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Va-Va-Villainess: Emily (in Paris)

Published March 29, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Sometimes indecisive niceness can be just as mean as abject cruelty.

Take Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), the titular focus of Emily in Paris, for example. Forever trying to spare feelings, particularly where her love for the chronically unavailable Chef Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) is concerned, has led her to commit countless faux pas. This has often produced hurt feelings & confusion for those around her. Even worse, perhaps, this wishy-washiness has resulted in the breaking of many a kind soul’s heart.

As of the first episodes of the show’s fourth season, the character that has been most shattered by Emily’s unintended recklessness is the gorgeous (and totally available) financial guru Alfie (Lucien Laviscount). Treated to an on and off again courtship due to the emotional craziness in Emily’s world, Laviscount truly nailed his character’s core deep ache upon realizing that Emily’s promises of total commitment were shattered after Gabriel decided he was finally able to pursue her once again. 

As charming & fun (and over-the-top glamourous) as Emily is, these behaviors definitely make her an occasional villainess in my book.

Agreed?

P.S.: Having just started watching the show a week ago, the fact that I am already so far into the mix, episode-wise, proves what a fan of Emily (and crew) that I really am. 

But still…poor Alfie!

Wrong Turn 4 Podcast

Published March 22, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

I grew up outside of Buffalo, a legitimate oasis for snow during the winter months ,,,and sometimes even well into spring. 

I’ll never forget one Easter break when I was a pre-teen. On our first Saturday off, the temps hit the ’70s. Annette Funicello beach movies were playing on the local station – and I thought we were heading into a summery paradise. That night, though, we were struck with a blizzard and I was dodging one frozen tundra after another for the next 13 days. 

Fortunately, that scenario wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the one that hits the ski loving gang in Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings. Out in the icy wilderness, they run into the extremely violent Hillicker brothers and, as it always does in this series, physical trauma & death soon come for them. 

Unlike the other entries, the LGBTQIA community enters the scenario here via two of the main characters, a frisky lesbian couple – thus earning it a spot as one of my entries in Queer Horror: A Film Guide.

Recently, during the official podcast for the book, I joined editor Sean Abley in looking at the sapphic intricacies of this fun offering in this long running, low budget horror series. 

Be sure to listen, hopefully in some warm & inviting environment, at Podcast Addict (link below) or your favorite streaming service!

Queer Horror: A Film Guide – The Podcast – Podcast Addict

Hopelessly Devoted To: Fay Bainter

Published February 22, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Making history as the first actress to be nominated in both lead and supporting categories at the 1938 Academy Awards, the down-to-earth Fay Bainter played many a loyal mate and supportive mother throughout her career.

Always a savant for the text, Bainter was able to transform herself into controlling, dangerous women, as well. 

Indeed, in The Shining Hour, an MGM film packed with strong female artists, Bainter was able to show a skilled duality. As Hannah Lindon, the matriarchal figure of a wealthy dynasty, she effectively showed compassion and love for sister-in-law Judy, played by the ever authentic Margaret Sullavan. Her reaction to Joan Crawford’s Olivia Riley, a NYC showgirl who unexpectedly marries into the family, is one filled with derision and virulence, though.

Dramatically, her character’s hatred of Olivia eventually leads her into a moment of fiery mania. This act of violence inadvertently changes Judy’s life forever and gives Bainter a chance to utilize a more expressive energy than was typical in her many acclaimed performances. 

While her portrayal of the very vocal, very prejudiced Mrs. Amelia Tilford in The Children’s Hour (1961) earned her another Academy Award nomination, it is her role in Dark Waters (1944) that is decidedly her most lethal.

There, as the seemingly kindly Aunt Emily, she soon puts amnesiac heiress Merle Oberon’s life in danger. It is a subtly cool performance that is all the more effective for Bainter’s spidery sweetness.

Career Retrospective:

Any Bainter marathon should definitely include Jezebel, containing the performance that she actually won the Oscar for, and Cry Havoc!, a surprisingly effective war drama that also features such names as the above-mentioned Sullavan, Joan Blondell and Ann Sothern.

Van Johnson: Lady Killer

Published February 14, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

He was Hollywood’s fresh faced hero, but Van Johnson caused more than certain pigtailed viewers’ hearts to flutter. The characters he played could also be very dangerous to the opposite sex,

Even the man-breaking Elizabeth Taylor suffered, cinematically, under his boyish spell. 

Sparingly adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited, 1954’s The Last Time I Saw Paris found Johnson’s Charles Wills initially dating Donna Reed’s elegant yet doting Marion. But with one look at Taylor’s spoiled Helen, Marion’s younger sister, Johnson/Charles is smitten and Marion is quickly a mere footnote in his life. The tempestuous relationship between Charles and Helen soon produces a child…and mountains of heartache.

