1991 was the year that the Gloucester Cinema opened up and I could walk through the woods and a couple of bogs to a movie theatre all by myself without needing a ride. That was the summer of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. I was LIVING. By September, the theatre staff knew me by name. I saw EVERYTHING - People Under the Stairs,Sleeping with the Enemy, Silence of the Lambs, Terminator 2! A couple movies stand out in particular. Child's Play 3 8.30.1991
This is not a good movie, but it's the first horror movie I ever went to by myself.
Cape Fear 11.13.1991
Scorsese. DeNiro. Split dipoters. This was the moment when Jessica Lange became the embittered, callous, chain-smoking Jessica Lange parody we know and love (and fear) today. If I had a dollar for every time I walked down the hallway to middle school chorus, imagining that I was Juliette Lewis walking into the auditorium, intent on finding an older man determined to put his finger in my mouth, I could buy us about seven grilled stuft nachos.
Freddy's Dead 9.13.1991
THIS. Another movie I insisted on seeing alone as to not mar the experience. I remember how everyone in the audience wore the 3D glasses for the first ten minutes before we realized that it wasn't in 3D until the last reel.
Tomorrow I'll be sure to tell you about how I wrote a four page fan letters to Norm from The Real World and how I got momma's credit cards shut down after one too many calls to Marina Sirtis on QVC.
Ryan over at Shock Til You Drop did a nifty list of horror movies from the 90s and it sent me into a deep reverie in the manner of a Tennessee Williams heroine.
The world around me faded and was replaced by crystalline memories of walking to parochial school, still thinking about last night's episode of Parker Lewis Can't Lose. On special days, I'd get a tuna sandwich from The Yellow Sub, the good kind with the chunks of dill pickles on the top, and try to avoid getting beat up and/or called faggot until it was time to go home and I could watch my stories.
Reading Fangoria magazines in the local bookstore, this era was the apex of my horror fandom. It was a time when everything was possible and all my dreams were real. Ironically, much like today, the 90s was a period of horror backlash. Coming off the glut of 80s slashers, audiences would become far more interested in Sharon Stone's sexcapades than a return to Camp Crystal Lake. So, while everyone is away at Sundance, let's take a moment to throw is back.
The Exorcist III.
8.17.1990
1990 came hard. Don't believe me? Watch this movie. The Exorcist IIIpetrified me, quite literally. If it came on television, I'd be rendered motionless, for fear that movement would draw the spirits and some monstrous, possessed elderly woman wielding gardening equipment would spring out of the hall closet, covered in mom's sheets from last year. One night The Exorcist III came on and I had to call Vanessa to come over and turn it off for me while I covered my head with the pillow. It holds up.
Gremlins 2: the new batch
(6/15/90)
Phoebe Cates got a bob forthe Gremlins sequel! To 12 year old Jeffrey, this was the epitome of chic. I also have a soft-spot for horror movies set in high-rises. They had Gremlins 2 merchandise in the supermarket, coloring books and those magic erase boards with the plastic stylus - I was deep in it. High-concept, phantasmagoric, this movie was clearly left alone by the studio and, as a result, Marla Bloodstone will live forever in homosexual lexicon.
It.
11.18.1990
Anyone who's met me knows that all I ever want to talk about is the fact that, a few years back, Warner Bros hired Cary Fukanaga to remake It as a big-budget, two-picture, R-rated tentpole. This happened! It will surely never see the light of day, but it happened on paper. This is the world I want to live in. The 1990 It mini-series predates The Walking Dead and all the glorious horror entertainments on television that we now take for granted. Tim Curry is spectacular and there are a few genuinely subversive moments despite the fact that the project had to be approved by many network censors. Between It and Twin Peaks, 1990 was a banner year for horror on TV. If you haven't read the book It is based on, you must. It is far and away my favorite Stephen King book. Gang bangs, monsters, homeless queer mashers, children holding one another and weeping - what's not to love?
Honorable mention goes to the Tom Savini directed Night of the Living Dead remake, not because it's particularly remarkable (though Molly Shannon is fantastic in it), but because they played a teaser trailer for T2 beforehand and it's all that mattered at recess that fall.
I'll be back tomorrow to talk about 1991 - the year momma pulled me out of Catholic school because I was being bullied and had managed to gain 20 pounds from all the tuna sandwiches.
Remember when our Vice President, Joe Biden, was talking about what a riot Will&Grace was and then President Barack Obama told America that gay marriage was awesome and a year later we could get married in California? That was fun.
This blog was founded four years ago on the notion of exposing the cryptic, closeted homosexuals abounding in horror. Since then, things have been moving quickly. When a lesbian hosting the Oscars is seen as the "safe choice," we've come a long way indeed.
I think I stopped writing as much as I used to because I'm in a place in my life where, thankfully, I no longer have to look for subtext to feel like I'm a part of something. I'm perfectly comfortable with where I fit in the world. I'm getting old. I have no patience for basic, self-hating gays (bret easton ellis). I have no patience for having to root through stories to find the gay hidden in the bramble (marvel movies).
From James Whale and Dwight Frye to Stephen Geoffreys and Mark Patton, horror has always been queer. We shouldn't have to apologize for it or justify our place at the table. Just look at The Conjuring! I'm haven't seen it yet, but it made all the money and Vera Farminga looks like this in it...
...the proof is in the FaggotyAss Pudding.
During my self-imposed hiatus from diegesis, a film was released that exemplifies how we no longer have to live in shadows; a film bold enough to assert that gays aren't spineless, mincing victims or homicidal sociopaths. This film, ladies and gentlemen, is ParaNorman.
Norman is a sweet boy. An outsider, he doesn't have a lot of friends and spends most of his days watching old Italian horror movies on V/H/S and talking to his grandmother (played by ELAINE STRITCH). It's like a Polaroid from my own childhood! Over the course of the film, we see Norman socialize and learn to accept himself despite being different. Along the way he saves a town from three hundred year old ghost zombie bullies and realized that everyone feels different at one time or another. He grows up.
"You can't stop bullying, it's part of human nature."
Here's the kicker: ParaNorman prominently features an openly gay character! Mitch is a popular and handsome kid who all the other kids look up to and he just so happens to have a boyfriend. Mitch isn't sad, spineless or cruel. He isn't angst ridden or martyred in the end. He just exists alongside the other characters. When I saw this movie in the theatre chock full of children, no one laughed at the reveal. This was a real moment, not played for laughs and the kids completely accepted it. ParaNorman is the future.
This generation's answer to The Goonies. Paranorman is made with so much love you can feel it in every frame. Its animated characters are consistently more layered human than most real-life actors. Life is hard. The world is a scary place. Awful things happen every single day. Everyone feels like an outsider - especially bullies. How we handle insecurity and how we treat one another is what differentiates us from the Real Housewives of New Jersey. So, whether you're black or white or gay or straight or a witch or a bro, you should catch this movie on Netflix streaming immediately. Consider it your moral imperative.
"You know what they can do if they can't take a joke."
Imagine a movie audacious enough to open on a little girl drying out in the Helen Keller Clinic for the Emotionally Crippled.
Having been put away for dressing up like a clown while killing her stepmother, little Jamie is a mute and she's having some sort of epileptic fit, sweat pouring through her best dinosaur pajamas. The doctors need to perform an emergency tracheotomy to get her to breathe.
Just as the surgeon prepares to make the incision that will save her life, Donald Pleasence from Halloween cries out, “No!” Yes, Dr. Loomis is in the Emergency Room for some reason – and yes, boys and ghouls, Halloween 5 (1989) is really this good!
“Dr. Loomis, leave the little girl alone.”
One would think that the proposed bastard daughter of Laurie Strode would be averse to Halloween, but not our little Jamie. She loves it. There are pumpkins in her hospital room, and God help the kid who thinks he has her beat at this year’s costume pageant! Jamie came to win. She even has a gay bestie to help her apply the perfect face before competition.
Jamie's life would be practically perfect if it weren't for that creepy Dr. Loomis screaming, shaking her, and constantly berating everyone about Michael Meyers!
Meanwhile, in life outside the asylum, there's a girl who looks like Demi Moore and she's telling what may be the greatest fashion story ever assembled on film. I'm talking about a zebra on denim jacket with pearls, acrylic hearts, and a purple taffeta collar. I'm talking bedazzled denim pantaloon-style daisy dukes and a black lace body stocking! Looks. Besides turning looks, she's there for some reason and saying some things, but I can't concentrate on anything but her outfits, so who knows? I do know that Demi and a couple of her friends get super drunk, steal a box of kittens, and wind up alone in a barn with Michael Meyers. I told you. This is a good movie.
In a futile attempt to bring these two stories together, Jamie and her best gay break out of the nut house and set off to bring down Michael Meyers once and for all, turning Halloween 5 into the Bugsy Malone of slasher films. The kids have their work cut out for them. Gone are the days of plodding along atmospherically with a butcher knife, in Halloween 5 Michael Meyers drives a Camaro.
How good is Halloween 5? When the going gets tough, moments after her closest family members are brutally massacred (again) at the hands of Michael Meyers, Jamie goes upstairs to brush her hair under police supervision. A girl after my own heart.
