Hopelessly Devoted To: Ruth Roman

Published August 10, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Brash yet sophisticated, Ruth Roman was a dynamic celluloid broad. She lit up such nourish pictures from Warner Brothers as Strangers on a Train, Three Secrets, Lightning Strikes Twice and Tomorrow is Another Day. Whether sporting a sassy blonde wig (Tomorrow) or emanating patrician airs (Strangers), she always registered with a definitive presence.

Unsurprisingly, this aura continued to resonate throughout her latter-day credits, including a number of significant terror film projects. Her bombastic take on an overprotective mother in 1973’s truly weird The Baby is an important piece of exploitation history. Her roles in The Killing Kind (also 1973) and 1977’s Day of the Animals were less significant but were still filled with her patent gregariousness.

Meanwhile, one of her more interesting ’70s credits had her intersecting with two other queens of horror. As Adele Arnold, a retired big band singer, in The Disco Killer episode of Police Woman, Roman shared potent scenes with both Angie Dickinson (Dressed to Kill, The Maddening, Circle of Fear, Pretty Maids All in a Row) and Taaffe O’Connell (Galaxy of Terror, New Year’s Evil).

Convinced by Dickinson’s Pepper, the titular police woman, to take part in an undercover operation, Roman supplies Adele with a tough outer core underscored by a nostalgic, bruised heart. Portraying a character reeled into the mayhem in order to protect her estranged daughter (O’Connell) from a trio of trigger happy mobsters, Roman happily revels in being this story’s primary focus.

For those, like myself, who enjoy analyzing the background connections of various performers, the fact that Roman and O’Connell both expired at the hands of various monsters (both natural and unnatural) in their various celluloid outings makes them seem like natural co-conspirators as mother and daughter. That Dickinson was also a contract player for Warner Brothers makes her various scenes with Roman sing with a potent naturalness, as well.

Probably logged in as nothing more than a normal workday for all involved, I would still, time travel permitting, love to visit that set – if only for a brief moment or two.

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

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Catching Private Ryan

Published July 5, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Ryan Phillippe knows his audience.

In 2014’s Catch Hell, his sole writing-directing credit, Phillippe plays Reagan Pierce, a liberally exaggerated version of himself. Down on his luck, the emotionally beleaguered Pierce accepts a lesser acting job in a Louisianian bayou town. Unfortunately, on the first day of filming, he is intercepted by two local men. Kidnapping him, they hustle him into a swamp ridden shack where they begin torturous games. Trying to break him mentally while simultaneously destroying his reputation via online shenanigans, the duo soon escalate matters into Straw Dogs territory.

As the shackled Pierce is continually bloodied, degraded and beaten, the audience (rightly) assumes that retribution will eventually be in order. Thus, we have the male equivalent of the rape-revenge film here. This becomes especially obvious once it is revealed that Junior (Stephen Louis Grush), one of his dimwitted captors, has sexual feelings for Pierce. Of course, this budding attraction first arose when Junior watched Pierce in action in a sexually charged teen drama, referencing Phillippe’s own work in Cruel Intentions. As my opening statement attests, this plot point proves that the actor is very aware of how much his portrayal of Sebastian Valmont effected his gay fans in their youth.

Interestingly, these circumstances put Phillippe’s character in the same position as Camille Keaton in I Spit on Your Grave and Matilda Lutz in Revenge (among countless others). As the increasingly frenzied Junior tries to rape Pierce, Phillipe and Grush are exposed, both emotionally and physically, entering into vulnerable positions usually reserved just for female starlets.

This attribute supplies Catch Hell with a sort of significance, making it a cultural oddity with some spark behind it. Occasionally feeling draggy and drawn out, there are enough scenes of essential weirdness here, particularly a bizarre film within a film during the closing credits, to make this of interest to cinema buffs. At the very least, the copious views of the backsides of Phillippe & Grush in the project’s most notorious scene will give those who like that sort of thing plenty of penetrative thought.

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

The Missed Queering of Speak No Evil

Published May 27, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

I’ve got more years behind me than before me. I don’t have enough time left on this planet to watch yet another film or limited television series where a powerful white man terrorizes a woman (either solo or with family in tow) for an hour and a half. This realization came to me when I was about halfway through 2024’s Speak No Evil, the Americanized version of a popular Danish horror film. The fact that it took me two or three months to finally finish it speaks to my weariness.

Don’t we live in a world where that kind of POS has been granted far too much power, anyhow? I don’t need him as the primary figure of my entertainment orientated escapes.

Granted, the more salacious side of my gayness wickedly sparked at this project’s midpoint visual of a beefed up James McAvoy stripping down to his black briefs for a swim. Sitting through the demented machinations of his character was another story altogether, though.

Of course, I might have taken more interest if the hinted at attraction between McAvoy’s Paddy and Scoot McNairy’s Ben had been more fully realized. While calculatedly setting a trap for Louise (Makenzie Scott) and her daughter, Alex (Alix West Lefler), Paddy makes off with the patriarchal side of that family unit, driving him into the woods for some manly bonding.

The song that Paddy chooses to accentuate their macho excursion, though, is The Bangles’ ultra-romantic Eternal Flame. That tune becomes a central sonic focus of the project, making viewers – or at least this one – wonder if director/co-writer James Watkins was subtly hinting at something a bit more lavender in Paddy’s nature.

But, ultimately, this twisted celluloid excursion soon does a forward freefall into Paddy’s deliriously violent attack upon Louise, Ben and Alex. All subtle nuances in character are swept aside for red faced, eye bulging mania.

The corporate, common line quality of this filmmaking is frustrating in it’s predictability. We definitely don’t need a mainstream, studio supported look at a dangerous homosexual – particularly in this politic climate. But turning Paddy into a sexually fluid manipulator of all who come into his path would have definitely given this film a fresh boost of life, turning a tried and true maniacal monster into something a little more joyfully perverse. This would have also taken some of the heat off of the basic, misogynistic notion of a woman and her child facing danger from yet another deluded, over privileged man.

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

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!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Troll Terror 101: Godsend

Published March 22, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Somewhere in my media strewn apartment, there is a DVD of Raging Bull. I’ve had it for years, with every intention to watch it, but…

Of course, you can bet I if stumble upon my copy of 2004’s Godsend, featuring Robert De Niro’s other greatly acclaimed modern performance (lol!), all bets are off. That sucker is going in the player!

Before you judge me, though, let’s consider something. At the beginning of the 21st Century, after years of often stellar projects, De Niro seemingly made a purposeful creative decision to begin branching out into his (highly enjoyable) Troll Terror years. He did this via taking roles in projects like (the above mentioned) Godsend, Hide and Seek (2005) and Red Lights (2012).

Naturally, he was no stranger to the genre, having made appearances in the noir-ishly violent Cape Fear (1991), Kenneth Branagh’s pompous, sweat-tastic take on Frankenstein (1994) and the psycho thriller The Fan (1996). But it was with the poorly received Godsend that I think many critics and fans began to question his choices a bit.

A Mary Shelley-style Bad Seed knock-off, this film found De Niro in (spoiler alert) mad scientist zone. Playing genetics expert Richard Wells, he initially reads as kindly and benevolent. But things take a turn after he helpfully clones the dead child of Paul (Greg Kinnear) and Jessie Duncan (Rebecca Romijn). Upon entering his grade school years, Adam (Cameron Bright) starts to exhibit severe personality disorders while also beginning to act out with deadly intent. After some investigating, the Duncan’s discover that Wells has also imbued their child with DNA from his own psychotic, deceased offspring.

Bleakly impossible, the project wound up with a 3% Rotten Tomatoes score. But Bright, who visited similar territory in the bizarre arthouse adventure Birth, is actually truly effective as the psychologically twisted, less than originally named Adam. De Niro also subtly portrays the deep shift in Wells, bringing a chilling honesty to the scenes where his evil plan is revealed.

The fact that Kinnear, who was nominated for an Oscar, and De Niro, an honoree with multiple acting statuettes, both found this project worthy also speaks to its effectiveness. Wouldn’t any parent do anything they could to resurrect their suddenly departed offspring? A parent himself, De Niro surely responded to that aspect of the script, making this good kid-gone bad enterprise a repeat watch for me…and, hopefully, plenty of others.

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Genre Perspectives: The Sandpiper

Published March 1, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Its no surprise that acclaimed horror directors like John Landis have contributed enthusiast commentaries to profiles on such visually stunning old school creators like sparkling dance king Busby Berkeley. Horror films are often defined by their morbid style and atmospheric palette, and it is no wonder that its prime practitioners recognize the impressive work of those who came before them.

Director Vincent Minnelli is another of those lush golden greats that contemporary maestros often rhapsodize about. His pictures always radiate with deep color and intense style. There is also probably nothing more spookily evocative than the Halloween scene in his classic Meet Me In Saint Louis. There, he carefully conjured up dread and youthful excitement all at once. In fact, the cheering mob like quality of that sequence almost dominates & supersedes the frenzied crowd work supplied by David Gordon Green in some of his recent seasonal epics.

