Calling all gay horror whores

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Daniel

To celebrate horror pride, I’ve revised several of my posts about my life in gay horror, which originally appeared on my former publisher’s website, and I am reposting them on Boys, Bears & Scares so they’ll have a permanent home. No better way to start things off than with my “Calling all gay horror whores” post…

As a gay guy who has been obsessed with horror since I was a little kid, I never searched for any correlation between the genre and the orientation. I just thought horror fans were horror fans. But because horror over the decades has been so heterosexual male-oriented, when I began writing my own horror fiction, I decided it made sense to do it from the all-male perspective while modeling it after the tried and true traits of the genre: scares and sex.

My first erotic horror collection Closet Monsters included five erotic horror stories and the novella Zombied Out, which had some sexual situations but was not erotica. I used the same formula with my second collection, Horny Devils. This time the novella, entitled Scream, Queen!, was a gay slasher—which has been reprinted as part of a Halloween double feature in Wet Screams, the fourth installment of my Comfort Cove gay horror series. It was easy to sex up Scream, Queen!, because the slasher genre lends itself to “gratuitous” sex. That was when I realized I would never write a sex-less horror novel. For me, just like humor, injections of sex into horror help to awaken the senses and totally screw with your mental state. It’s part of the ride: I’m scared. Now I’m horny. I just peed a little from laughing. I almost shit my pants from fear.

Sex in my writing is not necessarily always an “integral part of the plot.” Just like in real life (and straight horror), when the opportunity seems right, in it goes. If a given moment guarantees the characters would be having sex, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to go into explicit detail rather than cut away! But I don’t consider my writing erotica. It’s not written solely to get readers off, so it’s not like you’re reading a sex story labeled “erotic horror” simply because the guys are having sex on Halloween night. These are actual horror stories, albeit loaded with naughty sex.

Unfortunately, gay horror often targets the “erotica” market rather than the horror market, which does it a great disservice. There’s a good chance when an erotica reader sees a sexy guy on the cover of a gay horror book, he’s in for something he didn’t bargain for: gratuitous horror along with the sex. When the cover also captures the horror elements (something I strive for on the covers of my own novels when I come up with the concepts myself–see the Closet Monsters cover above), the erotica reader may be repelled by the horror. However, the horror fan—the true market for the genre—will be intrigued. And unless he’s a horror reader who finds that sex gets in the way of the story and wasn’t tipped off about its inclusion in the book by the half-naked guy on the cover, he’ll be right at home with every gory gay, horny homo detail.

Two great tastes…but do they really go great together?

Hey! You got sex in my horror! No! You got horror in my sex!

What’s all the bickering about? Isn’t that a delicious combo? Does the inclusion of sex in horror fiction automatically make it “erotic” horror? It seems in the world of publishing, heavy sexual content scores you an “erotica” label, just like we expect a penis in a movie to get slapped…with an NC-17 rating, that is. But isn’t there a distinct difference between sex and erotica depending on its purpose within the context of a story and its effect on the reader?

Either way, you would think that in the world of LGBTQ fiction, expressing our sexuality openly in our stories would be embraced. Hell, it should be encouraged! Instead, we need the prudish “erotic” warning label to protect our virgin minds from unsavory adult content!

It often seems that the inclusion of sex in a book has readers holding crossed fingers up to it as if they’re warding off a vampire with a crucifix or stamping an X rating on the book. And so fiction that features sexual situations gets the old “erotic” subgenre attached to the true genre: erotic horror; erotic romance; erotic mystery; erotic fantasy (that last one sounds the dirtiest of all).

I don’t know how it works with the other genres, but I personally cringe every time I see the word “erotic” attached to the “horror” classification on my fiction. Just the fact that “erotic” leads the classification creates an assumption about a book; before even getting to the “horror” part, the mind has already sent the wrong signal of terror loud and clear: “EEK! This is a sex book!”

I would prefer to call my fiction grindhouse horror comedy or exploitation horror. As in those types of movies, the sex in my books is most often presented as over-the-top, absurd, and funny. For instance, a man’s expulsions taste just like dairy when he’s “milked” in my first Comfort Cove gay horror novel Combustion, and a young man who practices the black arts pleasures a big red bear with a dildo using only his mind in the second installment, No Place for Little Ones.

Occasionally, there’s a “romantic” sex scene (because my characters do have hearts!), but generally, the sex is there as a prelude to the horror, to place characters at their most vulnerable when the horror shows itself, or even to just go for the good old gross out.

These are all purposes that go hand-in-hand with horror. Sex isn’t meant to arouse; it is intended as foreplay to awaken the senses and emotions and to enhance the intensity of the climactic moment of fear. And, hey. If sex in horror does turn some readers on, that’s a result of their warped ids. Some people are that sick and twisted—my readers, for instance. I’m fine with them calling my stuff erotic horror. For the rest of you, it’s simply horror. Just have an adult cover your eyes during the dirty parts.

When I started my writing journey, I just assumed horror and eroticism a logical fusion for gay horror fans. Imagine my surprise when some reviews expressed appreciation for the…um…meat of my stories but then made comments about the sex being a distraction. As someone who grew up at a time when sex was mandatory in horror, I’m going to guess these readers weren’t properly raised on sex and violence.

I’ve even seen the equating of the sex in my horror fiction to “sexual assault.” That’s far from the same thing as doing something sexual with a man because you want to be forced into doing it with him, as is usually the case in my stories. Sexual situations involving an unwilling participant are a complete turn off for me—I’ve read that kind of erotic fiction with no enjoyment and watched it go on to win literary awards. Which means I won’t be winning any awards any time soon, because you won’t often find a Deliverance moment in my writing. When you do, the point is absolutely not to arouse; it is to horrify—as when a bunch of crazed dockworkers shove a little man up the ass of a 15-foot man in The Rise of the Thing Down Below, the third novel in my Comfort Cove gay horror series. I can’t be responsible for where the mind wants to go, but isn’t it possible that what might be making readers uncomfortable is that they are left questioning whether or not a scene is supposed to be turning them on?

Perhaps it’s easier for a gay reader to assume such scenes in my books are intended to be sexual because, unlike a heterosexual male, who is most likely repulsed by the idea of butt fucking (as depicted in Deliverance), gay men generally expect it to be a positive experience. Look at it from the reverse perspective. A gay man watching I Spit on Your Grave is not likely to see the rape scene as sexual at all, but the protective anonymity of internet message boards shows time and again that there are heterosexual men who do find it stimulating. Does that mean they are sick individuals, or does it mean that horror is succeeding in making them uncomfortable about the darkness within themselves? Maybe that’s why the sex in my books unnerves gay readers; it makes them contemplate what they never had to when female T&A was being splashed needlessly across the screen through twelve Jason movies.

Either way, whether sex is in place to arouse or to disturb, of all people to express distaste in its presence I never imagined it would be gay men. Could it be true? Straight male horror fans are more in touch with their sexual selves than gay horror fans? Was I going about writing gay horror all wrong?

Thankfully, for every comment about the supposed unnecessary sex in my writing, there is appreciation of it. It was nice to have someone tell me that my story “Woof!” proved to be the first time werewolves made him hot. I often get nods for writing horror stories that feature piggish, hairy, burly bears instead of vanilla, smooth, pretty boys. Not all gay men want sex in their horror, but there are definitely those who aren’t complaining. Still, it’s hard to find the community of gay sex and horror lovers. General horror message boards aren’t bringing them out of the closet. I began to wonder just how niche the market was for my writing.

Then a friend turned me on to a Greenwich Village bear establishment called Rockbar NYC, where a couple of horror-loving gay guys hold a horror trivia night a few times a year. Before I know it, I’m co-hosting the trivia night and doing a reading/signing of my books. I had a blast. Here was a bar full of gay men who could answer the question: How many people did Cujo kill? That night, my erotic horror anthologies were bought and given away as prizes. But did that mean gay horror lovers would actually like them? I didn’t know.

With the release of Combustion the first in my Comfort Cove gay horror series, I returned to Rockbar NYC and something wonderful happened. What was clearly a regular crowd at horror trivia night remembered me as much as I remembered them. And they had actually delved into my books. I witnessed one friend tell a couple that when he read my novella Zombied Out, he pictured them as the bear couple in the book. Another reader told me that whenever anyone peruses his bookshelves, their eyes are drawn immediately to my books. Yet another horror fan told me that he won my book in the trivia contest the first time I was there, loved it, and read it out loud to his adora-bear hubby. He specifically referenced my story “Monstrosity” about a man suffering from a case of “gargantuanism.” He said the ending was horrific—but readily admitted that he also thought it was so hot he took care of business to it more than once. Good news for him. That huge man becomes a main character in the novels in my Comfort Cove series.

And there it was. Evidence that my kind of gay erotic horror fan is out there. I’d been in contact with one occasionally over the internet, but to be in a bar full of them was not only an honor…it was hot as hell. And so I created Boys, Bears & Scares, dedicated to everything gay horror, from movies and books to art and graphic novels. Doing so has connected me to lovers of gay horror, from the men who create it to fans who devour it. It’s a place where gay horror fans can find an exhaustive and ever-growing list of what’s out there. And in the years since I launched the site, it’s a thrill to see how many other sites, social media accounts, and podcasts have popped up focusing on horror from an LGBTQ perspective.

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I don’t know why I swallowed all this fly

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Daniel

Actually, I do know why. The Fly legacy rules and has haunted me since my childhood. So let’s get into all five films.

THE FLY (1958)

The pure simplicity of The Fly makes it such a classic of the 1950s. While it freaked me out as a kid, the truth is, this isn’t a monster movie in which the fly is a creature to be terrified of beyond how he looks. Instead it’s a tragic tale of nature gone wrong–the fly is, in a sense, the victim of the horror here, sort of making this a play on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” concept. But alas, the man seals his own fate here by messing with science.

In essence this is a tale of a scientist who creates a “Beam me up, Scotty!” machine. He figures out how to teleport physical matter from one chamber to another in his lab by pulling the molecules apart then reforming them. You would think after the sick bastard sends his pet cat into thin air, never to return, he wouldn’t fuck around anymore.

Instead, he gets in the machine himself…not knowing a fly buzzed into the chamber. The results of the teleporting is a mashup of the two life forms. So, while the scientist keeps his face hidden from his wife, he instructs her and her son to try desperately to hunt down and capture a fly with a white head. Eek.

I only have dozens of eyes for you, honey. Now find that fly!

The suspense of the entire film is based around a) seeing what he looks like under the towel, and b) seeing what the white-headed fly looks like. And it’s worth the wait.

The classic final scene with Vincent Price discovering the fly in a horrific predicament in the garden still gives me the willies when I see and hear it and remains one of horror’s most disturbingly effective moments for me.

RETURN OF THE FLY (1959)

It’s always fascinating to look back at just how long horror has been pulling the cash-in stunt of rushing out sequels, not to mention doing the old rinse and repeat while just making sure to add more horror.

Released only a year after the original classic, Return of the Fly gives us a jolting surprise; it’s black and white! I love me some black and white horror, but I prefer continuity, so this regression to a then dying film format is disappointing. But seeing as to how much more cartoonishly monstrous the fly head is this time, it’s probably better it’s camouflaged by the gloom of the colorless format.

Vincent Price is back, and the son from the first film is an adult he warns away from continuing his dad’s scientific work. Lucky for us he doesn’t heed the warning.

There are more animal/human crossovers this time to horrify us, and when the scientist finally ends up getting accidentally mixed up with a fly that gets in the machine (what are the odds?), wouldn’t you know he coincidentally switches the same exact body parts with the insect that his dad did?

The fly with a human head looks ridiculous this time, but at least the big man fly is much more of a monster than a tragic figure, and goes around killing people. There’s even a good jump scare. Awesome.

CURSE OF THE FLY (1965)

It seems virtually pointless to continue the franchise name six years later in a movie that has no fly monster at all. Hell, this could have cashed in as a sequel to Freaks instead.

Very loosely tied to the previous films, the family experimenting with teleportation is poorly linked by a family tree that isn’t really possible based on the first two films, so you just have to go with it. Also, the detective has the same character name, but is played by a different actor.

You’re really best off watching this as a pretty creepy standalone film. A woman escapes from a mental institution, meets a man, marries him, and goes to live at his home, unaware that his failed experiments with teleportation are leaving behind a collection of deformed humans he keeps locked away and under the watchful eye of a woman who is freaky herself.

There really isn’t much more to it than that. The ignorant woman who is destined to discover and be terrorized by her husband’s dirty secret, all the while being told by him and his family that she’s imaging things.

Atmospheric and eerie, this one does benefit from black and white film. Unfortunately, it falls apart at the end with a very sloppy denouement.

THE FLY (1986)

If you’re going to remake and reimagine a horror classic for a modern audience (30 years ago), you need to do it the way David Cronenberg did The Fly. A virtual rewrite beyond the core premise, the 1986 film deconstructs the deconstruction of man and fly, making a gradual transformation the factor that carries the plot.

Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis are both at the top of their game, and their performances as virtually the only characters in the film add to its strength.

Jeff is a scientist, Geena is a reporter. They hit it off then he shows her his experiment. You would think once he tries his teleportation on a monkey and the machine turns the poor thing inside out, he would never even consider getting in the machine himself. Idiot.

Gone is the swapped body parts, so there’s no man with a fly’s head and no hunting for a white-headed fly. Instead, the two completely fuse structurally into one, so Jeff slowly begins to change.

He becomes more agile, he becomes virile, he becomes angry, and he becomes strong. I didn’t know flies were virile, angry, or strong. I also didn’t know that if you go to a bar with bad skin, then snap a guy’s bone out of his skin during an arm wrestle, you could just walk out with no repercussions and some bimbo will still go home with you.

Jeff’s slow metamorphosis delivers the gruesome, disgusting horror. I mean, I love a hairy guy, but if coarse bug hairs started growing out of his back, I’d start having second thoughts. And once my guy began puking on his food before devouring it, I’d be out of there. Brings a whole new meaning to having your ass eaten out.

The acid puke is definitely the kicker in this remake, with Jeff eventually taking out his jealousy on one character in one of the most heinous ways. Plus, we finally do get to see a fly version of Jeff, and it’s a nightmare.

And let’s just say it’s a good thing Geena doesn’t live in one of those states that would make her carry a fly larva to full term.

THE FLY II (1989)

Cronenberg doesn’t return to make the sequel, which is a pointless rehash that sticks to the formula of the original sequel–more monster, more murder. As ridiculous as it is as a sequel, it’s definitely a good, gory creature feature.

The son of the fly is born to a pretty good Geena Davis lookalike. As he grows to become Eric Stoltz…in a lab…a scientist who acts as his father figure continues to experiment with teleportation and urges him to continue his father’s work.

It’s a struggle for Stoltz, who secretly sneaked into the lab as a child and saw the scientist experiment with his beloved dog with tragic results.

Having just lost my own Miss Fine, the little puppy love of my life, only a month ago, the segment about the dog was excruciatingly long and heartbreaking during the revisit of the film, and I ended up fricking sobbing non-stop for like fifteen minutes. Since the movie runs fifteen minutes longer than the first one and begins to drag, I vote that much of the dog part should have been cut.

The film really does drag as it goes into recycled territory. Stoltz begins a relationship with Daphne Zuniga (who I still think is the same person as Justine Bateman) in a montage set to a KD Lang song. Then he begins to change, realizes he is his father’s son, gets angry, and unlike his dad, goes on a massive killing spree through the lab.

Although the “fly” looks nothing like a bug, it makes excessive use of its acid puke as it takes down lab workers left and right. It’s not the fly, but it is definitely a creature feature good time. It also end with a mean-spirited revenge twist.

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Is Knife + Heart the gay slasher gays have been thirsting for?

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Daniel

I’ve been excited to see gay French horror film Knife + Heart ever since it started getting loads of promotion and then loads of raves from gay horror fans. As a result, I was also wary of being hugely disappointed by over hype—the death toll for many horror movies these days.

Now, after scoring a copy of the Blu-ray to add to my collection of homo horror movies, I can safely say…it’s a mixed bag for me.

Much of what I’ve heard about the film is that it’s both a slasher and homage to giallos of the Argento era. I’d say it’s a bit of a mashup of both, but not quite a full-fledged delivery of either. What it reminded me most of is the once controversial 1980 film Cruising, which I discuss as almost being a gay slasher here. In fact, I would guess the Pacino film is one of the main influences for Knife + Heart. The first death scene alone is a virtual copycat kill lifted directly from Cruising.

Much like Al Pacino, who played a detective undercover in the seedy underground gay scene of the late 1970s, which begins taking a toll on his relationship with a woman and sends his sexual identity into turmoil, our main woman here is a lesbian who makes gay male porn in the late 1970s—and she’s really not a nice person. Her being unpleasantly predatory is just part of it. As her relationship with her girlfriend falls apart and her actors begin getting viciously murdered, she incorporates the crimes into the plot of her new film and internalizes the idea of being a gay male serial killer. Once gender identity issues were flirted with, I began to get hints of Dressed to Kill as well.

I love the general plot, but while I know the film is being LGBTQ inclusive, I personally would have preferred the protagonist be male not female. In a sea of men getting all homo with each other, the placement of a female feels way to much like a David DeCoteau heteronormative safety net to me. Hell, I couldn’t even watch that porn clip that went viral a while back with a woman eating a salad while two guys fucked in front of her. I just cannot get sexually charged when there’s a woman in the scene. Maybe it’s internal heterophobia…or maybe I’m just really that gay. Hey, judge all you want, but in this day and age of everyone insisting we all need to be pansexual, I know I’m not the only one who thinks it…I’m just one of the few who is willing to say it and not pander to societal pressures!

My ADHD tells me the investigative aspects of the film slow it down drastically. Just when the murders and homoeroticism amp up, the main girl goes into detecting mode. She meets various random characters that in no way clear up the mystery, instead adding more confusing extraneous elements. But I guess that’s what you have to do when you are attempting to replicate the disjointed weirdness of giallos.

There’s a black bird, a deformed monster hand moment, some hypnotizing club scenes, and trippy dream sequences, including a moment reminiscent of the movie theater scene in Messiah of Evil.

Horror dream sequences should be a red flag for filmmakers. If you feel the need to add one to keep the horror momentum going, your pacing is off. And just to be clear, this lull in thrills (which could have been adjusted by editing the film down from 102 minutes to 90) wasn’t only felt by me. My hubba bubba was watching the film with me, and at this point began asking me how much longer before the film was over.