How good is this movie? After driving himself to Jamie's house in a police car and killing all the attendant police officers, Michael Meyers stops to have a chat with Dr Loomis at the top of a gothic stairwell. Without giving away the camptastic ending, I'm willing to wager money that Michael Meyers is played by Piper Laurie in this film - it's THAT good.
Call me crazy, but I love nothing more than seeing a child actor terrorized irrevocably for ninety minutes for our entertainment. With the exception of Donald Pleasence (who sometimes falls asleep mid-dialogue - bless), the performances in this movie are over-the-top, alternating exclusively between hysterical sobbing and screaming hysterically. Like Jamie's gay bestie, Halloween 5 is a much-maligned and misunderstood pair of ruby slippers. Get those slippers out of the closet and let them shine for all the world to see - you won't be sorry that you did!
"He probably went out for a hamburger or a chicken dinner...you know how men are when they're alone."
Since the ancient Greeks wrote about Medea, it has been a well chronicled fact that actresses are monsters*. We all know Gwenyth Paltrow is a bloody nightmare, but did you know that even lesser known, D-list actresses can fall prey to the trappings of stardom? Take, for instance, Tasha Yar
Tasha Yar was on a hit television series in national syndication. She was paid handsomely to wear custom-made costumes and to work tête-à -tête with some of the greatest living actors of a generation. But this wasn't enough for Tasha Yar. In her fevered actress mind, she decided that she was better than the hit-series with banker’s hours in a set location that nearly made her a household name.
So Tasha packed up her two kids and her doctor husband and moved to a country house, Pet Sematary (1989) adjacent.
Watching Pet Sematary, we learn that Tasha Yar once had a sister with spinal meningitis who she let starve to death. We see firsthand her complete lack of mothering skills, as she rarely ever looks at her children, let alone feed them their Eggos.
Her family may be falling apart, but heaven forbid she wear the same outfit twice. Despite having worked her maid to death, Tasha's still too preoccupied with organizing her collection of skorts to stop her baby son from running into traffic... and you thought Cybill Shepherd was a nightmare!
The years of having to deal with Tasha's ego, coupled with the death of their only son, sends her husband into a tailspin. He can't take it anymore. He's having a nervous breakdown. He tries to seek counsel from former TV-star, Fred Gwynne - who just so happens to be their next door neighbor.
Fred had been through the Hollywood mill with his series, The Munsters, and Tasha's husband thought he could help put things in perspective. No such luck. There are no happy endings when you're married to an actress - just botox and personal trainers and life coaches and half-empty spray bottles of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter all over the bathroom.
Pet Sematary is groundbreaking in that its principal performers are completely unconcerned with acting or line delivery or putting any energy whatsoever into the proceedings. Nonetheless, there are valuable lessons to be learned:
Do not quit a series in its first season because you'll just wind up begging them to have you back and wind up acting as producer on a series of fair to middling documentaries.
Do not bury your dead children in spoiled ground.
Do not marry an actress unless you want a world of heartache in the years ahead.
*(The exception to this rule being Miss Sandra Bullock who is a lovely person and can do no wrong.)
I did not understand that Return of the Living Dead Part II (1987) was meant to be a comedy. I watched it at my neighbor's house on pay-per-view (back when you had to call the cable company). It terrified me. In the months that followed, I would sneak into my neighbor's backyard pretending to be Suzanne Snyder - screaming and running from imaginary zombies coming at me from all directions. Gay.
I’m one of those funny bunnies who has only lived in or immediate to major cities (Boston, NYC, and Los Angeles, respectively).
Well, thanks to Stephen King, I never need to leave my urban bubble to know all about our country. For instance, I know that Colorado is a state where people get snowed-in and go crazy, chasing their families through expansive hotel suites with axes. Maine is where inattentive mothers allow their toddlers to roam into traffic, if only to resurrect them in ancient Indian burial grounds.
In a country populated with killer clowns, sycophantic obese women, and tween vampires, the scariest place may be the most unassuming - Nebraska. A state where religious zealots ban National Public Radio and the use of contraceptives. Where gay children run wild and unattended, channeling all of their confusion and whimsy into misreading bible verses (much like their adult contemporaries, Ted Haggard et al.).
Nebraska is home to the Children of the Corn (1984).
If I may, please allow me to turn your attention to a few of the most precious gems waiting to be unearthed upon a closer inspection of this horror classic.
1. Peter Horton get sexually violated by a cornfield.
2. There's an evil preacher/perpetual man-child named Isaac and he looks like this:
3. At one point, Peter Horton asks Linda Hamilton for a rag. Linda proceeds to grab the nearest child, rips off half of his cardigan, then hand it to Peter.
