Music to Make Horror Movies By: Karla DeVito

Published September 7, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

The revelation of hidden truths often has a macabre connotation for those of us who grew up Catholic. But the exposure of our deepest desires can also have dark implications across the board – especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Case in point, the divine Karla DeVito definitely brings out her finest candle dripping Gothicism in the music video for Midnight Confession.

In addition to her passionate take on this classic rock song, DeVito’s credits include Broadway (The Pirates of Penzance) and film (Modern Love). Of course, genre fused rock ‘n roll mavericks probably know her best from her touring duties with Bat Out Of Hell era Meat Loaf. True lovers of ’80s pop, though, surely cherish her the most for her excellent underrated LPS, Is This A Cool World or What? and Wake ‘Em Up in Tokyo.

Nicely, DeVito is still working towards her eternal prime, duetting with both Robby Benson, her husband, and fellow Steinman protegee Ellen Foley. These recent releases are currently available for viewing at https://karladevito.com/.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www,facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Raquel Welch

Published July 26, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

Whether she was fully intriguing the demented Richard Burton in the silly Euro horror Bluebeard or hunting down a homicidal twin as a prize-winning writer in the USA Network’s scientifically gonzo Tainted Blood, the glorious Raquel Welch has always proven herself to be something of a primetime thriller.

Known for warbling a tune or two on Broadway (Woman of the Year) and television specials (including her own self-titled one), Welch also made a grab for pop stardom in 1987 with the gloriously fun single This Girl is Back in Town.

Seemingly only appreciated in the sticky back rooms of gay bars, this track ultimately didn’t do well enough to produce a full album. Thankfully, though, it’s glorious Paul Jabara assisted rhythms live on online and in dusty used record bins everywhere!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Music To Make Horror Movies By (Pride Edition): Ethel Waters

Published June 26, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

One of my favorite Broadway tales was provided by an actress who appeared with the legendary Ethel Waters in a play. Waters was apparently known, industrywide, for her Sapphic interests and her co-star was a bit nervous when the two decided to rehearse alone. But before they even had a chance to begin their line readings, Waters sensed the apprehension in the air and chuckled, telling her scene partner to relax as she must certainly didn’t waste her time trying to hook any timid, very uninterested fish.

This cute tale belies the complexity of Waters’ life, though. Conceived from a rape, Waters had a chaotic childhood, surrounded by prostitution and crime. Despite disadvantage and rampant prejudice, she worked her way from the stages of Black vaudeville to Broadway productions and onto film and television. Married three times throughout her lifetime, she also proudly wrote about her loving relationships with women. Interestingly and seemingly at cross purposes with her past, this powerhouse wound up her life campaigning and performing for televangelist Billy Graham, sure proof that she was a singular entity who listened to only one pertinent drummer – her own.

Much loved for her unmistakable renditions of such standards as Irving Berlin’s Suppertime, a heartbreaking song about lynching, and Am I Blue?, which was included on the soundtrack to genre series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Waters died in 1977 at the age of 80. Then and always, she reigns as a beacon of pure talent and uncalibrated willpower – a true icon for the LGBTQIA community.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Flashback: My Fair Psycho

Published March 6, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

The pride of both Broadway stages and sophisticated cabaret venues, the precise, velvet toned Christine Andreas proved that she was a master of her craft with her work as the manipulatively deranged Dr. Taylor Benson during the 1990 – 1991 seasons of Another World.

Initially presented as the diligent psychiatrist for the soap’s tortured Sharlene (Anna Holbrook), a popular character suffering from multiple personality disorder, Benson soon revealed her own mental weaknesses. Fixated on Sharlene’s handsome husband John (David Forsythe), Benson did everything she could to make him her own. After gaslighting Sharlene into believing her treatment wasn’t working, the twisted doc eventually lost herself in psychosis. After kidnapping Sharlene, she seemingly murdered her in an explosive encounter on her boat. In her last scenes, though, this extremely misguided therapist was so lost in delusion that she couldn’t even recognize John, the man who motivated her diabolical schemes.

The winner of the American Theater Award for her work as Eliza Doolittle in a 1975 revival of My Fair Lady, Andreas proved her daytime mettle here by imbuing this deliciously unsavory character with both a determined sweetness and a calculating intensity. The plot line itself also speaks to this genre’s exploitation parallels – twisted women, gothic crimes and the ability of multiple characters to return from the dead – as Sharlene, Benson’s favored victim, did several years after her fiery “demise” during this iteration of the show.

Andreas, who recently performed a successful show featuring the music of Edith Piaf, meanwhile, is always creatively resurrecting herself at http://www.christineandreas.com.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Hopelessly Devoted to: Lillian Roth

Published January 25, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

Emoting, authentically, across smoky nightclub aisles and golden Broadway stages, legendary chanteuse Lillian Roth often lived an existence as stormy as the torch songs that she was best known for performing. So potent were her misfortunes that her autobiography, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, was made into a popular movie starring Susan Hayward, one of the grand dames of stormy melodrama.

Roth, incidentally, had a heathy filmography in her own right. Genre enthusiasts, in fact, have much to cheer about over her celluloid glories. Besides co-starring with The Marx Brothers in the Pre-Code comic adventure Animal Crackers, she also portrayed Barbara Stanwyck’s aggressive yet full hearted cellmate in 1933’s jail yard drama, Ladies They Talk About (photos below). Decades later, she authoritatively essayed a pathologist in Alfred Sole’s Alice, Sweet, Alice, a film that has, rightfully, gone onto be one of the most impressive examples of subversive ‘70s horror.

On that set, Sole recalled Roth talking about her various ups and downs. She claimed then that one of her lowest points was when she had to take a job waiting tables where the tunes she had immortalized were often played on the juke box. Mercifully, the clientele had no idea who she was.

But, thankfully, due to the multiple glories of YouTube and film festivals, new generations are now able to appreciate her artistry. Indeed, this trailblazer, the epitome of the glamorization of the golden age of song, deserves to be focused on and fondly remembered.

For the curious, more details on Roth’s life are laid out at Lillian Roth | Jewish Women’s Archive (jwa.org)

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/bigggayhorrorfan

Hopelessly Devoted To: Gretchen Wyler

Published November 22, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

A year after Shirley MacLaine rocketeered to stardom, due to replacing an ailing Carol Haney in the original Broadway production of Pajama Game, the vibrant Gretchen Wyler (1932 – 2007) accomplished almost exactly the same thing with Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings. Wyler attacked the role of movie star Janice Clayton with such virtuoso power that she was promoted from second understudy to lead, almost overnight.

Nicely, this led this leggy wonder into to a distinguished career, full of stage and television efforts, including multiple stints on a variety of soap operas and situation comedies. Interestingly, for someone who often used her sex appeal as a vibrant component of her performing arsenal, one of her significant nighttime credits was as a guest star on Haunted Angels, a third season episode of the classic detective show that brought about the creation of the term “jiggle TV,” Charlie’s Angels.

Perhaps the most accomplished of several Angels’ plotlines that included horror genre elements, this venture found Wyler’s well-to-do Clare Rossmore requesting assistance from America’s favorite femme investigators due to the seeming ghostly reappearance of her long dead nephew. Adding to the gothic allure, Rossmore’s philanthropic countenance manifests itself in the form of a psychic research institute, an appropriate setting for a supernaturally charged murder to occur.

Of course, all is not as it seems, and as truths are revealed, Agatha Christie style, Wyler nestles nicely into an agreeable chemistry with David Doyle’s ever faithful Bosley. While this story features a rare, fun pairing between Kate Jackson’s Sabrina and Cheryl Ladd’s Kris, it is Doyle, a musical stage veteran himself, and Wyler who truly charm with a rare ease and joy.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Horror Mash-Up: West Side Waltz

Published October 5, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

I’ve always considered this site to be an homage to the interests of the gay men who came up in the generations before me. By doing this, my work here also almost functions as an apology of sorts. I can’t tell you the number of times that I rolled my eyes, during my rebellious college years, while some martini sipping elder gushed to me about the wonders of Connie Francis’ phrasing or the dynamic flare in Joan Crawford’s eyes while playing one of the many ambitious, conflicted women that she excelled in bringing to celluloid reality. Clutching my Patti Smith t-shirts to me like rosary beads, I vowed I would never be that kind of a gay man. But as the decades swirled past, I found myself drawn to the moody gothic antics of Bette Davis and Linda Darnell in films like Deception and This is My Love – often more so than with any of the contemporary, gut spewing epics that burst across the film festival screens at events that I attended with like-minded friends. Thus, one of the main focuses of this blog was to highlight the oddly spooky credits of those established queens of cinema. Now, I find, even when watching something a bit more mundane, I am, internally, cataloging the terror credits of the participants. (You might even find this game could come in handy whenever your significant other forces you to sit through another rom-com or slow moving domestic drama.)

Therefore, I was surprisingly delighted this past Sunday afternoon. After throwing in a dollar copy of the 1995 television film The West Side Waltz, the cinematic treatment of a popular play about two middle-aged spinster types finding renewed life due to their involvement with a hearty homeless woman and a young Bronx vamp, I realized that all the headlining divas (Kathy Bates, Jennifer Grey, Shirley MacLaine and Liza Minnelli) had some connection to the worlds of horror. Grandest of them all, perhaps, is Bates, who won the Academy Award for her enthusiastic performance as Annie Wilkes in Misery. Meanwhile, fellow Oscar winner MacLaine starred in 1972’s authentically effective The Possession of Joel Delaney, a film that might have cost her the lead in The Exorcist due to the similarity of the two projects. Less distinguished than those projects, perhaps, was Grey’s leading turn in Ritual, a still fun film that mixes the steamy, old school jungle melodrama of I Walked with a Zombie with another mighty performance from the legendary Tim Curry. Minnelli’s connections to the field, meanwhile, are more musically related. Famously, she sang back-up for shock rock legend Alice Cooper on his Muscle of Love effort while offering up a totally recognizable solo on the track Mama from My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade – proof of the power of her own Oscar winning status.

Meanwhile, true crime aficionados may find a connection with this particular title, as well. Co-star Robert Pastorelli, who brings the same kind of goofy energy here as he did with his popular long term role on the original Murphy Brown, was highlighted as a prime suspect in the suspicious (real life) gunshot death of his girlfriend in 1999. The reopening of the case in 2002 is rumored to be a possible reason why Pastorelli was found dead of a morphine overdose that year. Hmm…you just never know what you might find within the confines of a filmic adaptation of a Broadway play, right?!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE. Big Gay Horror Fan

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Unsung Heroines of Horror: Patsy Kelly

Published July 4, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

Her teaming with the stunningly tragic Thelma Todd in a series of comedy shorts in the ’30s brought the zaftig Patsy Kelly fame and critical renown for her clowning abilities. But by the ’40s, her career had dried up. Hollywood was not ready to accept Kelly’s refusal to hide her lesbianism or to even downplay her preferences to the masses.

Unfortunately, this proud, unwavering stance forced her to live through some lean years. A friendship with the iconic Tallulah Bankhead (Die, Die, My Darling) carried her through the ’50s and ’60s. (Kelly worked both as a real life and on stage companion to that mercurial talent.) Thankfully, by the early ’70s (with many of the Tinsel Town executives who shunned her either forgotten or dead), Kelly found latter day success in a number of Broadway vehicles. These turns eventually found her gainful employment – of all places – in two Disney flicks, including Freaky Friday (with future notable Sapphic, Jodie Foster).

Thankfully, in 1968, this unforgettable performer (who also provided ample buffoonery to 1939’s The Gorilla with Bela Lugosi), also made a pit stop in Classic Terror Town with her affably odd performance of Laura-Louise in Rosemary’s Baby. Playing a character who is overly devoted to Rosemary’s demonic offspring, Kelly resonates most in her final moments of the film. But any time she is onscreen here, particularly when she is sharing space with fellow golden oldie Ruth Gordon, is a fine one – making this often overlooked entertainer, a true unsung heroine of horror!

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Va-Va-Villainess: Dolores Gray

Published June 13, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

The sultry Dolores Gray (1922-2002) had a unique career. She will probably go down in history as the only actress to win a Tony Award for a show that lasted only 6 performances (1954’s Carnival in Flanders). She also lit up the MGM Studios in the mid-fifties with her personal brand of glossy sophistication, but, ultimately, only had major roles in four films.

Thankfully, those celluloid adventures offered her the chance to often play game seductresses and extremely glamourous, catty rivals to her (generally more innocent and trustworthy) female co-stars.

She, perhaps, made her most significant performing mark as the vindictive, backstabbing Sylvia Fowler in 1956’S The Opposite Sex, a remake of Clare Booth Luce’s zing worthy The Women. This project found her going arched eyebrow to arched eyebrow (with some exuberant fisticuffs thrown in for good measure) with such cinematic notables as June Allyson, Ann Sheridan and Ann Miller.

Her most popular public offering, though, was perhaps 1957’s Designing Woman, directed by the diva loving Vincente Minnelli. Here, as theater starlet Lori Shannon, Gray provided competition for Lauren Bacall’s sensitive fashionista Marilla. While her character is more of a victim of circumstance here than in the previous effort, Gray still puts in a good show as a majorly distracting influence upon the whirlwind romance and marriage of Bacall’s fashion queen and Gregory Peck’s beleaguered sports writer, Mike Hagen.

While Gray was quoted, by certain sources, as wishing that she had a more extensive filmography, one cannot deny the quality of the cool charm that she provided in the credits that she did have.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan.com

Hopelessly Devoted To: James Mitchell

Published March 14, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

Not only did the handsomely eclectic James Mitchell enact one of soap opera’s most hiss worthy villains for decades, but this lucky performer was also one of the cast of thousands, as that film’s tag line so boldly highlighted, to appear in the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera.

Granted, in Phantom, the always attention stealing Mitchell appears for mere moments as a reporter logging the details of the catastrophes that have haunted a local music hall. Thankfully, his turn as the diabolical Palmer Cortlandt on All My Children was a bit more substantial. There, his character continually made life hell for his often revolving spouses and judiciously tender offspring – all storyline subtext that Mitchell fully embraced, resulting in 7 Emmy nominations for the dedicated actor.

Mitchell, who seemingly never hid his devotion to costume designer Albert Wolksy, his romantic partner for 39 years, also held dear his substantial pedigree as a theatrical artist. Humbly describing himself as an actor with strong movement skills, he actually was one of the Broadway stage’s most powerfully athletic dancers. Those who saw him perform never forgot it and his close collaborators included such mavericks as Agnes DeMille, Jerome Robbins and Gower Champion.

With DeMille, he famously essayed Dream Curly in the ballet sequence of 1955’s Oklahoma, where one of his partners was the beefy, animated character actor Rod Steiger.

Thankfully, just like in that particular scenario, Mitchell always seemed to come off as unique and individualistic. So, while his one Gothic credit might only encompass a couple of minutes of screen time, the breadth of his career definitely speaks to the multiple achievements that one of our queer brothers could make – justifiably earning him a place in every gay horror lover’s heart forever.

Until the next time, SWEET love and PINK Grue, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan