Social media has its drawbacks. But if you’re lucky, you can also discover the coolest people, including many who live many miles away.
Speaking to that point, I’ve recently stumbled upon two amazing women, Kelly and Jessica. They are true horror lovers, exciting podcasters and they, sparkle bewitchingly, with a true sense of fun. I really think you need to check them out.
Nicely, not only do they, as the (Ontario based) Spinsters of Horror, produce podcasts that are gleeful, but they also look at gender and other social constructs in the genre with a serious eye and a spot on analytic expertise.
Be sure to find out about everything these two goddesses of cinematic mayhem at
Providing the ‘40s singing voice for everyone from MGM’s Vera Ellen to the stunning Rita Haworth, the versatile Anita Ellis earned her terror pedigree by having her vocals included in the 1964 horror cheese fest The Flesh Eaters. The sister of Larry Kert, the gay actor-singer who found acclaim in the original stage production of West Side Story, Ellis eventually courted success as a jazz singer in her latter day career – even though a particularly vicious form of stage fright often robbed her of her voice.
Still, her talent and skill will forever reverberate in numbers such as this.
Best known for her popular run on Days of Our Livesand for her hit single Friends and Lovers(with the late, beloved Carl Anderson), Gloria Loring is a renaissance woman. As an author, motivational speaker and singer-actress, she has been deservedly admired for decades.
But an appearance on Freddy’s Nightmares also makes her a minor matriarch of horror, as well. As Ellen Kramer, the no nonsense editor of a tabloid journal, on the second season episode Heartbreak Hotel, Loring shone with a sense of vibrant power and feministic sassiness. (Interestingly, this episode also features Tiffany Helm from Friday the 13th: A New Beginningand Richard Cox, the killer in William Friedkin’s controversial gay themed slasher-thriller Cruising.)
Among Loring’s greatest work, though, has to be this amazing melody of songs, which tells the bittersweet story of a romance from its hopeful beginning to its heartbreaking end.
Be sure to visit this spectacular multi-hyphenate at www.glorialoring.com and until the next time…
Chicago is home to many amazing film events. From the multiple festivals originating from the Terror in the Aisles crew to the Music Box Massacre, there are a wide variety of genre happenings for cinema enthusiasts to embrace. One of the newest and most exciting homegrown productions is The Windy City Horrorama, now entering its second year.
Last year’s activities included an anniversary screening of Jason Goes to Hell, with director Adam Marcus in attendance, along with a multitude of premiere screenings. The upcoming edition will also feature special guests including indie legend J.R. Bookwalter, appearing with a celebratory screening of Robot Ninja, and Rodman Fletcher, the director of the much beloved terror comedy Idle Hands.
But WCH is truly making its mark as being a special place for outrageous indie and foreign splatterfests. If titles like Straight Edge Kegger, The VelociPasterand Mutant Blastcatch your gore seeking eyeballs, then you won’t want to miss this enthusiastic celebration, which begins a three day residency at the historic Davis Theater in Lincoln Square on Friday, April 26th.
The Honey Bees, comprised of Tina Louise, Natalie Schafer and Dawn Wells, may be the greatest fictional girl group of all time. Gilligan’s Island fanatics surely rejoice in this episode of the popular show which finds the cast’s beloved Ginger (Louise), Mrs. Howell (Schafer) and Mary Ann (Wells) forming a musical version of The Honeys in hopes of finally getting off the island that they have permanently been sequestered on.
But the fact that this versatile trio of actresses has been involved in many individual genre projects makes this joyous collaboration of special notice to terror tikes, as well. Schafer, a veteran performer of film and stage, hit the gothic mother lode first with appearances in The Secret Behind the Door…and a beloved episode of the Boris Karloff hosted anthology series Thriller. Louise made the ‘70s and ‘80s particularly enjoyable with roles in the feminist classic The Stepford Wives and the atrociously lovable oddity Evils of the Night. Wells, meanwhile, found herself battling for her life against a water beastie and a violent serial killer in Return to Boggy Creek and the greatly admired The Town That Dreaded Sundown. (Interestingly, it is rumored that Well’s voice was dubbed here by Jackie DeShannon, the writer of the coolly mysterious Bette Davis Eyes.)
