Okay. So I was given the opportunity to screen two films from the disturbingly underground looking Dead Guys Cinema website and the Serial Killers Underground website. And I was terrified…for all the wrong reasons. There’s something freakishly snuffy about these gay horror flicks featuring scantily clad young men meeting their demise. You don’t go into these looking for cheap thrills and jump scares. I was expecting scene after scene of uncomfortably violent murders. Sure I got that, but to my surprise, there was much more to these movies. However, they’re still not for everyone. It takes a special kind of gay to get into Dead Guys Cinema and Serial Killers Underground.
Dead Guys
I first watched the original Dead Guys movie, which has the tagline “Never Looked So Good.” As it reads on the DVD box, it looks like the movie is actually called Dead Guys Never Looked So Good. Great title. Anyway, the movie is directed by “Alex Dove,” a pseudonym for director Alex Pucci of the Scream Kings films and movies like Camp Slaughter and Frat House Massacre.
Dead Guys Never Looked So Good is ideal for the lover of exploitation flicks who also likes to see tons of young cute guys in only their underwear getting choked to death. Yet, despite the excessive morbidity and exploitation of the male body, the film actually has a plot.
Dead Guys Cinema is masterful at long, drawn out choking scenes that seem very real. It’s truly frightening how real they look—you kind of want to see behind the scenes footage just to know the victims walked away from the scenes alive. This particular film is about a sexy gay couple that gets off on getting guys virtually naked then choking them to death. It’s an autoerotic asphyxiation lover’s wet dream. For those of us who like a kinder, gentler form of erotica in our horror flix, a majority of this film will be disturbing.
However, in between the macabre murders, there are periodic cuts to detectives investigating the case of all the missing young men. The lead detective is an absolutely stunning looking guy. Wow. Amazingly, just when you think nothing new is going to happen, the movie takes a huge turn, with the detective creeping into the lives of the crazy couple. This exploitation flick suddenly turns into a melodramatic murder mystery cop movie! Awesome.
The film gets virtually campy—a shocking change in tone from the snuff-like feel of the first half. The boy bodies and kills continue, but the mood is lightened and it’s a refreshing change; this part feels worthy of the fun title Dead Guys Never Looked So Good. Killing chaos ensues and we get slammed with one delicious twist after another!
Okay. So it’s also a jerkoff flick for guys with choking fantasies, but mostly just the first half of the movie. I was impressed at the shift in gears of this low-budget piece of trash! The shift is so drastic that it really does feel like two different films. It may end up isolating fans of the male exploitation in the second half, while fans of straight-up erotic gay slashers might be turned off by the exploitation before they even get to the second half.
If the conclusion of Dead Guys is too “light and fluffy” for your tastes, you might want to challenge yourself to sit through the next film I viewed, from Serial Killers Underground….
From the Depths of Depravity: Forgive Me Father for I Have Sinned
From the Depths of Depravity: Forgive Me Father for I Have Sinned is like a Serial Killers Underground epic miniseries. Seriously. It’s 2 discs with a 4-hour running time! And it’s filmed on video to give it that cheap “low budget or is it snuff?” look and feel. It’s also one of those “inside the mind of a serial killer” movies, with the entire film being narrated by a self-loathing gay psychopathic priest.
This perverse and depraved flick is serious exploitation fetishism. As we hear the priest’s thought process and learn the story of why he wears a mask and has a love/hate relationship with beautiful young men, we watch a couple of hours of young men in undies, naked, showering, masturbating…and being choked to death. In true Dead Guys Cinema style, the kills are morbidly and disturbingly real.
When you arrive at disc 2, the movie feels more like a voyeuristic softcore porn video for quite a while. The priest fixates on one particular straight guy. We watch the guy showering, checking himself out in the mirror, masturbating…and the priest fantasizing about killing him. Nothing is left to the imagination—there is plenty of peen on display and even a fantasy choke kill with a pretty erect peen bouncing around. But gay fetishists beware. There’s also some serious hetero sex. This guy’s got a girlfriend. They have sex and phone sex, and she goes to TOWN on herself with a couple of fingers with plenty of close-ups.
But it gets even more hardcore. The priest eventually holds the kid hostage. He rapes him. He masturbates him. He virtually chokes him to death several times then resuscitates him. There’s also some praying involved.
Be warned. If you have serious sexual dominance issues and repressed hatred of the Catholic Church and priests, From the Depths of Depravity: Forgive Me Father for I Have Sinned will either be much needed therapy…or push you over the edge.
MY FINAL THOUGHTS
Talk about a gay horror niche market! You’re not going to find a gay Scream or gay Night of the Living Dead at Dead Guys Cinema or Serial Killers Underground. This is extreme gay exploitation for dark dudes who like to watch the erotic and the horrific copulate. I imagine a vast majority of gay horror fans would rather avoid this kind of gay torture porn, feeling more comfortable sticking with less offensive films like Maniac, Last House on the Left, and I Spit on Your Grave. You know. The kind of torture porn in which beautiful young women are exploited for our horror gratification.
If you are achingly curious now–or if this sounds like just what you’ve been looking f0r–click on over to the websites:
Here’s my Boys, Bears & Scares vlog about Dead Guys Cinema:
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