misogyny

All posts tagged misogyny

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!

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Review: Fort Doom

Published November 16, 2018 by biggayhorrorfan

 

debbie fort doomPost-election week there may, surprisingly, not be a more appropriate horror film to watch than 2004’s Fort Doom. A low budget, seemingly home grown effort, this feature stars the always compelling Debbie Rochon and the eternally gothic Billy Drago, who gives a very disturbing, leveled performance as one of the production’s not so red herring villains here.

The film itself follows the Southern adventures of Lacy Everett (Rochon) and her group of working girls as they set up shop in a seemingly idyllic community. The Civil War has been recently fought and lost, and while there is emotional fallout to be found everywhere, hope abounds, as well. That is until Everett and her ladies discover that a serial killer is loose in their new tightly locked home base. As folks begin to disappear and it looks like all evidence points to the demented town mortician (Drago), it soon appears that a deeper, more deadly conspiracy at hand.

As with many indie terror efforts, there are many passages of stationary dialoging here. One also almost wishes that the producers had picked a different period of time to recreate due to the college theater costuming alone. While some of Rochon’s outfits have a bit of a stream punk effect, more than anything it is obvious that the budget did not allow for a real life recreation of the clothes that the characters would have actually worn in this era. Kind viewers will find that this gives the enterprise an enjoyable silliness, though. Others, well…Fort Doom.jpg

Surprisingly, what is not silly here is how accurately screenwriter Matthew Howe, who developed the story with the film’s director J. Christian Ingvordsen, seemingly predicated our current misogynistic and racist government controlled by powerful white men. Willing to do anything to stay in power, the vengeful founding father types in this film ultimately serve as a chilling prophecy and a reminder of how this destructive mindset has always existed in our culture.

That Rochon, who has survived her own share of personal hardships over the years, is our stand-in here, supplying strength and resolve and sassiness, is also a plus and an assurance that perhaps, like her Lacy, we will truly rise above this current regime, as well.

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

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Soska Sisters on The Core

Published January 23, 2018 by biggayhorrorfan

Soska The Core 2

If you needed any more reasons to love the Soska Sisters, their appearance on the fun Shudder series The Core will give you an ample supply.

Here, the lively, genre twisting twins spend their segment happily discussing their favorite castration sequences in horror films. They even end their time on the show in front of table that is laden with prosthetic cocks. Seemingly reveling in the (possibly humorous and uncomfortable) reactions that might arise from horror’s extreme bro culture, the filmmakers are again subverting the parameters of the world of terror.

Just as with films like Dead Hooker in a Trunk and American Mary, this appearance helps to carve out alternative, namely queer and feministic, creative territory. One might even propose that by putting a focus on violence against men, particularly on where they are most vulnerable, they are altering an entertainment landscape that has balanced too long upon the subjugation of women, both physically and emotionally. Hopefully, in 2018, with their help, we will be able to prove that, however you identify, we are all in this together and that we can put the final nail in the coffin of the thought that torturing a half naked female for an hour and a half qualifies as proficient genre cinema.

Stranger things have happened, no?

Soska Sisters The Core

https://twitter.com/twisted_twins  www.twistedtwinsproductions.net  www.shudder.com

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

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