4. This bitch.
5. Isaac.
6. Watch for the contempt Peter Horton for Linda Hamilton. Aside from being openly disdainful of her throughout, he never looks in her eyes. I love watching straight couples who hate each other but stay together because society says they only have value as part of a set.
7. Malachai has beautiful hair.
8. Peter and Linda run over a little gay boy with their Oldsmobile. They put his body in the trunk, then walk away and leave the car behind.
9. Isaac.
His may be the gayest performance in the populist horror canon. Even though I love a boycot, this film is best enjoyed with a vanilla milkshake from the Jack in the Box. Please note that the o-x in "box" make the shape of one of those Jesus fish. Think about it!
"What's the matter, Thorn, don't you like it on your back?"
When you are about to get into your town car and someone runs up, harried, insisting that they talk to you this very instant, then chances are pretty good that you may be the legal guardian of the spawn of Satan.
The Omen films(1976-1981) were the precedent for the Final Destination movies: a series of deadly coincidences kill off characters one by one. Rather than pander to the lowest common denominator audience, The Omen franchise was almost too clever for its own good. These films move at a glacial pace, expounding upon the Holy Land and the Book of Revelation. Its protagonists are rich white people shoulder-deep in foreign affairs. Our heroines are delicate, barren women of discernible age, clad entirely in St John, who are the second wives to CEOs and dignitaries. Sign me up!
Evil kid movies are hard to pull off without becoming unintentionally comical. Somehow, with Richard Donner directing Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, and a stable of brilliant, English character actors, The Omen successfully managed to be a spooky classic - constantly teetering on the edge of good taste and sensationalism. On the other hand, Damien: Omen II (1978)jumps off the cliff of good taste and nosedives face first into the realm of, you guessed it, queer canon!
An elderly woman wakes up in bed wearing earrings and a full face of makeup to find a raven perched on her bedpost. She begins wailing, throwing herself dramatically to the ground and playing dead. Nothing, at any point actually touches her. Gay Rights! An English reporter (clad in red fur and wearing several pounds of someone else's hair) finds her car breaking down in the middle of an abandoned highway. She begins saying things like “Oh dear, oh no.” as she is suddenly pecked alive by wild ravens and crushed by a speeding Mack truck. Damien: Omen II is nothing if not tasteful.
Instead of nesting among foreign league ambassadors, this time around Damien is living in Chicago with his uncle, William Holden (continuing in the long line of Network actors who ran off to do the first horror film they were offered). William Holden is the CEO of Thorn Industries. Thorn Industries has a stronghold in electronics and is branching out into controlling the world’s produce supply as well. This is a conveniently evil corporate backdrop for our story and not-so-subtle metaphor for the real evil behind our dependence on foreign oil.
Life would be a bowl of cherries for Damien if it weren’t for the matter of his cousin, Mark. Mark is heir to the Thorn Empire, not Damien. Luckily, the son of Satan has many a minion - William Holden’s second in command at Thorn Industries takes a peculiar interest in shepherding Damien from boyhood to full grown Antichrist. There are a lot of pregnant pauses and lingering eyes shared between these two. I’m not saying Damien is gay, but he definitely exerts the powers of evil by giving his enemies a stink-eye that can cause day-players to spontaneously thrash themselves into walls while clutching feverishly at their chests! I’ve seen that at clubs, it’s a mess.
I never want to be the gay who cried wolf, but there is something queer about Damien: Omen II. Could it be Lee Grant as the female lead, doing her best drag queen impression of a loving mother? Is it the presence of Sylvia Sidney as the most irascible house guest since that lady in Titanic who did nothing but complain for hours and hours until she finally died on the boat, leaving strangers to dispose of her stinking remains and cases and trunks of memorabilia (but not the diamond necklace they were looking for)? Does Damien's smudged eyeliner and standard American falsetto work in conjunction to create an overall impression of homo-eroticism? Call me crazy.
Damien: Omen II is a tricky case to diagnose. For every moment of schlock (Meschach Taylor plummeting to his death in a cardboard elevator set) is countered with something clever (contemporary corporate land ownership as the devil incarnate). Jerry Goldsmith's score is fire and there are scenes at the all boys military academy and in the woods covered in snow that rival anything seen in the first film. Regardless of sexual persuasion, Damien: Omen II is the perfect horror movie to fall asleep to, like a warm blanket on a brisk autumn day.
THIS. Another movie I insisted on seeing alone as to not mar the experience. I remember how everyone in the audience wore the 3D glasses for the first ten minutes before we realized that it wasn't in 3D until the last reel.
