Take Five with Marital Streep

Published October 21, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Over the past couple years, my brilliantly fun friend Wendi Freeman has began producing music as the delightfully monikered Marital Steep. In the months since her debut release, her electro clash rhythms have definitely brightened many a dance enthusiast’s ear buds. This is especially true with her latest offering, Hunting for a Beautiful Accident. On the eve of her performance at Bezazian Library’s Gay Fright Fest – because what self respecting queer doesn’t love a lively set from a self produced pop princess?!?! – Freeman took a moment to chat with me about the horror influences in her music and to let us know what she is currently listening to, as well.

Big Gay Horror Fan: What inspired you to create music as Marital Streep?

Marital Streep: Marital Streep sprung from a desire to be allowed to dance. I had been playing drums in punk bands for so many years and wanted to just admit to myself that I like classic 80s synth pop.

BGH: I love the cinematic nature of your sound. Is that something you’ve worked purposefully towards?

MS: I’ve always loved artists like Tangerine Dream, and how horror films specifically use synth scores, like John Carpenter. I aspire to that level of versatility to construct a mood.

In the song, Diagetic I play with how I wish my music could be something a character pops on in the background. I want someone to tune in a radio or put in a cassette and you hear my song in the background. That’s one of my favorite tropes- when a character puts a song on and it’s tinny and distorted and then they pop it in as the main soundtrack and you suddenly hear it clearly.

BGHF: You recently released a new EP, Hunting for a Beautiful Accident. Is there a song on that new collection that you found was truly exhilarating to work on?

MS: This entire ep was exciting to work on because I really learned new skills about chopping and sampling. I’d find a glockenspiel loop and get excited to distort and warp it.

BGHF: That is so cool! What Marital Streep song do you think would fit perfectly in one of your favorite horror films?

MS: I want to be the musical act at a prom! I want someone getting killed or bullied while I’m singing something bright and bubbly like Used to Dance.

BGHF: You’d be like EG Daily meets Devo!! As a huge music fan yourself, what current dance acts have been getting your pulse to race to the BPM?

MS: This year in particular has been a great time for women producing their own music. I’m inspired by Ninajirachi and Pink Pantheress creating their own beats and my favorite album recently has been underscores’ U.

Be sure to find Marital Streep on all your favorite streaming devices. You can also follow her at http://www.maritalstreep.bandcamp.com and http://www.facebook.com/p/maritalstreep-61574760700991/.

Marital Streep will be performing at Gay Fright Fest at the Bezazian Library branch, 1226 W Ainslie, in Chicago on Saturday, October 24th at 1PM. It’s a free event with candy, prizes, screenings and (obviously!!) great tunes…so please join us!

https://chicagolocalevents.com/events/gay-fright-fest-2026-10-24-bezazian

Heavy Metal Stacey

Published May 2, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Ciji: Say, I know a boy who plays bass in the Sub-Deviates. His hair is the same shade of blue as yours.

Mama: Small world.

She undoubtedly survived unscrupulous music executives while also helping to accentuate some of celluloid’s greatest graveyard mayhem in Return of the Living Dead. But the most frightening obstacle that Stacey Q faced in her entire career just might have been Vicki Lawrence’s no-nonsense Mama.

Famously remembered as Cinnamon, a glittery pop star much like herself, from an iconic run of The Facts of Life episodes, Stacey returned to sitcom musicality in a 1989 episode of Mama’s Family, Bubba’s House Band. Based on The Carol Burnett Show skit, this show ran for 6 seasons, focusing on Vicki Lawrence’s sarcastic, hard-to-please character.

Nicely, unlike Cinnamon, Q’s Ciji here is a member of the chainsaw wielding rock band The Bonecrushers. Her fierce partners in leather include Terrah Bennett Smith (Mojo) and Lisa Michelson (Snake) & the trio, initially, turns the Harper household into a zone of dominatrix-like rebellion. But soon the women reveal themselves to be experts at crafts and the culinary arts & are more than willing to help the formerly antagonistic Mama (Vicki Lawrence) succeed at her local bazaar.

Sweetly outfitted for that event, the trio perform the standard Sugar in the Morning to help sell the titular matriarch’s candy cakes. But by the credit crawl, they have returned to their heavy metal ways, much to concert promotor Bubba’s (Allan Kayser) delight and Mama’s scowl mouthed regret.

Nicely, Q, while not really given a solo moment to shine, blends in well with her co-stars. She and Kayser have a little in common here, as well. While she harmonized her way into horror royalty on the ROLD soundtrack, he played the obnoxious Brad in another ’80s cult classic, The Night of the Creeps.

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Paul Jabara

Published January 4, 2026 by biggayhorrorfan

Joyful and energetic, Paul Jabara’s music helped define the mid-to-late ’70s. He co-created one of the greatest duets of all time, Enough is Enough, with Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand. His tracks with solo Summer, Last Dance, and solo Streisand, The Main Event, also lit up the dance floors, back when your grandparents were swinging into the wee hours with their navel bearing dress shirts and multi-towered heels.

Of course, the homosexuals among us will probably know him best for the iconic fruit-swirled track Its Raining Men. Sung by the irreplaceable Weather Girls, this tune has worked its way into the background of many a celluloid adventure, including the horror comedies Scary Movie and Vampires Suck.

Sadly, Jabara, who once had the herculean task of replacing Tim Curry as Frank-N-Furter in the Los Angeles production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was one of the many queer creatives who lost his life to AIDS. His legacy will live on, though, via online play lists and the countless speakers that are still blaring his music from the streets of New York City to the rainforests of Borneo.

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Bobbie Gentry

Published August 16, 2025 by biggayhorrorfan

The 1969 opening scene of Final Destination: Bloodlines hopefully introduced younger fans to one of pop & country music’s most distinctive voices. With this bloody revisiting of decades past, the film’s music producers were able to explore a number of interesting tunes to supplement the soundtrack. One of the coolest background fillers was the enigmatic Bobbie Gentry’s take on Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

Of course, the gorgeous Gentry is probably best known for composing and performing the influential gothic story-song Ode to Billie Joe. Her cool, whiskey-soaked tones embellished a number of other significant compositions, though. These include Fancy, another dark yet deliciously fun tale, Okolona River Bottom and Mornin’ Glory, along with her wistfully essential covers of other artists’ recordings.

Significantly, she is also one of the most mysterious singers of all time. After her great success in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s, Gentry disappeared completely from view after an appearance at an awards show in 1982. There has been no public footage or magazine interviews since then and even her current place of residence seems to be up for debate.

What is not in question, though, is her overall influence on the music scene. A respected artist’s artist, Gentry has had a number of previously unreleased LPs resurface in special editions on Record Store Day over recent years and she has been paid loving tribute to by artists as diverse as country queen Reba McEntire and jazz diva Nancy Wilson.

Hopefully someday an inventive writer-director will use her story as the focus of a femme powered mystery or genre film of some sort. Until then, thankfully, we have this….

…and this…

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

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!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Cyndi Lauper

Published July 15, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

The recent announcement of Cyndi Lauper’s final concerts sent me traveling down memory lane.

One summer day in 2002, I discovered that I had some time to kill. As I biked around Lincoln Park, I recalled that Lauper was doing an instore mini concert & signing at the (late, lamented) Tower Records on Clark in Chicago. I decided to fill up a bit of my morning by attending.

Little did I know that side trip would turn into an all-day adventure.

After purchasing her (then) new EP Shine – which served as my ticket into the show, I was sent outside to wait. Two hours later, we were led back into the building…and there she was on a hastily constructed stage! It was truly awesome to see her perform in such close proximity. She even broke down & shed tears of joy when some of her hard-core fans began singing along with her on latest ballad called Water’s Edge – probably one of my favorite concert moments of all time.

We then were put in another long line to meet her. I, honestly, thought about leaving, but I figured I had already put in a lot of effort & time. When I got to her at last, she happily signed my CD….but just as we were about to take a photo, one of her handlers approached her & told her that she could no longer personalize the signatures as they had to leave soon for the United Center (where she was opening for Cher — coincidentally, for that icon’s own never-ending, inaccurately entitled goodbye tour.)

“Oh,” she cried, “I don’t want them to hate me! I have to let them know!” A very sweet notion – & a moment captured forever by the employee who was taking our picture. The first shot here is of her getting the news & the second is of her addressing the crowd. I suppose I could also look at the experience as a lesson in life’s eternal sense of balancing expectations. My photos with her are kind of funky…but I did get the last personally addressed CD!

One song that she did not sing that day, but one that ultimately served as the opener for her set in the 2007 True Colors shows, was Hole in my Heart (All the Way to China). Taken from the soundtrack to Vibes, the bizarre ’80s comedy that saw her playing an eccentric psychic opposite Jeff Goldblum’s equally odd clairvoyant, this number is an underground fan favorite.

Of course, in this critically maligned offering that phenomenon was played for humor. It would be decades later before Lauper, playing a Broadway musical loving private detective, would fully enter the world of horror in the Sweeney Todd inspired The Horrors of Dolores Roach.

A Land of Terror Tunes:

Additionally, Lauper’s quiet storm ballad All Through the Night was used to grand effect in the well-regarded Netflix spook show The Haunting of Bly Manor. Her almost 300 soundtrack credits also include spots on such horror adjacent television programs as Ghost Whisperer, Bones and Medium, as well.

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!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Music to Make Horror Movies By – Keely Smith

Published April 8, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

Has there ever been a voice as elegantly smooth as the one that poured out of the divine Keely Smith? I think not.

In fact, Smith’s was the one instrument that broke up my continued playback of Nine Inch Nails, The Crow soundtrack, Nirvana and Liz Phair one summer. The months encapsulated by those early ’90s heat waves were dominated by those indie rock forces and the Capitol Records Spotlight On compilation of Smith’s greatest work. Indeed, I found her take on Fools Rush In to be simply grand. Even more so, her commanding performance of Sweet and Lovely was almost indescribably beautiful to me.

Nicely, in recent years, even the horror and creature community has discovered this irreplaceable songstress. Her tunes have been used in the reimagining of Stephen King’s The Stand and Marvel’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

All I can say is…better late than never…and let’s hear some more!

Fun Facts:

Smith co-starred with Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road, one of the first films to embrace an outlaw, rock ‘n roll spirit. Also after years of playing the professional straight man to Las Vegas dynamo Louis Prima, Smith defiantly took control of her career, determinedly performing her music in the style and vein that she appreciated and preferred for the remaining decades of her career.

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

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan