close the door, turn out the lights...

"Naughty."

If you thought that little girl in Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire was an experiment in endurance, then you obviously haven't seen Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984).  Poor Billy.

Billy was an angel from heaven with dewy, expressive Bambi eyes and preternaturally moistened red lips. Then, one Christmas Eve, his parents had the bright idea to take him to the Utah Mental Facility to visit his pedophilic monster of a grandfather.  Grampy gets off on terrifying little Billy year after year - this year planting seeds about how Santa Claus is a vengeful demon hellbent on the destruction of all that's naughty in the world. After Billy is thoroughly traumatized, his parents take him off for a late night drive in the woods where they are promptly attacked by a murderous convict in a Santa Claus suit.  Billy's dad is shot in the head, his mom's throat gets slashed in front of him, and his little brother, Lennie, is thrown off into the woods someplace to be raised by wolves (or Sarah Palin).

Billy soon found himself in the less capable hands of the wicked lesbian nuns at St. Mary's Home for Orphaned Children. He's a regular Christina Crawford, this Billy! After years of beatings from Mother Superior and a warped perception of heterosexual sexuality from having seen his mother assaulted  by a man in a Santa suit as a child, something rather curious happened to Billy: he got insanely HOT. 

Billy realized that he was far too attractive for the company that he was keeping, so he renounces the Christianity that the nuns hold so dear.  Seeing their hypocrisies firsthand, he decides to bask in the warm, electric light of Mormonism. Mormons love repressed homosexuality and a deeply warped sense of right and wrong! He’ll  fit right in.

Mormons are hard workers.  They drink lots of milk so they can do heavy lifting and they have pretty blonde hair and skin.  Mormons have amazing bodies, but be careful - beneath those gleaming dead eyes and perfected fake smiles, they are not to be trusted!  Just go and ask the fine people who worked at Ira's Toys, where Billy got a job as a stock boy.  Oh, wait, you can't ask them anything because they're all dead!! All the years of repressed sexuality, rage, and wearing funny underwear finally set Billy off on a Christmas bloodbath the likes of which America has never seen.

"You see Santa Claus tonight, you better run, boy!  You better run for your life!!"

Silent Night, Deadly Night is amazing. I watch it every year.  Aside from the sheer animal magnetism of our protagonist (I'd let him hack me to pieces, okay?!), the director makes sure to spend a whole lot of time focusing on male ass shots, whether clothed in tight, high-waisted Lee jeans or just hairy and naked as God intended. Our first shot of adult Billy is a tight shot on his crotch.  If you know straight people or lesbians, there are at least 4 different sets of boobs on display as well. Something for everyone. I just love any movie that shows blood on snow and Linnea Quigley having sex on a pool table and a climactic showdown in an orphanage run by malevolent and immortal nuns.

I hope these stains come out!

That's not what a covergirl puts in her body!

In honor of the 20th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, I turn your attention to one of my first crushes: Joe Seely.

(cue up Barbra Streisand's love theme from A Star is Born for optimum appreciation of the following)

Love, soft as an easy chair.  Love, fresh as the morning air.
One love that is shared by two, I have found with you.

Like a rose under the April snow, I was always certain love would grow.

Love, ageless and evergreen, seldom seen by two.

You and I will make each night a first, every day a beginning.  Spirits rise and their dance is unrehearsed.  They warm and excited us 'cause we had the brightest love. 

Two lights that shine as one.
Morning glory and the midnight sun.

Time we've learned to sail above. Time won't change the meaning of one love, ageless and ever evergreen.

Evergreen.

If you have not spent time with this film, do.  Even if only for Danny Hassel's brilliant motorcycle transformation or for Erika Anderson's touching struggle with bulimia, or to see my boo, Joe Seely, turn into a comic book superhero in the manner of the Ah-Ha music video.

the biggest gift would be from me...

“You can’t live in the past, honey.”

I will be the first one to tell you that I get weird about my birthday. I never want to make a big fuss so I don’t tell anyone about it, only to wind up morbidly depressed when nobody acknowledges my existence with cakes and pizzas and exotic chalets and skypes with Julie Taymor. This cycle repeats every year.  

Adding to this neuroses, my birthday falls just a couple days shy of Christmas, making me a victim of “holiday” presents (which only seems unfair when considering I buy my friends both Christmas and birthday gifts, but who’s keeping track).  Add that to the fact that no one is ever in town because they all have families and... I'm sorry!  As you can see, birthdays can be a hotbed of anxiety and angst. 

But you don’t have to take my word for it, just ask Melissa Sue Anderson!