That destructive energy reaches its zenith, one rainy night, when the combative, overly emotional Helen is caught in a downpour after a battle with her disapproving spouse. Her deathbed gasps change Charles’ life forever.

Johnson lost another celluloid paramour due to excessively stormy weather in the three hankie Miracle in the Rain, released two years after Paris. 

Here it is Jane Wyman’s shy, inexperienced Ruth who falls under the spell of G.I. Arthur, whom Johnson plays with a worldly sense of charm.

Wyman’s character here is the exact opposite of Taylor’s, but Arthur proves to be quite the lady killer with her, as well, if only by accident.

After a tender courtship, Ruth is misinformed that Arthur has died overseas. Distraught and depressed, she exposes herself to the elements. Thus, pneumonia ridden and nearly delirious, she perishes in his arms as he reaches her just in time for her final collapse.

The moral of these stories?!? Avoid those charmers, ladies and gents!

Johnson’s Horror Express:

As with many Golden Age greats before him, Johnson appeared in a couple Euro Horror efforts in the latter days of his career: 1982’s The Scorpion with Two Tails and 1989’s beast in the wild entry, Killer Crocodile.

Va-Va-Villainess: Ruth Hussey

Published February 7, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Elegantly sympathetic in the classic ghost mystery The Uninvited (1940), actress Ruth Hussey also scored as the spunky photographer Elizabeth in 1940’s The Philadelphia Story.

Proving her worth as a performer, Hussey could also bring a little nasty energy to her celluloid projects. Nicely, in Maisie (1939), the first chapter in Ann Sothern’s long running comedy series, Hussey disguises her character’s sinister goals with a rich sense of sophisticated privilege. 

There, as the well-to-do Sybil Ames, she not only carries out a lurid affair behind her doting husband’s back, but she also enacts a plot that finds Robert Young’s kind ranch supervisor on trial for a crime that he didn’t commit. 

Luckily, Sothern’s street smart Maisie figures out the vile plot and comes to the kind gentleman’s rescue just in the nick of time.

Thus, especially for connoisseurs of cinema gold, the most enjoyable aspect of this old school romp is watching Sothern match her rascally earthiness against Hussey’s highbrow vengefulness. 

A better matched duo is rare to find.

While The Uninvited is definitely Hussey’s best known genre credit, she also joyfully emoted in Mink, a first season episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. While this tale from the Master of Suspense is a lighter hearted one, Hussey still works with a fine duality, allowing audiences to question whether she is aware of the criminality behind a piece of recently purchased apparel or not.

Review: Sewer Gators

Published February 4, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

All of the world’s probiotics and Ryze coffee drinks may not be enough to save you from a shit stained nightmare – especially when there are deadly gators popping up in the bathroom at your private home.

Unfortunately, in the very fun Sewar Gators (2022), the residents of a small Louisiana town learn this sad fact the hard way. Thus, after a drunken ne’er do well is practically swallowed whole after a trip to the john, frazzled Sheriff Mitchell (Kenny Bellau) must try to convince his town’s unyielding mayor about the danger at hand. Of course, even the arrival of a determined alligator expert (Marion Pages) does little to change the oblivious official’s mind and soon a variety of townsfolk have viciously expired. 

Nicely, writer-director Paul Dale works with a true understanding of how powerful the ridiculous can be when done correctly. Utilizing Dollar Tree props and such absurd scenarios as the banishment of a large reptile via a voodoo doll, he creates an over-the-top winner here.

Despite the low budget and an occasional lack of experience, the cast here is always appropriately natural or assuredly broad depending upon the situation at hand, as well. Bellau, in particular, wins the audience over with a subdued ease.

Overall, fans of Jaws and The Asylum’s multiple nature-gone-wild projects will definitely find much to enjoy here. 

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Paul Jabara

Published January 4, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Joyful and energetic, Paul Jabara’s music helped define the mid-to-late ’70s. He co-created one of the greatest duets of all time, Enough is Enough, with Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. His tracks with solo Summer, Last Dance, and solo Streisand, The Main Event, also lit up the dance floors, back when your grandparents were swinging into the wee hours with their navel bearing dress shirts and multi-towered heels. 

Of course, the homosexuals among us will probably know him best for the iconic fruit-swirled track Its Raining Men. Sung by the irreplaceable Weather Girls, this tune has worked its way into the background of many a celluloid adventure, including the horror comedies Scary Movie and Vampires Suck.

Sadly, Jabara, who once had the herculean task of replacing Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was one of the many queer creatives who lost his life to AIDS. His legacy will live on, though, via online play lists and the countless speakers that are still blaring his music from the streets of New York City to the rainforests of Borneo. 

Castle Fairy: A Quick Visit with 1313: Frankenqueen

Published December 29, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

“Ah, you’re going to be a lot of useless data, aren’t you?” – Victoria Franks, 1313: Frankenqueen

As a companion to my Netflix viewing of Guillermo del Toro’s larger than life version of Frankenstein, I also indulged in another Mary Shelley inspired opus, David DeCoteau’s 1313: Frankenqueen (2012). Like del Toro, DeCoteau definitely has his own style and he also worships at the altar of a really good set piece. Of course, DeCoteau’s props are all human, involving the forms of very smooth and cleanly muscular jock-types. 

Here a bevy of those prototypes are recruited as weekend lab rats for Victoria Franks (Helene Udy), a brilliant plastic surgeon. Udy (My Bloody Valentine, The Dead Zone) is obviously having a blast in the titular role, both pithily analyzing and enthusiastically dispatching her charges. In fact, it is hard to determine what is more painful for the young men in her employ, the rigorous work-outs that their host puts them through or the barbed retorts that she frequently delivers about their intellect and worthiness for her program.

Otherwise, as expected from a DeCoteau feature, there are long sequences of the male cast wandering, in perfectly shaven fugues, throughout Franks’ mansion. Since his first male erotica opus, Voodoo Academy in 2000, these dream sequences have been a staple in his films. One could even argue that they put DeCoteau in the auteur league as they are so infused with his creative identity.

His frequent themes of revenge and underdog upmanship are also in full force here. 

Industriously, these simple plot points and a single location, along with a rotating cast of female genre performers & toned studs, created an celluloid empire, with close to 30 films done with the same stylistic precepts.

Of course, while there is nary a bare male buttock in sight, one must admire the art of the fluff on display in these titles. With almost academic precision, the performers arrange their pouched jewels, allowing for a lasting impression that the scenarios themselves don’t always achieve.

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Review: Resurrection

Published December 14, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

While the character of John Harper in Resurrection (1980) sternly resides in a small country town, he has little in common with portrayer Roberts Blossom’s best-known role, Ezra Cobb. In 1972’s Deranged, Cobb, is a backwoods denizen of a different sort – , a fan favorite psycho, based on serial killer Ed Gein. There, Gein’s exploits are proffered up in bloody, documentary-style detail, efficiently essayed by a wild-eyed yet blisteringly natural Blossom.

In contrast, Harper, while cold, is extremely pious and soft spoken, a direct opposite of Cobb. Indeed, Blossom most excels here in the moment when Harper’s long gestating rigidness dissolves into tear stained joy, proving the true versatility of this distinguished poet and performer.

Interestingly, this film, revolving around a woman named Edna (Ellen Burstyn), who discovers she has healing abilities after a near death experience, features multiple performers, such as Blossom, who are known for their genre credits. 

Most significantly, Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for her committed performance in the now classic The Exorcist. As she, powerfully, finds the nuances of Edna’s transformation from a crippled accident victim to peaceful wonder-maker, she was also, rightfully, nominated for her work here. 

Meanwhile, among the story’s relatives and friends, Madeline Sherwood and Lois Smith both give effective characterizations. Sherwood, a distinguished Broadway performer, had significant roles in such projects as The Changeling, often referred to as the most effective ghost story of all time, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Haunted By Her Past (previously covered here). Smith, also acclaimed for her stage work, appeared in the killer child flick Twisted and essayed one of her most recognizable roles, Adele Stackhouse in True Blood, decades after her appearance here. 

As Edna’s powers are never truly explained, there is a mysterious, almost science fiction essence working, plotline-wise here, as well. Interestingly, scenes in which Edna is examined in a series of college labs, definitely have a kinship to the sequences in which Regan (Linda Blair) is experimented on in Exorcist II: The Heretic, a film Burstyn seemingly made a decided effort not to be involved in. 

Thus, if one is in the mood for something quiet and mystical or even just looking for a break from overwrought bloodshed, this might definitely be a movie well worth seeking out.

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Strange and Unusual: Ethel Griffies in Castle in the Dark

Published December 6, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

As Madame Saturnia in the murder-mystery Castle in the Desert, the distinguished Ethel Griffies definitely steals the show. The last Charlie Chan film produced by 20th Century Fox Studios, this adventure finds Chan (then Sidney Toler) investigating a poisoning at the titular establishment. Beckoned there by a note that no one claims to have written, Chan is soon joined by his overeager son (Sen Yung) and Saturnia.

While Griffies, as previously reported here, has such projects as The Birds and Stranger on the Third Floor on her resume, Saturnia is probably her most horror-ready role. In commune with the supernatural elements, she spends the majority of the picture popping around a ruinous basement facility. Seemingly completely off kilter, she actually accurately predicts what is about to happen as every shady plot twist comes to life. 

Giving fully into the wily witchery of the role, the actress is a perfect foil for Toler and one wishes that these two characters had been brought together more often.

Nicely, while Griffies had often played up the archness of her persona in other projects, here she is all heroine – although a perfectly strange and completely unusual one.

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

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