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!

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Queer Horror: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Published October 5, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

After a 9-year publishing odyssey, Queer Horror: A Film Guide is finally a reality. For a variety of reasons, not all of my pieces made the final cut. I will share some of those unpublished essays here, from time to time. A link to purchase the book is featured, below, as well.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Writer: Rita Mae Browne, Amy Holden Jones (uncredited)

Director: Amy Holden Jones

Cast: Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villella, Debra De Liso, Andre Honore, Joseph Alan Johnson, Pamela Roylance, Brinke Stevens, Pamela Canzano

Beginning life as a script entitled Don’t Open the Door, director Jones heavily reconfigured writer Browne’s original work while still retaining that legendary lesbian author’s humorous, feministic intent here.

The plot, unsurprisingly, is typical ‘80s slasher fare. A notorious killer (Villella) escapes from the psycho ward, descending upon a group of momentarily parentless teens who are imbibing beer and pot while indulging in sexual antics. Yielding his drill like a phallus, the killer makes his way through the hard-partying population until the final act when the very pretty, very unpopular girl next door (Stille) puts a decisive end to his days of murderous marauding.

Low budget even by typical grindhouse standards, this film ingratiates itself by smartly emphasizing the real-life fear of losing one’s virginity with almost every death sequence and by broadening the perspectives of its feminine protagonists. Led by the subtly assured De Liso as Kim, the female teens here are more knowledgeable about sports stats than their male counterparts and gender stereotypes are subverted with all of the film’s maintenance support staff being played, nonchalantly, by women, as well.

Despite Browne’s involvement, the Sapphic action is ultimately understated here. Reversing expectations once again, the girls’ kindly coach (Roylance) is decidedly soft spoken. Only Canzano in her short scene as a carpenter gives off a decidedly gay vibe with her fun, efficient characterization.

Queer Horror

Rhonda in the Beyond

Published July 22, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

My boyfriend in Chicago in the early ’90s was best friends & occasional roommates with a talented actress named Rhonda Reynolds. Rhonda and I weren’t incredibly close…horror films made her physically squirm in discomfort…but she once acted in a short play that I wrote, and we had many of the same musical likes. In fact, I still have the L7 shirt that she got for me when she saw them open for The Beastie Boys in Chicago. Her future husband Robb was also a talented bassist. Robb and I spent one Saturday evening, in the Wicker Park apartment that I shared with Kelly – the afore mentioned boyfriend, pouring through my CDs and cassette tapes, listening to the latest Fugazi and other alt-rock/punk gems.

In 1994, Wreck, Robb’s band, released an LP on C/Z Records and they went on tour. I went to the kick off show with Kelly and Rhonda – procuring another band shirt that I had for decades. Rhonda, herself, soon took off for Los Angeles, landing a prominent gig opposite Lloyd Bridges in a sexy TV film about a small-town scandal called Secret Sins of the Father.

Going the way of many first relationships, Kelly and I broke up that fall. We did keep in touch for a handful of years after that, though, and I learned through him that Rhonda was landing other nighttime gigs, here and there. But my ears really perked up when I found out that she secured a job playing a ghost on an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, a syndicated anthology series that was many a young genre fan’s entree into the macabre. I never could figure out when her episode was airing, though, and as the years passed, it became just one of the many interesting factoids that decorated the background of my existence.

Of course, as I age, nostalgia is ever nipping at my heels and, in a flush of newfound determination, I recently found her segment online. As you can see from the photos alone, she played her character, an apparition warning a family against impending dangers, with an ethereal potence. Of course, my viewing was amplified by my experience with her in my theater salad days and my sincere gratitude for having lived a life surrounded by so many uniquely creative individuals. But you can judge for yourself at….

A Spirited Update:

All these years later, Robb and Rhonda are still continuing their artistic journeys — this time through the culinary arts. Their restaurant Masa, a celebration of Chicago style Deep Dish pizza, in East-Central Los Angeles is a smashing success with both locals and the city’s many visitors.

https://www.masaofechopark.com/

Death Becomes…Us!

Published June 3, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

In her 2010 documentary I Am Nancy, actress Heather Langenkamp examined why the male monsters in horror, specifically Freddy Krueger, receive the lion’s share of fandom, including merchandising, while iconic heroines, such as the character she portrayed, are often given short shrift. As a gay horror fan, who definitely feels intense kinship with the sensitive yet thrifty survivors of these bloody epics, I have often felt the same sort of dejected curiosity. It’s definitely a straight ghoul’s world. Even when there is alternative abundance, it is often tempered. As part of the writing team of McFarland’s upcoming Queer Horror: A Film Guide, I excitedly found gay characters and lavender subtext throughout decades of film, but overwhelmingly, the LGBTQIA characters were often not at the forefront of the action.