Things were going relatively well for Melissa Sue Anderson since her crippling and mysterious brain surgery four years ago. She was part of the most popular clique in school, she had cute boys interested in her and, on occasion, her hair wasn’t even that frizzy! But Melissa Sue is a complicated little nut to crack. You see, she’s a bit melancholy about the death of her mother; she can’t decide if she’s a lesbian or if she wants to bed her therapist (some 30 years her senior) - on top of all this, she has to plan her own birthday party. It’s all too much and it's all going to her head! 

There's a lot to be learned from Melissa's birthday misadventures.  I, for one, won't let anybody feed me shish kebabs in front of a fireplace anymore because the chances are pretty good that they are a misandric, previously conjoined twin hellbent on revenge for some catty thing I did 20 years ago.

When I was in second grade there was a precious little monkey boy in my class. We all know the type.  He was the kind of gay boy who stood out like Chita Rivera at a Korean taco truck, he just could not blend.  Bless his heart. I hated him for being gay because, subconsciously, I was terrified that he’d start an elementary school witch hunt and the kids would be on my queer case soon thereafter.

One day, he was having a birthday party and he handed out these gorgeous homemade invitations.  They were perfect - covered in lace and glitter and feathers, folded to perfection. Well, in a daring display of homosexual contempt, I tore the invitation up in front of all the other kids in the class.  This prompted waves of laughter in the gay boys' direction seldom seen since Carrie got her period in the shower.

I’m not proud of my actions that day and karma came back to bite me in the ass years later, but that’s basically what happened to Melissa Sue Anderson.  Melissa threw a party and no one came but her alcoholic mother and she’s been waiting patiently for ten years to exact her revenge.

"I'm a rich woman now and I'm back to shove it in their faces!"

Happy Birthday to Me (1981) is St. Elmo’s Fire for the horror set. It follows the elitist “top ten” seniors of The Joan Crawford Academy as they plan for the future, drink to good health, and get brutally massacred in the campiest fashion imaginable. Who doesn’t wish St Elmo’s had ended with Emilo Estevez getting his face mashed off on a speeding moped tire by Andie McDowell ?!

This movie has it all: 1980s fashion, a genuine camaraderie between its characters, men in short shorts, female psychosis, emotionally and physically abusive mothers, race cars, and a third act that flies off the rails and into the stratosphere.  

A lot of schlock came out during the horror craze of the early 1980s. While this movie may be ludicrous and campy, it’s capably made. The production design and photography are fantastic, as are the makeup effects and gore (albeit trimmed from its original cut to garner an R rating). Kevin Williamson owes someone a residual check for ripping off the Happy Birthday to Me dénouement in his Scream movie. The real joy comes from these actors having the time of their lives on camera and giving a lot more than what was on the page to every scene. Happy Birthday to Me is a delicious piece of cake with pretty pink icing and, when faced with an opportunity to have cake, always treat yourself!

Opened by Progressive Entrapment

"Again with the evil!"

      

Ladies, have you ever suspected that your boyfriend may be the tiniest bit queer? 

Well, next time you have the kids over for a fondue party, after you’ve washed your hair with your pantene pro-v shampoo/conditioner and lauded yourself for being beautiful, you may want to pull out a Ouija board – or a Witchboard (1985) as the children call them nowadays.

Tawny Kitaen is one of those girls who are crazy hot and seem to have it all until they speak and you realize that their permissive sexuality is just cover for deep depression, body issues, and never getting enough attention from her dad after the third grade talent show. That's why she voted republican.  Poor Tawny.  I’ll give her one thing: she can host a party. When not writhing on a car in a Whitesnake video or chatting up Dr. Drew, Tawny is always entertaining!  Her guests are at the height of fashion and they can pontificate on God in relation to art and the big bang theory for hours on end! She is the one who taught me that a party is only as good as your guest-list. 

However, one night Tawny made the tragic mistake of inviting this queen named Brandon to her dinner party.  Brandon is that bitchy shrew who ruins the party in The Boys in the Band, complete with Egyptian rings and gold bracelets; only, instead of the telephone game, Brandon makes them all play with his Ouija board then chastises them for their pronunciation ("wee-jah" is correct, never "wee-gee").  Leave it to a gay! 

Adding insult to injury, Tawny learns that the boy she had been courting for months, Jim, is not only a gay, but was once in a long term relationship with bitchy Brandon and her party was only a means of getting them back together. Not again!

Tawny uses all her "love me" tactics - throwing herself into walls and pouring ketchup on her floor, but those boys are gay for each other and want nothing more to do with her.  You know how bitchy fags can be.  Left to her own devices, Tawny makes friends with a spirit through the Ouija board who helps her realize that she’s better than just being a pawn to gay men and drugged-out rockers.

