The Backside of Horror: The Killing Kind

Published May 18, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Outside of Joe Dallesandro’s work with Paul Morrissey in Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and The Blood of Dracula, the exploitation films of the ’70s were not usually an advertisement for the male physique.

Gay director Curtis Harrington, though, definitely cast a loving camera eye onto the young, very fit John Savage in 1973’s The Killing Kind. Often shirtless and/or running around in tiny swimming trunks, Savage’s unstable Terry Lambert is lingeringly obsessed over by his mother (Ann Sothern), a female roommate (Cindy Williams), an uptight neighbor (Luana Anders) and his former lawyer (Ruth Roman).

Often shrinking from their fevered gaze, Lambert’s hesitancy to their affections is truly understood in one mid-act scene. There, Sothern’s Thelma incestuously sneaks into the bathroom while he is showering and, giggling with coy abandon, takes many a steamy photo of him.

Harrington’s lens, meanwhile, is almost as lovingly obsessed with Savage’s rare masculine beauty as the plotline participants. This makes this offering the rare proto-slasher with plenty of sensuously photographed scenes of skin of the red blooded and increasingly bare variety – all reaching a head (or buttock as the case may be) with that daring wet, bathing shot.

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

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Ann Sothern: The Triumphant Kind

Published May 5, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Gay director Curtis Harrington was the George Cukor of the horror set. With filmic grace, he guided such pedigree blessed superstars as Gloria Swanson, Simone Signoret, Gale Sondergaard, Piper Laurie and Joan Blondell to blood curdling glory in such projects as Games, The Killer Bees, Ruby and The Dead Don’t Die.

Of course, his greatest achievement among the diva set just might be 1971’s What’s The Matter with Helen? That cult favorite, featuring the dueling frames of pert Hollywood sweetheart Debbie Reynolds and robustly complicated Academy Award winning Shelley Winters, did not, initially, set the box office on fire. But critically praised as one of the best post-Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? imitations, it has become a favorite among discerning terror lovers in the decades since.

But running a close second, in my opinion, to that lauded project is 1973’s gloriously sleazy The Killing Kind. This celluloid smudge features not only Ann Sothern, at her matriarchally pouty best, but the whiskey soaked Ruth Roman and catlike character actress Marjorie Eaton (The Time of Their Lives, The Snake Pit, Zombies of Mora Tau).

Revolving around Sothern’s blowsy Thelma and her often shirtless, sexual deviant son Terry (John Savage), the movie definitely fixes an unwavering gaze on Savage. Just released from prison due to participation in a gang rape, Terry is oddly juvenilized by Thelma, who forces chocolate milk and lipstick stained kisses upon him in abundant measure. Thelma is not alone in this kind of overindulgence. A spinster librarian (Luana Anders), a wanna-be starlet (Cindy Williams) and even Terry’s former lawyer (Roman) & an aging tenant (Eaton) of Thelma’s, all drip around him with moist concern and occasionally aggressive interest.

In particular, Louise, Anders’ character, fantasizes about him sadistically violating her. Meanwhile, Rhea, played by Roman, seems more distressed over losing Terry’s case due to sexual affection for him than any career-style woes.

The plus side of these and other incidents is this is the rare exploitation outing that concentrates on male beauty, happily embroidered by a juicily femme cast. The psychology here, though, may leave something to be desired. The screenplay seems to suggest that the reason the deeply violent Terry erupts on a journey of uncontrollable revenge is all due to the fawning, overly needy women in his life and not extreme mental imbalance or some other layered factor.

Still, as the lead-in paragraph indicates, Harrington works wonders with the female cast. Roman crams a variety of emotional flavors into her one scene while Anders brings a successfully bitter, almost acidic, texture to her characterization.

Magnifying them, Sothern sinks her teeth into every neurotic tic of her character, creating a childishly odd but truly believable human. Supporting roles would follow for this veteran actress, but in this, her last leading role, she and Harrington absolutely eek every morsel of strange goodness that there is to be found in the circumstances at hand.

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

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Gloria Swanson

Published March 19, 2017 by biggayhorrorfan

Sunset Boulevard

Was there ever anything as haunting as Gloria Swanson’s deliciously deluded Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s classic, emotional noir Sunset Boulevard? Many refined and enthusiastic film buffs will probably, unanimously, agree that there isn’t.

Thankfully, almost 25 years after this macabre venture, Swanson returned to play another demanding diva in Curtis Harrington’s fondly remembered television horror Killer Bees. As the queenly Maria von Bohlen, Swanson ruled her fictional family with a tart grip even as the matriarch’s fuzzy flying pets began to draw the life out of members of the frightened local community. gloria killer bees

Meanwhile, although she was never known as a singer, the always game legend tackled a couple of tunes in the early 80s on a variety of star studded specials.

Here, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra’s well regarded Wonderful One gets the nostalgic treatment.

Next, Swanson is joined by Brooke Shields (Alice, Sweet, Alice, The Midnight Meat Train) and Barbara Eden (A Howling in the Woods, The Stranger Within) for a surprising version of Cole Porter’s What Do You Think About Men?

For those interested, the adventures of this singular entertainer are explored in deeper detail at https://thehairpin.com/scandals-of-classic-hollywood-the-gloria-swanson-saga-part-one-e2d29b36eac2

gloria 3

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

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Sharkbait Retro Village: Gale Sondergaard in “The Cat Creature”

Published February 13, 2014 by biggayhorrorfan

From soul sucking mermaids to possessed drive-ins and satanic dogs, gay director Curtis Harrington’s film subjects are gloriously unusual. He, like many a lavender lad before him also appreciated a good diva when he saw one.

Counting Gloria Swanson (Killer Bees), Debbie Reynolds and Shelly Winters (What’s the Matter with Helen?), Ann Sothern (The Killing Kind) and Piper Laurie (Rudy) among his leading ladies, Harrington, akin to such Golden Age “female directors” like George Cukor and Douglas Sirk, worked with some of filmdom’s most majestic femmes.

In the 1973 television terror flick The Cat Creature, Harrington worked magic with the mysterious, socially beleaguered Gale Sondergaard. As winner of the first Academy Award for Supporting Actress in 1936, Sondergaard had a quality career until being blackballed in the ’50s for refusing to testify during the McCarthy “Red Scare” trials. She eventually returned to the screen in the ’60s and spent a lot of the ’70s doing television and fright fare such as Savage Intruder (1970).

Here, with a sassy firmness, Sondergaard infuses the supporting role of Hester Black with a steely spine and a heart of gold. A former con, Black provides mothering (with some faint lesbian undertones) to the young female assistants in her pawn shop. Her world is turned upside down, though, when one of the women in her employ mysteriously disappears. As a sly cat works its way through nearby alleys and acquaintances soon lose their lives, it appears that the killer may be mystical in nature and much closer to Black than she ever expected.

Harrington works with an astute sense of shadow, here. (He would employ the same techniques in the sillier, much beloved Devil Dog: Hound of Hell in 1978, as well.) The mood he generates does much to elevate the simple plotline (which makes the true killer’s identity fairly obvious, early on in the proceedings).

Old school horror lovers will appreciate the appearance of David Hedison (The Fly) as the male lead and sit com fanatics should delight to the presence of a very young, almost unrecognizable Meredith Baxter (Birney), who sports lots and lots of hair!

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

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