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Review: Babysitters Vs. Vamps

Published October 31, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

John Carpenter may have made babysitters fighting evil a classic horror trope with 1978’s Halloween, but young women have been banding together to confront monstrosities & other forms of injustice long before Michael Meyers was seared into our consciousness. Whether it was Irene Dunne & Jill Esmond trying to figure out who was targeting Thirteen Women in 1932 or Lee Remick & Stephanie Powers facing down a criminal mastermind in 1962’s Experiment in Terror, female empowerment in exploitation has been an entertaining must-have.

Nicely, in Babysitters Vs. Vamps, gay indie horror director-writer Brian Dorton focuses his tale around Lana (Scarlett Freeman) and Michelle (Cameron Dorton), two longtime best friends, who find themselves trying to outwit a body chopping cult in a small Southern town. Utilizing a quick running time and a sharp sense of humor, Dorton seemingly utilizes mostly local talent to create a fun and gory, feministic story here. Although nothing truly overt occurs, the gruesome gang at the center of the action is also decidedly bisexual, an important & diverse touch.

Documentary-style interviews, meanwhile, set the background. It seems something deadly has been brewing for years in this providence, with rumors swirling about a possible vampire cult. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the girls’ potential dates, an amorous young man, who leads Seth (Dorton) and his vicious crew to the house where the girls are ensconced for the weekend, watching over a newborn. Soon a nosy neighbor (Heather Harlow) and a potential hook-up are in Seth’s sights, with Lana and Michelle being prepped for his final course. 

Highlighted by some impressive splatter and gallons of spewing blood, Dorton brings a quiet menace to Seth, acting-wise, while Harlow, a blossoming indie horror queen, brings the surest sense of timing to the obnoxious antics of her overbearing Deena, making her performance a standout.

As with many micro-budget productions, audiences need to have a forgiving spirit with certain aspects, production-wise. It also may strike some as odd that the titular creatures share little of the expected bloodsucking attributes of their more famous kin, ultimately coming off as more Manson like than supernatural. 

Still, this is a solid example of the independent grit and artistic tenacity that it takes to make something fun and juicily violent out of very, very little.

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

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Second Look: The Eye

Published October 25, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Almost inoffensively middle-of-the-road, The Eye, one of the countless remakes of popular Asian horror films that began to saturate the American celluloid landscape at the beginning of the 21st century, definitely has more to offer than its low critical rating & Razzie nomination might suggest. 

Centering around the nightmarish results of a corneal transplant given to a blind musician played by Jessica Alba, the film contains one truly great visual twist at it’s midpoint. Locked as we are in the assault of Trump’s prejudiced America, the story’s residual look at how women of color are treated, especially when they are saddled with a further sense of otherness, is surprisingly resonant, as well.

Alba, whose performance was widely mocked, is also much better here than might be anticipated. Visually lush in presence, she was seemingly made for the silver screen. But she also took this assignment seriously, studying for months with sight impaired adults. Thus, she gives her Sydney Wells a quiet legitimacy. 

She is anchored, cast-wise, by a young and bright Chloë Grace Moretz as a cancer-stricken youth. Parker Posey, meanwhile, as Sydney’s sister isn’t given much to do besides act protective, but she definitely adds glamour and pedigree to her all too brief scenes. Total Recall‘s Rachel Ticotin factors in, nicely, as well. Showing up, as other established talents like Betty Buckley and Faye Dunaway have done, in an explanatory cameo, she registers with professional pathos & helps lead the story to its bus burning climax.

DP Jeffrey Jur also adds some romanticism to the Pang Brothers’ original, fairly simple concept. With the determined nuance of a storyteller, he brings out all the rich fantasy inherent in Sydney’s career as a violinist in a major city. 

These small touches may make this quiet reimagining a perfect rainy-day sleeper for those who like their horror with a gauzy, understated quality. 

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

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Night Gallery Vamps: Diane Keaton

Published October 19, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Sweetness and light sometimes mask untoward savagery. Thus, as a skilled purveyor of the harmless and quirky, the iconic Diane Keaton was the perfect choice to play a character with hidden layers.

While the prime example of this is probably her well thought out turn as the promiscuous schoolteacher in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a wise producer took advantage of this celluloid anomaly earlier in her career, as well.

As the brisk and efficient Nurse Frances Nevins in A Room with a View, a first season episode of Night Gallery, Keaton initially is all soft eyes and the queen of modest answers for her prying, bedridden employer. But soon the crafty gent gets Nevins to admit to a history of jealousy and violent rages – especially when it concerns the hunky chauffeur who has promised to marry her. Knowing that his young and beautiful wife also has eyes for the man, the ailing codger sets up the unstable RN, allowing his darkest fantasies to come to life without even having to raise one finger. 