"You know what I'm afraid of more than anything else? That I'll never be able to love anyone and I'll spend the rest of my life alone."

Witchboard's a riot.  As my friend John would say, it's like a bad Wednesday episode of General Hospital!  Regardless of it having been shot on a camcorder with bare-bulb utility lights, this movie is enjoyable and remarkably and unapologetically a gay love story.  Jim works at the gayest construction site you've ever seen where all the men wear high-waisted jeans and no shirts.  People die in this movie that are in no way related to the Ouija or our protagonists. Rose Marie plays a landlady named Mrs. Moses (because she's so old, GET IT?!).  Men weep openly.  Tawny Kitaen has a waterbed.  I'm getting myself all worked up just talking about it.  I better lie down.

happy aids day!!!

hungry like the wolf

"That's enough with the biting."

I’m gonna tell you a secret: sometimes I get a little hungry for a happy ending. Socially awkard girls with no marketable skills and borderline lesbian tendencies get to swoon over sparkley hipster vampires and LatinX werewolves. Women of a certain age have Nancy Meyers romantic dramedies with terrible overhead lighting and self-hating female leads. For me, escapism is imagining a world where gays can live happily ever after in functional relationships (if they so desire) with a craftsman homes and reasonable taxation for representation. 

While it’s wicked awesome that Milk and Brokeback Mountain can make piles of money and get progressive soccer moms to feel like they’re reaching out to minorities – these movies still make a martyr of the fags.  We die so people feel “woke.”

But then I had to wonder: Can we ever have a happy ending?

From time to time, when starved for any reflection of the contemporary gay experience, one begins to see gay subtext in the mainstream. 

You don’t have to be Nancy Drew to see that the Neil Jordan/Jodie Foster movie, The Brave One, was clearly intended to be a lesbian revenge thriller - no one gets bashed for being heterosexual in Manhattan.   Popularized by Quentin Tarrantio and Kevin Smith, once you look at Top Gun through the gay kaleidoscope, it’s impossible to see it as anything but a story of two men coming to terms with their love for each other…no straight guy would sing karaoke to Kelly McGillis. 

Wes Craven (always a friend to the gays) and Kevin Williamson (always gay) made a movie that no one saw called Cursed (2005). Cursed uses werewolf bloodlust as a metaphor for dormant sexuality with the 1990s popcorn horror paradigm as its model, only it was released in 2004.  Both pastiche and ahead of its time, Cursed may be the gayest entry in the Craven oeuvre and it comes SO close to presenting a gay happily-ever-after that it merits exploration.

Jesse Eisenberg and Christina Ricci are siblings who are touched by The Wolf. Christina wears ill-fitting business suits and styles her hair in a bun to imply that their parents are dead.  Like Judy Greer and Portia DeRossi (who also ham it up in Cursed), Christina doesn’t exist without a gay audience.  Her performance counters realism. Always mindful of her deaf fans, she makes a lot of faces and indicates everything.  She is drawn to emotionally distant men (amen) and men are drawn to her. Pacey from Dawson’s Creek is her boyfriend and he has perpetual stubble on his face as to indicate that he is a werewolf.  Milo Ventimiglia is the captain of the high school wrestling team. He drives a camaro and he’s in love with Jesse Eisenberg. 

Jesse and Milo pretend to compete for the attention of an anorexic girl to make her feel better about herself, it’s very sweet, but they really just want to wrestle with each other. When push comes to shove, Milo comes out to Jesse and, together, they fend off the werewolf hoards and still have time to go out on the town with Lance Bass and his obnoxious Florida friends.

Let there be no question that when a movie has its climax in front of a Cher mannequin, it's a GAY MOVIE.  So why does Jesse never say, "Hey cool, Milo - I think my neurotic misanthropy is actually a smokescreen to cover-up my stifled homosexuality as well, let's make out!"?  

Why must we read between the lines?  How can a movie be so queer as to have Judy Greer play an evil publicist who happens to be the Queen of the computer-generated Wolves in a Bob Mackie slit-to-the-crotch purple gown and not have the balls to just let its secondary lead live happily ever after with a hot (albeit physically and emotionally diminutive) boyfriend?  Considering that Hollywood still refuses to let women carry movies, I suppose it really isn't homophobia as much as it is misogyny and the bottom-line.  At this point in his career, post-Scream and Dawson's Creek, Williamson could have done better.  He could have pushed boundaries instead of uncle tom-ing his gays.  If you try to appeal to everyone (ie: the Weinsteins), you wind up making no money and your movie is exiled to the graveyard of castrated opportunities.  Lesson learned.