cult

All posts tagged cult

Shark Bait Retro Village: Strike Force – Fallen Angel

Published May 20, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

After being terrorized by Scott Jacoby’s Bad Ronald, in the cult classic tv film of the same name, one would think that actress Cindy Fisher would be a bit leery around charismatic, misunderstood strangers. I would further assume that this would especially apply to mysterious figures played by actor Judson Scott, a man whose piercing blue eyes and knife sharp cheekbones always spelled imminent and inexplicable celluloid danger. But, hey, a job’s a job…and playing a questioning spirit named Sunset on the Fallen Angel episode of the short lived, early ’80s series Strike Force had to be a fun one.

For those uninitiated, Strike Force, a rare failure for the Aaron Spelling conglomerate, specialized in bringing a sleazier, Dirty Harry vibe to Friday evenings on ABC in the 1981-82 season. Plotlines, over the first few entries, revolved around revenge fueled families who gruesomely decapitated their victims & perverted, low-class charmers who kidnapped, raped and murdered beautiful, unsuspecting women. Led by stern jawed Robert Stack, the regular (crime solving) force also included the prolific Dorian Harewood, former Australian pop star Trisha Noble, the handsome Michael Goodwin (who went onto the even shorter-lived nighttime soap The Hamptons) and favored character actor Richard Romanus, often utilized as the team’s comic relief. 

In accordance with similar outings, Fisher’s moneyed Sunset is sensationally whipped by Scott’s Johnny Lee here, after refusing to take part in a Manson style massacre he orchestrates. Fleeing him and his devoted cult members, she soon holes up with the Stack’s crew on a small farm. As Johnny and his associates wage war upon them, further casualties mount. (The handsome Shannon Presby, best known as the lead in Sean Cunningham’s The New Kids, plays a sadistically reverential follower who is arrested by Noble and Goodwin.) 

Of course, after the bullets stop flying, Sunset and the show’s regulars, unsurprisingly, have survived the opposing onslaught. But as the end credits fade, it remains ambiguous, a la Patty Hearst, to what degree the show’s shamed heiress with have to pay for her initial involvement with these sadistic degenerates. Nicely, the emotional resonance of this question is amplified by the work of Fisher, who brings both vulnerability and edge to her creation. *

* (Fisher would play a more traumatized version of this character a few years later on an episode of TJ Hooker. In Trackdown, a 4th season episode of the show, her young married is captured by Richard Hatch’s sadistic criminal, giving her another showcase role and a place of note in ’80s television entertainment.)

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

Perks of the Trade – Phaedra

Published June 28, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

Perks of the Trade looks at the varied filmography of Anthony Perkins, the queer performer forever associated with Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest onscreen killer, Norman Bates.

I was 19 years old and Marty was way too old for me, his manly body already going soft around the ages. He also never finished college and worked at a grocery store during a time when I thought being a conservatory trained soap opera actor was the only occupation to aim for. Still, I wanted him much more than I wanted the handsome, curly haired carpenter who ran his own construction business and the muscular, blonde pre-med student who adored me and followed me around the dance floor of Christopher Street, the then Mecca of Chicago gay bars, with an unmitigated devotion. Attraction is mysteriously undefinable, a strange beast.

These unpredictable notions of romance often ran through my head when viewing 1962’s Phaedra, the lushly histrionic soap opera that finds Melina Mercouri’s maturely exotic title character rejecting Raf Vallone’s viral and passionate shipping magnet for his strait-laced son, played by a skinny, nervously intense Anthony Perkins. At the time of its release, the majority of critics rejected this grand operation outright – claiming that Mercouri’s amply charmed lass couldn’t seriously have found a moment’s fascination with Perkin’s anxious playboy. But the actor’s fresh-faced desirability does show through here on occasion, pointedly proving why his lighter contrasts might have appealed to Mercouri’s magnificently aging creature.

Thus, one wonders if director Jules Dassin had directed the seduction scenes with less tragic melodrama and more angular kink that the whole enterprise might have played differently. Perkins’ powers reside in his eccentricity and despite finding the quiet strength within himself to go toe-to-toe with Vallone during some climatic sequences, he truly comes alive here during the hysterical sequence when he drives himself to a madly howling death in a European sports car. Delightfully, this entire sequence is included as a track on the movie’s soundtrack album, with Perkin’s strangulated yowls making for one of the most unusual audio experiences ever committed to vinyl – a blazingly creative achievement in and of itself.

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

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