There are victories, though. 1992’s diva-licious, camp-tastic Death Becomes Her, a favorite among queer horror fans and creators, has recently been adapted into a musical, with a Broadway opening slated for the fall of 2024. It’s pre-White Way try-out in Chicago, garnered enthusiastic reviews & fueled awareness that the book writer (Marco Pennette) and the lyricists (Julia Mattison & Noel Carey) are well attuned to what crowd has kept this thirty some year old cult property in the public consciousness. From the jokes to the musicalized rhymes, this is a show for every queen who worshipped at the fabulously catty altar laid out by Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in the Robert Zemekis film.

Anyone who feels like they missed out by not witnessing the glories bestowed on the theatrical world by such age-old Tony winning powerhouses as Ethel Merman, Mary Martin and Pearl Bailey will find much satisfaction here, as well. From the opening moments of the show, Destiny’s Child’s Michelle Williams electrifies, bringing a Diahann Carroll meets Eartha Kitt energy to the stage. As Viola Van Horne, a more prominent take on the film’s Lisle Von Rhuman (Isabella Rossellini), she emerges from glittery cocoons and ancient sarcophagi, compelling viewers to follow her every magical move. Megan Hilty, taking over as Streep’s self-indulgent Madeline Ashton, and Jennifer Simard, doing a crisp take on Hawn’s Helen Sharp, meanwhile, bring out all the delightful, irreverent, vengeful and awesomely (aka DIVA) fun aspects of the script. Their 11 o’ Clock duet, Alive Together, is a phenomenon – easily achieving and/or surpassing the heights reached by similar female-centric songs in shows like Wicked and Side Show.

So, yes, there may be 12 celluloid variations of Friday the 13th without a single fey gent in sight – but we do finally have this potion-perfect example of a musical to call our very own!

More information on the production and it’s upcoming run in New York City can be found at http://www.deathbecomesher.com.

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

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Unsung Heroines of Horror: Sonia Braga

Published April 23, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

I went to a Catholic high school in Olean, a small town in Western New York. Like so many other other villages in that region, it became an unknowing sanctuary for many of the church’s predatory priests. Recent years have seen major media revelations about the school’s former principal and its long-term Spanish teacher – frequent abusers, in and out of that environment. Terribly, accusations against that institution’s nuns have also seen the light of day. It seems many knew about their colleagues’ unholy actions and did nothing to stop them.

Thus. the evil head nuns in Immaculate and The First Omen, recently released within weeks of each other, have really resonated with me on an emotional level. Both Immaculate‘s Mother Superior (Dora Romero) and Sister Silva (Sonia Braga) in The First Omen, aggressively and willingly, take part in the patriarchal madness of their religious forefathers. (Both projects’ feminist tones, revolving around a women’s bodily autonomy, are especially welcome in this era when abortion rights are being, perilously, stripped away, state by state.)

Braga’s Silva, in particular, vibrates with an eye blazing sternness. Ultimately leading Margaret (Nell Tiger Free), the film’s heroine, into a devilishly unexpected (and unwanted) parenting situation, she strips away all sense of the protective and maternal with aplomb. Best known for her work as the romantically adventurous Dona Flor in Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands and the exotically life affirming Spider Woman in Kiss of the Spiderwoman, she defiantly avoids pleasant celluloid artifice, creating a strict and unwavering presence here.

Seemingly this is because Braga gets the idiom. Mood is central to creating good genre performances and her past work in the medium helps her blend in perfectly with the atmosphere established by the piece’s truly skilled writer-director, Arkasha Stevenson.

Importantly, Silva is another unusual notch on this legendary performer’s unique belt of credits. Forgoing traditional terror set-ups in her previous assignments, she was a vengeful research scientist in This’ll Kill Ya’, a fourth season episode of HBO’s Tales from the Crypt & vampiric high priestess in From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter. Let’s hope the ecstatic audience reviews and critical acclaim of TFO will guarantee her further, layered work in the field of horror and suspense.

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

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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

Va-Va-Villainess: Ann-Margret

Published February 23, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Often playing sultry and seductive in her far-flung career, the incomparable Ann-Margret’s first attempt to break away from her initial sugar-pie image resulted in her appearing in the camp classic Kitten with a Whip. There, as the hotly homicidal Jody, she terrorized John Forsythe’s staid weekending businessman with pout worthy aplomb. Ridiculed at the time, the film eventually inspired many bad ass female musicians and young gay men who vowed, much like this B-Movie’s title character, to not take life’s homogenized shit lightly. Going down in a blaze of glory, Jody, despite her maniacal fixations, was a heroine to many of society’s lost and lonely & seemingly set the framework for the vengeful biker chicks in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! KIll!, another femme-strong cult classic.

Going forward though, this career gal’s man-eating characters were often imbued with a comic voluptuousness, Jody’s razor-sharp anger was not to be found in such schemers as Laurel in Bus Riley’s Back in Town, Jezebel Desire in The Cheap Detective or Charming Jones in The Villain. But the experience of playing those humorous variations on evilness, did seemingly allow her to add texture and depth to a variety of her performances, resulting in a part in the early ’90s that contained truly effective strokes of gray.

