happy halloween!

Because some of you children aren't aware of what real cinema looks like, here's The Midnight Hour - a film in which Shari Belafonte is a closeted lesbian who gets a vampire girlfriend in a wine cellar while How Soon Is Now by the Smiths plays.  Your favs could NEVER!

Eat junk food.  Have sex with a mask on.  We have a whole month to recover before Xmas.

xoxo
love u

Inside Amy Steel

“Keep clean during your menstrual cycle.”

Today I was on the elliptical listening to this months' best gym mixtape (Duel of the Fates and the Lea Michele/Melissa Benoist cover of NewYork State of Mind on repeat for an hour).  I was clicking through the cable channels when I happened upon Sandra Lee wearing a buttercream and yellow Stepford Wives apron.  She was fixing some Costco spinach and tomato wraps into tortilla chips to go with her shitty edamame guacamole dip (why she didn't just buy the Costco tortilla chips is beyond me) and it all got me thinking about feminism.

Gays can have a complicated relationship with feminism. One minute, they're watching Real Housewives, the next they're not holding the door for ladies and grabbing at their behinds without consent while using the B-word. Tricky. I don't think this exists so much in the horror community. We worship our heroines.

Last week I touched upon how, in my mind, horror movies have always been pro-women and gays.  Even though the real world is unforgiving, women always manage to come out on top in the end of a horror movie.  That’s why I love them! And there’s no better Final Woman to kick us off than Miss Amy Steel from Friday the 13th Part 2. 

There’s a reason that this is the scary movie they watch on Halloween in Mean Girls - it’s amazing!

I can’t pinpoint why Friday the 13th Part 2 works so well.  It doesn't have the tightest story in the series; it's not the most phantasmagorical nor does it bother to abide by any of the rules of space/time continuum.  Yet, there’s something special about it - a movie brazen enough to feature a Shih Tzu called "Muffin" as a protagonist. 

It certainly doesn't hurt that Friday the 13th Part 2 has the highest gay to straight ration of any of the Fridays (be it the hot gay in the wheelchair or the hot gay with the slingshot who was on Million Dollar Listing last year or the blonde maybe-gay with the clipboard…). 

Maybe it’s the fact that it opens with a twelve minute art film prologue starring Adrienne King and a cat; or maybe it’s the comedy stylings of sexy beanpole Stu Charno playing scenes in a loincloth – or it could be the fact that the entire cast seems to genuinely enjoy one another.  Whatever the cause, this movie is magical.

While there’s genuine power in objectification (just ask Matthew Bomer), Amy Steele is not a feminist in the Showgirls/Megan Fox sense of the word.  She's the kind of feminist who wears flats and refuses to brush her hair; the type who only owns sports bras. 

Amy (an unabashed ginger) is a developmental psychologist tomboy who decided to work at a camp for the summer.  You know, to practice.  

Arriving late to her first day of Counselor Training in her vintage red bug and sporting a clashing pink peasant skirt to show off her field hockey physique, Amy knows how to make an entrance.  She's self-assured and bold. Despite her ethereal demeanor, within two hours Ms. Steel manages to exert her charms at every turn and has all the boys eating out of her hand. Feminism.

Like all strong and independent women, Amy knows the importance of taking a minute to enjoy a good drink.  Accordingly, she hauls half the counselors far away from the cabins of Camp Crystal Lake and to the safety of the local pub where she proceeds to get hammered and talk about the psychological shortcomings of men.  A girl after my own heart! 

She waxes poetic about Jason's emotional well being.  Preparing to enter her last semester of grad school, Amy intuits that Jason must have survived his drowning and must still be living in the woods like a feral animal all these years.  Then she calls him the R-word. Tough love. I like it. A good final girl always thinks on her feet.

Like all stars who refuse to be confined to gender-stereotypes, Amy certainly knows how to make good TV.  When she’s in her final showdown with Jason (in one of the tightest ten minute sequences in the entire franchise), she pulls out every stop.  I’m talking costume changes. She falls out windows, she trudges through streams, she wields chainsaws, she communes with rats, she even pees her pants - a Stunt Queen through and through! 

Amy Steel is the only Final Girl who commands Jason to kneel at her feet before killing him - and he complies! Who says horror movies aren't feminist?  I don't recall Amy Adams getting General Zod to bow down in that Superman movie and that cost a lot more than Friday the 13th Part 2!!

Let us sleep tight knowing that for every disposable movie where women are treated like props to service reductive straight male wish fulfillment, there is a Friday the 13th Part 2 out there. Thirty years have gone by and we're still talking about it.  Who's on top and who's on bottom now?

FaggotyAss Drinking Game - shooters any time you see a closeup of someone's hands or feet (just make sure you don't have any place to be the rest of the evening).

every gay deserves a lesbian bestie...

...and mine is going to be Amber Heard!

We've been following your progress for quite some time, Amber.  But going to the GLAAD awards with your girlfriend has officially earned you the crown.  You are the greatest Scream Queen of our generation!  Congratulations, babydoll.  You have made us all proud and your grapefruit basket is in the mail.

Now hurry up and come over, I need you to drive me to the Home Depot and show me how to use a belt sander.

Maybe it's Maybeline

"Look, she's suffered some sort of memory loss..."

First and foremost, let it NEVER be said that horror is not a gay man's medium.  The fake IMAX theatre in Century City was festooned with upwardly mobile homosexuals last night, hellbent on seeing the Faggotyass Best Actress of 2009 fight zombies while in her first trimester.  I was invigorated (and maybe a little drunk).  The time had finally come for Resident Evil: Afterlife.

I have never played video games.  I have no idea what on Earth is going on in these Resident Evil movies - but who cares?  Paul W.S. Anderson makes them with so much joy, you've got to be a grouch or just soulless not to appreciate their reckless abandon and complete disregard for continuity.

In this particular movie, Milla Jovovich is a on a quest to find Ali Larter.  After a quick stop at Vidal Sasson in this season's best wool-lined parka, she heads off in a biplane from Japan to Alaska. Unfortunately, Ali Larter has been implanted with a robotic spider between her bosom that has left her in a state of amnesiatic savagery.  Luckily, this conflict resolves itself with a quick dissolve to her lying unconscious, sans robotic spider.  You may be thinking that with the Umbrella Corporation hiding around every corner, a girl doesn't have time to look her best... Not so!  Just because we're some eight years into the zombie apocalypse, that doesn't mean a girl doesn't deserve a full face.  You never know who she could run into.  In one of the most touching sentiments of sisterhood ever captured in horror cinema (albeit off-camera), Milla applies a perfect face of 90s neutrals to Ali before they set off on an adventure down the coast.  It's a good thing she did because Milla and Ali wind up making an expected pitstop in zombie-infested West Hollywood where they happen upon Ali's gay brother.  Naturally.  Hilarity ensues.

Even after my champagne wore off, I had a blast.  The 3D is breathtaking - this is the first movie actually shot in 3D since Avatar (discounting cartoons), and it shows. Sure, the acting is nonexistent, the plot makes no sense, and the setpieces are obviously just shot in a room in Canada someplace - that's the fun!  Like a delicious bag of candy corn, Resident Evil: Afterlife is the perfect film to kick-off the Autumn season and it provides ample inspiration to start our Halloween diets on Monday.  How lucky can you get?

back to school again

Portrait of a Lesbian

"There's a door down here and I'll bet there's something behind it."

Yesterday was the longest day of the year.  How did you celebrate? I, for one, wore my best straw hat.  If you haven't already, I strongly advise you to take a day off.  Call in sick and go enjoy yourself. Life's too short for sitting at a computer!

I remember those sultry days of youth like they were yesterday; sneaking off in my short shorts, (armed with processed cheese slices for sustenance) perching myself high atop an elm tree to catch a furtive glance at the boys next door slamming into each other on the slip'n'slide.  I didn't have any brothers or sisters so I had to make my own fun.

Summers were made for breaking into abandoned factories and for creating elaborate subplots involving my elderly neighbors.  This may be why I have always felt such a strong connection to Phantasm (1978).

Phantasm is about a lesbian with too much time on her hands.  "But, Jeff, you've never related to lesbians before!" I know.  Prepare to be confused.

Jody (who is a boy) is having a tough time.  His parents are dead and he is left all alone to raise his sister (who insists on being called "Mike" - which has been traditionally considered boy's name).  Mike is terrified of losing her brother to other women - she has some real abandonment issues since the death of their parents. Jody's only happiness comes from hooking up with townie girls in the local cemetery and from the occasional jam session with his best friend, Reggie (a man who has his own ice cream truck and who happens to be 38).  Without any money for summer camp or Indigo Girls albums, Mike starts letting her imagination get the best of her.  

If life has taught me anything, it's that the fear of abandonment can lead to deviant behavior in lesbians.   The summer starts off innocuous enough, with Mike following her brother all over town. However, things soon take a turn for the worse when Mike starts imagining that every girl that Jody hooks up with is really a demonic Jawa in disguise.  Mike creates elaborate fantasies involving the creepy old man who runs the town mortuary chasing her all over town and steel balls flying at her face at every turn. She finally lets herself get close and relate to new people (Sally and Suzy, the kindly women who run the local antique shoppe) only to have them viciously slaughtered by Jawas.  Mike starts breaking into mortuaries and stealing body parts to cover with mustard and put in her treasure box...she's losing it! Is this really happening? Is this all in her fevered lesbian mind? From here on out, Phantasm feels like a hallucination induced from a few too many Dos Equis after a day in the sun. 

Gender identity and inter-dimensional travel aside, Phantasm is quite remarkable.  Years ahead of its time, this film influenced everything from The Evil Dead to Stephen King.  Phantasm also features one of the best domestic horror scores of all time.  Apply some SPF 15, grab yourself a six-pack and welcome in the summer the right way.  Do it for Mike.

breaking news: clarice starling edition

"The official reason I didn’t do Hannibal is I was doing another movie, Flora Plum. So I get to say, in a nice dignified way, that I wasn’t available when that movie was being shot...Clarice meant so much to Jonathan and I, she really did, and I know it sounds kind of strange to say but there was no way that either of us could really trample on her."