herbert is very smart, almost too smart. His intelligence makes him arrogant without merit. He is one of those guys who can only function inside the world of academia, someone who has never had to learn real life lessons or master the keys to social interaction. Herbert West is like those bad kids in middle school who’d light cats on fire and call it an experiment.  While I appreciate his fashion sense, Jeffrey Dahmer is not a role model, kids. 

Sociopaths always have a hard time getting things that require social skills like apartments and grants; this conundrum is what led Herbert West to Dan Cain. Dan is a straight Hot in his third year residency and he is always shirtless.  Dan blows off steam built up from working twenty-hour days with cadavers by having lots of straight sex with his girlfriend, Meg. Meg happens to be the Dean of Student’s daughter. Dan knows what he’s doing. A different kind of sociopath. 

Dan is pretty, he has a spare room in his apartment, and the staff of Misketonic Medical School universally adores him.  Herbert needs Dan.

Is Herbert West a gay? Probably, yeah. But he's not fun about it. He hates women.  He doesn't have sex; he'd rather sublimate all physical needs into his all-consuming “work.”  He only tests his potions on well built men and he has a personal vendetta set against Dan’s girlfriend, killing her cat and making snide comments about her hair and the diameter of her hips.  He even goes so far as to have her father mutilated to drive his point home. You know how bitchy fags can be.

As Herbert West’s appetite for power and carnage grows, he becomes smug, almost hot (but that’s my issue with being attracted to emotionally unavailable narcissists).  Of course, arrogance and homosexuality natrually ends in being suffocated by another man's large intestine, but I digress.

We over use the expression “iconic, but Re-Animator is iconic.  From its score to its poster design to it’s amazing use of physical space and day-glo green slime, It delivers on all counts (and it features gobs of male nudity).  This was one of the films that you’d talk about on the school yard as a test to how hardcore you were (aka: how permissive and absent your parents were). Re-Animator is a holy grail.  It’s got everything: hot boys, zombies, vengeful faggotry and gobs of gore.  

Just when you think the queer subtext is imagined, Herbert West will breaks the fourth wall, as though the audience is part of his fevered psyche along for the ride.  When I was a little boy, I’ve longed for syringes full of glow-stick ooze. I still do.