On a side note, Schafer, who died in 1991, also appeared in a popular touring production of the lesbian classic The Killing of Sister George with Claire Trevor. Louise, who has quietly tried to move past her seminal work as Ginger, keeps admirers informed of her activities at https://www.facebook.com/pg/thetinalouise. Wells, meanwhile, has long kept the torch of that imaginary island burning. She, happily, keeps up with fans of GI (and her other work) at https://www.facebook.com/therealmaryann/ and http://dawnwells.com/.
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
One of my fondest memories of high school – yes, I do have one or two! – was when Kristin, my very blonde and pretty senior prom date, wore the same dress as the very nasty, slightly dog faced class president. I wasn’t very popular (and that moment may have made me even more of a pariah to some) but Kristin definitely won the “Who Wore It Better” poll that night.
The amazing Count the Clock Productions show another, more vicious way to teen victory with the Giallo shaded music video, Who Killed the Homecoming Queen? here. As always, their visual style radiates with LGBTQIA friendly potency and Euro-tinged delight.
Roles in Oklahoma, Carouseland The Music Manpegged the exquisite Shirley Jones as one of America’s true sweethearts. Glossy production numbers on variety specials, like the one below, only enhanced that image.
But every performer has a dual nature. Jones, who won an Academy Award for playing a lady of the evening in Elmer Gantry, has been nicely showing hers in such latter day horror productions as Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Zombie Night. If that isn’t proof of her full bounty of talent then I don’t know what is!
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Her powerful Mulholland Drive landlady may have uttered the line “Ten bucks says you’re Betty,” but the divine Ann Miller, whose amazing career spanned decades, was always one in a million.
Movie buffs will always be grateful to the eccentric David Lynch for immortalizing Ann at the end of her career with a role in his mysteriously gothic masterpiece, but he was not the first auteur to take delight in Miller’s powerful presence. Dance maverick Busby Berkeley, long admired by such genre legends as Joe Dante and John Landis, provided this tap dancing marvel with one of her most captivating and original production numbers in the fun musical Small Town Girl.
Miller, long a believer in extraterrestrial powers – her final book was entitled Tapping into the Force, died at the age of 80 in 2004. But to her devoted fans and dedicated celluloid buffs, this expressive dynamo will live on forever!
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
As with many superstars, Mary Astor and Constance Bennett among them, King Kong’s expressive Fay Wray found herself playing mothers of grown daughters onscreen far too soon. Nicely, Wray finds plenty of moments to bring a sense of charm and joy to her Mrs. Gordon Kimbell – no first name given!!! – in the 1953 MGM musical Small Town Girl.
Mothering musical sensation Jane Powell as she romances Farley Granger’s society playboy (while simultaneously wrangling her way through the rest of her loved one’s strong personalities), Wray is able to show moments of exasperated tenderness over her brood’s foibles and eccentricities while providing evidence that she is the force that keeps her family on the right track.
Terror celebrants, meanwhile, will be pleased to see Wray, whose other horror credits include Doctor X and Mystery in the Wax Museum, share a scene or two with Granger. Granger, who proves here that he was one of the most striking presences in the Golden Age of Hollywood, is well known for his work in Hitchcock’s homoerotic masterpieces, Rope and Strangers on a Train. Besides that amazing contribution to the legacy of dark cinema, this eclectic specimen appeared in a variety of Giallo enterprises (So Sweet, So Dead, Something Creeping in the Dark, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) and enlivened the beloved 1981 slasher The Prowler, which is highlighted by Tom Savini’s gruesome effects work.
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Fierce and independent, Ida Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood for many years. She was just as memorable in front of the camera, establishing herself as a prime example of the tough hearted film noir broad.
As was typical of many women in that genre, she played nightclub singers in both The Man I Love, the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York, and the atmosphere soaked Roadhouse, which had absolutely nothing to do with the Patrick Swayze cheese-fest of later years. Although dubbed in the former, she was able to display her own smoky, mood soaked voice in the latter.
Not expectedly in her fading years, Lupino found herself battling off gigantic feathered foes in Food of the Gods and Ernest Borgnine’s horned cult leader in The Devil’s Rain. Her last role was of a magnificent Norma Desmond take-off in an early episode of Charlie’s Angels, a fitting finale for one of the grand queens of the cinema.
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Big Gay Horror Fan 