Keaton’s effortless friendliness plays well here, naturally, but she wisely adds a studied steeliness to her characterization as Nevins admits to her less than wholesome reactions when under emotional stress. She is also perfectly paired opposite Angel Tompkins’ less than faithful bride. Tompkins, known for her work in such exploitation and horror films as The Bees, Alligator and The Naked Cage, equals Keaton here with a duality of agreeability and sin. 

Assuredly, the horror environment was far from Keaton’s hallmark. But for fans of the genre, it is nice to know that she had one small credit in that field before her sad passing at the age of 79 in the fall of 2025.

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

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Horror, She Wrote: If the Frame Fits

Published October 14, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

As an episode filled with surprise twists, If The Frame Fits ended the second season of Murder, She Wrote on a bright spot. 

For twelve seasons, as true fans often lovingly joke about, Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher had an endless supply of friends and relatives. 

Here the action begins as she is coaching an old acquaintance, played by Norman Lloyd of Jaws of Satan (photo below), wherein Lucifer manifests himself into the body of a snake, with his mystery writing. Thankfully, the execrable task of analyzing his unpublishable scribblings is relieved when a crime is committed and Jessica is able to finally do what she does best – sleuth!

Norman Lloyd running from scaly hellspawn in Jaws of Satan

The list of suspects contains a bevy of television and film regulars. Chief among them is Deborah Adair’s Ellen Davis, an executive at a country club. Despite her professional appearance, Davis, Jessica eventually susses out, is having an affair with the victim’s husband. Her partner-in-cheating, Christopher Allport’s Donald Grainger also comes into range as he stood to inherit a huge life insurance policy upon his wife’s demise. John De Lancie’s quirky Binky. meanwhile, may have done it for the love of Ellen, whose feigned interest in him may have led him to a homicidal heart.

While the afore mentioned trio don’t have A Nightmare on Elm Street sequel or the like among their credits, they do have filmic fright alliances. Adair co-starred with television heartthrob Jack Scalia in The Rift (AKA Deadly Ascent– photo below), a water logged project about monstrous seaweed. Allport, meanwhile, memorably portrayed photog Freddy, who meets a grizzly end in the opening sequence of Gary Sherman’s Dead and Buried, a project that has developed a large cult following in the decades since its release. Lastly, De Lancie enacted the molesting Dr. Mott in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, one of the most popular thrillers of the early ’90s.

Perhaps most significantly, this entry in the ever popular detective show was helmed by Paul Lynch, a Canadian auteur whose credits include the original Prom Night (with Jamie Lee Curtis) and Humungous, a beast in the woods opus that ran perpetually on late night cable in the mid-80s. Which besides the lovely charms of the always affable Lansbury, might make this a real reason for fright fans to check this enjoyable early finale out.

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

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Hopelessly Devoted To: Rosemary DeCamp

Published September 7, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

Whether represented by the vigilant Diane of Poltergeist or the psychotically murderous Mrs. Voorhees of Friday the 13th, the character of the mother has been intrinsically important to the horror film. Interestingly, years before these films hit the cinema, producer William Castle followed this dueling outline of matriarchal personality types in his projects, as well.

Famously, Joan Crawford’s Lucy Harbin in Strait-Jacket represented the more unhinged maternal aspect. Rosemary DeCamp, meanwhile, perfected the traditional caretaker as Hilda Zorba in 1960’s 13 Ghosts. Of course, by the time her stint with Castle came around, Crawford had already helped define the Grand Dame Guignol genre with her work in the eternally classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? But DeCamp, who arguably became best known for playing Marlo Thomas’ mother in That Girl, had also appeared in Eyes in the Night, a moody noir-detective story that was described as being “startling as a scream!” at the beginning of her career.

Further espousing terror pyrotechnics, DeCamp went on to roles in The Painted Mirror, an episode of Night Gallery (featuring Zsa Zsa Gabor), and the genre specific comedy Saturday, the 14th. The television episode, in particular, might resonate with older movie fans as DeCamp outwits an evil Gabor there.

Nicely, Tigers In My Lap, DeCamp’s truly enjoyable memoir, shares on set highlights of many of her projects. To that end, her reminiscent details about working with Castle aren’t plentiful, but they are apt. She notes that her role didn’t involve a lot of acting chops and that she even had trouble discerning the celluloid ghosts onscreen at the film’s premiere. Still, she rejoices a bit in the producer’s showmanship, claiming that she had the most stills of that movie out of all her projects-all due to Castle’s knack for publicity.

Thus, while DeCamp isn’t necessarily eulogized as a Queen of Scream, her connections to the genre are significant enough for fans of all ages to embrace her and her work.

Fun Fact: DeCamp’s contributions to movie musicals are also of note. While she blazes with snappy power as Kathryn Grayson’s bohemian aunt in So This is Love, a biography of opera singer Grace Moore, On Moonlight Bay and By the Light of the Silvery Moon, both starring Doris Day, are nostalgia buff’s favorites by far. Illustrating the significance of these projects, Day even lovingly contributed the forward to DeCamp’s book.

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

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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!

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Music to Make Horror Movies By: Billy Idol

Published June 15, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

At 17, I really knew nothing about the gay community. I was growing up in a small farming town, surrounded by shit kicking, flannel shirt wearing earth outlaws. But somehow, I instinctively knew that the leather jockstrap sported by Billy Idol on the January ’85 cover of Rolling Stone was part and parcel of the queer male experience. I already had multiple crushes on all the smooth soap opera hunks from my favorite shows, but never before had I been quite so unabashedly titillated. 

I probably would have been even more turned on if I had been aware of Idol’s connections to the horror community in that era. 

As a fan of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist, he himself hired director Tobe Hooper to helm the post-apocalyptic video for Dancing with Myself. A couple years later, his music swirled out from celluloid bound speakers, accentuating the splattery action of Lamberto Bava’s Demons. Perhaps even more importantly, as the decades have flown by, many music critics have reassessed Rebel Yell, his second album, finding it to be one of the significant Gothic New Wave records of that era. This is unsurprising if you consider that the haunting Eyes Without A Face, one of that LP’s focal points, was influenced by the influential French horror movie of the same name.

Catering to that trend, in the years since, songs like Rebel Yell and White Wedding have worked their way onto the soundtracks of such projects as Bride of Chucky, Scream Queens, American Horror Story and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. The inclusion of that latter song in 2025’s Fear Street: Prom Night, which became the Number One film on Netflix within a day of its release, has surely introduced him to a bevy of younger terror loving fans, as well.

Who knows? Maybe some quivering twink in some remote village will even discover that long ago magazine image for the first time and find himself as transformed as I was all those years ago.

What the hell! For his sake….

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

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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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Psychotic Women: General Hospital’s Kristina

Published April 18, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

General Hospital‘s Kristina Corinthos-Davis (Kate Mansi) has been acting like a case study out of House of Psychotic Women in recent episodes of the 62 year running show. That tome, Kier-La Janisse’s emotionally charged exploration of trauma, exposed the nervy, emotionally warped femmes of genre cinema and this longstanding soap character definitely would fit, perfectly, within its pages.

After losing the baby she was carrying last summer, Corinthos-Davis has definitely been at odd ends. The murder of her beloved sister Sam (Kelly Monaco) in the fall furthered that tremulous descent. That the dewily manipulative Ava (Maura West), the person she holds responsible for the death of her child, was still constantly underfoot, demanding cash and excessive favors from her family, provided this beleaguered character’s final push into murderous instability.

Sure that Ava was out to steal her younger sister away from her crime lord father (Maurice Bernard), Kristina cut the brakes to the car that was in her parking spot. Staying true to the dramatics involved with the daytime pedigree, the vehicle actually belonged, instead, to Rick (Rick Hearst), Ava’s lawyer and the father of Kristina’s other sister, Molly (Kristen Vaganos). 

Thankfully, Rick and Elizabeth (Rebecca Herbst), his passenger, survived the crash that impetuous act caused, but now Kristina is sure to be driven even further into cascading unpredictability. Lucky (Jonathon Jackson), Elizabeth’s ex-husband and current paramour, quickly realized that she was to blame and Ava and Rick weren’t far behind him.

Now, Ava is blackmailing Alexis (Nancy Lee Grahn), Kristina’s mother, and once Molly finds out who injured her beloved parent, worlds are definitely going to be rocked. This will surely keep this nutty heiress in emotional crosshairs for the months to come.

It might even be conceivable that, despite Alexis’ fervent efforts, she winds up in Ferncliff, the serial’s mental institution, bringing even more exploitation goodness to the canvas. Last utilized when the trusting yet gutsy Sasha (Sofia Mattson) was drugged and locked up by the evil Damon Montague, a little misadventure at the hands of an unstable doctor could definitely make Corinthos-Davis redeemable again.

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

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