Comedy, camp, Christmas, killers, the undead, single white straight cis stalkers, all kinds of gender identities and sexual orientations…this marathon of horror seems to have everything. But let’s find out what’s missing.
THE LAST HOUSE OF HORROR (2023)
This is a shocking case of bait and switch, so I can’t justify adding it to the homo horror movies page. However, it gets a well-earned spot on the stud stalking page. It also lands on the holiday horror page because it takes place during the days leading up to a college Halloween party.
There are some highlights here for nostalgia buffs. The score is a totally 80s, synth-driven throwback. There’s an instrumental knockoff of the A Flock of Seagulls new wave classic “I Ran”. At one point, the disco song from Prom Night can be heard in the background, sped up to chipmunk speed. There’s a play on the first Scream phone call, as well as more than one killer. Plus, the film captures the look of shot-on-video movies from the VHS days.
Most importantly, there are endless scenes of college hunks in tight underwear for most of the movie, with significant closeups of their asses, and even some bare man booty. In fact, this footage is so significant that there’s little in the way of a plot, nor is there any central character to cling to.
It’s mostly hot men lounging around their dorm rooms, with a few other characters doing their own thing in between. There are shadows of individual plot lines, but none of it ever feels like it comes together to create a story beyond masked killers popping in every once in a while to slaughter someone.
The kill scenes use cheesy practical effects and CGI blood, which totally services the indie filmmaking style. Visually, the establishing shots for the kill sequences are classic, delivering all the right camera angles, horror lighting, and ominous shadows. On top of that, while there isn’t much in the way of Halloween décor for a majority of the film, when we finally get to the Halloween party, the autumn party lights and jack-o-lanterns are lit!
The biggest “twist” is the sudden shift to total heterosexual content in the final act. While all the male nudity never crosses into man-on-man action, in the end, heteronormativity prevails. A girl finds out she might be pregnant, a dude eats pussy (I’m almost convinced he was really chowing down), and there’s doggy style straight sex. We even get a final girl instead of a final guy, as a female character is instantly thrust into the spotlight for a climactic chase scene.
This brazenly erotic movie isn’t going to satisfy either end of the male sexuality spectrum. Straight guys won’t sit through the parade of exploited hunks in the first half, and gay dudes will be let down by the final act. However, bi and pan crowds may find it to be a tasty buffet.
Be warned. The film intentionally leaves us with a cliffhanger, no resolution, and the announcement of part 2. The sequel has already been made, so as soon as I find a way to watch it, you’ll be able to read all about it here.
I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU (2024)
Imagine if you will a movie that is highly entertaining but also an absolutely horrible movie in terms of content and you’ll understand I Don’t Understand You.
More a dark comedy than a horror comedy, although it does get bloody later on, the film begins with a gay couple trying to adopt a child. In the meantime, they head to Italy for a vacation, where they accept an offer to visit the restaurant of a renowned chef.
This is when things get creepy for them. Their car breaks down on a desolate country road in a rainstorm at night. A man who doesn’t speak English offers them a ride, but then drops them off at a house in the middle of nowhere and drives off. An old lady who doesn’t speak English invites them in for food and shelter. The lights go out. The phones don’t work. And then…
This movie goes totally Tucker and Dale on us, only with an educated gay couple instead of dumb and dumber. Through a series of accidents, people begin dying and the bodies pile up. But that’s not exactly true. After the first accident, this privileged white gay couple about to welcome a newborn into their lives does everything in their power to cover their tracks for fear their perfect life will be ruined.
This really is a nasty portrayal of a gay couple, because they know very well that everything they are doing is wrong, yet they just keep digging themselves deeper to protect themselves, with no regard for those who are most impacted by the situation. And yet…
…it’s so damn funny and wrong that you can’t stop watching. The hubby and I had a great time with it, laughing all the way, and all the while, I kept repeating, “This is an awful movie”.
The film stars the likes of Andrew Rannells and Amanda Seyfried, adding to its evil charm. And the 80s Starship hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” is used perfectly. Make sure to continue watching for some tag scenes between and after the closing credits.
CHRISTMAS BLOODBATH (2024)
The director of Easter Holocaust takes on Christmas with a heavy dose of John Waters weirdness and crass camp. I found this way-too-long shlockfest absolutely unbearable.
It’s sleazy, skanky, absurd, messy, confusing, filled with queer content, and an absolute bore.
A dude and his non-binary sister are heading to a museum run by a psychotic woman to get her to sell the place to a devious corporation that is selling beauty products that mutate people.
We get: drag queens playing female characters, a puppet as the head of the company, a trio of goth punks participating in a daisy chain fuck (girl in front, bi guy center, gay guy in back), abortion, murder, conjoined twins, killer dolls, killer ornaments, raunchy sex humor, tits with teeth, and eventually a killer animatronic Santa. And it all adds up to a movie that drags on for 103 minutes.
QUEENS OF THE DEAD (2025)
There was so much hype around the fact that the daughter of George Romero was making a queer zombie film, but now that I’ve seen it, I have to say that she probably shouldn’t have allowed it to be promoted via the nepotism route. I’m so let down by how weak this movie turned out. There are several indie queer zombie flicks out there that accomplish what this one fails to. It misses the mark in almost every way.
I felt like I was watching two different movies—a zombie comedy snoozer and a poorly written, no budget, queer camp comedy—that finally come together momentarily near the end to give us a hint of what could have been.
After a promising opener featuring a drag queen encountering a zombie, we are dragged into a queer bar for an exorbitant amount of tired queer banter. On the bright side, the film celebrates the queerest characters possible, with no signs of the usual cute gay white guy cast in sight. There’s a variety of colors and gender identities. Problem is most of these characters turn out to be a bunch of incessantly screaming queens instead of bad ass queer zombie fighters. Sigh.
It gets tedious and shrill fast, which is perhaps the only upside to there being barely any zombie action for them to scream through. Every character is too much of a caricature vying for attention as the queerest one of all, so there are no highs and lows or comic rhythm in the unfolding of events. You know something went horribly wrong in your diverse, queer horror movie when the funniest, most charismatic character is the one white, seemingly straight cis guy.
The characters simply don’t have much to do here for a majority of the run time beyond delivering pointless lines that don’t move the plot forward. Eventually, in the final act, a horde of zombies gathers outside, and the queers make a plan to let the living dead in for a confrontation in their safe space.
While the final fight is fun, it’s another missed opportunity. It begins as a drag performance of Ke$ha’s “Blow”, but just as the queens get up the nerve to go to war as the beat kicks in, they drop the act and simply start fighting the undead old school style. This was the golden opportunity to exploit the attempt at a campy queer horror flick by having a choreographed battle incorporated into the drag dance performance.
We do get some cameos by familiar faces, including Cheyenne Jackson, Margaret Cho, and Tom Savini, but their presence is as bland as everything else. Honestly, as much as I pride myself on my gay horror movie collection, I’m really going to have to convince myself to add this one to my library if it gets a Blu-ray release, which bums me out. I guess there’s no excuse not to buy it, considering what I did next…
THE FINAL BOY (2025)
I blind bought this one on Blu-ray because it doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere.
A twink and a somewhat beefier young guy featured in the first scene are cute together as they watch a horror movie, although their meta convo is typical and tired. However, they do reference the gayness of Elm Street 2. Once the killer comes on the scene, it gets fairly suspenseful, and the beefier boy is no slouch. He fights back, but that doesn’t matter in the end.
Next, we meet the main cast of friends at the funeral—a very long funeral with way too much establishing dialogue as they decide to honor their dead friend (the beefier guy) by going to a cabin in the woods. Due to an overwritten script, the excessive talking becomes an issue all the way through to the killer motivation speech at the end, which causes this film to run a whopping 2 hours and 6 minutes long—the scariest part.
Without a focus on eye candy, there’s a good mix of everyday queers, including one couple made up of a pansexual guy and a trans guy. There’s even an open-minded moment where a straight character asks them exactly how that works.
We get lots of exploration of the interpersonal relationships, which again means loads of talk, a few flirty sex scenes with no explicit content at all, and a brief partying montage moment.
The simple, serviceable kills don’t kick in until almost halfway through, and the killer wears a basic robe and a mask. The major body count doesn’t pile up until 90 minutes in, and half of the death scenes are shown as flashbacks as the killer reminisces in the way too long denouement dialogue.
There’s not much suspense, no body reveals, no chase scenes. I know queer indie filmmakers are determined to give us more representation in horror, but it’s crucial to also deliver on the horror, which this doesn’t. Not to mention that you will most likely figure out right from the start who the killer is and what their motivation is, so the whodunit aspect isn’t compelling either.
There’s a big Christmas dinner scene after the final credits begin to role, and once again, there’s too much talking that goes on way too long considering the big twist it is leading up to is totally obvious.
Meanwhile, the faux horror film the gay couple is watching at the beginning of the movie is included as a short film in the extras on the Blu-ray, and its old school VHS horror movie vibe is better than the actual movie.
BIG EASY QUEENS (2025)
Even at only 76 minutes long, this film cannot find its footing or decide what it wants to be. I’m only covering it because it’s labeled on IMDb as a horror movie, and I have to warn you that it is in no way a horror movie, although it attempts to shoehorn in a few bloody elements that make it look like it’s trying to be horror.
Hell, it barely passes as a comedy, mostly failing to be the campy experience it’s aiming for. It tries to appeal to a queer audience without committing to being fully queer. There are also numerous musical “numbers” that are mostly comprised of just one drag queen singing slow songs.
So why isn’t it horror? It’s about three women living and running businesses in New Orleans. There’s cheating, backstabbing, and bounties on heads, giving this more of a mob movie angle. There’s one bizarre sequence near the end of the movie that appears to be two of the women performing voodoo rituals that spawn zombies (you know, because it’s New Orleans), but I honestly have no idea if any of that was supposed to be real, because none of it ever pans out and we just go back to the mob story.
So what about the gay stuff? At first, this seems to be about three drag queens, but it turns out that two of the drag characters are playing actual female characters, and the third female character is a woman dressed like a drag queen. I don’t understand why they didn’t just have drag queens playing all three roles.
The only thing that gives this a queer element is that we are eventually treated to some hot gay male throuple action—a reveal that would have made more sense if the three female characters had been portraying drag queen characters and all been played by drag queens. The truth of the matter is that the threesome scene between the guys is the highlight of the whole movie, and it lands this one on the does the gay guy die? page.
HAG (2025)
I’m so thrilled that filmmaker Sam Wineman finally got his chance to make a full-length feature, and he pretty much knocked this queer nod to 90s erotic thrillers out of the park.
For starters, the soundtrack of electronic dance music is a banger, and you have to hear the kitschy theme song for main character Rowan during the closing credits to appreciate how obnoxiously infectious it is.
So our main guy Rowan works at a coffee shop but is also a wannabe musician who is determined to get his demo into the hands of a hot but sleazy daddy bear record executive.
In walks Mag, a cis, straight, single white female. Not only is she a new coworker, she also dated Rowan way back in middle school. She is aggressively forward in rekindling their friendship, but somehow Rowan is as oblivious to that as he is to the fact that he’s going to have to spread his cheeks for the sleazy hot daddy bear record exec if he wants a record deal. Personally, I would have chosen the record deal over the creepy girl stalker as a roommate option, but Rowan chooses otherwise.
And that’s the most uncomfortable part of this movie for me. I’ve never been a fan of the fag hag concept, and the immediate bond between Rowan and a desperate straight girl is just icky. He literally strips down in front of her practically the minute he brings her home to take a dip in the pool. What gay dude would do this?
And she refers to them as Will and Grace, but they are even twice as fucking annoying as Will and Grace.
Mag is, however, a fantastically campy psycho, and all Rowan’s friend from the coffee shop are extremely likable. Among the cast is an American Idol alum who is now known as Adore Delano of Drag Race fame.
Mag is crazy right from the start, and the distinct addition to this formulaic film is that when she has her “episodes”, she mutilates her own fingernails. Eek! That shit always freaks me out. Bitch, can’t you just cut yourself like a normal person? Mag also delivers one of the most original psycho acts I’ve ever seen in an erotic thriller, and it involves a toothbrush. Nothing grosser and greater than a germ-ridden toothbrush scene trying to be a sexy scene.
Mag starts manipulating everyone and everything to have Rowan to herself, including leading him into a threesome with a bi guy he likes.
Meanwhile, we just wait anxiously for her to totally snap and start killing people, which is saved for the final act after some carefully paced tension is built up.
You have to love when Rowan and his best friend lay a very Nancy on Elm Street style trap for the final showdown. The predicament Mag gets Rowan in during the big battle is hard to believe and kind of silly, but it totally fits the vibe of the movie. Not to mention, it’s quite clear that Mag is totally going to come back for more.
I can definitely say that this was my favorite film of this bunch, and I sure hope Tubi starts allowing their originals to be rereleased on physical media someday so I can add this one to my collection (along with the damn Terror Train remakes).