As for the slasher elements, there are some nicely executed kill scenes from a visual standpoint. The killer, wearing a black mask that almost looks painted on, is super creepy, and makes freaky expressions and noises (which could have been exploited more because they’re that effective).

For me, what’s missing is any suspense or tension in these moments. I never got that sense of dread that the best slashers deliver. It lacked the kind of sustained terror that gets my heart racing, except one scene that flirts with the bizarre vibe of a giallo—it comes late in the film and is presented with unnerving flickering light, and is the closest thing to a chase scene that we get here. Yes, even though we have a main girl, there isn’t a chase or battle scene with the killer, and don’t expect any traditional body reveal moments. The climax is more giallo than slasher (in a good way if you’re a fan of giallos). And just to be clear, gay male horror fans shouldn’t expect a final boy, although there are a bunch of final guys who totally steal the final girl’s thunder.

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2 horror anthologies from 4 decades apart

Posted on June 1, 2019 by Daniel

Talk about an extremely contrasting double feature. And I don’t mean because one comes from 1977 and the other from 40 years later. The Uncanny and An Hour to Kill are totally different animals—one a cat, the other a pig.

THE UNCANNY (1977)

Before Cat’s Eye there was…The Uncanny! While the cat passes through the stories in the Stephen King anthology then gets his own tale with Drew Barrymore, this one is entirely about cats.

Peter Cushing is an author convinced that cats are trying to take over the world. To prove it, he comes to a prospective publisher’s house to tell him three tales of killer cats…

 

1st story – A devious young woman wants her relative’s inheritance, but the old bag has left all her money to her horde of cats! So the woman cooks up a scheme to change that, but the cats have other plans. This one has a horribly long sequence of the woman hiding out in a kitchen to stay away from the cats, but when she fully comes out, it feels like The Birds…with cats.

2nd story – This tale takes an awesomely mean and somewhat campy turn by today’s standards. After her parents die, a young girl comes to live with her aunt, uncle, and evil cousin, who terrorizes her and her cat. What idiot would mess with a black cat and a little girl with a bunch of books on the occult…?.

3rd story – This is a weird and often farcical tale starring Donald Pleasence as an actor who doesn’t treat his dead wife’s cat kindly, so the cat creates “accidents” on the set of Donald’s movie!

The odd thing about Cushing’s argument when it comes to the wraparound—none of the stories suggest cats are trying to take over mankind, just that they’re weeding out the assholes and getting revenge.

AN HOUR TO KILL (2018)

The wraparound of this indie does it a disservice until the final payoff at the end. Two assassins waiting to execute an assignment sit in their car to tell horror tales. The setup takes too long and the segments between stories are too long, especially considering this is a horror movie and the wraparound is not horror at all, so it in no way sets the tone. Anyway, on to the stories.

1st story – Girls go looking for a marijuana stash in a hidden Nazi bunker. It’s only implied that a few of them are killed by a guy in Nazi uniform, and then the story just ends. No blood, no final girl, no conclusion. I’m not quite sure why there was no effort made to deliver on the promise of a slasher.

2nd story – Murder after a food eating contest. This one is going for a trashy horror comedy vibe. In that it succeeds, but again the story feels incomplete!

3rd story – Okay, this exploitative trash makes sitting through the disappointment beforehand worth it. Be warned, it is totally offensive to rednecks and hillbillies. A group of white trash bowlers wants to take their new black teammate to screw some pigs. Let’s just say a backwoods family turns the tables on them. This sleazy tale made me laugh out loud, and the black dude is hilarious. I would have taken this one as a full-length movie.

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Fresh Meat at the Carnival of Fear in Jurassic City

Posted on May 31, 2019 by Daniel

These three may not have anything in common, but I watched them one after the other on Prime, so I’m cramming them into one blog!

CARNIVAL OF FEAR (2010)

As soon as I began twitching while watching this one, I checked the run time. Nearly two fricking hours! Why? Just…why??? How do filmmakers not watch their films back before release and realize, holy fuck this shit is going nowhere slow!!!

What kept me watching is the fact that I’m a fan of both leads. I adored Aimee Brooks in Monster Man, one of my faves, and the same goes for cutie Damian Maffei with the luscious lips from Christmas with the Dead.

The pair gets trapped in a creepy, closed amusement park at night and begins experiencing terrifying situations…that are never actually happening. And that’s where things get repetitive and unscary. You know they’re never really in trouble despite taking on an alligator, a swamp creature, clowns, rapists…it’s like passing through what is inevitably a controlled carnival fun house environment.

The disjointed plot heads in the most obvious direction. Both characters have a past connection to the park, and unless you’re new to the genre, you’re sure to know what’s happening before it’s spelled out.

The most obvious problem here is an unbearably long segment in the middle of the film in which the pair plays carnival games with a booth vendor. I can’t fathom who thought this never-ending sequence was a good idea. Without it, the film could have been 90 minutes long and delivered a much better paced, cheesy horror experience. Sure, there’s some bad CGI (especially a roller coaster scene), but it’s mostly a fun midnight movie vibe that would have worked better if it were faster.

FRESH MEAT (2012)

Playing off a Tarantino/Guy Ritchie vibe, Fresh Meat is a dark comedy about a home invasion gone wrong when the criminals discover the hard way that the family is a bunch of cannibals.

Yes, once again it’s that twist on the home invasion plot, but making it fresh is that the daughter has just arrived home to discover her family has gone cannibal right before the baddies break in.

It’s her split moral dilemma that makes this one unique…along with the added burden of a budding romance.

There’s plenty of action as well as campy gore to entertain, and you’ll get some laughs out of it even if it isn’t as funny as it could be. The big guy in bra and panties steals the show for a while, but once the tide turns on the plot, Jango Fett, who’s still as sexy as he was 20 years ago, gets the spotlight, ending this one on a high note.

JURASSIC CITY (2015)

The director of Silent Night Zombie Night brings us SyFy quality CGI raptors and head biting…in a prison…with a bunch of sorority bimbos as the survivors trying to escape.

That sentence tells you everything you need to know about Jurassic City, so either take it for the craptastic entertainment it is or avoid it.

The prison has an aggressive lesbian inmate, a tough daddy inmate the girls have to team up with to survive, Ray Wise earning a paycheck to put food on the table by playing the warden, and one jump scare that actually got me.