In Our Sons, one of several early television films taking on the AIDS crisis. this layered pro assumed the role of Luanne Barnes, a small-town mother who is, vehemently (at first), unaccepting of her dying son’s homosexuality. Course and nasty, Luanne eventually succumbs to her instinctual maternal nature and embraces her ailing child before he succumbs to the darkness. Acting most directly against fellow legend Julie Andrews, as a fellow mother, and Željko Ivanek, who effectively played her terminal offspring, this is a scorched earth performance. While Luanne is presented as the ultimate villain, having disowned her son due to his sexuality, she is also as achingly human, a masterful undertaking for A-M and a far, far cry from Kitten with a Whip’s steely yet fun one dimensionality.

Horror Hall of Fame:

While she does make an appearance in 2006’s mind-twisting (little seen) Memories, featuring the dashing Billy Zane, A-M’s most popular genre undertaking is 1978’s Magic. This dark tale of puppetry and madness gave her a chance to play sweetly passionate Peggy Ann Snow opposite future Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins.

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

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Kasey Chambers

Published February 16, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Q: Name a song that was used in definitive synchronicity with a character in a modern horror movie.

A: Kasey Chambers’ Pretty Enough in The Loved Ones. It perfectly fit the demented mindscape of its female lead, Lola/Princess (Robin McLeavy)

Arriving on the scene towards the tail end of the Torture Porn era, Australia’s The Loved Ones (2009) is a visceral high school horror with one spectacular difference. The prolonged scenes of often animalistic violence were performed by, or done at the exquisite behest of, a teenage girl. Indeed, while some might cry hard earned tears or emotionally self-flagellate when their preferred beau rejects them, here Lola and her devoted father take a different tact – they kidnap the boys, gruesomely flaying away at them until they emerge into mindless monsters.

Nicely, director-writer Sean Byrne and McLeavy also give this femme-demon a sonic heart. Despite her majestic barbarism, Lola is also relatable – a person with true hurt in her heart and a vivid bouquet of beating insecurities. These sympathetic qualities are expressed best when she listens to her favorite song, Chambers’ Pretty Enough. Nicely, while a huge hit in Australia, Chamber’s masterful tune is merely familiar to American audiences – giving it an added reverence and soft poeticism here. It helps make the film a true experience for any viewer lucky enough to be sucked into its shimmeringly odd vortex.

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

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Hipster-Restaurant Regan & the Queer Book of Horror

Published December 31, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

As with many physical media collectors, my stacks of films are ever growing and sometimes years will pass before I watch something that I purchased at some dusky garage sale or found for supercheap online. Naturally, my bounty was further enhanced with the unfortunate decline of neighborhood video stores. I, for one, could not resist even the shoddiest looking homegrown horror flick if it was only going to cost me a buck or two. One night, while at my restaurant gig, one of my tables commented on whatever movie related t-shirt I was wearing at the time. We started chatting about films and I discovered one of them had appeared as an extra in one of the low budget terror extravaganzas that I had recently picked up. “I was the girl who pukes at the frat party in Terror at Baxter U,” she informed me, somewhat sheepishly. Photo ops, naturally, ensued.

Due to that encounter, I sped up my timeline for viewing this particular oddity. I found it to have its own set of weird, low budget charms – the most significant being the strange reveal of a May-December romance between an aged professor and one of his male pupils, resulting in a kind of extreme take on the Billy-Stu dynamic from the original Scream. Furthering the story, I was asked, soon after, to be one of a several essayists for an encyclopedia style book about queer characters and themes in horror films. Naturally, Baxter found itself a major place in my writing for that.

Flashforward almost 10 years and that book is finally almost ready for release. Thus, I send a word of thanks out to my very own hipster-restaurant Regan and, wherever she may be, I hope she is proud, in her own way, of the literary conduct that she inspired.

Meanwhile, more information on Queer Horror: A Film Guide is available from the publisher at:

Queer Horror – McFarland (mcfarlandbooks.com)

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

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Jeff Junker’s Queer Punk Horror Art

Published March 29, 2019 by biggayhorrorfan

Queer Horror Zine

Independent art makes the world go round. Case in point, one of the coolest things to happen to the LGBTQIA community was the ‘90s queer core music movement. Artists like Bikini Kill, Come, Pansy Division and the Rotten Fruits proved that there was a wide variety of DIY entertainment options for those who like an angrier, grittier, more angular approach to the creative muse.

In keeping with the energy of those vibrant times, artist Jeff Junker has just released Queer Punk Horror Art, a compilation of his work that is sure to bring back the ragged vibes of those days with the turn of every page.

The book is available now at https://www.amazon.com/Queer-Punk-Horror-jeff-junker/dp/1091273596/. So, pull on that paint flecked Darby Crash t-shirt and dive in!

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

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