Nicely, Minnelli’s vivid hues and auteur style elegance are still present in his latter, less critically recognized works. Even in The Sandpiper, a chest heaving soap opera from 1965 featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, his visual flair dominates the proceedings. Taylor, whom he had worked with twice before in the original Father of the Bride comedies, is also crowned with the loving, saturated camera work that he provided such luminaries as Judy Garland, Katherine Hepburn and Lucille Bremer in their heyday.

Interestingly, Taylor’s against the grain artist character also finds parallels with many of the imperfectly singular horror heroines we have seen of late. As Laura Reynolds, a freewheeling bohemian who refuses to bow down to traditional expectations, Taylor seemingly finds all the strands of her own singular power and displays them, passionately, onscreen. Thus, astute viewers can find echoes of everyone from XXX‘s Maxine to Heart Eyes‘ Ally McCabe in Reynolds’ fiery resistance to conformity.

Now, one can only hope that younger (and even older, blindsided) horror fans will eventually discover all the wonderful genre coincidences that lurk within popular cinema from decades ago.

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Hepburn’s Flame

Published January 11, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Nervous, against the grain types were often Katharine Hepburn’s specialty. Unsurprisingly, the fluttery traits of the quirky spinsters she played have also found emotional root with the awkward titular characters in May, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Rosemary’s Baby and a host of other femme focused terror fests.

Chronic terror viewers also know that secrets and murderous deeds often beat at the heart of many a gothic vixen. These attributes are something at least one of Hepburn’s characters was very familiar with, as well.

Working alongside frequent collaborators like director George Cukor and actor Spencer Tracy, Hepburn brought the high toned Christine Forrest to life in 1942’s Keeper of the Flame. As the widow of a revered public servant, Forrest presents a shifty figure. Trying hard not to detonate the image of her revered politician husband, Forrest keeps to the shadows, praying to remain illusive as possible after his sudden death. But the attention of Tracy’s Steven O’ Malley, a skilled reporter, endangers this.

Once O’Malley discovers that the calm diplomat had turned into a megalomaniac racist with thoughts of world domination – sound familiar, anyone?!? – he also soon realizes that Christine might have cottoned to this radical switch over, as well. Even more importantly, one very storm swept night, she might have decided to do something very definitive about it. A washed-out bridge is always very convenient for an accidental death, right?!?

Although, filmed lushly and with a sense of overheated (occasionally damp…. see above) drama by Cukor, the production of this all-star vehicle was apparently very troubled. The script was constantly rewritten – with Hepburn, who was devoted to Tracy, even demanding that the traits of her character be strengthened while his be weakened, as was apparently true to the source material the screenplay was based on. Executives and reviewers alike were also dismayed at the bad light the story brought to American officials and their often-questionable policies.

The fact that her character partook in a form of vigilantism also, seemingly due to the ever-present Hayes Code, found Hepburn’s counterpart in hot fire in the project’s final moments. This jarring sense of patriarchal morality, thankfully, is something we no longer have to forcibly experience as our celluloid femme fatales can often sin without death reaching out its hands for their proudly upright necks.

But, on second thought, (check Rosemary) is a devil baby clamping on their nips really all that much better?!?

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

www,facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Hellraiser at Leather Archives

Published October 18, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

There Are No Limits!!! —- But ONLY for every sharp-faced Chicagoan who JOINS US this SATURDAY at the Leather Archives & Museum for the Hellraiser Double Feature!!!

Attendees not only get to see 2 Clive Barker classics in the kinkiest body positive venue in town, but more surprises await them, as well – including a special Barker memorabilia exhibit & a between films visit from the doppelgänger of Kirsty Cotton herself!

Intrigued? Then check out the link to the event, below!

Fetish Film Forum – Hellraiser (1987) and Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) Double Feature

Hope to see you there – and until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE,

Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Halloween Highlight: Slumber Party Massacre II

Published October 14, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

My favorite fall feature in (the late, lamented) Soap Opera Digest was their round-up featuring the performers talking about the horror movies that they had starred in. All these years later, I’m still thrilled whenever I discover someone known for their work on daytime in a terror project.

I grew up watching the CBS soaps, the channel my mother loosely watched as she went about her daily tasks. One of the plotlines that I most remember involved The Young and the Restless‘ then bad boy Paul (Doug Davidson). As many serial cads before him, he had gotten a mousy lass named April (Cynthia Eilbacher) pregnant. After she refused to bow into his pressure to abort the child, the two entered into a brief, unsuccessful marriage. Permanently rejected, soon thereafter, the quiet, downtrodden girl left town.