And just when you think the only CGI dinosaurs you’re going to get are raptors, a big T-Rex and Pterodactyl are randomly thrown in at the end.

Not going to lie. The hubba hubba and I got a few good laughs watching this one.

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Going back to before trolls discovered the Internet

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Daniel

When 1986 film Troll hit cable, I wasn’t a huge fan because it was essentially horror-lite, bordering on fantasy. 4 years later when Troll 2 hit video, I was breaking into my 20s and working at the video store, which is probably where I vaguely watched it on the TV in the background as I helped customers. Because honestly, despite it somehow garnering a huge cult following and its own documentary over the years for being the best worst movie ever made, I couldn’t remember a thing about it. Now, 30 years later, I re-visit both of them.

TROLL (1986)

It’s not shocking that Charles Band was behind the scenes executive producing this film; it very much foreshadows the template he would use on his Full Moon films throughout the 1990s. At the same time, it has that PG-13 kiddie movie feel, right down to the Spielberg-esque storybook opening. Even director John Carl Buechner (Friday the 13th VII, Ghoulies Go To College, Cellar Dweller, Watchers 4, Miner’s Massacre) is notably restrained with the horror moments here.

For me, this should be as much the cult classic the sequel has become. In fact, I’d say this is more a candidate for best worst movie ever made than the sequel.

For starters, there’s the cast: Charlies’ Angel Shelley Hack and 80s horror king Michael Moriarity are the parents. The boy from The Never Ending Story is the son. The little girl who played rapidly growing alien-human hybrid Elizabeth on V is the daughter. The neighbors include Sonny Bono, Gary Sandy of WKRP in Cincinnati (I was so hot for his tight jeans as a kid), Julia Louise-Dreyfus, and Lassie’s mom June Lockhart. Plus, Charles Band’s Full Moon staple Phil Fondacaro plays a neighbor and the Troll.

The plot is ridiculously 80s awesome at first.

The daughter runs into the troll in the basement of their apartment building, and he drags her to another dimension while he takes her form and starts acting like a brat…and using his magic ring to turn victims into little mythological critters that hang out in an apartment he transforms into a fuzzy green garden.

The adults are secondary characters, as it is the boy who knows his sister is no longer herself and turns to the only person who will believe him—Lassie’s mom, who is a witch.

It’s up to her to use her magic staff to help him defeat the troll and get his sister back…in the other dimension…where there’s a big monster.

Despite becoming more fantasy than horror, which usually isn’t my thing, Troll is a perfect slice of eighties crap, so I can’t help but love it.

But the most notable movie magic factor of this film? Both father and son are named…Harry Potter. Mind blown.

TROLL 2 (1990)

Now that I’ve sat down and actually paid attention to Troll 2, it astounds me that it has been postured as a so-bad-it’s-good movie. In my opinion, aside from a few cheesy details I’ll get into, this is a better movie than the original and as darkly weird and fucked up as most 80s Euro horror of the era. It’s the horror movie the first Troll isn’t.

That’s because Italian director Claudio Fragasso is no stranger to the subgenre. His films include Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, Monster Dog, Scalps, Zombie 3, Zombie 4, Beyond Darkness, and Night Killer. And this is the moment when I should have had a V8, because I just realized that I am a huge fan of his films and have every single one of them in my collection. Therefore, it’s no surprise I adore Troll 2 and in no way think it deserves a negative-positive cult following.

The truth is, Troll 2 was not meant to be a sequel to the original, despite there being so many parallels between the two films. The creatures this time are “goblins”, but the monster designs are so similar to the creatures in the original that you would swear it’s intentional. Personally, I’m shocked that once the studio decided to push this as a Troll sequel, they didn’t just have the actors come and dub in the word “troll” each of the few times they say “goblin” in the film. Hell, a few bad dubs would have made this feel even more like the Euro horror it is.

As for the plot, it’s essentially The Howling or Salem’s Lot with goblins. A family comes to a vacation home in a small town, and the son begins to realize that all the locals are actually a secret community of goblins in disguise, and their goal is to turn any humans into plants that they can then eat (what’s wrong with all the great plants we already have on the planet?).

Now, while in the first film the troll—who also disguised himself as human—didn’t eat people, he did in fact turn one victim into an entire garden that all the other mythological creatures inhabited.

This film also begins with a storybook opening. They boy’s grandfather reads him a tale of the goblins. However, grandpa isn’t actually there. He died a few months before, and his ghost comes to visit the boy regularly.

Honestly, if I were 12 and not 21 when I saw this film, I would have been scared witless. The little boy has horrific dreams and visions of turning into an oozing plant.

The locals have a mark on their skin and are eerily Let’s Scare Jessica to Death in their cold, emotionless staring. The goblins relentlessly terrorize the boy. And they really do transform humans into ooey-gooey greenery to devour. Plus, the ending is surprisingly dark for a movie focusing on a little terrified boy.

Even so, there are plenty of campy oddball comic moments between all the sinister stuff. I couldn’t get enough of the 80s montage of the sister’s bedroom—a Smurf on a shelf, posters of Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise, the sister dressed in her best Jane Fonda workout outfit…

There’s the moment when grandpa suggests the boy pee on food the goblins offered to the family…

And just as in the first film, there’s a witch. Her performance is horribly cartoonish and over the top for a majority of the film, and she plays right to the camera at times, totally breaking the fourth wall.

But when she gets to transform into a darker version of herself at the end, she’s deliciously creepy. Yet that’s when we get another bizarre Euro horror scene. She seduces a young man with corn on the cob…which begins to turn into popcorn once they start getting it on. Where’s the melted butter when you need it?

The popping corn is definitely a jarring slice of absurdity just when the film reaches its climax, which has the family doing a séance to summon grandpa for more help as the goblins fricking infiltrate the house to get them! Yeah, this one definitely would have freaked 12-year old me out, while the first film might as well have been another Never Ending Story sequel.

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STREAM QUEEN: I’m getting afterimages of blood clots

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Daniel

When I see a theme for a blog forming in my streaming watchlist, I never anticipate being satisfied by all the selections, so I’m happy to say that horror anthologies Afterimages and Blood Clots were quite fun. Here’s a tastes of the tales you’ll get.

AFTERIMAGES (2014)

This is essentially an English language Asian horror anthology, with every story centered around the now classic Asian ghost girl theme. As a sucker for Ringu/Grudge era horror, I was totally satisfied with this one, because the stories are effective and creepy, and each one has a unique setting and plot. I even liked the look and feel of the visual presentation of the tales.

The wraparound alone is engrossing, as a group of college friends does an Asian occult ritual that involves burning cameras. But doing so results in films being left behind—films they load onto a projector and start watching…

1st story – This is my favorite of the bunch. A dude spying on a pretty girl with his telescope in an apartment complex goes down to the pool when he sees her taking a night swim by herself. Eek! This one is a goody.

2nd story – A young woman becomes obsessed with the spot on the ground where a suicide victim landed when jumping out of her apartment building.

3rd story – This is the most cliché of the stories, I’d say. Reminiscent of Devil, it sees a group of people stuck on an elevator with a girl who is behaving very oddly…

4th story – Combine Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” with the Leslie Nielsen story from Creepshow and blend it with an Asian ghost girl tale, and you have this creepy good story.

5 – The final tale concludes the wraparound, with a fun and cheesy teen horror vibe.

BLOOD CLOTS (2018)

Unlike traditional horror anthologies, Blood Clots doesn’t have a wraparound. It’s simply a series of short films gathered together to create a full-length feature. Actually, the film is only about 70 minutes long, which is okay in my book! As a result, most of these tales get right to the point, with a setup and a zinger twist conclusion. They’re also well-produced, so it doesn’t feel like you’re watching a bunch of indie shorts shot on a camcorder.

1st story – During a zombie outbreak, a woman hides out in the basement of a diner. It has a classic zombie vibe and great atmosphere, and the ending is delicious.

2nd story – This is a brief backwoods cannibal family short that’s fun…but I already saw it on the anthology Minutes Past Midnight!

3rd story – No complaints here. This one has nudity and perversion in the woods…and then a hellish monster attacking.

4th story – This is a fiendish little twist on the classic concept of a boy being afraid of the monster under the stairs in the basement.

5th story – Now this is clever. A guy working as one of those human statues at a carnival has to put his talent of being an inanimate object to the test when there’s a zombie outbreak.

6th story – This is a fun giant jellyfish creature feature on the beach…but it’s another one I’ve seen before, because it was included in the anthology Monsterland.

7th story – This is an odd dark humor story I guess, about a dinner party that includes a family’s squid-headed relative. I kind of wish it hadn’t been the final story, because it doesn’t deliver as much of a punch as some of the others.

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I had a case of the 28 day infection again

Posted on May 26, 2019 by Daniel

Before I reflect on revisiting the “28” saga, here’s my original take from years ago. I went to the theater to see 28 Days Later and hated it. In fact, just as with The Blair Witch Project, despite the massive hype the film was getting, when the end credits began to role in the theater, the groans and looks of disappointment from the audience spoke volumes—people were flabbergasted that the movie could have gotten so many rave reviews.

Therefore, I was glad to wait until 28 Weeks Later made its way to cable, and when it finally did, I unexpectedly loved it. So has my views on either film changed?

28 DAYS LATER (2002)

Interestingly, I had no recollection of the opening scene, in which infected monkeys in a lab go ape shit crazy. I only remember the intro of the main dude waking up in a hospital in a deserted city. I guess it deserves credit for being the template for the first episode of The Walking Dead, when Rick wakes up in a hospital. However, here we get to see the main guy’s wiener.

For the most part, the opening is my favorite scene, then it’s all downhill from there, just as I remembered. The first half of this way too long 2-hour movie focuses on the main guy joining a small group of survivors in trying to stay alive. It’s just a series of scenes of them stopping at one place after the other, and very few of the scenes are actually frightening or suspenseful.

But the bigger problem for me is that the characters are simply not very likable. The main guy is particularly weird and creepy, like some sort of mentally ill dude who escaped a loony bin. I just could not connect with him at all and did not trust him. The main woman is okay and a strong survivor, which once again foreshadows The Walking Dead—she gives off a major Michonne vibe. Meanwhile, the one character I liked most is the one character that doesn’t make it.

Sure, this movie introduced fast running infected, which is frightening, but here it’s usually lost in a blur of choppy editing and dark lighting. And what could have been one of the best scenes—a trip through a dark tunnel—concludes in a moment that made me laugh when I saw it in the theater. As the infected run after our protagonists’ car, despite being completely primal, they all just suddenly decide it’s pointless to chase a car and stop running!

When we move into the second half of the film, it falls apart for me. The survivors are rescued by a bunch of armed military men. Ugh. And we get another hint of The Walking Dead—encounters with dangerous communities. Yep, the concept of a psycho community is introduced, and the infected are pushed aside so chauvinistic men with guns become the antagonists for the remainder of the film. Yawn. And the sudden upbeat ending feels kind of absurd after how dark and dreary the film is.

I do like that people can become infected simply by getting infected blood in their mouth or eye. That’s always been my pet peeve about zombie movies. People will get zombie guts all over them and never fear that it might cause them to become infected. I wouldn’t even want to get in a few feet of one of those things.

28 WEEKS LATER (2007)

It’s hard to believe these two films are even linked, because the sequel blows the first one away. Rather than a series of vignettes of characters just traveling from one place to another, the sequel has a specific story arc focusing on one family, which I found totally engrossing.

The opening is absolutely unforgettable. A family trying to exist during the outbreak is holed up in a house. When the infected unexpectedly infiltrate, the man of the house becomes a total dick and pulls an “every man for himself” move.

This scene is also burned in my mind because it takes a piece of score from the first film that is just subtly playing in the background during the final scene and transforms it into an upfront guitar anthem that carries throughout the sequel.

The film follows the family to a safe district where the children are reunited with their dad. Things become dark and ugly when the husband is reunited with the wife, turning this into an infected revenge flick that puts that absurd Day of the Dead remake with Johnathon Schaech as a stalking zombie to shame. The son and daughter are relentlessly pursued by the dad, and even a military escort—Jeremy Renner—can’t seem to keep him away.

Along the way there are some phenomenal infected attacks, including a helicopter massacre and a claustrophobic scene of everyone in a safe house creating a stampede while trying to escape as the infection spreads within minutes.

There’s also a night vision scene in underground tunnels that may as well have been a vent scene (there’s one of those, too. Fuckers).

Unlike the first film, this sequel made me yearn for a sequel that’s promised but never materialized. Yep, first impressions are everything, and my impression of the 28 films hasn’t changed a bit.

 

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Beware the killers within the devil’s mile

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Daniel

Eureka! A double dose of streaming selections that revolve around kidnappings and deliver plenty of popcorn horror along the way.

KILLERS WITHIN (2018)

Unless you haven’t been paying attention to modern horror releases—or not reading my blogs about current movies—you’ll know that a common twist in home invasion films these days is that the real danger is what’s already inside, and the baddies doing the invading are the ones in trouble.

That’s the case with Killers Within (hell, the title says it all). A woman and her ex-husband plot a home invasion after their son is kidnapped.

It takes a while to get past the usual home invasion stuff—and it’s hard to pick a side since the invaders are the protagonists, but the monster movie fun finally begins about halfway in, and it’s total sci-fi creature feature fun, complete with rubber costumes.

The gore is standard and therefore mildly satisfying, and the mythology behind the creatures is cool, for it delves into evolution and science—something we really need in these days of religious lunacy overthrowing our government.

If you grew up in the 80s and lived through the V The Mini Series phenomenon, you’ll really appreciate this one.

DEVIL’S MILE (2014)

What a relief to watch two movies with the same general theme (kidnapping) and find them both satisfying horror experiences, well-crafted, and completely different horror subgenres.

In Devil’s Mile, one male and two female kidnappers abduct two girls, but as they transport them to their boss, they take a detour on a deserted road and shit gets bad really fast.

This is how you start a film right, as a series of fast, unexpected situations occur before we even get to the horror part.

The kidnappers get sucked into a vicious cycle of trying to leave the scene of a car accident while being repeatedly attacked by an Asian ghost girl.

And the only way to temporarily vanquish her is with light.

Essentially, this is Dead End meets The Grudge meets Darkness Falls, making it an awesome combination in my book. The ghost girl is ghoul cool (if not a bit overly CGI), and there’s plenty of suspense and jump scares, making this a perfect flick when you just need a fix of cheap thrills.

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30 years of Stepford wives, children, and husbands

Posted on May 24, 2019 by Daniel

I’m a big fan of Ira Levin’s novels, and most have been adapted into films, including Rosemary’s Baby, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, A Kiss Before Dying, and of course, The Stepford Wives.

I was young when the 1975 film came out, but I imagine it was on television within a few years after, because I also remember seeing it for the first time at a young age. While I always assumed it was quite famous, even spawning a bunch of sequels, upon watching the interviews on the DVD, I was shocked to learn several things I never would have guessed about it—starting with it being a huge commercial failure!

Secondly, the performance of Nanette Newman, who plays the first Stepford wife we meet, was generally panned by those involved in making the movie. Her robotic performance as the perfect prim and proper wife is actually brilliantly chilling if you ask me.

And finally, the feminist movement absolutely revolted against this film when it was released. It goes to show you that the “PC”/“snowflake”/“hyper-sensitive” culture isn’t a new plague in society. Just as Cruising was hated by the gay boys, Basic instinct was hated by lesbians, and blaxploitation flicks experienced backlash, the wives highly offended those who felt women were being portrayed awfully. And just like all those other films, the easily offended totally missed the point, not only of the movie but of horror in general.

Horror is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. Horror is supposed to present horrific possibilities. And the possibility here is. I coincidentally watched these films just as numerous states were banning abortion and controlling women’s bodies, so the sheer terror of what affluent white men are capable of doing to women—even their own beloved wives—was magnified as I revisited this film from nearly 40 years ago. In other words—men are fucking awful. The problem here is not the women—they are the ones the audience identifies with and fears for.

Essentially, The Stepford Wives, in case you didn’t know, is an Invasion of the Body Snatchers concept, with the women’s husbands joining a special club in which they secretly replace their wives with perfect Betty Crocker versions of themselves. The women are there to please their men in every way possible, right down to the men being able to augment the new versions of their wives. Sick…and so believable, sadly.

Hell, feminists would have had their tubes tied if the film had gone as planned. Rather than the goodie-goodie image the women present when converted in the film, they were originally supposed to essentially be Playboy Bunnies walking around in slutty outfits. I’m glad they weren’t, because that would have branched away from the reality of married men fucking whores on the side and then forcing them to get abortions while passing anti-abortion laws to hurt the marginalized…

Ironically, although it’s not touched upon enough, there is a white privilege moment in the film when several of the women try to act all cool and liberal while gossiping about a black family that has moved into town. We never see the black husband inducted into the men’s club, which begs the question—would he be welcome? Is it gender before race in Stepford? Would have been great if that had been explored even a little. And speaking of mixed race issues, the white dude from The Jeffersons appears in the film, as does Ginger from Gilligan’s Island.

The concept of The Stepford Wives is what makes it so eerie. This isn’t a “scary” movie in the traditional sense. No jump scares or anything like that. Katharine Ross is perfect as the strong, independent woman who moves to Stepford with her husband and children (one of them being a young Mary Stuart Masterson).

As Ross begins to notice the women in the town are weird, she befriends another new resident, played by Paula Prentiss, who is also equally perfect in her role as a free-spirited, confident woman.

The pair begins to investigate and determines something is very wrong. It’s even brilliant that they get it totally wrong for a while, becoming convinced another horror trope is at play…

There are essentially two scenes that drive the point home and bring on the spine tingles. First is when Ross confronts one of the wives and things escalate surprisingly quick…with Ross taking a huge gamble in initiating it. The other is when she sneaks into the creepy men’s club mansion on a rainy night and comes face-to-face with her own face. EEK!

REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES (1980)

The director of the Dr. Phibes films goes the made-for-TV route for this sequel that takes place ten years later (even though it was made five years later).

Sharon Gless plays a TV network reporter who comes to Stepford to write a story on why no one ever leaves the town once they move there. You have to wonder why the town has a hotel welcoming guests when it has such a nasty little secret to keep.

The men’s club leader isn’t thrilled with her poking around. While Sharon befriends new couple Julie “Marge Simpson” Kavner and her cop husband Don Johnson, Stepford wives are used as weapons to try to kill her. Most notably…Mrs. Roper! Awesome.

Forget everything you learned in the original. These are not robot replacements of the wives. The wives simply take pills four times a day when a siren blows throughout the town. These pills are what keep them controlled…and sometimes cause them to malfunction like robots?

Yeah, it’s bad, but it’s 1980 made-for-TV perfection in all its silliness. The worst part for me is when Gless gets the same creepy moment Katharine Ross did in the original, confronting a malfunctioning wife, but any eerie atmosphere is ruined because there’s sappy 1950s sitcom music playing! I get that they were going for a whole June Cleaver wink, but it ruins the scene. The least they could have done was have that wife go after her with a cleaver instead of a wife in a different scene…

The climax is quite funny, with the Stepford wives coming down from their drug addiction and revolting against the monster known as man.

THE STEPFORD CHILDREN (1987)

This time around the wives are still robots, so there’s no telling how everything went back to the way it was after Revenge. There is a vague reference in the men’s club to things going wrong once before, if that helps you imagine continuity.

Barbara Eden moves to Stepford with her kids and her husband, played by Karen’s original husband Sid on Knots Landing, which he left like 5 years before so he could make mostly TV movies, including this one.

What are you and your friends doing to me, daddy???

Why is The Stepford Children one of my faves in the series? Because it’s essentially an 80s teen flick with some horror thrown in at the end. Eden’s son and daughter are the new kids in town, and they’re totally 80s cool, high hair and all…but the other kids in school aren’t.

Basically it’s Footloose, right down to a high school dance scene in which the kids politely dance to ballroom big band music. The new kids put on some totally 80s rock wave, the moshing starts, and they get arrested!

Meanwhile, Eden tries to start a PTA…I guess because she was so successful in Harper Valley. The school administration is nasty with her. Her husband starts to humiliate her in public. He’s ashamed of the way his kids look and wants them to be more prim and proper…never seeming to notice that Barbara is a MILF who should be dancing on the hood of a car in a Whitesnake video.

Just think. If I were a father and wanted to make kids act like they did back in my day, you young brats would get to live like it was the 1980s. Who’s the world’s best daddy?

Fricking Oscar Goldman, having experience with fembots, is the leader of the men’s club this time, so he knows what he’s doing when it comes to making humans into robots, and he doesn’t have to worry about the Bionic Woman putting a stop to his evil plot.

It takes quit some time, but eventually the kids realize things are not right, and then Barbara does as well when her son’s new girlfriend suddenly starts acting very different, thanks to being sold down the river by her dad, played by Principal Morloch from Fame.

Eden doesn’t really step into the final lady role until the last half hour. In her search for the truth, she even goes as far as digging up a Stepford grave, delivering one of the best horror moments of the series.

During the final confrontation, there’s a freaky encounter with incomplete robots, and there’s also a bizarre monologue in which Oscar Goldman says they’re doing it to save the future generations. Um…how can there be a future if the kids are all robots that can’t procreate?

THE STEPFORD HUSBANDS (1996)

The director of April Fool’s Day, When a Stranger Calls, and When a Stranger Calls Back goes for Lifetime level sci-fi horror with this final sequel before the remake.

Donna Mills acts like she’s still Abby Ewing as she gets bitchy regularly with her husband, who is devastated because he just released a book that was a huge flop. They may as well have had Ted Shackelford play the husband.

It’s a shock that this evil vixen becomes the good guy for a change, but in terms of Stepford mythos, it’s not a surprise. Making a strong statement about women being better than men, this time when the husband starts turning weird and the wife realizes something is not kosher in Stepford, instead of joining the madness, she takes on the community to stop them from converting her husband into the perfect man. I guess she preferred him in his miserable state so she could continue kicking him while he was down.

Cindy Williams is her friend who backstabs her to get her husband sent to the “clinic”, and not surprisingly, Louise Fletcher plays the evil mastermind.

And while there is a conversion process, this movie harkens back to Revenge, requiring the men to take pills. But I do want to know exactly what the purpose is of the coiled hose attached to the men’s crotches during conversion…

THE STEPFORD WIVES (2004)

Coming nearly 30 years later, this movie is as white as the original, but at least there’s a gay couple, and Bette Midler as the free-spirited friend does balk about the lack of color in town, reminding us that this has always been a story about the perfect little segregated town in America.

The remake isn’t going for chilling or eerie. It’s more of a satirical reimagining, with legendary Frank Oz directing. To me the tone is like Stepford injected with a campy dose of Witches of Eastwick.

Aside from a vastly rewritten ending, the plot is virtually identical following a very weird reality TV show opening (relating to main character Nicole Kidman being a TV executive).

After Kidman has a breakdown, her husband Matthew Broderick moves the family to Stepford, where they meet their real estate agent Glenn Close, who is married to Christoper Walken, leader of the men’s club.

The new house is automated (so why the need for controlled housewives?) and comes with a robot dog…which seems to foreshadow the women being replaced by robots.

And that is where the biggest plot hole comes in. The robot replacement seems the way things are, complete with remote controls for wives, as well as Nicole eventually coming face to face with her robot self. However, the new ending, which has Nicole figuring out how to save the wives, implies that they are not robots at all, but merely have had computer chips implanted that control them!

Despite the terrible screwup in the writing, the different ending is what saves the film for me because it’s a delicious twist and also very campy. Bette Midler also has a great scene in which she malfunctions…if you watch the deleted scenes. Her big shining moment is heavily cut, probably because it is absolutely cartoonish and absurd, but it’s so Bette at her funniest that I wish it had been left in.

The cast also includes Jon Lovitz, singer Faith Hill at the height of her crossover success in a gimmicky role as one of the wives, and go-to actor Roger Bart, who always steps in when a stereotypical gay guy is needed.

His character is the most specific update of the story’s premise. How does the men’s club handle a couple comprised of two men? It complicates matters since the men, to prove they’re open-minded, invite both male spouses to join. And bringing a new social and political statement into the mix, the gay guy who has female friends and despises Republicans is the one who doesn’t exactly meet the men’s club criteria for being a Stepford husband. Imagine that….

Sticking to that theme, the film gives us way too much blatant exposition about the conversion process and the thinking behind it, including spelling out that the threat men are feeling is the independence of successful women.

Even so, there’s more to it than that, and the twist in this remake should have gotten feminists’ tubes in a knot more than the original. At the same time, it’s creepy to realize this remake from 15 years ago reflects the reality of how white women overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump…

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