Flash forward: My senior year in college, I moved into an apartment with access to multiple cable stations and I was soon taping late night horror movies, left and right. One of my favorite discoveries was Slumber Party Massacre II. A zany, rock n’ roll infused cartoon, it also gave a nod to the complicated factors involved with burgeoning female desire and almost worked as a parody of the (even then) often by-rote practices of the traditional slasher film.

To my extra hyphenated delight, Eilbacher even popped up, in a series of frenzied flashback sequences, as Valerie, the first film’s now very traumatized heroine.

Earnestly, this past weekend, while prepping to interview Deborah Brock, the film’s writer and director, onstage at a film event, I mentioned how much the presence of one of my favorite former soap actresses in the film meant to me. Gregariously, Brock let me know that Eilbacher was a true professional and a great actress to work with. In fact, as a practitioner of The Method style of acting, she got so worked up in her audition that she ran from the room, crying. Brock followed her into the hall and assured her that everyone in the room had been very impressed.

On set, Eilbacher’s intense commitment continued. She would often rock, rhythmically, by herself in the corner or crawl under the set’s bed to prep for the emotional scenes that were soon to follow. A number of crew members, concerned about her mental state, were soon placated by Brock, who informed them that the actress was just getting into character and was totally fine.

Thus, the next time you view the film – hopefully sometime this Halloween season – keep in mind that Eilbacher truly dug deep, allowing you to experience the true depth of Valerie’s longstanding torment, adding a vital component to the cult film’s long lasting, overall enjoyment.

Or, thanks to Brock (pictured, above, at Laurie’s Planet of Sound in Chicago), you can forgo that serious look at thespianism and just focus on the film’s manic, guitar infused fun!

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Ruthless – Two Genre Credits of Ruth Gordon

Published March 29, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

The people I really want to meet at conventions are often long gone. Here and there, someone like Shirley Jones or Russ Tamblyn will pop up at a show, but the magic of old Hollywood is often only present in a secondhand way. This does have its certain charms, though. Last weekend, for example, I was able to ask two celebrity attendees at Days of the Dead in Chicago about their experiences working with legendary actress-writer Ruth Gordon.

“I don’t think she liked kids.” – OR, Don’t Go to Sleep

Oliver Robins, there to highlight his work as Robbie in the Poltergeist films, appeared with Gordon in Don’t Go to Sleep (1982), often described as one of the creepiest television films of all time. In keeping with her role, a wizened mother-in-law mourning the loss of her favored grandchild, Robins recalls that the celebrated performer kept to herself, arriving on set to only do the one or two takes needed to get her scenes with him completed. Age, Robins reasons, surely paid a part in this professional curtness, as well.

Despite that un-familial remoteness, Gordon, beloved for her Academy Award winning work in Rosemary’s Baby, turns in a complex performance in the project. Her scenes with Valerie Harper and Dennis Weaver, her adult co-stars, ring with the layered sadness and regret of Bernice, her character in this ghostly piece. In particular, she and Weaver go forehead-to-forehead in an emotional confrontation at the film’s mid-point. Each blame the other for the death of their beloved Jennifer, the specter haunting the proceedings, both emotionally…and, seemingly, physically. Ned Wynn’s script is often brutal, killing off core characters imaginatively and ever the trooper, Gordon even finds herself looking down the beady eyes of a mischievously placed iguana named Ed.

As an aside, Robins did have a wonderful memory of the connection that Steven Spielberg and Weaver had due to their work on Duel, another seminal television horror project. Spielberg sent a note to Weaver on the DGTS set urging him to “Be nice to Oliver!”

“She thought I was her assistant.” – CS, Voyage of the Rock Aliens

Craig Sheffer, booked to celebrate his work with Clive Barker in Nightbreed, appeared with the pint-sized super star in the bizarre, early ’80s musical Voyage of the Rock Aliens. The first day that they met, she asked him to go get the shoes that she needed for the upcoming scene…and then continued to have him run errands for her throughout the shoot. Sheffer found the whole experience amusing, though. Hell, if you’re going to be a go-fer, it might as well be for a charismatic character actress of certain renown.

Gordon, who invested her full energy into Voyage‘s diminutive conspiracy-believing sheriff, also appeared in such genre projects as Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby, Isn’t It Shocking? and Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? throughout the years. Outside of her work in Rosemary’s Baby and Harold and Maude, the cult film that endeared her to a generation of film buffs, her most prominent artistic achievements occurred with her playwright husband Garson Kanin. Their scripts for Pat & Mike and Adam’s Rib gave Katherine Hepburn, whose many against the grain characterizations provided the prototype for a host of scattered, nervous lasses in horror, two of her most noteworthy mid-career roles.

Viva la Gordon…and thanks for the memories, guys!

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan