Author: Eric Diaz

Last week I wrote about how film maker John Waters emerged out of suburban Baltimore in the 60’s, pack of wild friends in tow, to become the premiere architect of modern camp cinema. Today we’re gonna cover the movies he is perhaps most infamous for, his self-described, notorious “Trash Trio” of films from the 70’s that made him a cult icon: Desperate Living, Female Trouble, and, the most infamous, Pink Flamingos.

Pink Flamingos (1972)

Referred to by John Waters as his “Filth Epic,” Pink Flamingos is the story of the notorious “beauty” Divine, the Filthiest Person Alive. Wanted by the police for various crimes against decency, Divine assumes the alias of Babs Johnson, and hides in a remote trailer in the woods with her hippie son Crackers, who likes to fuck live chickens, Crackers’ “Special Lady Friend” Cotton (Mary Vivian Pierce) who likes to voyeuristically watch Crackers in his depravity (as long as he doesn’t ever touch her) and Divine’s mentally retarded mother Miss Edie (Edith Massey) who is singularly obsessed with eggs and lives in an oversized play pen, wearing nothing but a girdle and bra. Everything would have been perfect for Divine and her twisted little family were it not for the nearby presence of two jealous perverts, Connie and Raymond Marble, played by Mink Stole and David Lochary.

The Marbles believe they are far filthier than Divine, and feel they deserve the title “Filthiest Persons Alive” (it’s never really explained who exactly gives this title out, but really, who cares?) After all, Connie and Raymond own several pornography shops, sell heroin to the inner city elementary school children, and best of all, kidnap unsuspecting hitchhiking girls, lock them in their basement, and have their sexually conflicted butler Channing rape them and impregnate them in the hopes of selling the eventual offspring to lesbian couples. They earned that title dammit. And to prove it, they are going to humiliate and destroy Divine and her family. But they should know better than to try and fuck with Divine and get away with it.

And in a nutshell, that is the “Plot” for Pink Flamingos, for lack of a better term. Lack of plot aside, what makes Pink Flamingos unique and special is just how gleefully depraved it is. No matter how many times I’ve seen it (which is more than I care to admit) Pink Flamingos continues to make my jaw drop with just how low it will go for the sake of getting a burst of laughter rooted in shock. When Crackers and his date have sex with a chicken, well….they really have sex with a chicken, and then eat it. And in the film’s most infamous moment, when Divine eats a dog turd, it’s not a prop. That’s the real thing.

But none of that gross out shock value stuff is what keeps a true Waters fan coming back for viewing after viewing. No, it’s that Waters dialogue, either brilliantly delivered by Divine and Mink Stole, or hilariously butchered by Edith Massey. Pink Flamingos (along with El Topo) helped create the Midnight Movie craze, and played for years on end at several urban cinemas at Midnight showings, ensuring Water’s and Divine’s place in the cult pantheon for all time.

Female Trouble (1974)

Another star vehicle for Divine, Female Trouble was made after the enormous success of Flamingos. Divine plays Dawn Davenport, a jeuvenile delinquent in 1960 Baltimore. When Dawn does not receive a pair of Cha Cha heels for Christmas, she knocks the Christmas tree over onto her mother and runs away from home, only to be raped and forced into a life of stripping and crime to pay for her and her new daughter Taffy. After being recruited in the world of high fashion by Beauty Gurus Donald and Donna Dasher, an eventual murder spree occurs when Dawn accepts the Dasher mantra that “crime and beauty are one”

Not quite as gross as Pink Flamingos (there is no sex with chickens or eating dog shit for example, although there is a close up shot of a diseased penis for your viewing pleasure) I actually think Female Trouble is better. The lines of dialogue are sharper and more venomous, the commentary on our obsession with fame by any means is more pronounced than in Pink Flamingos, and everyone by and large, gives a funnier performance. Of the classic Trash Trio, Female Trouble was initially my least favorite, maybe because it is the least overtly shocking and gross, but after many, many viewings it has become my favorite by far. Of all the old low budget films in the Waters catalog, this one was Waters’ AND Divine’s personal favorite as well.

Desperate Living (1977)

The first of the classic Waters films I ever saw, and therefore the one that made me a fan for life. So this one has a special place in my heart, even though Divine is not in it and the movie suffers somewhat because of it. Desperate Living is the saga of Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) a suburban housewife and mental outpatient. After she and her 400 pound maid and psychiatric nurse Grizelda Brown (Jean Hill) kill Peggy’s husband, they flee together to the magical land of Mortville, a place so vile they let killers live there scot free. Ruled by the evil Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey) Peggy and Grizelda are forced to live with Mole McHenry (Susan Lowe), a mean Bull Dyke wrestler who only wants a sex change operation, and her girlfriend Muffy St. Jaques, “the most beautiful woman in Mortville” played famous real life criminal Liz Renay. Eventually, Peggy and Grizelda start something of a romance. If you ever wanted to see a full on sex scene between a 140 pound white woman and a 400 pound black woman, Desperate Living is the chance you’ve been looking for. Eventually there are betrayals, murder, and a palace coup in Water’s (nearly) all girl lesbian epic.

By the time this one rolled around though, Midnight Movies were dying out — with the exception of The Rocky Horror Picture Show which will probably never die out. Waters had to tone down his act for the mall cineplexes if he was going to survive as a film maker. It was the 80’s now, and America’s wild hey day was coming to a crashing halt.

Polyester (1981) was Waters’ first R rated movie, and while it contains a lot of the signature humor indicative of the early films, it is clear this movie has something of a budget and isn’t just a bunch of friends making a movie in the woods of Baltimore. Divine returned after being absent from Desperate Living, and for the first time was playing a victim turned hero, not just a monster. If getting an R rating instead of an X was a shock to Waters, I can only oimagine how much of a shock it was to get a PG rating for his next movie Hairspray, a movie that would eventually turn out to be his greatest success, not once but twice.

In the last few decades, Waters had continued to make films to varying degress of success. Some, like Serial Mom, still have that old school Waters subversive edge, but others, like Pecker, just seem to have a certain something missing. In a way, Waters has been usurped for the gross out shock factor by the vile videos that end up in your email inbox like “Two Girls One Cup” and the like. But so few of those things ever have any kind of self awareness of what they are, or any kind of satirical edge. They are just gross because they can be. The humor and the politics is irrelevant.

But while John Waters may not be the cinematic upstart he once was (and who can be an upstart at 60 anyway), he has become a favorite pop culture staple and commentator. He turns up in more documentaries about pop and film culture than almost any other writer/director, and he always has a pointed comment to make that more often than not is right on the nose and causes one to laugh out loud. Be it the DVD extras for Disney’s The Little Mermaid, reality true crime television, or playing himself on The Simpsons, Waters has become America’s favorite creepy uncle — even to people who would never even have an inkling of what a cult film is. Every Holiday season, he does his live John Waters Christmas Tour around the country, where he regales his fans with stories of his wayward youth, like stealing presents from people’s unlocked cars and Divine shoplifting a television and a chainsaw from a department store during the holidays in plain sight, when no one had the balls to do anything to stop him. Sure, most of the stories get repeated each year, but so what? How many times do people watch Rudolph or A Charlie Brown Christmas each year? It isn’t like that shit ever changes.

So while I happily go see each new Waters flick, I know there is no way any of them can replace the Trash Trio for me, and I’m ok with that. Maybe Waters is more useful now as a perverse old Grandpa who shows up when we least expect him, either on tv or on stage, to remind us how fucked up our world is and that the best remedy is to laugh at it. There ain’t nuthin’ wrong with that.

The King of Camp. The Pope of Trash. The Prince of Puke.  All titles that have at one time or another been attributed to openly gay writer/director/pop culture personality John Waters.  I think it is fair to say that no other single person has contributed to the concept of gay camp humor more than John Waters, and on a personal level, no other person has contributed to my own personal sense of humor than John Waters. Raunchy, cheap, and dirty, Waters’ films celebrate everything that is tasteless about American culture, somehow managing to be respected and reviled at the same time.

The first Waters movie I ever saw was the original Hairspray back when I was in high school.  Although a great flick, it was Waters’ first PG rated movie, so it was not in any way indicative of the kind of movie Waters was famous for. I wouldn’t see one of those particular movies till I was nineteen. Celebrating bad taste and exploitation in a way no one else ever has, Waters’ movies taught me nothing is as funny as being offensive, but being offensive in a clever, ironic way, therefore really offending no one. Well, no one except maybe those that truly deserve it.

At the age of nineteen, I was finally deemed ready to “join the cult” as it were. My older brother gave me a fuzzy third generation video tape of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living, John Waters’ notorious “Trash Trilogy”.  I don’t think these movies were in print on VHS at the time, so it added to the whole aura of “these things are banned”, although I knew they weren’t really. But it did feel like I watching something forbidden, something wrong. I remember literally thinking this could not be happening in front of my eyes. How is this even legal? Who would do this and put it on film? I instantly called all of my friends over (well, all the ones I knew to be as twisted as me, anyway). I remember being shocked and disgusted and laughing hysterically. And it was like our collective senses of humor for the rest of our adult lives were born in that room at that moment. I had a new guru, and his name was John Waters.

THE EARLY YEARS

John Waters was born on April  22, 1946 in the upper class neighborhood of Lutherville outside of Baltimore, Maryland. A more normal, 1950’s Norman Rockwell upbringing he could not have asked for, yet somehow from this boring WASPy world a demented sensibility was formed. As a child he performed violent puppet shows for children’s birthday parties, until some kids got scared and complained to their parents (according to Waters, all those kids probably grew up to be boring carbon copies of their parents and probably never left Lutherville — I’m inclined to agree). Also as a child, he would watch trashy Drive-In movies with his binoculars from his bedroom window.  For his sixteenth birthday, his grandmother gave him his first Super 8 camera. Little did she know she had unleashed the Beast.

His first movie was shot on his parents’ front lawn, a movie that was shown only once called Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, about a black man who is married by a KKK member to a white woman. The movie was made for thirty bucks, and only starred his friends. But with the little 17 minute movie, Waters’ Dreamland “Studios” was officially born.

Now, all Waters needed was a star. And he found one, waiting for the school bus.

DIVINE

A fellow high school classmate of John Waters was an overweight, effeminate boy named Glenn Milstead. “He lived down the street from my parents. I used to see him everyday and he had different color hair every day as he was waiting for the bus and my conservative father would, like, tremble and rage in disgust as we passed by. I thought God, I have to meet this person. So I met him through a girl that I knew who knew him because they used to gamble for pimple medicine when they played cards.” Dressing him in drag and re-christening him Divine, Waters had found his star player. He first starred in Waters’ next Super 8 movie Roman Candles, and then his first 16mm film Eat Your Make-Up, a film about a deranged nanny who kidnaps young girls and forces them to model themselves to death in front of her boyfriend. Although only shown a handful of times, Divine found her breakout star moment playing Jackie O in a recreation of the Kennedy Assassination staged on his local suburban streets. Now mind you, this was early 1966, a little over two years since the actual event occurred. Needless to say, the neighbors were not amused.

At first, Divine was more your typical 60’s glamorous drag queen, but Waters quickly reshaped him into something more, something perverse. Something unique. “In the very, very beginning Divine was like a real drag queen for about two seconds until I really got a hold of him. Because back then other drag queens hated him immediately because they knew that we were making fun of drag queens because drag queens were really very square then. They all wanted to be like Miss America and wear mink coats and all that. And Divine obviously made fun of that image. I mean here was someone who was fat and proud of it, which no drag queens were. And I think Divine had a lot of built in rage. I mean he was hassled in high school and I think he used that. Being Divine the character gave him an outlet for that and I think I had a lot of rage too and I think the two of us channeled our rage into whatever character Divine was playing in the film.” Divine went on to star in all but one of Waters’ subsequent films until his untimely death in 1988. But while Divine may have been the headlining star, he was far from the only remarkable presence in the early films of John Waters.

THE DREAMLAND CREW

In 1960’s Baltimore, there were no actors who you could get to do the kinds of things one is required to do in a John Waters movie, such as eating dog shit or getting a blow job in a real church. So in lieu of professional actors, why not just hire your friends? Amongst those friends turned “actors” were Waters’ childhood best friends Mary Vivian Pierce, Cookie Mueller, and David Lochary, a beauty school friend of Divine’s who starred in many of the early films till he died by bleeding to death in his New York apartment after falling on a glass while on PCP. But it was the following two actresses who, along with Divine, came to epitomize everything great and trashy about a John Waters movie.

MINK STOLE

One of the few Dreamlanders still alive, Mink Stole (born Nancy Stoll) has either starred or had a cameo in every single one of John Waters’ full length movies. Originally just hired to tapdance topless in a tutu for Mondo Trasho, Mink proved to be the best actress of the bunch. Almost always playing a villain or a brat in a spiteful rage, no one, and I mean NO ONE, can spout long hateful venom filled monologues like Mink Stole. Possibly my favorite line in the history of cinema comes from one of her rants in 1974’s Female Trouble: “I wouldn’t suck you lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen IN YOUR BALLS!” If Divine was the black heart of the John Waters’ movies, then Mink was it’s twisted soul.

EDITH MASSEY

Once you see Edith Massey’s face, you never forget it. Sadly, you never forget it for the wrong reasons. John Waters “discovered” Edith when she was a barmaid at a dive bar called Pete’s in the seedy side of Baltimore. God bless John Waters, because instead of running away from her snaggle-toothed visage like running from Medusa, he decided to dress her up in a girdle and bra and put her in an over sized play pen for his most notorious film Pink Flamingos. This lead to her having her hair bleached blonde and put in a skin tight dominatrix outfit for Female Trouble, and having a sex scene as the evil Queen Carlotta in Desperate Living. But it wasn’t Edith’s horrible appearance that made her so unique, it was the unique way in which she delivered the lines in her script. Well, unique is one word for it, I suppose the more apt term would be Retarded. And yet, retarded in such an endearing way. Aside from starring in Waters movies, Edith used her new found fame to front a punk band called “Edie and the Eggs” until her death in 1984. There will never be another like her. And that might be a good thing.

THE EARLY BLACK AND WHITE FILMS

With his crew assembled, John Waters made his first two feature length movies back to back, with money borrowed from his father. The first was the silent (except for music and occasion dubbed over narration) Mondo Trasho. Possibly the longest 90 minute movie ever made, it was followed up by the far superior Multiple Maniacs, where Divine and her pack of misfits form a traveling “Cavalcade of Perversion”, where they lure judgmental suburbanites into seeing drug addicts and lesbians under the Big Top, only to rob and kill them before moving on to a new town. After Divine is raped by a giant lobster, she goes on a mad Godzilla-like killing spree and has to be taken down by the national guard. After the minor success of Maniacs, John Waters was somehow able to convince his father to give him more money to make his first color movie, the one that, by his own admission, “He can never live down and can never live up to”; the trash cinema classic Pink Flamingos.

Next week, I will discuss John Waters’ infamous “Trash Trilogy” of Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living in detail, his move to more mainstream fare with Polyester and Hairspray, and whether or not Waters is more relevant today as a film maker or as a pop culture commentator. Stay Tuned!

So Watchmen mania has hit, for better or worse, depending on your feelings on the movie. This isn’t going to be an article about whether Watchmen was a good movie or not, there are plenty of places that discuss that on the internet (like the Geekscape Forums! Join Up Now!! Don’t ever say I don’t do my part fellas). Nope, this article is going to be all about Dr. Manhattan’s Big Blue Penis and the hilarious, yet often sad, reactions to it all across the nation.

To say that America has deep, deep issues about sex is something of an understatement. This country was famously founded by the Puritans, a group of people so stiff they even made the British uncomfortable. As a culture, we are both obsessed and repelled by sexuality. American men consume pornography on the same scale that American kids consume Lucky Charms cereal (your humble author consumes both equally). Sexuality is used to sell everything. Not too long ago, we had a half naked Paris Hilton used to sell Carl’s Jr. Hamburgers. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want my food to be sexy, thanks. And yet, this is the same country that was nearly brought down by a half second of Janet Jackson’s nipple back in 2004. At this year’s recent Wonder Con in San Francisco, Terminator Salvation director McG said he’s currently fighting with the studio to get the movie an R rating instead of a PG-13. The scenes in question don’t involve any of the brutal violence that I’m sure the flick is filled with, but with a couple of topless shots of an actress. The message? Blood and Guts = Good, Boobies =Bad. Or, in the case of Watchmen, glowing penis =Bad.

Now, I’m not one of those people who wants to remove violence from films. I’m a horror, geek after all, and I love me a little wanton violence on the big screen. Nor am I one of those people who think children are mindless zombies who mimic every single thing they see on screen. Good parenting will prevent that from every being an issue. But let’s say I were one of those worried parents, so concerned about Hollywood shaping my child’s precious little thoughts, then the truth would be that I would rather have them see onscreen sex than violence any day. After all, I’d hope they’d grow up to have lots of sex one day, just as I hope when they grow up they never take a meat cleaver to someone’s head.

Which brings us to Watchmen, a movie where one of the main characters, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is seen more often than not walking around buck naked, with his CGI penis in full view. This has caused many a commentary to be made on the old internets. What’s funny is that the obsession with Dr. Manhattan’s blue penis is not just coming from giggling insecure guys in the audience, but from almost every critic who has written a review of this movie. Just scour Rotten Tomatoes or Meta Critic, and you’ll see. And again, It doesn’t matter if it’s a review praising or damning the movie. The reviewer in question will almost always make a snide remark about the “gratuitous” big blue dick. In fairness, the sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre was also called gratuitous by many a reviewer as well, although it seemed pretty tame to me. (It’s just people having fake sex folks. Get a grip) But it was Dr. Manhattan’s glowing blue schlong that got the most press.

But is the lower Manhattan really that gratuitous? I suppose if the camera was focusing on Manhattan’s junk every time he spoke, then it would be. But the truth is, there is a very unsexual nature to his nudity. (Another thing that’s hard for people to grasp: nudity does not always equal sex.) He’s just naked because he doesn’t care anymore. Vanity or shame in regard to one’s naked body is a socialized human attribute (in industrial cities), one that Jon Osterman moved on from when he pulled himself back together after the accident and became a higher life form. Besides, it’s not like he would get cold or hot anymore. Unless he’s at a social function like a funeral or appearing on a television show, why would he even bother with clothes? His nudity, and lack of concern about it, is an important visual character cue.

At the screening of Watchmen I went to (as well as screenings attended by certain friends who told me similar stories of their movie going experiences), it seems there is always some guy who has to loudly yell out in protest every time Manhattan shows up naked. “Aww, nah man, put that shit away!” or other words to that effect. It’s like by letting the audience of strangers know they are protesting this flagrantly offensive onscreen dick, then everyone will know for sure he’s not gay or something. And really, that is what it is all about, the knee jerk homophobia of the young American male.  You might argue it’s just outrage at onscreen nudity, but I don’t remember anyone saying a word in protest when Rebecca Romijn was naked and blue in the X-Men movies. So let’s not pretend it is anything else.

And all of this Dr. Manhattan-induced penis panic has left me to wonder if so much of our society’s homophobia is due to the way male sexuality has essentially been hidden from view for much of the past several decades. Female nakedness (or more often half nakedness) is used to sell everything from the previously mentioned cheeseburgers to car parts. Equally hot and nearly naked men are not used to sell similar products to women in nearly the same measure, even though women are over 50% of the population. The reason is simple; straight men still run the world, and that includes almost everything to do with advertising.  These men aren’t going to push a hot male model to sell to the female demographic. Why remind their wives and girlfriends how hot they aren’t? All this does is reinforce the notion among young men that the male figure is somehow gross and disgusting, (unless it’s their own of course) despite almost 3000 years of classical art telling us otherwise. Well, classical art and Zack Snyder’s other flick 300, but that’s a whole other article.

I can only hope that with the release of Watchmen in all of its big blue glory, some people might, just might, examine what it is about someone else’s penis that they find so threatening, even when it’s blue and rendered by a computer, and maybe someone will catch themselves mid-thought are realize just how ridiculous they are being. If Dr. Manhattan’s dick has any kind of legacy, I hope it is simply making people realize just how silly their preoccupation with it is in the first place.

In a neighborhood near me growing up, there was an unassuming suburban home with a particular feature that gave people the chills, or maybe just made them want to puke. In front of this standard one story Orange County home was a series of Greco-Roman statues standing atop pillars on the homeowner’s front lawn. If that alone wasn’t tacky enough, parts of the statues were painted with bright neon colors. These statues stood in front of this home for many, many years. The people I knew who lived near it were ashamed and emberassed, but I each time we drove by I got a special thrill out of seeing them in all their glory, a flagrant “fuck you” to the entire neighborhood. I never found out who lived in that house, but I always wanted to know. But I knew, even as a child, that whoever owned that home simply had no idea how horrible their taste was, and that made me chuckle to myself every single time I passed it by. I soon discovered that the other gay kids at school (well, gay acting kids. It’s not like we were out n’ proud in Jr. High) had a special reverance for this particular house. That’s when I realized that “our” humor does not always jive with “their” humor. It’s when I discovered what camp was, beyond its definition as “that place one lives in while in the woods.”

I might get into some trouble for saying this, but the truth is different racial, poilitical, socio economic and age groups, more often than not, have very, very different senses of humor. Am I generalizing? Well, yes I am. There are always exceptions to every rulek of course, but it’s a truth we all know. No one expects to see a group of middle aged women at an American Pie movie, or a group of teenagers at the latest Woody Allen rom com, or a lot of white people at the latest Tyler Perry opus. Action, Drama, Horror, these kinds of genres can and do cross all kinds of racial, age and economic lines, but nothing is quite as group specific as comedy. In short, we don’t all laugh at the same shit, and gay people are no exception to this rule.

Nothing gets gay men rolling in the aisles like camp humor. There’s all kinds of camp of course, and by no means do you have to be gay to “get it”, but for some reason we respond to the notion of “so bad it’s good” more than any other category of humans. The dictionary describes camp as “something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous and sentimental.” In other words, there are two kinds of camp: Intentional and unintentional. Why we as gay men love camp humor so much is almost impossible to explain. I feel like it’s in my DNA almost. Of course, there is a brand of camp that’s loved by straight people too. I mean, who doesn’t love the wretched excess of an Ed Wood movie? And the Geekscape Gauntlet is built around the notion of straight boy camp humor, with unintentonally campy movies with lots of guns and kicking that look like they cost $5 to film at your local nature center. But for the purposes of this article, I’m going to focus on the campy stuff that gay people love, since more often than not camp humor is what defines our humor.

Unintentional Camp

More often than not, unintentional camp is the better of the two. When someone tries so hard to make something respectable only to have it backfire in their face in such a spectacular way, well….that is always entertaining. Not all camp that’s unintentional is bad in any kind of traditional way, however. Almost all old Hollywood Classics from the Golden Era are campy in some respects by today’s standards, since the acting style back then was so theatrical and stagey all across the board.  We kind of give movies from this era a pass, but not to acknowledge their campier aspects today is missing half the fun. And I think for some of the depression era classics, they only have an audience today because their are still a handful of gay men who lap up every over the top line delivery given by Bette Davis or Gloria Swanson when one of those old flicks shows up late at night on AMC.

Another great camp tradition are educational films from the 1950’s and 60’s. Meant to teach children and teens the perils of getting your first period, not wanting boys to think you’re a “loose girl”, or teaching young boys to beware of “the homosexual”, educational films are delivered with a ridiculous earnestness that makes one howl in laughter each time. So much of tv is campy by definition, but one man took the cake: Aaron Spelling. In the 70’s and 80’s. producer Aaron Spelling was the king of unintentionally campy television shows. America lapped up shows like Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, and Dynasty, with bad writing, over the top acting, and ridiculous fashion and hair. But the gay community loved them not in spite of their cheesiness, but because of it.

Then there’s the movies. While the world of low-budget action, horror, and sci-fi camp has always yielded its own brand of camp, it is the big budgeted, earnest epic failures that the gay community has embraced as their own. I speak now of the Mommie Dearests, the Xanadus and the Showgirls of this world, movies with high ambitions and lofty goals, which then fail in their own spectacular way. The sheer awfulness of these films attracts us as much as it seems to repel everyone else, and maybe that’s their special appeal. To everyone else, their failure is just that: merely failure, but to us it’s art. Hilarious, accidental art.

Intentional Camp

Of course, some things are intentionally campy and great. The original 1960’s Batman television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward (not to mention gay icons Julie Newmar and the late, great Eartha Kitt as Catwoman) is probably the first intentionally campy mega success in American culture. Comics fans all over the world hate the series for mocking their beloved Dark Knight. Truth is, Batman for much of the 50’s and early 60’s was a very, very silly comic that was ripe for being made fun of. “Dark” was the last thing it was. My own relaionship to the show is probably familiar to many; as a child with no taste developed and no sense of irony yet, I took the whole thing on face value. As a pre-teen I hated the show for making fun of Batman and giving comics a bad name, and as a teenager and adult I finally realized it was a brilliant parody and came right back to loving it. In the 80’s, celelbrities like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and Pee Wee Herman became instant Icons of gay camp humor . Don’t think Pee Wee counts as gay camp? Watch the Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special again; it features such special guest stars as Cher, Grace Jones, Charo and The Naval Mens Choir. Then you tell me Pee Wee doen’t count. It’s required annual holiday viewing in my home.

Last but not least, there’s the Drag Queens. Long staples of gay culture, drag is the very definition of camp humor: Ridiculous over the top excess just for the sake of it. We love our drag queens with a special fervor others reserve for Presidents and royalty. In a weird way, people like RuPaul and Boy George are our royalty (well, old Boy George is kind of fallen royalty at the moment). While drag is usually men dressing up as women in an over the top fashion, the truth is drag can mean any overly exaggerated version of femininity, even if it’s an actual woman. One of my favorite drag personas is a woman named Angelyne, the Billboard Queen. A big breasted Barbie doll come to life, Angelyne has long been a Los Angeles area staple, driving around Hollywood in her hot pink Corvette, buying up billboards all around town merely to advertise her own glamourous existence and nothing else. Angelyne is the very definition of a campy drag queen, and as far as I can tell, she’s a real woman. Hell, even Cher and Madonna can attribute so much of their appeal to their gay fans as being female drag queens too.

And speaking of drag, I can’t not mention the late Divine. But I’ll get to her next week in detail, when I do part 2 of the Camp-tastic series, all about John Waters, the King of Camp.

Ask any comic fanboy the question “name a gay super hero” and chances are that fanboy will either struggle to come up with one, or just go for the standard stock answer: Northstar. Northstar (alias Jean Paul Baubier) is a former member of Marvel Comics’ Canadian super team Alpha Flight and later a member of the X-Men. His real significance, of course, is that he was pretty much comic’s first openly gay superhero. To be honest, other than being the first gay hero for a major publisher, there isn’t that much special about him. His powers are super strength, flight, and energy flashes. I mean, who doesn’t have those powers?? The only other unique thing about him is that he’s maybe the only other hero who is also a French Canadian skier. Jean Paul and his twin sister Aurora were vaguely elfin in appearance, kind of a riff on TV’s Wonder Twins from Superfriends. She and her brother had matching costumes, and were clearly meant to always go together like Zan and Jayna or Wily Kit and Wily Kat from Thundercats. Once Northstar’s sexuality became an issue though, Aurora became kind of the comic book version of Solange Knowles or Ali Lohan, totally in the shadow of her more famous sibling.

Being the first gay super hero has afforded Northstar something of a reputation as a punchline for comic books fans. Toyfare Magazine used Northstar constantly to make gay jokes in the back of their magazine in their “Twisted Mego Theater” section. (Some jokes were kinda funny, most were lame.) And then there’s internet viral sensation The Real World Metropolis, where they had Northstar cast in the role as the token gay housemate. Another Youtube example is Super Hero Birthday Party, which has Northstar chasing around Namor the Submariner at a pool party while they are cooking oversized hotdogs together on the grill. I admit this one was pretty funny, or maybe I’m just partial to it because the guy they got to play Northstar was pretty cute and only wore swim trunks for most of it.

Although Northstar was always intended to be gay by his creator, legendary comic artist John Byrne, Marvel Editorial of the early 80’s forbid Byrne from outing him. In fact, Jim Shooter had a policy, while Editor in Chief at Marvel, that decreed there were to be no gay characters in the Marvel universe; he often successfully prevented writers from having their characters be gay. Byrne might be able to subtly imply that Northstar was gay, but could never state it explicitly. (In Marvel’s defense, at the time the Comics Code would never have allowed it anyway.) Northstar actually first appeared in the 120th issue of Uncanny X-Men in 1979, as one of several members of Canada’s first super team Alpha Flight. In that story, Wolverine was said to have  been a member of Alpha Flight while working for the Canadian government, and Alpha Flight is sent to retrieve him and force him back on the team. Neither Northstar (nor his twin sister Aurora) were given much to do or say in that issue or in much of their subsequent appearances, until Alpha Flight recieved their own comic in 1983.

Now with their own series, Byrne knew the team members’ backstories and personalities would need to be fleshed out. “One of the things that popped immediately into my head was to make one of them gay,” says Byrne. “I thought, it seemed like it was time for a gay superhero, and since I was being ‘forced’ to make Alpha Flight a real series, I might as well make one of them gay. I settled on Jean-Paul, and the moment I did I realized it was already there. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have been considering making him gay before I ‘decided’ to do so. Of course, the temper of the times, the Powers That Were and, naturally, the Comics Code would not let me come right out and state that Jean-Paul was homosexual, but I managed to ‘get the word out’ even with those barriers.” By getting the word out, Byrne more or less meant he might say that Northstar was gay to a fan at a convention, or in a comic fan magazine, but just never in any actual story about the character. Northstar was instantly the most famous gay hero that everyone knew was gay but never actually said it. He was like the Anderson Cooper of the super hero world.

Writer Bill Mantlo took over for John Byrne as Alpha Flight writer, and wrote a story where Northstar became infected with a sudden strange illness. Apparently, Mantlo intended to reveal that the illness was AIDS and to then kill off the character in Alpha Flight #50. Maybe Mantlo was trying to be topical, but to have the only known gay character (acknowleged officially or not) suddenly die of AIDS would have just been insulting, and a terrible message to any and all gay kids reading about that character:  “No matter what you do kids, if you’re gay you will get AIDS and die, that’s the only story we have about people like you.’Nuff said True Believer!” Thankfully, wiser heads at Marvel prevailed, and Northstar was not killed off, and his weird illness was revealed to be magical in nature, and it was even revealed that Northstar was not a mutant, but in fact….he was a fairy. (Ok, maybe killing him off would have been less insulting.) In any event, Northstar’s new “fairy” status was shortlived and retconned out, and he went back to being a mutant pretty damn quick.

Northstar would finally be allowed by Marvel to come out in issue #106 of Alpha Flight in 1992. Series writer Scott Lobdell was given permission to allow Northstar to finally say out loud the words “I am gay”, way before Ellen got to do so on the cover of Time Magazine. This whole stunt made the mainstream media of course, and the issue sold out almost instantly and went into several printings. I never, ever read Alpha Flight (I don’t know anyone who did, really), but even I bought that issue. It’s a rather badly written and drawn story, very typical early 90’s Marvel. It involved Northstar saving an AIDS baby from a dumpster and his attempts to adopt her. (Even at age 17 I rolled my eyes.)  It reads like one of those “Very Special” episodes of The Facts of Life or Punky Brewster. But at least Marvel had their heart in the right place this time. Still, despite the fanfare, almost no mention was made of his sexual orientation for the rest of the first Alpha Flight series, which ended two years later.

Because of this fact, though, Northstar was now the most famous member of Alpha Flight, and by the early 2000’s Marvel decided to use his notieriety and have him become the only member of that now defunct team to officially join the X-Men. And let’s not pretend it was any other reason than his status as Marvel’s token queer that he was allowed onto the X-Men; for being a multi cultural team, the X-Men have always been lacking an actual gay member, despite being a huge gay rights metaphor. No one else at Marvel could really fill that slot but Jean Paul. It certainly wasn’t his unique powers. The X-Men had the “I’m strong and can fly and shoot energy” powers pretty well-covered. Northstar’s time on the team was short lived, as he was dropped during one of what seemed to be their annual roster changes, but it was still nice to see a gay hero make it onto the big leagues.

The most controversial thing that Northstar did next was to die. (it’s ok guys, he got better really fast) A brainwashed Wolverine skewered Northstar with his claws in fact. Film producer and novelist Perry Moore was so pissed off the Marvel’s most popular super hero had just killed off what was their only important gay character, that he ended up writing the novel for younger readers called Hero (about a young gay teenage superhero) as an effort to have some kind of positive gay super hero for younger kids, since it seemed Marvel was now killing them off. The book went on to be a bestseller, and is now about to be made into a Showtime series  with none other than Stan Lee as executive producer. So while Northstar himself might be seen as a one note character, or worse, just a punchline, his very existence is what made any other gay super hero even possible today.

 

 

Ok, first things first, this is not an article about which characters in the Marvel and DC Universes are really gay or not — mostly because I already did that. I don’t really think ANY of these characters are or should be gay. But just for shits and giggles, let’s say they suddenly all turned queer. Let’s face it, stranger things have happened in both universes. Mr Mxyzptlk once turned the Justice League all into members of the opposite sex and recently we discovered an alternate universe where the Marvel heroes were all apes. So everyone suddenly turning homo? As I said, stranger things have happened.

So assuming everyone who was straight turns gay (and, I suppose, everyone gay turns straight, meaning there is a very butch version of Northstar now) who makes for the best couples? In my opinion, these here would be LGBT (Super) Powered Couples of all time.

THE BEST LGBTSPC’s!

Reed Richards and Hank Pym

A match made in gay nerd heaven. Let’s face it, even in the “real” Marvel Universe, Hank Pym kind of hero-worships the good doctor. He’s always deferring to Reed as the #1 Scientific mind in the world. Not that the former Ant-Man isn’t great, but still, you don’t see him on the Illuminati, do you? Still, good old Hank is a genius. Reed always seems bored by Sue, as 45 years worth of marital troubles can attest to. Let’s face it: She’s a trophy wife. They are married because she’s hot and that’s it. In the Marvel Gayverse, Reed still has a thing for hot blondes, making his pairing with Hank a perfect match. And at least Hank can keep up with him in conversations instead of getting that glazed over look on his face whenever he starts spouting off about quantum singularities and shit. There could be a problem though, as Hank Pym has a legendary inferiority complex, he might try to back hand Reed one day just like he did to the Wasp in the regular Marvel Universe. But I doubt Reed would put up with that shit for a minute, he’s send him straight to the Negative Zone. So maybe it won’t be too much of a problem.

And one more thing that speaks to their compatibility, at least in bed: Reed can make parts of his body bigger, And Hank can make parts of his body smaller. As Stan Lee would say, “’nuff said”.

Superman and Batman

Opposites attract, right? Well, that’s what Paula Abdul said. Even in the regular DCU, these two almost already have a sexual chemistry, the way they bicker all the time, and then somehow find a way to make up and find common ground once again. It’s almost romantic. Batman is always making snarky remarks towards Superman, but to me that’s like the little boy who pulls the little girl’s pigtails on the playground. We all know it means he really likes him. In the regular DCU, we know Clark has a thing for hot sarcastic brunettes that have no powers yet can take care of themselves (more or less). In the gayverse this translates to none other than Batman. I think Bruce would have a really hard time saying th L word to Clark, and that might lead to problems; but I’m sure if you were to ask them what makes their relationship work, Superman would say “He needs someone to save him” and Batman would say “He’s the only one who makes me laugh”. Besides, both Superman and Batman are ridiculously handsome, and guys that hot only ever date other guys that hot. It’s the unwritten rule. Well, it’s written…but in my life.

Oh, and super powers or not, Batman is ALWAYS on top. C’mon, you know you were wondering.

Wonder Woman and Storm

Ok, they exist in two different universes. For the sake of this article, the Gay Versions of the Marvel and DCU are one and the same, ok? A lot of people might assume that Wonder Woman’s natural pairing would be She Hulk or Ms. Marvel or someone super strong like that, but I say no…It’s Storm. Both are royalty, both have at one time or another been reffered to as a Goddess, and both have the whole Earth Mother nurturing thing going on. In the regular DCU, Wonder Woman once dated an African American guy naved Trevor Barnes, so we know she likes a little brown sugar. These two would be a match made in Heaven…or Olympus.

Cyclops and The Silver Surfer

I know it seems odd, but think about it; Scott Summers clearly has a thing for people WAY more powerful than he is. Like, Cosmically powerful. Plus, Scott could take off his ruby quartz sunglasses with old Norrin Radd, as that stuff will just bounce right off the Surfer without a scratch. The Surfer has less of a track record of going insane and eating stars than Jean Grey does (don’t blame him for Galactus’ issues) therefore leaving our good X-Man in better shape emotionally. The only thing I see standing in the way of Cosmic Bliss here is I’m not really sure if the Surfer actualy has any genitalia. That might pose a problem.

Catwoman and the Black Cat

At least you know they could borrow stuff from each other’s closets and it would be totally cool, right? I actually think they are way too similar to work out long-term, but they would have a nice brief dating period where they would have lots of crazy cat sex. Like the kind you hear in the middle of the night that wakes you up, even though it’s coming from across the street. You know what I’m talking about.

Green Lantern and Green Arrow

In case any one is wondering, I mean Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan, not any of their usurpers. The same circumstances that made these two the bestest of buds in the regular DCU would translate perfectly to the Gayverse. Hal is the more conservative ex military guy, Ollie is the brash ultra liberal. These two spent much of the 70’s and 80’s bickering Han Solo and Princess Leia style, so much so that you wish they’d just get a room already. Despite all their differences, these two have a lot in common as well, making for a perfectly balanced relationship. Plus: Both are really into green, which makes decorating a place together so much less of a hassle.

Nightwing and the Winter Soldier

Both are former kid sidekicks to famous bad ass super heroes, Nightwing having worn the famous green undies and booties of Robin for 40 + years, and The Winter Soldier having been Bucky Barnes, who was essentially a Robin knock-off during World War II and kid partner to Captain America. Unlike Robin however, he didn’t have to wear his gay little outfit forever, as he was killed off by the end of the 40’s and actually stayed dead for sixty years. Eventually, both of these characters got “Bad Ass” makeovers, first when Robin became Nightwing and then when Bucky was ressurected as the Winter Soldier. (And just like that, they each have a fan base.)

Nightwing and Bucky are perfect for each other because their life journies are so similar. They can relate to each other in a way that no one else can really understand. They both like those little Domino masks, and both wear that same goofy floppy hair that must really be annoying when fighting someone in an alley. Right now in the regular comic book universes, Winter Soldier is the new Captain America, and more than likely Dick Grayson is going to be the new Batman. But it won’t last, and both will be relegated to their old identities in no time. In my world they can cry on each other’s shoulders when that happens, and then make sweet love down by the fire.

The Scarlet Witch and Zatanna

In the regular Marvel Universe, Wanda Maximoff AKA The Scarlet Witch has had weird taste in men, having married the android Vision. I think Wanda would maybe not have gone crazy and tried to destroy the Avengers and gotten rid of all the mutants if she had been with another, more nurturing, magic user…someone like Zatanna? Scarlet Witch is clearly the more powerful one, but I think she needs a Zatanna to keep her in balance. It could be a very cute relationship though, very Willow and Tara from Buffy. Hopefully this relationship ends better than that one. Besides, how could Wanda resist those fishnets and that top hat? No one can.

Of the three big slasher franchises of the 80’s, A Nightmare On Elm St. was always my favorite. I loved the original Halloween, it’s truly a seminal film, but it’s really the only movie in that series that I would actually consider great. And not to offend anyone, but none of the Friday the 13th films are really any good. Cheesy fun? Hell yes, but even the original was nothing more than a gorier cash in on Halloween’s huge success. In fact, by 1984, only 6 years after the release of the original Halloween, not only had there had been two more sequels in that series, but also four more Friday the 13th’s, not to mention Terror Train, Prom Night, Happy Birthday To Me, My Bloody Valentine and about a dozen others no one but the most devout Fangoria reader remembers. And it was in this environment that Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare On Elm Street was released, shaking up the whole idea of what a slasher film could be.

The original Nightmare, despite its low budget and occasionally cheesy acting, is actually really ingenious. The idea of a killer who can stalk you when you are sleeping and at your most vulnerable is truly terrifying, and the idea of the sins of the parents being visited upon their children is equally intriguing. Teenage actress Heather Langenkamp might not have won any Oscars, but I for one always loved her portrayal as Nancy Thomson, one of the few female heroines in slasher films who not only does more than scream and run, but fights back and kicks Freddy Krueger’s ass (sort of). And then there’s that score, the instantly iconic and eerie piece of music that was just downright creepy and memorable. The original Nightmare was a surprise hit and more or less put New Line Cinema on the map; Freddy Krueger was an instant icon. So, naturally, New Line wanted a sequel right away. Wes Craven declined to come back for Nightmare 2, and I suppose that was the first indication this movie was not going to be a step up from the first. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge was conceived, written, produced and released all in less than a year from the original’s release, meaning there could not have been a hell of a lot of time to second guess some really bad choices. However ill conceived as it was, today this flick is remembered for a whole different reason: its overt homo erotic subtext.

The movie opens with a school bus coming down a suburban street. Sitting in the back, all alone and without friends, is our hero Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton); the new kid in town and our main character (It should be noted that Jesse is the ONLY main protagonist in the entire seven film run of the Elm Street series who is male). Within minutes, we find out that our bus driver is none other than Freddy Krueger, and he drives the bus into some Hellish desert landscape where he begins to slaughter the screaming kids…until Jesse wakes up, letting out the girliest scream ever given out by anyone with testicles. He then proceeds to get up, and the first shot of Jesse in the “real world” in this movie is his smooth, blonde, pretty boy body in his tighty whiteys, covered in sweat. This is Clue #1 that this is going to be the gayest horror movie of all time.

We then are introduced to Jesse’s boring stereotypical family, who just don’t understand why their son is acting so darn strange lately. He then goes to school with his new girlfriend (but not girlfriend, it should be noted) Lisa. Everyone at school keeps giving Jesse and Lisa shit, asking when are they gonna make it official and get it on. Of course, both get defensive and aggressive whenever this subject is brought up “He’s just my ride to school, ok??“, Lisa says when one of her friends starts to butt in. This was before the time you could just say “Lay off, I’m his Fag Hag”. Jesse didn’t really have any friends at school, yet, but quickly made one after he was pants’ed on the baseball field by local stud and asshole Ron Grady (Robert Russler). They get into a dirty, sweaty, wrestling match during P.E. After the dirty sweaty male bonding, and being forced to run laps and do push ups by their sadistic PE teacher, Grady and Jesse, of course, become best buds.

Jesse continues to have terrifying dreams of Freddy. Why exactly Freddy has chosen Jesse is unclear; aside from the fact that Jesse now lives in Nancy’s old house from the first movie. It’s unclear why Freddy would even haunt that house really, although I guess an argument could be made that he was killed there the second time in the original film. In any event, Freddy haunts Jesse’s dreams, but unlike Nancy, it’s not to kill him, but to enter him (as in possess, just in case you were wondering what I meant). In one scene Freddy caresses Jesse’s face with his steel claw…”Daddy can’t help you now. We got special work to do, you and me…” after which Jesse lets out yet another very girly sounding scream.

We then get some more gratuitous shots of Jesse sweaty and in his underwear, then of Jesse dancing alone in his room in a very queer way to “Touch Me All Night Long” by Cathy Dennis (yes, I’m serious) and then some more sweaty and nearly naked Jesse and Grady being harrased by the evil PE teacher in the locker rooms. There’s even a scene where the family parakeet goes insane and attacks everyone, then blows up for no reason. I’d love to know what the writers were smoking the day they thought that would, in any way, be scary.

And after the parakeet, things get really gay….

Jesse, after yet another nightmare, goes wandering out at night in the rain, where he stumbles into what seems to be a gay leather bar called “Dom’s” (I assume as in Sub and Dom). After some random shots of leather queens making out and some trannies, Jesse is approached by none other than his evil PE teacher…in full leather daddy get up, baby! Next thing we know, we’re back at school, where the S/M PE teacher is making Jesse run laps in the basketball court and then tells him to hit the showers.

After a gratuitous scene of young Jesse in the showers, we see the S/M coach in his office, when suddenly…all the balls come to life. Basketballs, baseballs, tennis balls, all start flying off the shelves by themselves and begin attacking him. You read that right….the gay S/M teacher is assaulted by multiple BALLS. BALLS. But it gets better; the jump ropes come to life too, and proceed to tie him up in the showers and strip him naked. Then the wet towels come to life and begin to smack him on his bare ass. It’s then that Freddy finally appears, kills Evil S/M PE Teacher and, when we next cut to Freddy, we see it’s our hero Jesse — now possessed by Krueger and wearing the signature glove. He’s dripping wet and naked, horrified at what he’s done. Cue to yet another very girly scream.

Jesse’s friend Lisa decides to lighten the mood on Elm Street by throwing a pool party, but Jesse just isn’t in the mood, seeing as how he’s possessed by Freddy and killing older gay dudes and stuff. Lisa tries to get Jesse in the mood, and the two start making out in the cabana…but Jesse freaks out after another Freddy flash, and the hetero sex moment in interrupted and Jesse runs off. The very next shot we see him in is when he jumps into his friend Grady’s bed and wakes him up and demands to let Grady allow him to spend the night there and watch him. How much more blatant can you get? Take the following dialogue exchange however you want it;

Jesse: “Something is trying to get inside my body!”

Grady: “Yeah, and she’s female and she’s waiting for you inside the cabana…and you wanna sleep with me?“

Of course, Freddy takes complete control of Jesse in this homo-erotic set up and, after he kills Grady, he returns to the pool party where he proceeds to kill a bunch of kids there too. What is interesting to note is that at this party, made up equally of males and females, Freddy ONLY kills the boys. In fact, in this whole movie Freddy only kills guys, an anomaly not just for this series, but for all slasher films in general. Of course, hetero love prevails, and Lisa’s love for Jesse forces Freddy out of his body by the climax (of the movie). At the end of the movie we see Jesse and Lisa, now officially a couple, ride off into the sunset. Of course, Jesse can’t fight his repressed true nature for long, and Freddy reasserts himself over Jesse at the very end.

As a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, this second installment almost totally sucks — at least on paper. Almost all of the cool elements of the original are gone; Freddy being exclusive to the dream world and not the real world, the plot of the child killer seeking revenge on those who killed him, the great score and Nightmare theme, and, overall, the script really doesn’t make much sense. Still, Nightmare 2 made more than part 1, and with almost the exact same budget. I attribute this, of course, not to the quality of Part 2, but to the goodwill engendered by the previous film (modern examples of this include The Matrix Reloaded and Pirates of the Caribbean 2). When I was in Jr. High and High School, whenever we would have all night Nightmare on Elm Street Marathons (with a helping of Jolt Cola and No Doz of course) we would always skip Part 2, since it was “the lame one”. With Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the series brought back Wes Craven and upped the budget, making what many consider one of the best horror sequels ever. But I have to admit, as an adult, Nightmare 2 is a hell of a lot of fun to watch for all its gay subtext. Also, I’d much rather watch this one than Dream Child or worse, Freddy’s Dead [Editor’s Note: Suck it, Eric, that was my first 3-D movie! Also: Powerglove!]. The director of Nightmare 2, Jack Sholder, claims he had no intention of making it any kind of allegory of repressed homosexuality, but that when he watches it now he totally sees it. (I’ve never read a quote from the screenwriters, though.) It’s interesting to note, however, that Mark Patton, who played Jesse, did in fact turn out to be gay in real life, but kept it a secret from the producers since he was afraid of getting fired. I can’t help but wonder if they knew and that’s really why he got the role in the end, considering how gay this flick turned out.

Being gay, and a geek, growing up, it was difficult to find other gay people who were passionate about the same things I was – namely sci-fi ,fantasy, horror and comic books. Nowadays, it’s much easier to find gay people with similar interests, but back in the day? It seemed no other gay people loved the same things I did. Except the one thing almost all gay people will geek out over: Disney.

On the one hand, it might seem kind of shocking to some; after all, The Walt Disney Company is THE most All-American brand in the world. I mean, there’s Norman Rockwell, and then there’s Disney. And yet, Disney has played to gay sensibilities and employed more openly gay people than any other entertainment corporation ever known. More than once, they’ve gotten a lot of heat over it, like when a large conglomeration of Baptists and Born Again Christians launched a decade wide boycott of all things Disney in the mid 90’s. Disney’s stock did drop during all this, and I’m sure more than one Disney Store outlet in the south closed because of it, but Disney knew they had to stick by their gay employees. Because they had to know that the Gay Community was Disney’s Secret Weapon.

In The Beginning

Ok, as far as I can tell, Walt Disney himself wasn’t actually gay. I mean sure, I’ve heard a rumor here and there, but nothing substantial. After all, if one is to believe every rumor about Old Walt, then one also has to believe he was a big Nazi who secretly ran the government and is now frozen in a time capsule under the Pirates ride at Disneyland. So, since he was a married family man I’ll just err on the side of caution and say Uncle Walt was actually straight. But boy, he must have employed a serious amount of queers, based and the incredible musical scores, as well as the iconic and bitchy villainesses created during his time (not to mention Tinkerbell, still a term for gay men that your grandfather uses). Still, if there were any gay people employed by Walt during his time, It’s HIGHLY unlikely it was something that was common knowledge. Back then, the closet was more or less your only option. So whether or not any gay people were part of Walt’s inner circle, I’d say the early years of the Disney legacy speaks for itself.

The Curious Case of Tommy Kirk

There is only one known case of an openly gay person being involved in one of Disney Studio’s projects during Walt’s time, and let’s just say say that it didn’t go so smoothly. Well, I’m not sure if he was openly gay or if he just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

In the 1950’s, TV’s The Mickey Mouse Club was the pop culture equivalent to the current Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana or High School Musical. Child star Tommy Kirk was not only a player on that show, but he later went on to star in such iconic Disney live action hits as Old Yeller, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Shaggy Dog, The Absent Minded Professor and it’s sequel. Also, among his hits for Disney was his starring role in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, about a nutty teen inventor (what else?) Despite all of these successes, in 1963 Disney chose not to renew Kirk’s contract upon discovering Kirk had been having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy. And it was Walt himself who reportedly fired Kirk. Yet in a bow to audience wishes, the studio re-hired him for the Merlin Jones sequel, The Monkey’s Uncle.

In Walt’s defense, The Disney Studio always had an iron clad “Morality Clause” in all their star’s contracts, meaning they could never be caught doing anything that would be considered immoral by the masses. That meant no married star could be caught cheating on their spouses, no one could be caught doing drugs or anything of the sort without getting their walking papers. And let’s face it, a 22 year old having sex with a 15 year old is pretty damn sketchy, even by today’s standards. Still, I can’t help but wonder if their attitude would have been different had the 15 year old in question been a girl and not a boy, as this was not a public scandal, yet only something known to the Disney higher ups. In later years, Kirk would describe the situation himself, saying “even more than MGM, Disney was the most conservative studio in town…the studio executives were beginning to suspect my homosexuality. Certain people were growing less and less friendly. In 1963 Disney let me go. But Walt asked me to return for the final Merlin Jones movie, ‘The Monkey’s Uncle,’ because the Jones films had been moneymakers for the studio.” I guess even in for ole’ Walt, money proved thicker than morality.

The Death of Walt, The Disney Decline, and The Mouse Resurrection – And how a Queer or two Helped

Walt Disney died in 1966 after a long fight with lung cancer. While the Disney Theme Parks continued to be profitable after his death, the studio itself was in bad shape. Their live action family films weren’t really making money anymore, and their animated fare like The Aristocats and Robin Hood were seen as far lesser efforts than the animated classics from Walt’s day. By the 80’s, people like Steven Spielberg were seen as the new Walt, and Disney themselves were just churning out more or less forgettable cutesy animal stories like Oliver & Co. By 1984, new CEO Michael Eisner had re-charged the live action unit of Disney by creating Touchstone Pictures and making PG and R rated films for the first time (somewhere, Walt was spinning in his frozen crypt). Next, they turned their sites to making their animated films great again; and by doing so, they turned to a couple of queers.

When Disney decided to do The Little Mermaid as their return to fairy tale musicals, they chose composer Alan Menken (who is straight, just for the record) and openly gay lyricist Howard Ashman. Together, this duo was for Disney Animation what John Lennon and Paul McCartney were for Rock music. Not only did they create the iconic score for Mermaid, but also for Beauty and the Beast and most of Aladdin as well. Sadly, Howard Ashman died of AIDS before Beauty and the Beast was released, never getting to see yet another iconic creation brought to life. Although I don’t intend to mitigate his talent, without Ashman it just wasn’t the same for Alan Menken. He continued to score Disney films, but ask yourself: when was the last time you found yourself humming anything from Hercules, Pocahontas or Home on the Range? Who has even seen Home on the Range??? Aside from the three Menken/Ashman films, Disney’s biggest hit of their second Golden Age was The Lion King, scored by none other than the most well known out gay man in music, Sir Elton John himself.

One more tidbit about The Little Mermaid that amuses me to no end is something that few people know; one of Howard Ashman’s old friends was none other than gay cult director John Waters and his main star, the legendary drag queen Divine. Per his suggestion, the Sea Witch Ursula’s look was actually based on Divine. The notion that a drag queen actor, most famous for eating dog shit and cannibalizing police officers in Water’s Pink Flamingos (not to mention a dozen other perversions), is forever branded on kid’s toys and lunch boxes brings me no small measure of joy.

Today, The Disney Company is more than well aware of how crucial their homo employees and fans really are. Former Disney president Michael Eisner is quoted as saying he thinks 40% of Disney’s 63,000 employees are homosexual. Disney has the largest gay and lesbian employee organization in the entertainment industry. In fact, they helped underwrite the 1993 Hollywood benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. At Both Disneyland and Disneyworld, there have been organized “Gay Days” going on for years now, although not officially sponsored by the parks, they certainly haven’t stopped it – despite many protests from anti gay groups over the years. There is even a gay guide to the Disney parks called “Queens in the Kingdom“, which offers “fairy facts” like the fact that both Mickey and Minnie are almost always played by women, meaning when you come across some Mouse love in front of the castle, it’s probably some girl on girl action going on.

If anything proves how much Disney currently appreciates their gay clientle, (and especially their gay clientle’s wallets) Disney has chosen to allow gay couples to buy the company’s high-end Fairy Tale Wedding package that allows them to exchange vows at Disney’s theme parks and aboard its cruise ships, starting about $4,000 per wedding. While I’m not exactly sure how Uncle Walt would have felt about two Prince Charmings in Cinderella’s wedding carriage, it’s nice to see that the company he built is currently more progressive than our own government. It is because of this fact (despite the horrorible annoyingness of the current Disney Channel pop stars), and the incredible body of work the studio has provided for nearly a century, that Disney will own a special piece of the hearts of many a queer person forever.

In our culture, movies, television and music (and for some of us, comic books and video games as well) inform almost everything we know about our world. It’s logical that they should, then, inform everything we are supposed to know about ourselves and everything about how we are supposed to function with our peers. Don’t think so? We all like to think we are above it, but just look at your old high school yearbooks and see your horrible hair style and fashion choices, and then think about who was wearing the exact same thing on TV at the time. I’m more than sure that you’ll find a connection.

Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, everything I knew about being gay came from popular culture. And needless to say, in the 80’s it was a serious assortment of mixed messages. On the negative side, there was movies and TV. If TV shows mentioned gay people at all, it was almost always as the butt of a joke on a stupid sitcom. In the cinematic world, the teen movie comedies were the worst offenders; technically I was no where near old enough to see them, but having HBO (and parents who worked late) took care of that particular problem. I distinctly remember two movies that came out the summer that I turned eleven: Teen Wolf starring Michael J. Fox, and Once Bitten, starring a then unknown Jim Carrey. In one scene in Teen Wolf, Michael J. Fox is trying desperately to find a way to tell his best friend that he is really a werewolf. His friend turns to him and says “You aren’t gonna tell me you’re a fag are you? Because I don’t think I can handle that” to which Michael J. Fox’s character responds “No, no…I’m not a fag….I’m a werewolf” Of course his friend accepts him, after all…he can’t help being a werewolf, but of course he has total say over whether he’s a fag or not. Right?

Then there was Once Bitten, a movie about a teenage virgin played by Jim Carrey, who gets seduced by a female vampire (Lauren Hutton) who needs virgin’s blood to stay young. In once scene, Jim Carrey’s buddies are trying to check his inner thigh for bite marks in the high school shower, and when it appears to the other showering jocks that some gay shit is going down, someone yells “Fags in the showers! Fag Alert! Fags in the showers!” and everyone runs out in a panic like someone yelled fire in a crowded theater.  After the little debacle, one of Jim Carrey’s friends says “Oh my god… That means we liked it! That’s it. We’re homos! We’re rump-rangers!” As if being gay was something you could become if just enough other people called you it.

I remember almost nothing else about these movies, and have not seen them in decades. But my eleven year old brain absorbed those particular moments like a sponge, and it taught me that in this world, It’s okay if I end up being some kind of monster, but I had better not be a fag, because that would simply be unacceptable. It was like a warning to all gay kids: better go kill yourself now, or learn to hide your sexuality as well as you can, because life from high school on is going to be a living hell for you.

On the flip side of movies and television, though, there was the music world of the 80’s, as defined by MTV. For those of you reading this who are too young to remember, the M in MTV once stood for Music, and the whole appeal of MTV was that they played music videos 24/7 and not just reality shows about vapid rich kids. Boy George, long before he was imprisoning male escorts in his private dungeon, was a drag queen pop star who sold millions of records. Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics was all dyked out in a buzz cut and wearing a man’s business suit singing Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This. People like David Bowie were telling the world they were bisexual, even if they were really straight and were married to supermodels. Half the men in the music industry (be it pop or metal) wore make-up and had more hair product than your mom. The music biz was totally sissified. They couldn’t say they were gay, and in truth most of them weren’t, but the implication was there and it was enough. Sure, there was some backlash. Dire Straits had a huge hit song with Money For Nothing with lyrics that epitomized what regular straight-middle-America thought of all these homos selling millions of albums:

See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup?
Yeah buddy that’s his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he’s a millionaire

So I suppose as a little gay, in the closet kid, I had a choice to make; listen to the Hollywood movie making machine, who was telling me I was invisible or a pariah, or listen to the music world, which told me to embrace who I was and show off and be proud. I chose the latter, but I can hardly blame any kid who grew up hating themselves during this time, and are now in therapy as an adult as a result.

The irony was, by the time I actually was in high school in the 90’s, the entire paradigm would flip. Either because of the sympathy created by the AIDS epidemic, or simply because more and more gay people all over were coming out of the closet and being accepted, Hollywood began to change its tune. While we were still a long way off from lead characters being gay (much less showing gay intimacy on screen) it was no longer kosher to drop the word fag as a casual insult in film. Teen movies like Clueless had the cute guy in school that all the girls wanted to date end up being gay, as well as being accepted as part of the group. Hip shows like Melrose Place had gay characters as regulars, and MTV’s The Real World always had an LGBT cast member. Despite my feelings about MTV and reality television in general, I have to admit: The Real World did more to show the average American kid that gay people their own age were just like them than anything else in pop culture did up to that point. As for the geek media, well, we were all but non-existent there in the 90’s. There were three seperate Star Trek series in the 90’s, one which had an African American man as Captain and the other with a woman in charge, but none could find a spot for a single queer crewman. (We would have taken the Chekov role and not complained.) So much for diversity in the future. The world of comics was even worse. Unless it was a black and white indie book, good luck seeing very many visible gay or lesbians in comics at the time either.

And In the world of popular music, long gone were the days of gender bending superstars. The 90’s saw the ascendence of hip hop and pop punk as the dominating forms of music on the airwaves; where stars like Eminem could throw around the F Word and not only didn’t apologize for it, but seemed to revel in pissing off all those queers. Male musicians took and ultra masculine pose, and the women were more doey eyed and submissive and ditzy than ever before. The sound may have been 90’s, but the attitudes were straight out of the 50’s. There were exceptions to this rule, like queer-friendly bands like Green Day and Nirvana, but by the late 90’s the douchey Limp Bizkits of the world had taken over the charts.

Which brings us to the present. In this decade we’ve had more gay visibility in film and television than ever before, and the world of music seems slightly less homophobic than it did in the previous decade, if only slightly. Major hip hop stars like Kanye West have publicly spoken against the homophobia in hip hop culture, and pop punk stars like Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy have gone on record several times about how he wishes he was gay and likes to kiss boys. Ten years ago that would have been the end of his career, now I imagine most of the kids who listen to that band shrug and say “so what?” (In the meantime Ricky Martin is STILL not out of the closet. Tick tock, Ricky, come one!) On TV, Ellen is a fixture, and Will & Grace was on for what seemed like twenty seasons.

So I can’t help but wonder what the gay kids of today are going to turn out to be like. They’ve got Brokeback Mountain in theaters, The L Word on TV, and the music world has Katy Perry telling everyone on the radio that she Kissed A Girl (Note to Katy: Jill Sobule Kissed A Girl ten years ago. If you wanted to one-up her your song should have been called “I Fucked A Girl” – just sayin’.) In many more ways than we ever had in the 80’s, popular culture is giving gay kids a more empowering message to be true to themselves and to be proud of who and what they are (at least at this particular moment in time). And when they happen to come upon Teen Wolf late at night on TNT, it will seem like a relic from an earlier, sillier, time and not a portent of doom about their futures.

For every positive gay portrayal in the media, there seems to be another dozen crappy ones waiting in the wings. Here, then, are my top ten bad or stereotypical portrayals of gays in the media. Some are characters, some are real people essentially being characters, and all are just plain wrong.

1. Queer as Folk

When this show debuted back in 2000, I was ecstatic; a regular series focusing on a group of gay men, who were more than just side characters or guest stars? Sign me up! What made me even more excited was that the character of Michael (played by Hal Sparks) was also a huge comic book collector. With a gay geek on tv, how could this show be anything less than perfect? When the show finally premiered, it was pretty bad, but I was willing to give the show time. In fact, I gave it two whole seasons. It never got better – only worse. The characters seemed to only care about going to clubs, having lots of meaningless sex, and being bitchy and horrible to each other. You never understand what holds this group of friends together; especially since the center of the group, Brian Kinney (Gale Harold), is the worst stereotype of the bitchy pretty boy who spends most of his time cutting his friends down and insulting them. Despite how awful this show was, it had that addictive quality that found me getting caught up in reruns on the Logo Network late at night. This just makes me hate it even more. So much of this show felt like it was written by throwing darts and hitting various LGBT related topics and trying to squeeze them into a some kind of narrative. If I want to watch a show about four gay, bitchy, and promiscuous men in the big city and their sex lives, I’ll watch Sex and the City thank you very much.

2.Extraño

Back in 1988, DC Comics decided to introduce their first multi-cultural super team, and they were called The New Guardians. Amongst this parade of ethnic stereotypes (which included a Japanese man who was part computer code named R.A.M., I kid you not) was a flaming South American queen named Gregorio De La Vega, code named Extraño (Spanish for “Strange”…which is also synonymous with some word that begins with Q…hmmm…). He wore Liberace style outfits and reffered to himself as “Auntie”. Oh, and he had AIDS, because he was gay and it was the 80’s, so of course he had to have AIDS. I guess he had some kind of magic powers or something, but his abilities were kind of ill defined. The New Guardians series lasted just a year, until it was put out of its misery by DC. Since then, DC has been pretty good about introducing lots of positive LGBT characters in their books – no doubt due to their guilt over Extraño.

3. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! – Julie Newmar

Back in 1994, a little independent film called The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert premiered. it was about a road trip involving three flamboyant drag queens across the Australian Outback. Within a year, Hollywood had released its own version, To Wong Foo. In typical Hollywood fashion, they made a totally neutered version of a better foreign film. The main plot was more or less the same; three drag queens go on a road trip, then end up with a busted vehicle and an overlay in a small podunk town. Now, I’ve known a drag queen or two in my time. More often than not, they’re more than a little bit wild and crazy, full of sarcasm, and vinegar. Now, the so called drag queens in this movie (played by Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo) aren’t playing the part of drag queens, they are playing the part of men dressed up as their mothers. These so-called queens don’t really have any snark or sass, in fact they just seem to be there to help the local townsfolk by giving them fashion and cooking tips and watching Oprah with them. This movie has its heart in the right place, but it feels like it was written by someone who has never met any actual draq queens in their life (in one scene, we even see the drag queens asleep in bed while wearing their full hair and makeup. WTF?) I will say, though, that John Leguizamo is pretty damn good in this. He is the only convincing queen, but he even that couldn’t save this flick. I still maintain that this movie has a great title, though; it is far more clever than anything that actually happens within the movie itself.

4.The Birdcage

This movie is an American remake of the French 70’s farce La Cage aux Folles. Certain extreme stereotypes you could get away with in the 70’s were simply painfully dated in 1996 when this came out. The story centers around a gay cabaret owner (Robin Williams) and his partner (Nathan Lane), a drag queen who performs in the club. Together they raised a son, now fully grown and straight (and while I fully believe a flamboyant gay couple can raise a totally heterosexul child, I refuse to believe they could raise one who is so damn boring). Their grown son is now engaged to a pre-anorexia Calista Flockhart, whose parents are a conservative Republican Senator (Gene Hackman) and his old-fashioned house wife (Dianne Weist). When their newly engaged son’s soon to be in-laws want to meet his parents, Robin Williams and Nathan Lane decide to pretend to be a straight couple – with Robin Williams playing the man and Nathan Lane playing the wife. Also along for the ride is Hank Azaria as Agador, the couple’s gay Guatamalen housekeeper -cause, I mean, who better to play a flamboyant Guatamalan than a jewish guy? I’ll admit, there are some damn funny parts in this one, but the sterotypes are SO extreme, like the notion that in every gay couple one is “the man” and the other is “the woman”. Stuff like that only helps to make this movie seem even more ridiculous and outdated, even for the early nineties.

5.Bobby Trendy

When I was a young teenage club kid, waaay back in the early 90’s, there was a staple to the LA club scene that went by the name of Bobby Trendy. At (now looong gone) clubs like Midnight Mass, Sin-A-Matic, and Marilyn’s, you could often find Bobby Trendy in his pink wig, skin tight outfit, and giant silver bow, looking lovingly at himself in a passing mirror, or passing out flyers reminding everyone of his latest appearance on Jerry Springer (this was back in the time when Jerry was more a freak show and less about white trash brawling). After outgrowing that whole scene, I’ll admit that I lost track of the adventures of Bobby Trendy. Apparently he went on to open a custom furniture and interior design store called Designs by Bobby in the late 90’s. One of his clients was none other than the late Anna Nicole Smith, making him figure prominently in Season One of the Anna Nicole Show, where he engaged in a season-long dispute with Ana and her lawyer/friend/accomplice, named Howard K. Stern, during her slow decline. I can’t remember for the life of me what the Hell the dispute was actually about, but during the whole debacle Bobby acted like the worst stereotype of a bitter bitchy queen that I have ever seen. Also, Bobby single-handedly abused the word “Luxurious” to the point of it now being completely unusable.

6.Jack Tripper

Played by the late John Ritter on 70’s and 80’s sitcom Three’s Company, Jack wasn’t actually gay, but he had to pretend to be so his landlord would let him live with two single girls. And by pretending to be gay, that means mincing around on his tippy toes and being as flamboyant as possible. I’ll admit some of it was kind of funny, though. A side note: I actually first learned what the word gay actually meant (aside from the playground insult of “that’s so gay”) from Three’s Company. So in a way I should be thanking Jack Tripper, terrible stereotypes perpetuated or not.

7. Hollywood Montrose

To put it mildly, the movies of the 80’s were not kind to gay people. If gays were included at all, it was usually as the butt of a joke, like the over the top mincing Lamar Latrell from Revenge of the Nerds. But none were more ridiculously over the top stereotypes than Hollywood Montrose, played by Meshach Taylor in the 1987 flcik Mannequin. That’s the movie where Kim Cattrall is a department store mannequein who comes to life at night for Andrew McCarthy (look, all 80’s movies weren’t Raging Bull, OK?) Hollywood works at a Philadelphia department store called Prince & Company overseeing the care of mannequins, including the title one played by Kim Cattrall. Hollywood leaves no cliche untouched. He wore pink sunglasses at all times, refers to his mannequins as his “subjects”, and his car is a pink convertible called “Bad Girl” -the car also has a cover which is navy blue with pink dots painted all around. Sure, lots of gay guys like this exist, and I love ’em. But back when they were your only representation in the media, I couldn’t help but love them slightly less.

8. The Rawhide Kid

In one of Marvel Comic’s EIC Joe Quesada’s more bone-headed moves, he decided to revive the long dormant Marvel western character The Rawhide Kid as a flamboyantly gay gunslinger for the new Millenium. This was done for no other reason than the fact that Johnny Bart’s name was The Raw–Hide Kid. Oh, and it got Stan Lee on CNN defending Marvel for their brave and controversial choice, despite the fact that the whole thing was just an exercise in publicity for Marvel. And it worked, for 5 minutes, and then everyone stopped caring and carried on with not buying the comic.

9. Freedom Ring

Freedom Rings are little rainbow colored rings that gay people wear as symbols of LGBT Pride. It was also the name of yet another short-lived gay charcter over at Marvel, created by Robert Kirkman, for Marvel Team Up. Curtis Doyle had an alien ring that allowed him to alter reality (take that Green Lantern!) and was billed as Marvel’s new premiere gay super hero. A month later, he was killed off. In fact, he was impaled (no symbolism there, of course). Frankly, a gay super hero in a hot pink outfit named Freedom Ring to me seems as on the nose as an African American super hero called Black Lightning, so I say good riddance. Apparently, creator Robert Kirkman felt shitty about killing him off, and had this to say: “Frankly, with the SMALL amount of gay characters in comics in general, and how unfortunate the portrayals have been thus far, whether intentional or not–I completely understand the backlash on the death of Freedom Ring, regardless of my intentions. If I had it to do all over again… I wouldn’t kill him. I regret it more and more as time goes on. I got rid of what? 20% of the gay characters at Marvel by killing off this ONE character. I just never took that stuff into consideration while I was writing.”

It’s ok Robert, I forgive you. Not for killing off Freedom Ring, but for creating him in the first place. An A for effort though!

10.Richard Simmons
When it comes to fitness guru and American icon Richard Simmons, the late, great drag queen Divine said it best: “Richard Simmons even makes ME feel homophobic”.

Last Week, I gave some of the best and the worst of gay cinema. But there is another gay cinema: Movies meant for a mainstream audience that end up getting embraced by a loyal gay cult following instead. Most of these movies have no gay characters, writers, or actors yet they are considered part of queer culture for various reasons. So without further interruption, I present the Top Ten movies most embraced by the LGBT community.

 

 

1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

 

I suppose this one was a no brainer. I mean, an actual term for gay people is even derived from this movie (“Friend of Dorothy”.) It’s no small coincidence that the modern gay civil rights movement, the Stonewall Riots, began on the eve of Judy Garland’s funeral. I mean, the queers were already in a bad place emotionally that day ’cause Dorothy died. All we needed was a little push to make us snap. And what gay kid didn’t dream of going Over the Rainbow, to a musical and colorful place where being strange and outlandish was the norm? Frankly I never understood why the hell Dorothy would even want to go back to Kansas, but that’s just me. And speaking of Over the Rainbow, the official stance is that the LGBT Rainbow Flag is supposed to symbolize diversity, but I think we all know where the true inspiration lies, don’t we?

 

2.Mommie Dearest (1981)

 

Joan Crawford was one of the biggest female stars of the 1930’s and 40’s, who took to adopting wayward orphans decades before Angelina did. She was also an alcoholic with borderline personality disorder, who often took out her rages on her adorable little children. After she died in the 70’s and left her daughter Christina with “not one cent” Christina got her revenge on her mother by writing a tell-all book about her and revealing what an insane bitch she was to the world. Eventually the book was made into what seemed like a fairly straightforward biopic, with A-List star Faye Dunaway in the title role. What no one expected was Faye totally transforming herself into Joan, so much that she was almost channeling her, and then going so over the top in her performance that the end resulty was just overt campiness. The movie is two hours of ridiculously campy “drama” with Faye Dunaway chewing the scenerey in every scene she’s in. Faye Dunaway would later disown this movie, and say it nearly killed her career. I call bullshit on that because she’s always worked in movies and tv ever since then. But If you are ever at a crowded party and want to know who is gay or not, just yell “No…Wire…Hangers….EVER!!!” And see who can’t help themselves but to quote that line. There’s your homo.

3.Showgirls (1995)

 

Paul Verhoeven is a really talented man, and directed many genre classics like Robocop and Total Recall. However, gay men and women the world over love him for one movie in particular: Showgirls. Widely panned as the worst movie of all time (I believe it still holds the record for the biggest amount of Razzies ever won by a single film), Showgirls was released into theaters in 1995, prouldy wearing its NC-17 label on its sleeve. MGM no doubt thought that they had their first NC-17 hit on their hands; young men would surely flock to see the bare titties and asses and lipstick lesbian innuendo. Except that by 1995, any red blooded American male could just watch some crappy VHS porn and not have to pay the price of theater admission to sit through Showgirls (also, at home they can masturbate…at least more comfortably.) Instead of horny straight teens, the audience who ended up embracing this movie was the exact opposite of the one for whom it was intended: The Gays. Every single moment in this movie is an exercise in poor taste and terrible screenwriting, and even worse acting, with the exception of Gina Gershon who is the only person who knows exactly what shitty movie she’s in, and plays it to the max. Although the movie is supposed to be all about women, there are no actual female characters in this movie, just female actresses doing some kind of weird drag impersonations of women as opportunistic whores and catty bitches. It’s this unintentionally campy sensibility that made the gays the only people to love this movie and call it their own. No matter how many times I’ve seen this movie (and I’ve seen it A LOT) I still shake my head in disbelief that at some point in time, some studio head decided it was a good idea to throw $50 million at this production. I heartily recommend you watch the most recent DVD of this flick, as the commentary track by Showgirls expert and uber fan David Schmader is worth a rental alone, as he hilariously dissects Showgirls scene for scene, frame for frame, and explains just why it’s the worst movie ever made…and yet, also maybe the best??

 

4.Xanadu (1980)

After the incredible success of Grease, Olivia Newton John probably thought she could do no wrong. And then she made Xanadu. In 1979, at the height of Disco Fever in America, it probably seemed like a good idea to make an old school Hollywood musical about a struggling young artist and an aging tap dancer who get inspired by an ancient greek muse on roller skates to open a Roller Disco called Xanadu. Actually, I take it back, I doubt that sounded like a good idea even back then. Sure, the acting and story in Xanadu are beyond lame, but the music from Electric Light Orchestra is great, and the incredible cheese factor  in this movie make it so that gay audiences have enjoyed it heartily for nearly 30 years. I’ve often stated that when I die and go to Heaven (yeah, I know I’m supposed to go the other place), when I get there and those Pearly Gates open up, the first thing I wanna see upon my arrival is a re-enactment of the last 10 minute musical sequence of Xanadu, reenacted for my welcome. Because if that doesn’t happen, it might as well be Hell.

5.All About Eve (1950)

Unlike so many of the movies on this list, this is actually a great film and not “so bad it’s good”. Bette Davis (who shows up not once on this list but twice!) gives the performance of her career as an aging theater star who hires her devoted fan *cough*stalker*cough* to be her personal assistant. Of course her stalker does everything to become her and then tries to replace her. The script for this movie just sparkles, with one deliciously bitchy one liner following another at an incredible pace. They just don’t make ’em like this anymore, kids; and we all wish they did.

6.Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Yet another film about an aging starlet, also released in 1950, the same year as All About Eve. Also considered one of the greatest movies of all time, Sunset centers around a crazy reclusive older star going slowly insane in her old Hollywood Mansion, as desperate for a comeback as Lindsay Lohan is today. Another film with a woman more or less playing a drag queen, it’s no wonder so many of my peeps love this movie with a passion.

7.Valley of the Dolls (1967)

“Ted Casablanca is NOT a Fag! And I’m just the woman to prove it!” This line is delivered, sans irony, by actress Patty Duke in this big screen version of the national bestseller. Despite the casual homophobia thrown around in this movie, the only people who even know or still care about it today are gay people. Essentially, the rise-and-fall story of three seperate aspiring young starlets (Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, and Sharon Tate) the movie has some very conservative overtones; If you run off to the big city to find fame and glamour, you’ll end up a drug addict bitch (as happens to Patty Duke’s character) or in a body bag being wheeled out of your Hollywood home (as happens to Sharon Tate’s character, in an eerie forshadowing of her brutal fate at the hands of the Charles Manson Family a mere two years later). Only Barbara Parkins survives, as she chooses to give up fame for the domestic life in Connecticut. This movie is sometimes unintentionally hilarious, and also sometimes just as dull. The best thing it spawned was its pseudo sequel Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Now that movie is never dull…maybe that should have made the list.

8.Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965)

Three Go Go Dancers drive across the desert causing a lot of murder and mayhem along the way. And that’s more or less the plot in a nutshell. Gay men love this one for the extreme camp dialouge, lesbians love it for the hot chicks in constant flirtation with each other. Everyone else should love it just because it’s awesome. Directed by king of the tittie movies Russ Meyer, who also went on to direct the sequel to Valley of the Dolls.

9.Mean Girls (2004)

One of the few contemporary movies on this list, Mean Girls is smart, witty, and even bitchy too. A lethal combo that so many of us can’t resist. Also, it’s nice to go back in time and see Lindsay Lohan before she was a crack ho. This flick actually does feature a gay character in a small role, so I’m kind of breaking my own rules by including it, but this one needed to be on here.

10.Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1964)

This is Bette Davis’ second spot on this list, as well as Joan Crawford’s if you count Mommie Dearest. Baby Jane is the story of former Child star Baby Jane Hudson, now washed up and old, and forced to care for her now wheelchair bound sister, who actually had much greater fame as a grown up star which Jane never could attain. Jane (Bette Davis) torutures Blanche throughout the movie in a variety of ways, all hilariously entertaining. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford really hated each other in real life, lending a delightfully bitchy edge to every thing they do and say in this movie. When Bette kicks Joan, well, you better believe that shit is real. And that just makes it so much more fun to watch.

 

Have any suggestions? Comments? Want to out a few of your favorite fictional characters? Email me at:

GayscapeColumn@gmail.com

See you next Tuesday!

“This is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination. I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target of someone who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed themselves“

Harvey Milk spoke these words, and a lot more, into a tape recorder in November of 1977, a little more than a year before his assassination by fellow San Francisco city supervisor Dan White. Being a forerunner in any kind of civil rights movement, Harvey Milk knew he was a walking target, and that standing up for something as controversial as gay rights meant being subject to very real danger. Sadly, Harvey’s intuition as to his fate was justified.

I can’t think of a movie in recent memory with a more appropriately timed release than Gus Van Sant’s latest film Milk. This biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person ever elected to public office in United States history, was released mere weeks after a ballot passed in Milk’s home state of California banning gay marriage. Not only that, but Milk was released almost 30 years to the day of his assassination. All of these things combined give Milk somewhat of an eerie and powerful resonance.

Director Gus Van Sant has made some truly great films (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting) some terribly self indulgent ones (Elephant, Gerry) and one unforgivable remake (Psycho) but I think Milk might go down as the one he’s most remembered for. Van Sant brought his A-Game here, no doubt due to the fact that being a gay man himself, he knew what Harvey Milk’s story means to those in LGBT community. In other words, he really couldn’t afford to fuck this one up. This man’s story is too important to us. In a lot of ways, this is Van Sant’s most mainstream film next to Good Will Hunting, gay subject matter or not. He drops some of his more artsy fartsy inclinations and just gives us Harvey’s story, plain and simple. And the film succeeds because of it.

The cast here is superb. Sean Penn is one of those actors whom I have great respect for, but that I personally can’t stand. He’s humorless and self important, and is one of those annoying celebs who hates media attention of any kind, causing him to be thrown in jail for punching out photographers on occasion; but I can’t deny that the man is talented. Sadly, more often than not, Penn chooses characters who are as dour and humorless as he seems to be in real life, thus sucking the fun out of watching him on screen. Most of his most lauded roles have been gravely voiced anti-social types (Mystic River, Dead Man Walking) who fit him like a glove, but aren’t really what I call a stretch for Penn acting wise. However, in the form of Harvey Milk, Penn has maybe the greatest role of his career so far by playing someone so far removed from who he really is. To be honest, I can’t remember him being this jovial and just plain likable since playing Jeff Spicolli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

James Franco plays Milk’s longtime companion Scott Smith, and while the role isn’t an overly complicated one, he brings a subtle sweetness and patience to the part. The rest of the main cast is rounded out by a nearly unrecognizable Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, an intern for Milk’s political campaigns and future human rights activist himself, Alison Pill as Anne Kronenberg, the only woman in Milk’s inner circle, and Diego Luna as Jack Lira, Milk’s troubled younger lover. Playing a smaller, but important, part is Victor Garber of Alias as Mayor George Moscone-who was killed alongside Harvey Milk by the same man. I’ll admit to having a chuckle that uber hetero actor Sean Penn was playing the queeny Harvey Milk, while Garber, a gay man and well known lover of young latin men (much like the real Harvey was) was playing the straight Moscone. And of course there’s Josh Brolin as Harvey’s killer Dan White, but I’ll get to him later.

The movie opens in an unusual way, with black and white newsreel footage from what appears to be the 50’s or 60’s, of dozens of men being rounded up and arrested for being in a gay bar. Born in 1930, this is the world that Harvey Milk grew up in, one where being gay meant you had to lie to everyone; your family, your friends, your employers, Yourself. Before 1969, not only was being gay a crime, but congregating with other gay people was considered a crime as well, in most states. I found the use of this footage to be an ingenious way of starting the movie off, reminding the audience just how absurd things once were in our “free” society. The movie then flashes to television news footage of representative (and future senator) Diane Fienstein, telling a shocked press that Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor Moscone have been shot and killed, and that the sole suspect in the murders is fellow city councilman Dan White. Apparently, this scene was recreated with actors, but the original tv news footage is so powerful and memorable, that they simply chose to let it be, and I think that was a smart choice.

Then we are introduced to Harvey Milk himself, living in New York on the eve of his 40th birthday. He meets a cute young hippy named Scott on a subway platform, and convinces him to spend his birthday evening with him. Not only do they spend the night together, but the two fall in love and move to San Francisco together in 1972 – a city still recovering from the flower child hippy years (actually, the city never really did get over that era). Together, Harvey and Scott open a camera shop in the heart of what would be San Francisco’s famous gayberhood, the Castro. Not merely content with being just an openly gay business owner, which at the time was still a pretty daring thing to be, Harvey became an early champion of gay civil rights. To put this all in the proper historical context, this was merely 3 years after the Stonewall riots which launched the modern day gay civil rights movement, and still two years away from homosexuality being taken off the books as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Board. And yet, in this time period, here was Harvey Milk, organizing his community in a way that no one ever really had before, and against fairly overwhelming odds.

Harvey decides to run for city supervisor not once, but three times in the early 70’s. He loses each time. His partner Scott, his campaign manager, grows increasingly tired of having to share Harvey with his political ambitions. Franco plays Scott as a simple man, but not a simpleton. He just wants to have a quiet life with his boyfriend, but leaves once he figures out that is never going to happen; Harvey’s ambitions have grown far beyond his little camera shop. By 1977, Harvey Milk is finally elected as supervisor for the city of San Francisco, making him the first openly gay person ever to hold public office. He held that position for 11 months before he was killed.

It’s at this point in the narrative that we are introduced to the movie’s two main villains: Harvey’s fellow city supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin) and Anita Bryant, a former beauty queen, gospel singer and TV spokesperson who started a national campaign against gay rights in the late 70’s. Opting not to cast an actress in the part, and instead using old tv footage, the film makers struck gold here. No actress could have been as ludicrously cheesy and ridiculous as Bryant was herself (although I would have cast Parker Posey if I had to cast someone). Anita Bryant is still alive, and a part of me is glad that she’s lived long enough to see herself as a vilified and archaic symbol of intolerance, while Harvey Milk is seen as a pioneer and a martyr (that’s my classier way of saying IN YOUR FACE, BITCH!) However, old Anita footage and all, it’s Josh Brolin who really shines here as Dan White. In a city where the majority was actually made up of ethnic minorities, gays, and hippies, White was just your average white guy – his insecurities, anger managment issues, and inferiority complex were his undoing. Not being able to handle a city where he was out-shined in terms of public support and press by a queer shop-owner and a liberal-leaning mayor, White decided to kill them both.

Much of the movie’s narrative is lifted directly from the Oscar winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. So much so that all the news footage in the movie seems to be a direct lift from footage used in the documentary, or an exact re-creation of it. There are a few notable things in the movie that aren’t from the documentary though, like the notion that Harvey suspected Dan White of being a closet case homosexual, which is something first referenced in the book The Mayor of Castro Street (once a working title for this movie).

Also unlike the documentary, Van Sant’s film chooses to focus almost soley on Harvey’s actual life, and doesn’t deal much with the aftermath of his murder or the trial of Dan White. White was ultimately not convicted of pre meditated murder but manslaughter, due to his lawyers submitting the ridiculous and infamous “Twinkie Defense”, claiming his addiction to junk food had caused his temporary mental instability. With this ridiculous assertion, Dan White’s jury saw fit to give him only 7 years in prison. I couldn’t make something like that up if I tried. Luckily, White did the world a favor and killed himself in 1984. All of this would make an interesting film on its own, but I bellieve that Van Sant was wise to concentrate on Harvey’s life and not his death.

One thing I keep seeing brought up in the media is that the film is a strong opinion of how little has changed since Harvey’s day, as 30 years later the gay community has suffered yet another huge blow with the passing of Prop 8 in California. (In Harvey’s day the issue was Prop 6, trying to ban gay teachers in public shcools; it really seems like there’s always some fucked up “Prop” in the way).

However, while recent events certainly reminded us of how the gay community’s enemy is the exact same one as it was 30 years ago (the crazy religious right) I couldn’t help but think of how much HAS changed since Harvey’s day. Long gone are the days when someone could legally fire you from a job for your sexual preference, or deny you housing, or prohibit you from congregating with others like you . In 1978, Milk was the first openly gay elected official; in 2008 we have an openly gay member of the House of Representitives and even a Transexual mayor in Oregon. In fact, there are more than 600 openly gay or lesbian elected officials serving now in North America. Things have changed, they just haven’t changed enough, and while watching Milk all I could think of was how badly we need an inspirational leader like that again to unite us. And as much as I love Ellen, no…she doesn’t count. We need another Harvey Milk.

In the same recording that Harvey Milk made predicting his own assassination, he also said the following, which was as true then as it is now:

“I hope they take the frustration and madness and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope they would take the power and I would hope that five, ten, a hundred, a thousand will rise. I would like to see every gay doctor come out, every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out. Stand up and let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice than anyone could ever imagine. I urge them to do that, urge them to come out. Only then will we be able to achieve our rights.“

 

 

While the gay element in vampire literature has always been a bit more hidden, the homoerotic element in vampire films and television has always been that much more obvious, especially in the past 25 years or so-even going back to the dawn of vampire cinema, there’s been a pretty strong gay connection. Gaynnection?…nah.

Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu is the original vampire film, and nearly 90 years after it’s original release, it is still considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time. The vampire in Nosferatu, a thinly disguised version of Dracula named Count Orlock, is far removed from the romantic and suave (and sexualized) vamps of 19th century literature. Director F.W. Murnau opted for the traditional vampire of folklore, a terrifying and ugly revenant. And while Orlock was certainly interested in the blood of the film’s male protaganist, his approach was far more predator than seductor.

Nevertheless, Nosferatu has one glaringly gay element-its director F.W. Murnau. Murnau would die at age 43 in Hollywood, due to an accident that apparently involved a distracted director crashing his car while his Filipino houseboy was going down on him while driving.

Dracula’s Daughter (1936)

After the runaway success of Dracula in 1931, Universal waited a while for a followup. Originally set to be directed by James Whale, the openly gay director of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, the movie ended up being no less queer when it eventually came out. Pun intended. Actress Gloria Holden played Countess Zoleska, the title character who comes to claim her father’s body. While in England, she decided to get psychiatric help to treat her affliction. I guess she thought some quack shrink could de-vamp her the way some people today think they can be “de-gayed”. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, Zaleska seduces and kills a young female prostitute in a pretty overtly sexual scene for a 30’s film. This was probably the earliest film to feature a reluctant vampire. Dracula’s Daughter was one of the only vampire movies to serve as inspiration to Anne Rice when creating her Vampire Chronicles, and she even named one of the prominent vampire bars in her books “Dracula’s Daughter”, after this film. Ironically, Dracula’s Daughter was located on the corner of Castro and 18th Street in San Francisco, where one prominent gay bar or another has stood for several decades.

The Hammer Films

From 1958 through 1975, Hammer Studios produced some fifteen vampire themed films. While many of these focused on Dracula, several were loosely based on J. Sheridan La Fanu’s Carmilla. Lust for a Vampire, The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil and Countess Dracula. Most of these movies were light on plot and heavy on women with big breasts and big hair staring longingly at each other and then finally biting the shit out of each other in an orgy of blood stained white night gowns. Not to sound too straight about that, but…fucking awesome.

The Hunger (1983)

Based on Whitley Strieber’s novel, The Hunger is director Tony Scott’s first film and probably still his most non-commercial (this is the man whose next gig was Top Gun, after all). The Hunger’s opening sequence is one of the best ever; it features Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie as vamps on the prowl for victims at an early 80’s Goth Club to the tune of Bauhaus’ classic “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”. Denueve plays Miriam, a woman who has been undead since at least Egyptian times. She passed on her gift of vampirism to her lovers, who after a couple hundred years, begin to decay and need to be put away in coffins in the attic. After David Bowie quickly begins to turn into an old man, Miriam begins her seduction of a young female doctor played by Susan Sarandon. The entire seduction and transformation of Sarandon by Deneuve is tame by today’s soft core girl on girl action seen on Skinemax, but back in 1983 it was all pretty darn scandalous.

Fright Night (1885)

Tom Holland’s homage to the Hammer Horror films of his youth, Fright Night is the story is of an All-American teenager named Charlie Brewster, who has an attractive male vampire move in next door with his live-in interior designer. Can it get more gay than that?? Charlie does every dumb thing he can to draw the vamp next door’s attention, resulting in him vamping out Charlie’s best friend, horror geek “Evil” Ed. The scene where the Vampire (Chris Sarandon) decided to transform Evil Ed into a creature of the night in an alleyway is so beyond subtext that it is just plain old text. The actor who played Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) went on to have a rather long career in gay porn. Go figure.

The Lost Boys (1987)

Directed by gay director Joel Schumacher, it’s no surprise that a little bit of queer sensibilty popped up in this movie (still less than his Batman flicks though). The main vamp, David (Kiefer Sutherland), seems intent on transforming the new kid in town, Jason Patric, into a vampire. Most of their scenes involve a lot of heavy posturing between the two of them, but when David gives Jason his blood, it’s conveniently in a bottle; thus avoiding any male to male physical contact. Still, the way those two glare at each other at all times makes you just wish they’d just get a room already.

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Everything said about the novel can be said about the film translation as well. Many thought the homoerotic undertones would be removed due to the casting of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (remember, this is 1994, ten years before Brokeback Mountain); but just going by the book, the vampires in this universe do not have sex. For them the kill IS the equivalent of sex. So the best way for the movie to get around it was by not going around it at all. To the average movie goer, the main vampires were merely biting each other and sucking each other’s wrists, but anyome who understood “Metaphor:101” knew what was really going on here.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

Joss Whedon’s seminal television series is of great importance to GLBT portryals in the media. However, the character who was outed as gay wasn’t a vampire at all, it was Buffy’s best friend Willow, played by Allison Hannigan. The vamps on Buffy initially seemed more or less straight, despite mild flirting between female vamps Darla and Drusilla over on the Buffy spin-off Angel. Towards the end of Angel, however, fellow vampire Spike scoffs when someone refers to him as “an intimate member of Angel’s inner circle”, “Angel and I were never intimate” he says. “Well, except that one time” And with that sentence, a million fanfics were written all across the internet.

True Blood (2008)

The latest vampire sensation based on a series of popular novels. Nope, not that book series. Created by Alan Ball of Six Feet Under and American Beauty fame, this show has none of the melancholy musings on life, and prefers to keep to its “vampires as the new persecuted minority” metaphor. Yeah, not TOO obvious there, are we Alan Ball?

 

 I’ve always been drawn to vampires. As a young gay kid, I didn’t really understand any of the homosexual implications of The Undead, but I responded to it all one some kind of subliminal level. After all, what’s more appealing to a gay male teen than the notion of being young, hot and rich forever? Not to mention having what amounts to as very generous amounts of oral sex.

Sex is all over most of the popular vampire fiction since day one, from Dracula to Vampirella. There have been notable un-sexy vamps like those in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, but for most of the 19th and 20th century, the vampire and sexuality have been linked. Even today, with teen phenomenon Twilight, the sexual vampire metaphor exists in literature; although in that instance the entire subtext seems to be one encouraging abstinence. *YAWN* The way I see it, picking the most overtly sexual supernatural myth as a way of extolling the values of waiting until marriage seems lame and pointless. But then I don’t understand the appeal of High School Musical either, so what do I know?

A lot of people think that the gayifing of the vampire genre stared in 1976 with the publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. And while Anne Rice might have been the first popular author to make the connections between homosexuality and vampires overt and explicit, the truth is they’ve been there all along, either within the stories themselves or as part of the stories of the people who wrote them.

The first vampire story in the English language was John Polidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819, and originally attributed to the infamous poet Lord Byron. Although vampires had been part of folklore for centuries, The Vampyre was the first story to combine the undead creature of myth with the persona of a wealthy, aristocratic and sexy gentleman, a combination that has remained ever since. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, would dominate how vampires were perceived for the rest of the century and well into the next. And his creation and subsequent publication might very well have been the result of a bitter falling out between two male lovers.

The genesis of The Vampyre is a really fascinating one, because the modern vampire and the Frankenstein monster, two monsters linked forever in advertising and Halloween decorations, were literally born on the same night. And yes…it actually was a dark and stormy night. The poet Lord Byron was in many ways the first modern celebrity. Known just as much for his love affairs and bad boy attitude and he was for his poetry, he was in many ways the world’s first media darling. And while he was a well known lady’s man, he was also well known for his “boys on the side”, so to speak. John Polidori was not a writer, but a doctor, and Byron’s personal physician and traveling companion. One summer, while traveling through Switzerland with the poet Percy Shelly and his wife Mary, a summer storm forced them to stay overnight at one of Byron’s lakeside homes. To pass the time, they decide to make a contest on who could come up with the best horror story. They also decide to take a lot of drugs. While the contest extended to everyone, it was really between the poets Byron and Percy Shelley. After all, Mary Shelley was just the “little wife”, and Polidori was just the “doctor friend”. I doubt anyone took them seriously as artists. Byron came up with a vampire story, and Mary of course came up with Frankenstein.

Lord Byron didn’t think too highly of the vampire story he had come up with, and decided against ever doing anything with it. At some point over the next summer, Byron and Polidori had a bitter falling out. No one really knows why, but rumors persist to this day that Byron and Polidori had some kind of physical relationship, and Byron had more or less dumped Polidori, both as his doctor and as his lover. Certainly what Polidori did next suggests an angry ex lover and not just a fired employee. A few years later, Polidori took the fragment of the vampire story Byron told and finished it, but now he made the vampire figure a thinly veiled version of Byron himself, aristocratic and sexy, but also amoral and repugnant, leaving a trail of drained women in his wake. The Vampyre was published in 1819, and was an overnight sensation. It was translated into numerous stage plays all over Europe, and in fact started an entire “vampire craze” in the theater that lasted decades. The entire Theater of the Vampires scene from both the book and film versions of Interview with the Vampire was inspired by this whole fad. Everyone knew that Lord Ruthven was a version of Byron, much like everyone knows today that the character Meryl Streep played in The Devil Wears Prada is really Vogue editor Anna Wintour. So while not confirmed, it is very possible that the first modern vampire was created because one particular pissed off queen decided to get revenge and turn his ex into a monster. Well, at least on paper.

The next major vampire piece of fiction is J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, first published in 1872. This was the first explicitly lesbian vampire story, and somehow made it past the censors of the day. The story centers around a young woman named Laura who forges a friendship with another girl her own age named Carmilla, who of course turns out to be a centuries old vampire. Carmilla makes very obvious sexual advances towards Laura, and not only bites her, but also seems to only bite other women. Homosexuality was very taboo at the time, but it seems even them the notion of two hot girls making time was still the less scandalous option fit to see print.

Of course, the culmination of all these vampire stories was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the most influential vampire story of all time. Dracula only ever bites and transforms women in Stoker’s story, so one might think this is where vampirism goes all hetero on us. After all, the subtext is one that clearly seems obsessed with female sexuality from a male (rapists?) perspective. Yet at the same time, there’s this constant threat that Dracula is going to bite and transform hero Jonathan Harker, leading to all kinds of pseudo sexual tension that was probably unintentional on Stoker’s part. But it’s there nevertheless.

Funny thing is, Bram Stoker himself might have very well been gay, or at the very least bisexual. Several love letters he wrote to openly gay author Walt Whitman were discovered in recent decades, and Stoker was more or less in love with his boss of some twenty years, the British actor Henry Irving. Irving more or less treated Stoker like a manservant, and according to some authors, Dracula’s relationship with human slave Renfield is not too far off of what the Irving/Stoker relationship was like. It was all very S/M before S/M was even a phrase. The biggest indicator of Stoker’s sexuality is the fact that he died of syphilis, not long after a trip to America where he had become obsessed with a young American actor. His wife never contracted the disease, leading many people to the conclusion that they had a sexless marriage. In fact, his wife Florence was thought only married Stoker because he was more financially stable than her original suitor, Oscar Wilde. Looks like she might have picked one queer over another, a 19th century version of a fag hag.

The next truly significant vampire story is Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, first published in 1954. This story is less a vampire story and more a pre-cursor to the zombie apocalypse stories made popular later by the Romero zombie movies. The sexual component is almost totally removed from I Am Legend, and the classic vampire of yore might have gone away with it if not for the popular Hammer Dracula films of the 50’s and 60’s starring Christopher Lee and television’s Barnabas Collins, star of the cheestastic soap opera Dark Shadows.

By 1976, the vampire was only considered a product of low brow disposable entertainment. There were plenty of movies and comics and novels to be sure, but none that made any real impact or were considered literature of any kind. It was in this environment that author Anne Rice released her first novel Interview with the Vampire to the masses. While Stoker may have been oblivious as to any homosexual undertones within his novel, Rice was all too aware of all the metaphors within hers. The main character, Louis de Pointe du Lac, relates how he was transformed into a vampire in antebellum New Orleans by another seductive bloodsucker, the French aristocrat Lestat. Louis is a thinly veiled metaphor of the self loathing homosexual, who although loves his newfound sexual freedom, really also thinks God hates him and he’s going to go to Hell. Lestat on the other hand, is an equally thinly-veiled metaphor for the bitchy queen, impatient and sarcastic and funny, happily biting anyone he finds to be hot and not thinking twice about it. Together, they live for almost a century as a couple in opulent wealth, never aging and remaining hot twenty-somethings forever. They also have the ultimate in gay wish fulfillment when they get to create their own child together in the form of Claudia, a perpetual six year old dolly. (so much less hassle than adopting, and you get to go shopping for cute little girl outfits forever!) Interview, as well as Rice’s subsequent Vampire Chronicles, had plenty of other metaphors to throw around, most notably that of drug addiction as well as lost faith, but the fairly overt gay subtext made the gay community embrace it as their own.

Once Anne Rice opened the floodgates, the avalanche of gay themed vampire books, either overtly or subtextually, had begun. Whitley Streiber’s The Hunger, Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls and a dozen others hit the bookstores to varying degrees of success. And it’s a train that doesn’t look to stop anytime soon. As long as people have hang ups about sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, there will likely always be vampires in print to exploit our obsessions .

Next Week: Gay Vampires Part 2: TV and Movies!

While the comic book characters have mostly been a bit more reserved in just how gay they come across to the public, the world of children’s cartoons has always had the more obvious gay characters floating about, even in earlier, more intolerant times. Some so obvious I wonder just how they made it onto kid’s television programming in the first place. In fact, there are so many gay-seeming cartoon characters that it was really hard to limit this list to just ten, but I think the following are the gayest of the gay. And remember, these are characters from kid’s shows, so, I will not out gay cartoons like South Park’s Mr. Garrison or Smithers from the Simpsons. Let’s get started, shall we?

 

#10: Bamm Bamm Rubble

“We’ll have a gay old time” is how the Flintstones theme song ends. Maybe gayer than anyone originally thought? I speak now not of Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble, but of Barney’s son Bamm-Bamm. Intrduced originally in the first series of Flintstones toons in the early 60’s as a super strong baby, he was paired off with Pebbles Flintstone right out of the crib. After the Flintstones ended, Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles skipped childhood completely and went straight to teendom and their own show called The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show, where the two were apparently dating. Or were they?

Gayvidence:

– The pair never really acted like boyfriend and girlfriend anymore than Fred and Daphne did.
– Bamm-Bamm seemed to have lost all his super strength and butchness as a teenager, and just overall acts a bit more queer.
– He always refers to Pebbles as “Pebbly Poo”. When Fred called Pebbles Pebbly Poo, it was cute and fatherly. When Bamm Bamm does it, it’s really just super gay.

I always liked to think that Pebbles knew his secret, and was merely his beard. After all, they were in a rock band together, maybe Bammer had an image to protect. In later cartoons as an adult, Bamm-Bamm is frustrated with his job as a mechanic, and longs to work in a more creative field, so he and Pebbles decide to move to Hollyrock so that Bammer can pursue his dream of screenwriting. If you ask me, I think It was just so he could be closer to West Hollyrock.

 

#9: Louie Anderson

Annoying and unfunny comedian Louie Anderson was more or less outed as gay, after an aborted extortion plot in the late 90’s. Some guy threated to go to the tabloids with the info that he was once hit on by Anderson in a Las Vegas casino. Anderson decided to expose the guy rather than pay up, mostly since no one really cares about his so called comedy anyway. But this raises the question, if Louie is gay, doesn’t that make his equally annoying and unfunny cartoon counterpart from the animated Life With Louie gay too? Just sayin’….

 

 

#8: Hefty Smurf and Vanity Smurf

The Smurfs are all generally kind of gay. Running around in white tights and topless all the time, it’s almost little a miniature version of the White Party. And with the exception of Smurfette, they are all men. What did they do for sex before she showed up? Everyone always cracks jokes about how Smurfette was some kind of cum dumpster for the entire Smurf Village, but I think the Smurfs were more interested in doing her hair than doing her.
And no two Smurfs were gayer than Vanity and Hefty, both were the very epitome of extreme queer behavior.

 

Gayvidence:

 
-Vanity, The Fem. Always prancing around with a giant flower in his hat
-Constantly looking at himself in his mirror and going on about how pretty he is.
-Hefty, the butch muscle daddy; obsessed with muscles and with working out, he was almost too butch. Like he was overcompensating for something?

 

#7: He-Man

As a child, I was quite literally obsessed with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I owned every single toy. My bed sheets, my curtains, my lunchbox and my Trapper Keeper all had the blonde and muscular image of Prince Adam of Eternia imprinted on them in some way. What I was way too young to realize however, was just how queer this show really was.

Gayvidence:

 

-He-Man was always running around and wrestling other similarly muscular men, many who were wearing little more than a furry loincloth.
-He-Man drew all his power from his sword.
-his costume was little more than a metal harness. Kinky.

Despite all the obvious gayness, I never had a crush on He-Man like many have suggested (I love tall blonde men, it’s an easy enough assumption to make) I just was never one of those people who sexualized cartoon characters. And I never really wanted to be He-Man either (his twin sister She-Ra though? maybe) My only really gay association with the Masters of the Universe franchise is when I was 12 and the live action He-Man movie came out. The theatrical experience of seeing my favorite cartoon brought to life was a weird double epiphany for me. Seeing actors portray my favorite characters made me realize just how kind of retarded the whole thing really was, and I remember wanting to home and put all my He-Man toys in storage. But seeing Dolph Lundgren in little more than a loincloth, all hot and sweaty and glistening muscles, well…that just made me want to go home and do something else. Alone.

 

#6: Velma Dinkley

Being bookish and nerdy doesn’t necessarily make you a lesbian. Nor does a total lack of fashion sense (but it sure can get people talking). In many ways, Velma is a very positive role model. Almost every Scooby Doo mystery was solved by Velma, easily making her the most important member of the Mystery Machine gang. While Scooby always took off with Shaggy, and Fred was always with Daphne, it was Velma and ONLY Velma who ever ventured out in the haunted castle alone.

Gayvidence:

 
-The butch haircut, thick ass glasses, and unflattering sweaters are the epitome of cliche lesbian fashion choices.
-I don’t know many men who would venture out alone in the haunted castle, but I sure know some lesbians who ain’t afraid of shit.

Velma’s status as a lesbian icon has been referenced and parodied by things like Adult Swim’s The Venture Brothers and Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. We don’t yet live in a world where Hanna Barbera can officially out any character, but I have a feeling that if they ever do, much like the flesh and blood Ellen Degeneres it’ll be obvious to everyone Velma Dinkley who comes out first. And just like with Ellen, the whole world will shrug and say “duh. We knew”.

 

#5: Fred

Velma is not the only Scooby Doo character who is very gay seeming. Nope, there’s also Fred, the so called leader of Mystery Inc. (not sure why he’s the leader, except I guess maybe it’s his van) Many people are always saying how Fred and Daphne would go off and explore alone, and were maybe having sex while Scooby and Shaggy were eating stuff and Velma was looking for her glasses. But I always thought Fred gave off a very serious gay vibe. . .

Gayvidence:

 
-Fred never acted like he was dating Daphne, despite the fact they said on more than one occasion they were a couple. I don’t even think they even kissed once.
-That bright orange ascot. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the smoking gun.

 

#4: Yogi Bear and Boo Boo

Yogi and Boo Boo are just about as obvious as Bert and Ernie (who would so be on this list if they weren’t puppets) Running around Jellystone National Park, buck naked except for their little ties like Chippendales dancers. Some have suggested that their whole relationship is kind of pedo, with Yogi in the child predator role. But maybe it’s just me, but Boo Boo never seemed so much younger than Yogi to suggest a kid, he was just way, way shorter. If they were indeed gay, then these two are pioneers in the GLBT community, as they were part of the gay Bear Community decades before any real humans were.

Gayvidence:

 
-Yogi and Boo Boo seemed to co-habitate the same cave. And not in a “we’re just roomates” kind of way.

– Cindy Bear wanted nothing more than to get herself some Yogi love, but Yogi seemed to want nothing to do with her. Considering she was the only female bear in Jellystone, you’d think Yogi wouldn’t be so picky. Unless of course girls just weren’t his thing.

 

#3: The Pink Panther

Aside from the obvious fact that he’s pink, and considering his eternal silence, many might wonder just what is so gay about the Pink Panther?

Gayvidence:

– He always has a catchy score following him wherever he goes. I don’t know any real people who that actually happens to, but If I did I’d bet they would be gay.

-While he might not be flamboyantl and loud like so many gays in the media tend to be, the Panther is gay in that quiet and aloof way. The kind that is always rolling his eyes and silently judging you.

-he once had a show called Pink Panther and Sons where we meet his his two young boys, both of whom are of totally different colors. I think PP just adopted them. And like many gay people who adopt, the different colors suggest a multicultural thing. It’s very trendy.

 

#2: Snagglepuss

In a weird way, it’s nice to know that the world of animation had room for not one, but TWO gay acting animated pink cats. Possibly the most blatantly gay male cartoon character of them all, Snagglepuss is a fussy pink mountain lion who spouted off catchphrases like “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” and “exit, stage left!” in the most effeminate voice ever recorded for the cartoon medium. Seemingly based on the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz, Snagglepuss blazed a trail of flaming characters to come from Hanna Barbara studios in later years, although none quite as in your face as old Snagglepuss. But without Snagglepuss blazing the trail first, we might never have had the previously mentioned Velma, Bamm-Bamm, and Yogi Bear. And of course, Snagglepuss paved the way for the less obvious but still pretty gay Pink Panther.

Gayvidence:

-He’s a hot pink mountain lion with a lisp. Do you really require more evidence?

 

#1: Peppermint Patty

The Queen Bee of gay cartoon characters. It really doesn’t get any more blatant than this folks. Peanuts creator Charles Shultz must have known, even back in the day, that everyone was gonna think that Peppermint Patty was going to be a lesbian. Even as a small child I remember wondering if she was supposed to be a girl or a boy, long before I was asking such questions about real people. One of the only characters on this list I actually think might have actually been deliberate.

Gayvidence:

-The tomboy looks. The unkept hair. The open toed sandals.
-She plays sports better than any of the boys.
– That other young and vaguely dykey girl who follows her around and refers to her as “Sir”.
-She kind of looks like a young Jodie Foster.

 

Honorable Mentions:

Timon and Pumba, The Seven Dwarves, Ren & Stimpy, Bugs Bunny (transgender?) Dr. Quest and Race Bannon (Johnny has two daddies!) and Spongebob.

OK, let’s face it, there seem to be a lot more lesbian characters in mainstream comics than gay male ones. It makes sense, really, as the vast majority of the readership is young heterosexual males, a demographic who loves nothing more than some rockin’ girl-on-girl action. I’m sure a cover featuring Supergirl and Batgirl making out would send sales through the roof, where a similar cover with Superman and Batman might cause the fanboys to burn down their local comic book store, or maybe send them into a corner crying and rocking themselves back to normalcy (or in my case, euphoria). Which publisher has more G.I. Janes? I’ll get into

1. How they met/developed

2. The Gayvidence (evidence that they are gay)

Now, before we blast open some closet doors, let’s get in some quick history before diving in!

(that’s right – we’re tasteful enough not to have taken the obvious cue from the word “diving”! Moving on…)

A Brief History of Lesbians in Marvel vs. DC

DC Comics right now leads the pack with the amount of lesbian heroes in their books. This started back in the 1980’s when the Superman books introduced Maggie Sawyer, a cop in the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit. Sure, these days a cop with a short, dykey haircut is seen as a blatant stereotype, but back then having a regular supporting cast member be a lesbian was a huge deal – especially in DC’s flagship book. Maggie even made it to being a regular on the 90’s Superman animated series, where her girlfriend was shown several times. I’ll bet real money that Bruce Timm and the other producers told the network that was her sister had to sneak her in. Real money. Cash money.

In the years since then, DC has also made characters like Gotham City cop Renee Montoya into a new version of The Question, and they even introduced a lesbian version of Batwoman. What’s funny is that I didn’t find out that the new Batwoman was a lesbian by reading any comic book, or even from a comic book news site. No, I read about it in a press release on CNN.com. DC trumpeted their new heroine as “a lipstick lesbian” as if to reassure the readership that Batwoman would be more Portia Di Rossi than Ellen Degeneres. Fanboys’ tolerance for lesbianism only applies to a certain type, it seems. Marvel isn’t too far behind DC in this matter, as they’ve recently lezzed out characters like Kharma from the X-Men and Moondragon from the Avengers.

So with all the rug muchers running around kicking bad guy ass these days, are there any still in the closet? There are indeed a few, although the hints towards their sexuality are FAR more blatant than those for their male counterparts in the closet, again probably due to the titillation factor. Some have even came out, only to be de-gayed later. It’s interesting to note that most lesbian or presumed lesbian characters have a significant romantic pairing, while their gay male counterparts are always shown as being more asexual. That’s why most entires here are going to be seen in pairs!

#1 Mystique and Destiny

Marvel’s mutant terrorists barely qualify as being in the closet, as former X-Men writer Chris Claremont has made it all but explicit that these two characters were more than “just good friends”. But until Mystique officially declares “Yup, I’m gay”, she qualifies to be here. After all, we live in a world where people like Ellen, Rosie and now Clay Aiken have to appear on the cover of magazines declaring for the world their sexuality to make it official, despite the fact that it was painfully obvious to anyone with sight and hearing ability, no superpowers needed.

Birds Suddenly Appear
Mystique, whose real name is Raven Darkholme, is of course is the famous blue shape shifting mutant and adversary to the X-Men. Destiny, who could see into the future, who was introduced around the same time as Mystique, was also a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants along with Mystique. It’s been revealed over the years that the pair met back in the 1930’s when Mystique was making a living as a male private detective named Mr. Raven. This leads to the question of whether or not Mystique was born a man or a woman, but simply prefers being a woman. Although she did give birth to Nightcrawler, so I suppose she really was a biological female, unless her shape shifitng powers includes growing a uterus as well. Stranger powers exist in comics, I suppose, so who knows.

Gayvidence:

• Mystique and Destiny raised runaway, and future X-Man, Rogue together – making them perhaps the first same sex parents in comics. They would have been the model gay parents, if it weren’t for the fact that they were, ya know, EVIL.

• While Mystique’s shape-shifting abilities allowed her to stay young, Destiny aged normally, and looked liked the little old lady she really was. Nevertheless, the couple stayed together. This alone should prove Mystique was really a woman, because if she were a man, she would have ditched Destiny as soon as the crow’s feet appeared for someone like a Black Cat.

Despite all the very obvious allusions, Marvel has always sidestepped around the issue of actually outing them as a romantic couple for some reason. I highly doubt in this day and age there would be much of a fan outcry. So just come clean Marvel, and make it official for Mystique. You did it with Kharma and Moon Dragon! The character spent three X-Men movies running around buck freakin’ naked, it’s not like she has some All-American wholesome image to tarnish!

#2 Black Cat

Felica Hardy has long been Marvel’s Catwoman knock off and frequent love interest for Peter Parker before his marriage to Mary Jane. She would at most be presented as being bisexual, as she obviously has an interest in men. Huge interest. So when did she buy some lifetime passes to Lillith Fair?

Gayvidence:

• In the pages of the Amazing Spider-Girl, which chronicles the alternate future of Peter Parker and MJ’s daughter May, Felica Hardy marries Flash Thompson and then later divorces him and ends up in a committed relationship with another woman.

• A line in an issue of the Spider-Man / Black Cat mini series where she states “it’s been so long since I’ve had a boyfriend….or a girlfriend”. Leave it to series writer Kevin Smith to go there.

#3 Harley and Ivy

 

Birds Suddenly Appear
Posion Ivy was introduced way back in the 60’s issues of Batman, and has long since become one of his main villains. She was anything BUT lesbionic in her first several decades. In fact she was shown as a dude-loving vixen who downright hated other women. It wasn’t until she showed up as a major part of the 90’s Batman animated series that her previously hidden lesbionic tendencies surfaced. The producers decided to pair her up with Harley Quinn, the Joker’s abused (and insane) girlfriend. At first, they were merely seen as friends, partners in crime and a pain in Batman’s ass. The more they paired up, though, the more innuendo was shown between them…or at least as much innuendo as weekday afternoon kid’s programming would allow. Which if you watch Tiny Toon Adventures again, is A LOT. Seriously. YouTube that show right now. Your mind will be blown.

Gayvidence:

• We had them shacking up together, running around the house wearing big t shirts and panties and being all domestic like. Of course, they were just a tad overly touchy feeley, even for supervillains.

• When the Joker would always came back for Harley, that would leave Ivy all jealous and pissed off. If I were Ivy I’d be pissed off too; Harley is totally that chick that goes all dykey whenever things aren’t working out with her boyfriend, only to go back to him at the first possible chance. Fuck that. I suggest the next time Harley pulls this shit, Ivy has one of her vagina-like giant venus flytrap plants eat her. It would be poetic justice.

#4 Icemaiden

 

Triangles Suddenly Appear

Back in the late 80’s, DC’s Justice League series was less Super Hero All Star team and more comedic adventure book. The breakout stars were the D-List duo of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. To give them female characters to play off of, they introduced a female pair of even lesser known heroes (originally from Super Friends of all things) named Green Flame and Icemaiden, later redubbed Fire and Ice. Eventually, the powers that be killed off Ice, leaving Fire mourning her best friend. At this point, she should have just gone back to the name Green Flame, ‘cuz how lame a name is Fire without an Ice?? I guess someone realized this, and eventually a new Ice was introduced to the JLA. Except this one went by the original name of Icemaiden, and her skin was blue. Oh, and she liked girls. At least that’s how it seemed.

Gayvidence:

 

• Once she joined the Justice League, Icemaiden grew very close to Fire, and there were heavy hints at the two of them getting it on. But, in one of the weirdest story-twists in comics, it was revealed that Icemaiden’s flirtations with Fire were meant to shock her into getting over the original Ice’s death. What does that even mean? “I’m going to hit on you so it snaps you out of your funk, even though I know you ain’t playin downtown tonsil hockey with me”. I mean, really? C’mon.

• As a consolation prize, DC seemingly had her hook up with one of Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s leftovers, a woman named Olivia Reynolds. The original Ice eventually returned from the dead, as one in comics is prone to do, and Icemaiden returned to obscurity. If she’s really a lesbian, though, she’s probably still with that Olivia chick, even though it’s been like 15 years. That’s just how my sisters roll

 

#5 Lightning Lass and Shrinking Violet

 

Birds Suddenly Appear

More gayness from the world of DC’s Legion of Super Heroes. Lightning Lass, also known as Ayla Ranzz, the twin sister of Legion founder Ligntning Lad (guess her power) She was for decades portrayed as exclusively straight, and in fact was seen as having a relationship with fellow Legion member Timber Wolf on and off for years. Salu Digby, also called Shrinking Violet, is another early Legion member who does exactly as her name suggests. Shrinking Violet, or Vi for short, was a little less obvious in her alleged straightness. She didn’t date any male Legion members seriously. Seems the men folk were not her thing. At some point during the early 90’s, the Legion books jumped forward 5 years in time, where it was revealed that Vi (now sporting a cropped dykey haircut and scar alongside her face) and Lightning Lass were now lovers and in a serious relationship. Lightning Lass was the more “lipstick” of these lesbians, but it was kind of refreshing to see a lesbian super hero who looked more like a real lesbian and not the typical straight boy porno fantasy of lesbians. Of course, both of these characters were de-gayed when the Legion titles were rebooted in the mid 90’s DC Crossover Zero Hour. However, last year the original versions of these characters returned in the pages of Action Comics. It remains to be seen if DC has plans to out them all over again.

Gayvidence:

• Both women lived together and were constantly telling each other how they were the most important people in each other’s lives.

• Shrinking Violet’s super butch ‘do.

Did You Miss Wonder Woman, Eric?! WTF?!

I don’t actually think Wonder Woman is a lesbian. But obviously, a lot of people do. She was more or less in love with the same man for the first 45 years of her comic book existence, and in the years since has only shown a romantic interest in men. And as DC’s icon of female strength, I have to admit I kind of don’t really want her to be a lesbian. I only feel this way because of Wonder Woman’s status in popular culture really; I’m not too keen on the notion that a strong, well built female with no immediate need for male companionship MUST be a lesbian – as our culture insists. Little straight girls need a role model that’s physically strong and doesn’t spend all their waking moments thinking and/or talking about a male love interest. Wanna lez out Power Girl? Go for it. But I really think Wondy has gotta stay straight.

But having said that, if Wonder Woman was in fact a real person, she’d be a total fucking lesbian. Period. I mean, she’d never even SEEN a man before one crashed on her island. What was she, 20 at the time? At least? If I grew up on an Island where there was nothing but women, even I’d be all about velvet curtains, simply because I wouldn’t know any better. And don’t start with me about sexual preference being all genetic. Fine, it might very well probably be, but even if you are genetically pre-disposed towards one thing or the other it still wouldn’t matter because your eyes have only ever beheld one gender and your brain would adjust at an early age regardless of any genetic pre-disposition. Watch Jurassic Park. DC has been good about being honest about the fact that most of the other Amazons are in fact lesbians, so that’s something I guess.

The original Wonder Woman comics of the 40’s were filled to the brim with weird sexual innuendo, many of them lesbian.

Gayvidence:

• More often than not it involved Wonder Woman tying up another girl with her magic lasso, or hell….with just about anything that resembled ropes or chains. Female on female discipline was a big theme in the old Wonder Woman comics, making the title not just a lesbian undertone free-for-all, but a serious bondage free-for-all as well. This whole bondage theme has more or less been dropped since the 40’s, but Wonder Woman has never sold as well as she did then either. Don’t tell me there ain’t a connection there.

• I repeat: Has never seen a man, much less a penis, before her 20’s. What more needs to be said?

In this instance though, i’m for throwing realism out the door and keeping her straight. Of course, this all might have something to do with the fact that I really want her to fuck Batman. Just ONCE. Is that too much to ask? *sigh*

Come back next week for another helping of Gayspace in which we switch gears to Cartoon Characters!

Have any suggestions? Comments? Want to out a few of your favorite fictional characters? Email me at:

GayscapeColumn@gmail.com

See you next Tuesday!

 

 

Which comic book characters are secretly gay? This has been a favorite topic of gay comic book fans since long before there was an internet to speculate endlessly about such matters. As a young comic book reader, specifically of DC and Marvel books, I looked for any subtle clues as a gay youth that one of my heroes was like me. And by “like me” I didn’t mean 12 years old and Hispanic, I meant “also likes dick”. Speaking of Dick, let’s get started.

BIG MAYBE’S

#1 ROBIN

Robin was my first guess. He’s a lot of people’s first guess (my Robin was Dick Grayson and not Jason todd or Tim Drake – just to get my age out of the way here). He’s got a lot of pretty loud warning signs going on here. The loudest one, though, other than following around a father figure in close to nothing, was his outfit. He had that flamboyantly colored outfit.

Gay Evidence (Gayvidence? Is that too gay/cheesy?…meh…) Gayvidence:

• the little green shorts
• the easy-slip-off (matching) green booties
• and, apparently, shaved legs.

Plus his name was Dick, for fuck’s sake. Dick. DICK.

Soon enough, though, he was butched up to the hetero masses.

• First by giving him a hot alien girlfriend with enormous tits named Starfire.

• Then they made him less faggy-looking as Nightwing

So much for Dick.

#2 COLOSSUS

My next suspect was Colossus from X-Men.

Gayvidence:

• Big, buff, and shiny.
• He also kind of wore giant hooker boots back in the day.
• Costume issues aside, he also refused to get intimate with Kitty Pryde, citing her age as being an issue. Sounded like someone was tryin’ to make excuses to me. I mean, I’ve learned from Dateline NBC that straight men totally love 14 year old girls. Right???

Anyhoo, eventually Colossus hooked up with several other women, and that was that…but how butch were they?…hmmm….

#3 THE HUMAN TORCH

 

Then of course there is always Johnny Storm, AKA the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four.

Gayvidence:

• He always had a revolving door of girlfriends, but it just seemed like he was overcompensating for something.
• None of the girls lasted very long.
• His damn catchphrase is “Flame On!”

But as it turns out, Johnny eventually married. So I guess he really was straight after all, just like every overcompensating man that gets married…oh wait…hmmm….

 

Out!

So most of the heroes that I was hoping would turn out to be as queer as a three dollar bill either didn’t work out or the jury is still out on them. That doesn’t mean that beings in the Marvel and DC Universes can’t be secretly gay. In fact, there is actually strong evidence that some long-standing characters might be legitimately among the crowd who like to have some sausage for breakfast. Some almost even came out of the closet. So, since we’re not measuring these heroes’ gayness (cause that is such a straight thing to do), let’s start with the Golden Age of Comics, and work our way towards the present…

 

GAY HEROES THROUGH THE AGES!!!

#1 DOCTOR MID-NITE

You think Marvel’s Daredevil was the world’s first blind super hero? Nope! That particular honor goes to DC’s Golden Age “Mystery Man” Doctor Mid-Nite. First created in 1941, Dr. Charles McNider was a physician who was blinded during an assassination attempt on a mob informant he was treating. Discovering that although he was blind in daylight, he had 20/20 vision in complete darkness. When an owl flew into his window one night, he decided to fight crime and injustice as Dr. Mid-Nite. Yeah, I know, sounds kind of familiar; but, unlike Batman, good ol’ Doc Mid-Nite was never more than a back-up hero in the anthology books of the day.

Gayvidence:

• Unlike almost all hero types from that era, Dr. McNider never had any kind of real female love interest to speak of. All he had was his nurse and personal assistant Myra Mason, who seemed to have an unrequited crush on our hero (in other words, she was his Fag Hag).

Note: That alone isn’t all that incriminating, but when the other Golden Age characters were revived in later decades, they were all shown to have married, and in many cases, married and had super powered children of their own. Not Dr. Mid-Nite, though. He apparently remained a “confirmed bachelor” throughout his life. Sure, so was Bruce Wayne, but he was a notorious poon-hound even back in the day; with a revolving door of women folk coming through Wayne Manor on the daily. One might start to have questions about the good doctor, though…

 

• In 1999, gay comics-writer Andy Mangels proposed a story for DC’s anthology title Legends of the DC Universe. In this story, an old lover of Dr. McNider’s, now living in a retirement home, would come forward with the story of their “love that dare not speak its name”, finally revealing once and for all that Doctor Mid-Nite was, in fact, deep in the closet back during the Golden Age. Hey, at least he could see in that closet!

DC editorial nixed the idea, for reasons unknown. While it was one thing to create new gay characters for the comics medium, something DC was pretty good at doing, maybe they weren’t ready to out one of their original characters just yet – even if it was one that no one really cared about like Doctor Mid-Nite.

 

#2 ELEMENT LAD: A STORY OF CHANGE

 

 

In their fifty year history, no super team has had as vocal a queer following as the Legion of Super Heroes. One can see why; a group of attractive young people from various planets united to spread the concept of unity throughout the universe in the 30th Century. And often in fashionable, brightly-colored, and revealing outfits. With never fewer than twenty members at any given time, the Legion members were pretty evenly spilt between male and female (a pretty forward thinking concept back in the sixties, as teams like the JLA, the Teen Titans and even Marvel’s Avengers and X-men only had one token female at a time). So, “naturally”, most members were paired off romantically with a member of the opposite sex…

…all except one…

Gayvidence:

• Gay Outfit: Element Lad was really Jan Arrah, sole survivor of the planet Trom. With the ability to transmute elements at will, Jan tried out for Legion membership as “Mystery Lad”. He showed up in a bright pink outfit with a giant question mark as his emblem.

Today, rampant speculation would start right then and there. However, in 1963 such things certainly were still decades away from being brought up in mainstream comics – or anywhere in any mainstream media, really…

• Ne’er a Date: Element Lad was a stalwart Legionnaire throughout the sixties and seventies, but while much of the Legion drama revolved around which character was dating which, cute, sensitive Element Lad never dated anyone. Ever. In nearly 20 years. That’s enough to fuel plenty of fan speculation. By the late seventies, when social mores had started to change, Element Lad was already starting to be referred to by many fans as “The Gay Legionnaire”.
• Dated a Tranny for a Few Decades: So, DC editorial decided to do something about it. Instead of giving him a female Legion member to date, the writers decided to create a new character for him to get involved with. In the early eighties, female Science Police Officer Shvaughn Erin was introduced. She was a hot red head in the Mary Jane Watson mold, although unlike MJ she wasn’t totally useless, and aided the Legion on several cases. This relationship lasted pretty much throughout the rest of the eighties and into the nineties, when it was revealed that Officer Erin was in fact hiding a secret of her own; she wasn’t born a woman at all.

What Happened after this?

In fact, she was taking a form of future over the counter sex change pill called “Pro-Fem,” in an effort to make herself a hot chick so Element Lad would fall madly in love with her. Finally, Element Lad revealed to the newly male officer Erin that anything physical they shared was in spite of her being a woman, not because of it. Finally, after nearly thirty years of speculation, it seemed DC was ready to out Element Lad as gay.

Or not. A year or so later, DC rebooted their 30th Century continuity in their previously mentioned Zero Hour crossover, and in the new continuity Element Lad was made to be clearly straight. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this Pro-Fem drug actually exists, ’cause someone at DC is taking it. Only way to explain how they lost their balls.

The original incarnation of the Legion has returned to the DC Universe recently over in Geoff John’s Action Comics run, and I want to use this opportunity to tell Geoff Johns to make up for past mistakes and officially bring Element Lad out of the damn closet. He doesn’t have to make a big declaration to his teammates or anything like that. Just show a panel of Superman walking in on him fucking one of his fellow male Legionnaires and just get it out of the way. You know, something tasteful and subtle like that.

#3 RICTOR

 

Characters of questionable sexuality are not limited to the DC Universe. Marvel’s X-Men family, long a civil-rights metaphor, went from being metaphorically gay to maybe being just plain ol’ GAY gay with the character of Rictor the seismic mutant. While never graduating to any of the proper X-Men titles, Rictor has been more or less active in the secondary X books for almost twenty years now.

Rictor was introduced first as Julio Esteban Richter, a young Mexican mutant rescued by the original X-Men, then going by the name of X-Factor. Rictor drifted from X-Factor to the X-terminators to the New Mutants to X-Force to the X-Corporation and finally, back to X-Factor.

During his time with X-Force, Rictor forged a very close relationship with Shatterstar, a lame knockoff of the even lamer X-Man Longshot, leading many fans to speculate that the two D List mutants were more than friends. Rictor attempted suicide after losing his powers during the House of M crossover, but I think it was more for never making it actual X-Men status in the nearly two decades he’d been around. I mean, the X-Men even let Dazzler join. I’d jump off a building too.

In an effort to regain his lost powers, he forged a friendship with Magneto’s son Quicksilver who promised to return his lost abilities.

Gayvidence:

• While drinking one night with fellow X-Factor member Jaimie Madrox, Rictor jokes that he once slept with Quicksilver. When Jamie attempts to clarify that Rictor was joking, Rictor says “‘Of Course. Not that the guy/guy thing is…it’s just that Pietro’s semi-evil, and–Gimme a little credit, huh?” After another swig, Madrox says “God knows you wouldn’t want to make Shatterstar jealous,” to which we cut to a spit take of a stunned Rictor.

No denial followed. He is ours

#4 FIRELORD

 
Another Marvel character who could have been gay, and for all I know might still come out of the closet one day, is Firelord. Is it because nobody knows who he is? Not quite:

Gayvidence:

• He is another character who is literally on fire.
• Firelord is the third Herald of Galactus, after the Silver Surfer and Gabriel the Air Walker. Pyreus Kril of the planet Xandar was given the Power Cosmic by Galactus after the death of Gabriel, who was Firelord’s best friend (and more?…). He wields his cosmic fire energy through his giant staff. Yes, his power source is his GIANT STAFF.

Even though he is portrayed as mostly an asexual being, he was once asked by the Avenger named Starfox “Doesn’t your fire-y nature ever burn simply for pleasure?” – to which Firelord responded “Not the way you mean it! Not since the day Galactus made me the Firelord! Not since the day I lost my friend Gabriel—!” Mmmhm! You ain’t foolin’ anyone Firelord!

#5 CAPTAIN METROPOLIS AND HOODED JUSTICE

 

Captain Metropolis and Hooded Justice are two minor characters from Watchmen, and only Alan Moore knows for sure if they are gay or not. Let’s just say it’s heavily implied that they are.

 

Gayvidence:

• In Watchmen, Hollis Mason, the first hero to be called Nite Owl, writes a memoir about his super hero days in the 40’s where he outs both of these members of the 1940’s Minutemen hero team as not only being gay, but also secret lovers.

• Both characters only briefly show up in flashback form. In one scene set in 1966, Captain Metropolis is made to look like an out of touch fool by the Comedian at a gathering for a new super hero team.
• Hooded Justice comes off as more of a bad ass when he beats the shit out of the Comedian after the attempted rape of the Silk Spectre in an earlier flashback to the 40’s. After beating the crap out of the Comedian, he snidely remarks to Hooded Justice “This is what gets you hot”, suggesting that maybe Hooded Justice was into a little bit of playing rough as well. Makes sense, I guess, as that whole hood look is very S/M.
• Both characters are said to have died later under mysterious circumstances. Was it a super hero hate crime?

You might be asking, “Eric, are there other suspected homo heroes of any kind out there?” Hell yeah there are! No matter how many times Conner Hawke (the second Green Arrow) denies being gay, there will always be someone to say he’s really in the closet. And, my friends, in the world of comics, all it takes is for a writer to decide otherwise. So who knows? The only thing I can gaurantee is that it won’t be any comic Orson Scott Card is writing.

Next week, we hit Paradise Island and talk about the women folk, so stay tuned for your fair share of Super Queers in the Closet!

Trick ‘r Treat is the best Halloween movie that you probably won’t get to see this year. Originally set to be released last October, then postponed to this October, and then finally postponed indefinitely, I had the good fortune of seeing this movie at a special screening arranged for fans by Moriarty of Aint It Cool News at the Mann’s Chinese Theater. Apparently, the amount of people who signed up for this screening was so overwhelming that they had to spread the movie across three screens just to accommodate everyone. If this doesn’t prove to the good people at Warner Brothers that there is indeed an eager audience for this film, I don’t know what will.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie back in the spring of 2007, all I could think was “this movie was made just for me”. Halloween is by far my favorite holiday, and the time leading up to Halloween is my favorite time of year. For one month, the entire country allows itself to celebrate the things that I love. I can go to the grocery store and see copies of A Nightmare on Elm Street or The Omen on endcaps, meant to be impulse buys instead of the usual Disney flicks. Cable stations seem to program their schedules for the month around Halloween themed programming. And for at least one night, excessive and often wonderfully tasteless theatricality is encouraged instead of being frowned upon. Halloween is in many ways the most American holiday, because it celebrates all of the things we are supposed to be against as a “Christian Nation”, but all secretly really love (well, not so secretly if you’re me). It captures our own cultural hypocrisy in a unique and wonderful way.

It’s clear that writer/director Mike Dougherty (co-writer of X-Men 2 and Superman Returns) loves Halloween even more than I ever could, and Trick ‘r Treat is a big heart felt love letter to not just the holiday, but to a type of horror movies that they just don’t make anymore. This is an anthology horror film, much like Creepshow and Twilight Zone: The Movie, but I actually think this movie is a much better one overall than those. It has wonderful homages to those films as well as other classic horrors, without ever being obvious about it or feeling like a rip off of those originals. Nowhere near as extreme as the Hostel style torture flicks, but still creepy enough to be scary, this movie is kinda like Goosebumps, only with the occasional decapited head.

Set in a small Ohio town (all good horror flicks should be set in small midwestern towns… it worked out great for Michael and Freddy!) the film follows four separate stories, each set on Halloween night and loosely connected to each other, Pulp Fiction style. According to Dougherty, each story represents what Halloween means at different stages of your life; first as a kid, when it’s all about getting candy, then as a teenager/young adult, when it’s all about the partying, then as a parent, when it’s all about passing on the traditions to your children, and finally, as the grouchy old person who hates the holiday and just wishes the kids would stop ringing the doorbell. Each of these stories work really well, and each has their own unique twist to it that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling for you, assuming this movie ever gets released and you get a chance to see if for yourselves.

The movie really has a beautiful look to it as well. Apparently made for only $12 million, this movie looks like it cost at least double that in my opinion, a testament to everyone involved. It has that kind of overly perfect, manicured holiday look, the kind that only really ever exists in the movies, but not as extreme or stylized as a Tim Burton film for example. And kudos to the makers of this film for using all practical effects in this move. I’m not one of those people who hates CGI, but CGI in horror movies just about never works. To be truly scared, you gotta believe that you’re seeing something that’s actually there and not just pixels.

The cast here is really terrific, and filled with genre favorites, like Anna Paquin from the X-Men series, Tamoh Penickett from Battlestar Galactica, Dylan Baker from the Spider-Man flicks (in an eerily similar performance to the one he gave in Todd Solondz’ Happiness) and Brian Cox, who of course has been in every movie made in the past ten years. If I have any complaint, it’s that I wish I the movie was a bit longer, as it could have used just one more story in my opinion. I guess that might be seen as too much of a good thing in the end.

I’m not really sure what Warner Brother’s issue with this movie really is or why they are afraid of releasing it. At first it was suggested that they merely didn’t want to compete with the Saw movies, first part IV and now part V. Then I heard it simply was because this wasn’t a remake, a sequel, or torture porn, and therefore they didn’t know how to market it. Now having seen it, I think it probably has something to do with the unusually high body count of little kids in this movie. Stuff like dead little kids makes studios really nervous in these overly sensitive times, although they should know better than anyone that bad publicity is still publicity. Besides, as Dougherty pointed out in the Q&A after the movie, we once saw a little kid get eaten by a shark in Jaws, a possesed little girl masturbate with a crucifix in The Exorcist, and two little girls get hacked to bits in The Shining. And we all survived. When did we all turn into such pussies?

Whatever happens to Trick ‘r Treat in regards to it’s theatrical distribution, it will eventually have a long shelf life on DVD and become a Halloween night staple on television along with John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Nightmare Before Christmas and It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. But I still really think this movie deserves theatrical distribution of some sort and it would be a damn shame if it never receives it. Right now you can go on Amazon.com and order a beautiful coffee table book based on the movie, as well as order some lovely figures from Sideshow toys. But you can’t see the actual movie, and as far as I’m concerned that’s just ridiculous. I can only hope that by this time next year we can all talk about this movie and what a great little gem it is and not about how shitty it is that it has yet to be released.

Last year, Warner Brothers Studios announced a movie in development which took many comic book fans by surprise: a super hero movie without the hero’s name in the title and one that features the hero out of costume for 90% of what would be the movie’s runtime. This movie was first announced as Supermax, although the script I reviewed was titled Green Arrow: Escape from Supermax. If this movie gets made though, I expect it to go back to the original name, merely to avoid confusion with the upcoming movies of Green Lantern and Green Hornet.

It’s written by a guy named Justin Marks, a man who seems to have written a crapload of geek oriented scripts in the last couple of years, including Voltron, He-man and the Masters of the Universe, and Street Fighter. It should be noted that so far, not a single one of these projects has been made. The movie was set to be directed by another comic book associated film guy, David Goyer of the Blade movies and writer of Batman Begins. Since then, I’ve heard a sound bite here and there about this actually getting made, but I have a feeling if it does it will be someone other than Goyer at the helm, as he has seemed to move on. Assuming that the comic book movie machine continues at it’s pace, we might be seeing this one before too long.

A Brief History of the Green Arrow

Let’s face it, Green Arrow has in many ways been the poor man’s Batman. In fact, the original inception of the character is really nothing more than a shameless knock-off. Green Arrow was millionaire playboy Oliver “Ollie” Queen by day. He had a teenage sidekick, an Arrowmobile, an Arrowplane, an Arrow Cave, and the Star City police department even had an Arrow-signal with which to summon him. Somehow, readers let Green Arrow limp through the forties and fifties being content with him being more or less a simple Bat-clone. In the sixties, he found a home in the pages of Justice League of America, where the writers finally started to give Ollie a characterization of his own. Formerly a trust fund baby ( again, just like Bats ), Green Arrow lost all of his fortune and became an extremely vocal liberal hero, constantly fighting the corruption of corporate fat cats and the like. He ditched the Robin Hood replica costume and was give a cool redesign by comics legend Neal Adams. Unlike most heroes at the time, Ollie was given a girlfriend who was also a hero, the Black Canary. And just to hammer home how NOT like Batman Green Arrow was anymore, they turned his Robin like sidekick Speedy into a heroin junkie of all things. Despite sharing a title with Green Lantern through the seventies and early eighties, Green Arrow never quite made it to the A list, despite finally getting his own long running series in the nineties. But if there is a top of the heap for the DC Comics B-list, it’s gotta be Green Arrow.

So now that Warner Brothers seems to finally be interested in mining their DC heroes for film, they have turned their sights on Ollie. Except this is not exactly a Green Arrow script. And that is both its strength and its weakness.

The script begins with a brief flashback to Green Arrows’ origins. Unlike most super hero movies, this script is NOT an origin story though. And this is a choice I can understand. With the recent successes of both Batman Begins and Iron Man, yet another billionaire playboy who finds himself and becomes a hero is going to seem really played out to the average moviegoer. Especially when a quiver of trick arrows is no where near as cool as a flying suit of armor or all of Batman’s gadgets. In fact, Oliver Queen is only really in the Green Arrow costume for what probably consists of the first ten minutes of the movie. It’s here where the script veers off from traditional super hero flicks and becomes a whole other kind of comic book movie.

Green Arrow is framed for the murder of a man who is a part of Checkmate, a government organization that is the DC version of Marvel Comic’s S.H.I.E.L.D. Counter to the comics, in this script, Checkmate is against the tide of super hero vigilantism that is spreading, and exists to deal with the metahuman threat themselves. This is the first problem with this script; we get ZERO hints of any other super heroes at all. No mentions in the news, no brief glimpses or references. I can understand why Warners would want to keep their A List heroes like the JLA characters out of this, as they have their own projects in development, but there a tons of mid level DC heroes that could be shown or referenced. And none are.

Soon, Green Arrow is sentenced to life in the Super Maximum Security Prison for meta criminals, AKA Supermax. This is where the script starts to get really fun to read. Among the inmates of Supermax are a true shitload of DC C-List villains. Characters I would never expect to see in a live action flick. Among them are a few villains that the more old school DC fan might recognize, like Blockbuster, The Icicle, The Calculator, and even the Tattooed Man. We even see a cell for the Joker, although we never actually see him (and shouldn’t he be in Arkham Asylum anyway?). The walls of Supermax twist and contort every night, so no prisoner is in the same place or next to the same fellow inmate two nights in a row. This part is pretty ingenious, and would totally be fun to see pulled off onscreen.

The inmates are divided into three categories. The normal humans are in green jumpsuits (very  convenient for Mr. Queen). The mad geniuses are in blue, and kept drugged. A reference to Lex Luthor being one of them is made, but again, like the Joker, we never see him. And finally, the super powered criminals are in orange. All prisoners have a device implanted in them to prevent escape or dangerous use of their powers. A great deal of the super villains were put away by Green Arrow himself, which makes sense since there seems to be no other super heroes in this universe. Just about everyone inside the prison wants to see him dead. This leads to a moment that is a huge rip off of a scene from Watchmen,  where Rorschach is put in prison with those he put away. It’s almost beat for beat the same, and it’s shameless. With Watchmen coming out soon, I could easily see this scene being one of the first to go.

 

The warden of Supermax is DC Comics staple Amanda Waller. A big no nonsense black woman and officer of Checkmate, she’s a multi faceted character. But that’s in the comics, not in this script. No, here she’s a stock character, the big bad warden who sees Green Arrow as nothing but another criminal and will go to any lengths to break him. YAWN. We’ve seen this character before in a million prison movies and TV shows. Waller was used to much greater effect in the Justice League Unlimted animated show than she is here. I could see them getting Queen Latifah to play her, if only because she played a singing version of this character already in Chicago. A cool DCU character ends up pretty much wasted here.

Green Arrow eventually befriends, for lack of a better word, some of the criminals, specifically the shape changing Gemini and The Pied Piper, an old Flash villain. They hatch a plan to escape, which of course, no one has ever done before. What follows is a series of pretty kick ass action sequences and the movie becomes the super powered version Prison Break or Escape from Alcatraz.

But while the action beats are really fun, the characterization is either cliché as hell or just not there at all. This movie is all plot and almost never takes time to breathe. We get a few more flashbacks to Ollie’s time as Green Arrow, but there are not enough of them. We need to see why Green Arrow is such a bad ass and all these villains fear him. When the movie does take time to breathe, all the dialogue that comes out of the character’s mouths is very unoriginal. I can live with some cliché stuff as long as it’s written in a funny and endearing way, but all the stuff in this script is very self serious and reminds me of Heroes… in a bad way. There are a few plot twists towards the end that are really lame, and might be original if you’ve never seen a movie before.

I compared the recent draft of the Green Lantern script in tone to Iron Man, and to make a similar comparison, I’d say Supermax is a lot like The Incredible Hulk. The flashback and orgin sequences are kept to a bare minimum, and much of the story consists of a hero running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to find a way out of his mess. That movie somehow made it work, but I’m not sure this movie would fare as well. The basic idea of this script is really great, but it needs another pass or two before it should be made into an actual movie. If they can manage to inject some substance and nuance into this script I think it would be a unique take on Super Heroes that hasn’t been done in film before. Or it could go the way of Thomas Jane’s The Punisher, and nobody wants to see that again.

 

Aside from Batman and Superman, Warner Brothers has been notoriously slow in getting their pantheon of DC Comics heroes onto the big screen. In short, Marvel has been kicking their ass, and as an old time DC fanboy, that has been particularly painful for me to watch. Warners is sitting on a gold mine, one that they have been very unwise to neglect. Well, It looks like things might be changing, as Green Lantern is looking to film sometime early next year for a Summer 2010 release. Having just finished reading the script, dated June 2008, I suggest that Warners greenlight this one right now.

This script is good. Actually, I think It’s really, really good and will be a hell of a lot of fun to watch on the big screen. Adapting long running super hero comics isn’t easy because you have decades of stories by so many writers and artists that there isn’t a consensus on just who a character is or how they should act. For all the noise you hear about how hard it’s been to adapt Watchmen or Y: The Last Man into a screenplay, in a way it’s easier, because those comics are essentially stand alone novels with a singular voice. Not so with Superman, Batman, Spidey and the rest. And Hal Jordan (yes, that’s the GL they are going with… as if there was any doubt) has been written many different ways over the years. First like a hot shot pilot and ladies man, then a man with a decade long mid life crisis (I think he spent most of the 80’s on the road “looking for himself” or some shit) and even a drunk driver. It’s fair to say that until Geoff Johns brought Hal Jordan back in 2004’s Green Lantern: Rebirth, no one ever really nailed who Hal is as a character.

If I had to compare this script to any other superhero movie, the obvious choice is Iron Man. Hal Jordan, with his tragic backstory with his test pilot father Martin Jordan, his supporting cast of confidant Thomas Kalmaku and potential love interest Carol Ferris, are all introduced with ease and humor within the first few pages of the script in the same great way that James Rhodes and Pepper Potts were in Iron Man. If you can get actors of equal quality in the supporting roles, this has that kind of Iron Man potential for being a breakout hit. Like Tony Stark, Hal Jordan is a lovable lothario, although he’s not rich obviously, and is known for letting people down. But Hal Jordan is THE best test pilot, and proves it in an early action scene that if filmed right, will be a great action beat at a point in this kind of movie that is usually reserved only for exposition and introductions. I was sitting there reading it thinking “Oh, the audience is gonna eat this up” and this is well before Hal gets the power ring.

The screenwriters, comic book writers Marc Guggenheim and Michael Green, as well as director Greg Berlanti, really did their homework. They took beats not only from Green Lantern’s 1989 re-telling of his origin Emerald Dawn, but also from Geoff John’s recent retelling this year with Green Lantern: Secret Origin. There are hints of the seminal run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow from the 70’s, and even a few visual cues from Emerald Twilight, the story where Hal Jordan becomes evil and destroys the Green Lantern Corps. No, there is nothing quite that retarded in this script, but there is a moment where Hal has to wear the rings of his fallen comrades to defeat the bad guys. And it’s pretty damn sweet. Everything you would expect in a Green Lantern movie is here: The Corps, the Guardians of the Universe, the planet Oa, the Green Lantern Oath, and tons of weird aliens to give the filmmakers a chance to out-do the Star Wars cantina.

Instead of giving a plot synopsis (and really, the plots in these movies are pretty standard… it’s not why we watch them) I’ll instead give a character breakdown of who is in the script and how well they are handled, as well as how they match up to their comic book counterparts.

Hal Jordan:

At 27 years old, Hal is the best pilot, although reckless, and gets his ass grounded a lot. Still not over the death of his test pilot father when he was a kid, he’s fearless, which is why the ring chooses him. But he is never prtrayed as stupid. He’s given enough self deprecating lines so that he doesn’t come off as a full of himself jock asshole type, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun or something. His relationship with his younger and older brothers is also a factor in the movie, just as it has been in the recent comics, although it plays a bit differently here. If you get the right actor in this part, he could easily be as likable as Tony Stark in Iron Man, and maybe even more relatable. Not the drunk Hal of the late 80’s comics, or the mid life crisis Hal of the 70’s, the script’s Hal is an amalgam of the original 60’s comics and the Geoff Johns version. Which all works for me. As far as i’m concerned, this script contains quintessential Hal Jordan, if there is such a thing.

Thomas Kalmaku:

Hal’s best friend. Half Eskimo, half something else. Total nerd, he’s the audience’s identification character. He is the guy who always bails Hal out at the last minute. He’s given a lot of funny lines without going over the top. Unlike the comics, he is Hal’s contemporary age wise, so he’s more a Jim Rhodes than a Jimmy Olsen, but I like him better this way. Having Hal’s best friend be a geek is a nice way of showing that while Hal may be a pussyhound hot shot, he’s the kind that would have a best friend who is a total nerd and doesn’t care what the cool kids think.

Carol Ferris:

Hal’s love interest. She’s known Hal and harbored a secret crush on him for years, but continues to be disappointed with his selfish behavior. Just like the comics, her father is Carl Ferris of Ferris Aircraft, Hal’s boss and formerly his father’s boss. Carol was with Hal the day his father died, and that bond over a horrible incident never goes away for the rest of their lives. They need to be careful how they play her though. She shouldn’t come off as a bitch, which she almost does at some points. Hopefully they can find the right actress for the role who can pull off bitchy and likable in that Lois Lane way it could work. Overall I liked her, but they might have to tone her PMS down a notch.

Abin Sur

The alien who famously passes the ring on to Hal Jordan. He’s been more a plot device than a character in the comics. In a way he is to Hal what Uncle Ben is to Peter Parker….someone who was always referred to who we really don’t get to know. In this regard, Abin is given more personality than in the comics. This is a character who we mostly find out about in the way others regard him, and it seems the other GL’s regard him as an exemplary officer and an all around stand up guy, especially to this next figure…

Thaal Sinestro

In this script he’s not a bad guy yet (thank God), but just a kick ass GL who takes Hal Jordan under his wing as his trainee. Sarcastic yet likable, I really think they need someone smug and British to play him. The seeds are all sown for Sinestro’s eventual turn to the dark side in this movie, without being too over the top about it. He and Hal have a kind of Yoda and Luke vibe, only if Yoda were a prick.

Hector Hammond

There is a space villain as well (Legion from Emerald Dawn), but Hammond is the Earth-bound bad guy in this script. Hector Hammond is a character I know has been around for ages in the comics, but my most recent exposure has been in Geoff John’s Secret Origin arc. His origin is similar here, but not identical. He’s that creepy, smarmy guy, who suddenly has the ability to read everyone’s minds and finds out just how much no one really likes him. He’s got major issues surrounding his father, so in many ways he’s the shadow side of Hal Jordan who has been dealing with similar issues most of his life. Like the recent comics, Hammond gets his abilities due to something that was on Abin Sur’s crashed ship, so it ties his origin into Hal’s in a neat way. Some of the best parts of the script are all the things people around him think of him while he is able to hear it.

Pipe

A government agent in his 60’s, he seems to have a knowledge of the Green Lantern Corps and aliens going back a long ways. Who he really is is not revealed until the very end of the movie, but when I found out who it was, I gave out a litte fanboy squeal. I won’t give away who it is, but let’s just say that the writers did their jobs and covered ALL of the Green Lantern mythos by including him, and I think for DC fans this will be the equivalant of Nick Fury showing up at the end of Iron Man. If that’s not a big enough hint I don’t know what is.

Smaller roles are filled by veteran Green Lanterns like Kilowog and Tomar -Re, and there is even a reference to Guy Gardner when Abin Sur’s ring is looking for a new bearer. And not just Guy….the ring also flies by the desk of a certain reporter at the Daily Planet. I have a feeling he’ll be cut though, because the script treats Green Lantern as Earth’s first true contact with alien life, not something that’s makes sense if everyone knows about Superman. Still, it would be a fun cameo for sure, even if it doesn’t really make sense.

If this script has a fault, it’s that it’s not that terribly original. Some of the dialouge is just kind of there…never Star Wars Prequels clunky, but not as clever as it could be (although there is a lot of clever funny dialogue as well to balance things out). Whether or not those moments work depends on the directing and acting more than anything. If I were to read Peter and MJ’ s exchange about “I’m gonna see you light up Broadway” from the first Spidey flick on paper, I might have winced, but those actors sold it, and if they do the same thing here I don’t see a problem.

Warners needs to go with this script if they know what’s good for them. I can’t imagine one that would be much superior, or encapsulate the Green Lantern saga much better. Now just get Joss Whedon back on Wonder Woman and all will be right with the world. That’s right. I ain’t letting that one go any time soon. No sir.

Editor’s Note: I am starting my “Gilmore For Ganthet” casting campaign ASAP. Who’s with me? Who’s got a bucket of blue paint?

Let the Right One In is a film I’d been hearing about for months now, with glowing reviews coming out of every film festival it’s played, as well as winning Best Narrative Film at the Tribeca Film Festival and a few other choice awards at some other festivals this year. Everything I’d read about the flick sounded like it was right up my alley, and I was fortunate enough to catch an early screening at Cinema Tuesdays at the Montalban theater in Hollywood. Every now and then, a heavily buzzed about film actually lives up to the hype, and this is one of those rare times. Directed by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, the movie is based on the popular novel of the same name that came out in 2004. The title is also a  reference to the Morrissey song “Let the right one slip in” which I didn’t find out till after I saw the movie, but only helps in making me like this movie even more.

The movie is set in a working class suburb of Stockholm Sweden, sometime in the 1980’s. There are no direct references to dates, but there are enough small visual cues (a Rubik’s Cube here, a Smurfs toy there ) to suggest that it is. The entire movie is set in the dead of winter, with a thick layer of snow covering everything, giving the film a beautiful, almost fairy tale quality look throughout. Our main character is a 12 year old boy named Oskar, who lives with his mother in a somewhat run down apartment building. Oskar is skinny, nerdy, quiet, and doesn’t have any friends to speak of (he also looks kind of albino-ish, but maybe that’s how Swedish people look? Ok, ok, maybe not ALL Swedish people. ) Everyday at school, the same pack of bullies pick on him, tormenting him for no other reason other than he’s weird and different. Since you are reading this review on a site called Geekscape, I’ll bet there’s a good chance you can relate to Oskar’s predicament.

Oskar is soon smitten with another child, a young raven haired girl named Eli (pronounced Ellie ) who moves in next door with an elderly man named Håkan, the person whom we are to assume is her father. At first, Eli assures young Oskar that she’s not there to make new friends, but of course they ending up striking up a friendship anyway, and young Oskar ends up getting quite a serious crush on her. Eli tries to remain cool and aloof, but it’s clear that Oskar is winning her over too. It’s a lot like Arnold and Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years. Except this time, Winnie is a bloodthirsty vampire.

That’s right. Young Eli is a creature of the night, and a rather ruthless one at that. She first has her human servant, the man posing as her father, go out into town and kill people for her and collect their blood. But after he bungles a few of these kills, either from a conscious desire to end the killing or simply because he’s just getting older and sloppy, she realizes if she wants something done right she’d better do it herself. The body count begins to rise in town, causing a panic amongst the residents, and all the while the special bond between Oskar and his unique next door neighbor continues to grow. She inspires him to man up and stand up to the bullies who make his life a living hell every day. He in turn gives her a connection to another person her own age, although, unlike Oskar, Eli has been 12 years old “for a long time now” by her own admission.

It’s never really made clear just how long Eli has been a vampire, although it’s heavily implied that the man who has been posing as her father has been more or less her willing slave since maybe he was child as well, and has spent most of his life taking care of the young vampire girl he fell in love with when he was maybe the same age as Oskar. The man who plays Håkan (Per Ragnar) gives a great understated and heartbreaking performance, one where we can actually sympathize with this man who is killing not out of need or fear, but for some sad sense of obligation to this child who is not really a child at all. The real breakout stars here though, are Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar and especially Lina Leandersson as Eli. She goes from moody misfit kid to vicious vampire all in a matter of moments, and plays both sides of her character with an ease not seen in too many American child actors.

I really don’t want to spoil too much more of the plot, as you owe it to yourself to check this movie out when it goes into limited release (it hits Los Angeles and New York on October 24th, and rolls out in some other cities throughout the month of November). While it does indeed transcend it’s genre, it’s also a totally solid horror film as well, certainly better than any of the horror films being released by the major studios lately. In fact, the other great horror flick that came recently was the Spanish film The Orphanage, proving that either Americans have lost their touch for telling a good horror story or the studios just don’t want to bother trying to market something original.

It seems that aside from 90’s holdovers like Buffy and Blade, the vampire genre was kind of sitting this decade out. That was until this year, when the vamps came back with a vengeance, first with HBO’s True Blood and soon with the teenage girl sensation Twilight, and finally with Let The Right One In. Sadly, due to this being a foreign film, few people will see it and will wait for the no doubt inferior American remake starring some kids from the Disney Channel or something. And yes, an American remake is already in the works, before this film has even had the chance to build up it’s reputation. So if you’re a genre fan, or just a fan of good movies in general, go support this one when it hits your local theater. Yes, I know it has subtitles, but if you sat through them for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon you can at least extend the same courtesy to this movie. Plus, I can almost guarantee you that it’s better than whatever Saw V is going to end up being.

Last Friday night at Midnight at the Nuart theater in Los Angeles, Icons of Fright’s Tim Sullivan hosted a special reunion of 80’s vampire classic Fright Night, with the director and the majority of the cast in attendance. When I first heard this was happening, I knew there was simply no way I was missing this. Fright Night was the movie that made me a vampire aficionado, lo those many years ago, and I still have a deep affection for it, warts and all.

 

As a young kid, my knowledge of vampires pretty much extended to The Count on Sesame Street, Count Chocula cereal, and the Dracula Halloween decorations that littered suburban homes every October. In some way though, even as a small child, I somehow absorbed all the vampire lore through some kind of weird cultural osmosis, without ever watching a single vampire movie or reading a single vampire comic book ( I always quickly skipped over any of my brother’s issues of Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula comics when going through his stack, because the Gene Colan drawings of Drac, fangs bared, scared the shit out of me ) But it was Fright Night that made me a true vampire fan. Not that there were many vampiric options when I was a kid; as it turned out, the late seventies and early eighties were a dead time for the vampire genre. Horror films had shifted away from the classic monsters, and movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street had made the slasher film the only game in town.

 

That was until 1985, when writer director Tom Holland released his homage to the vampire flicks of his youth called Fright Night. Released in August of that year, Fright Night was not expected to do much business. In fact, it didn’t even get a proper premiere, as Columbia Pictures had put all their marketing muscle into the John Travolta / Jamie Lee Curtis aerobics movie Perfect. Well, Perfect turned out to be anything but, and was a notorious flop, while Fright Night made twice the money and remains a beloved cult classic to this day.

The story is pretty simple as far as these kinds of movies go; teenage Charley Brewster ( William Ragsdale ) is your typical all American 80’s teen movie geek. Charlie’s got a girlfriend named Amy ( Married with Children’s Amanda Bearse ) who decides in the opening scenes of the movie that it’s finally time to “go all the way” with Charley. But Charley, ignoring the eager and willing girlfriend waiting for him to pop her cherry on his bed, pulls his binoculars out and gets transfixed with the two good looking men who are moving in next door in the middle of the night. Turns out the new neighbors are Jerry Dandrige ( played by The Princess Bride’s  Chris Sarandon ) and his live in “interior designer” Billy Cole. Apparently they are restoring the dilapidated ( yet fabulous ) old house together. If anyone says I’m projecting by saying that’s a very gay set up there, then I really don’t know what to say to you.

After young Charley sees an attractive young woman get naked and then get bitten when Jerry leaves his window open ( you’d think after several centuries he’d be a little more careful about things like killing hookers in perfect view of the neighbors ) Charley decides he needs to do something about the vamp next door before he kills any more local hot chicks. He first enlists the help of his fellow horror movie geek friend and all around weirdo, “Evil” Ed. Evil is that kid we all knew in high school, who was really into Megadeth and bought every issue of Fangoria, and then actually posted the insert pin ups of blood and gore up on his bedroom wall. Evil Ed is played perfectly by Stephen Geoffreys, and in many ways his is the most fun and iconic performance in the whole movie. No offense to William Ragsdale, but I always wished Evil Ed had been the main character in the movie and not him. He’s just that much more fun to watch. Stephen Geoffreys went on to star in Robert Englund’s 976-EVIL and Moon 44, and then spent much of the 90’s doing gay porn movies like Cock Pit and Latin Crotch Rockets. He recently returned to horror with the indie flick Sick Girl, and I say horror is where he belongs. Although in all fairness I never have seen any of his porn work, maybe I’d change my tune if I did.

When neither Evil Ed nor Charley’s girlfriend Amy provide much in the way of moral support, Charley turns to his idol, washed up monster movie actor Peter Vincent, who hosts his own local horror movie show called ( surprise! ) Fright Night. Peter Vincent is a rather obvious amalgamation of horror icons Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, but is played with the appropriate tongue in cheek gusto by the late Roddy McDowall, who chews scenery with the best of them. It’s really the great trio of Roddy McDowall,Chris Sarandon, and Stephen Geoffreys that elevate this movie to cult status in my opinion.  While the movie’s script might not always be that great or that clever, these three actors always bring it and are a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

I was too young to ever see Fright Night in theaters when it came out, but I finally caught it when it started playing in constant rotation on HBO the following year. In many ways, Fright Night served as “My First Horror Movie” the way The Monster Squad, with it’s many television airings, was the monster primer for the generation right after me. Fright Night managed to mix horror with comedy in a way that didn’t devalue either genre, and revived the vampire movie in a very real way. The successful mix of the vampires and the quirky comedy resulted in a new mini genre, which led to The Lost Boys two years later and eventually, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Funny thing is, the more times I watched the movie, the less I liked Charley Brewster and the more I liked the vampire Jerry Dandrige. I mean, Jerry wasn’t all bad. Mostly he just wanted to be left alone. Vampires gotta eat, as they say. Plus, he could’ve killed Charley lots of times and didn’t, and literally tells him at one point in the movie “forget about me kid, and I’ll forget about you” But did Charley take his advice? Hell no, he kept fucking with his neighbor till Jerry had no choice but to vamp out his best friend and attempt to do the same to his girlfriend. Ok, ok…. so maybe my perspective is a little skewed here. But Fright Night taught me that if you like the human in the vampire movie more than the actual vampire, then that movie is probably doing something wrong.

Not to say that the movie is some great masterpiece or is perfect, because believe me, there are some unintentionally hilarious bits in this one. When Jerry Dandrige is attempting to hypnotize and seduce Amy in some cheesy 80’s disco, just seconds after one song ends and another begins, Amy is sporting a totally different hair do and make up. I had no idea that the hypnotic power of the vampire included an instant trip to the Vidal Sassoon hair salon. But the 80’s retro cheese factor is also part of the reason why the movie is still so fun to watch today, so I wouldn’t change a thing.

The reunion screening of the movie was a blast. Again, props to Tim Sullivan for getting the cast and crew together like that, not just for the reunion, but also to record an audio commentary that he’ll make available for free on his site. The fact that Sony has dropped the ball on releasing Fright Night in a proper Special Edition DVD is a damn shame, but I suppose sometimes you just need to leave stuff like this in the hands of the fans to do it right. Chris Sarandon couldn’t make it, but he was thoughtful enough to provide a little video greeting for the screening, which was cool of him to do, so in a way it felt like he was there. Almost all of the remaining major cast members and special effects team were there, with the notable exception of Amanda Bearse ( I was hoping she would show up and then maybe at the Q&A afterward she’d be wearing a totally different hairstyle ) The print of the movie they used was terrific; so many times at these revival screenings the prints are scratchy and awful, but not this time. Everyone involved still seems really proud of this one, and they should be. As one of the cast said at the Q&A after the movie, here we are, 23 years later and at 3:30 in the morning, and the theater is still packed with people who love this movie. Someone did something right.

So, technically, I’m part of the Beverly Hills 90210 Generation. The Walsh Twins, Brenda and Brandon, joined the class at West Beverly High when I was still in High School, and our graduations happened at roughly the same time. You could even say we grew up together. Except when the show actually aired, I couldn’t have given two fucks about it. Sure, girls at my school had “I HATE BRENDA!” stickers on their binders, and the guys all tried to look like either Dylan or Brandon. But I was way too pretentious a wannabe hipster to watch some Fox teen soap. Especially one where every episode was ” A Very Special Episode” dealing in some cheesy and preachy way with some important issue, like date rape or suicide or drug abuse. And then usually that subject was dropped by next week’s episode, and everyone would hang out at the Peach Pit like nothing serious had happened the week before. Such TV “Drama” was the staple of mega producer Aaron Spelling, a man whose laundry list of television producing credits includes such iconic shows as Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, TJ Hooker and dozens of other shows known more for their hair styles than their acting or writing. Beverly Hills 90210 was no different.

Of course, there were a few episodes I simply had to watch, for humor’s sake. I remember in one early episode, the 90210 gang go to an underground rave. Or at least, what the forty five year old writers and producers thought a rave was like. Jason Priestly’s Brandon is tricked into taking “Euphoria”, so named because apparently the producers were afraid the illegal manufacturers of Ecstasy might sue or something. As a fledgling club kid, the whole thing was so absurd and hilarious. Even more absurd and hilarious was when the girls camped out in front of a hotel where Color Me Badd was staying, as to be near their pop icons. Except no one ever really liked Color Me Badd that much, not even then. It was just obvious they couldn’t produce Boyz II Men for a guest stint. So on occasion, Beverly Hills 90210 was good for a laugh at it’s expense. But despite only watching a handful of episodes, and then just to mock them, 90210 was so huge and ingrained in the popular culture, that I could name all the main characters without having to think about it. Hell, to this day I can do the same thing, and that’s without Wikipedia. I know, it’s sad.

A side note that I can’t go without saying; I will always be grateful to 90210 for spawning the uber awesome and superior spin off Melrose Place. Although Melrose Place began as equally lame as 90210, but with a slightly older cast, dipping ratings quickly forced Fox to turn Melrose into a tongue in cheek, over the top soap starring Heather Locklear. And when that happened, the show became popular, and I became addicted. While the 90210 gang was busy dealing with peer pressure and frat parties, the denizens of 4616 Melrose Place were busy having cat fights in the swimming pool, running prostitution rings, planting bombs in the apartment complex, getting killed, and occasionally, actually coming back from the dead. Melrose Place was a cheestastic way to kill an hour, while 90210 always forced some moralizing down your throat. I always felt like Melrose knew exactly what it was, while 90210 still had illusions of being quality drama. I might have eventually warmed up to 90210 if Brenda and Kelly tried to kill each other at least once. Is that too much to ask?

Which brings us now to 90210, Version Two, which premiered last week to the biggest ratings yet for a show on the CW network ( Which, I realize, is not saying much) I’m not sure what possessed me to watch the premiere episode, but I never could resist a good train wreck. The episode opens with teen siblings Annie and Dixon, who just like twins Brenda and Brandon, move out to Beverly Hills with their folks from the Mid West somewhere. But wait! There’s a twist! Instead of twins like the Walshes or yore, Annie and her brother Dixon are not even real blood relations, as Dixon was adopted when he was eight. Dixon is even African American, proving just how different from Brenda and Brandon they are. Well, at least superficially. But everything else about this show is the same as the last, right on down to the trite characters and bad writing. We have the spoiled bad girl Naomi ( Anna Lynne McCord ), the “Rebel Outcast” Silver, ( Jessica Stroup ) the popular jock Ethan ( Dustin Milligan ) and assorted other stereotypes filled out by the regular assortment of hot twentysomethings playing teenagers.

Everything about this show screams cliche. It seems this show is stuck in the early 90’s, and no one thought to tell the producers that television has moved on. Teen shows have proven over the last decade that they don’t have to talk down or moralize to their audience. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and even the first few seasons of Dawson’s Creek and Felicity showed you can write young people as real human beings without having to descend into ABC After School Special territory. 90210 is old school disposable teen entertainment, but I can’t help but wonder if today’s kids will see right through this and just go back to watching Gossip Girl.

In fact, the only people I know who are excited about this show are people my age, more excited about plotlines involving returning original 90210 alumni Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty as Kelly and Brenda. Especially since after being publicly fired from 90210 in it’s fourth season, Shannen Doherty could never be convinced to even guest star on any of the episodes in the following six seasons. I guess Aaron Spelling had to go and die before she’d come back. Ms. Doherty was the Lindsay Lohan of the 90’s, getting into fights at clubs and with fellow cast mates, showing up late for shooting and being a general on set diva. Although I don’t remember if she ever flashed her vag to paparazzi ala Lindsay. But if Perez Hilton had existed in the 90’s, Shannen Dohery would have been all over it. Her presence alone I suppose adds a potential disaster factor that makes this television to Tivo I guess. Jennie Garth’s character of Kelly Taylor is now a guidance counselor at her old high school ( Buffy totally pulled that trick first, by the way) and has a four year old child from a mysterious father who remains unnamed. Is it Dylan? Is it Brandon?? I think they are gonna wait to see which guest star comes cheaper.

In the end, I actually wish this show well, even though I won’t be watching it further. If it keeps the CW afloat as a network, that can only be a good thing. It’s always the smaller baby networks that always take chances on quirkier shows like Buffy and Veronica Mars, when the bigger networks won’t touch them.

OK, I’ll come clean; my real secret hope for the success of 90210 is that if it’s a hit, The CW will follow it up with a Melrose Place Redux. Heather Locklear may be pushing 50, but she still looks hot. Well, at least she does in all those L’Oreal commercials where they use really good filters. I could totally see her being a cougar on the prowl for young men in the old apartment complex, like a better looking Linda Hogan. Don’t laugh….you know you’d watch it.

“Joel Schumacher, where are you when we need you?”

Those are words that I never thought I’d find myself typing, much less even thinking. After all, Joel Schumacher directed the two worst Batman movies of all time. But that was until I saw Lost Boys: The Tribe, the new straight to DVD sequel to the eighties cult classic. Now I wish that good old Joel had stuck around.

The Lost Boys came out in 1987, and at age 13 it was one of the first horror films I saw in an actual theater, back when it was easy as pie to buy a ticket to Adventures in Babysitting and then sneak into some other R rated screening. I already had a bit of a vampire fixation, due to repeated airings of Fright Night on HBO. But Lost Boys cemented it, and I was a vampire aficionado from then on. I still remember the movie posters tagline; “Sleep All Day. Party All Night. It’s fun to be a vampire.” Hells yes, sounded good me.

The original movie is not exactly The Godfather, or even The Godfather of vampire movies, but it’s still fun as hell and really does hold up. The movie has a great look to it, a wonderful use of the Santa Cruz locations, and there really are a number of clever one liners and fun little twists to the plot. The cast is great of course, and people like Jason Patric, Kiefer Sutherland and Dianne Wiest went on to stardom and critical acclaim. Corey Feldman and Corey Haim went on to do coke and reality tv, and of course there’s fiesty “Grandpa” Barnard Hughes, who went on to die.

Sadly, Lost Boys: The Tribe is the epitome of a bad straight to video sequel. It brings nothing new to the table at all, and the script feels like it was written on a napkin. The producers must have thought that casting Kiefer Sutherland’s younger brother Angus as lead vampire Shane was some kind of great casting coup, but it’s a total disaster. This guy can’t act. At all. I mean, every line reading is painful in an exquisite way. Yeah, he’s good looking I guess, in that totally cheesy kind of way, but he doesn’t look enough like his brother that it creates any kind of feeling of relation to the previous movie or his brother’s performance. If you weren’t paying attention to the credits you wouldn’t even know another Sutherland was even in this flick. Then there are the two protagonists, a brother ( Tad Hilgenbrink ) and sister ( Autumn Reeser ) who move to an unknown California beach community after their parent’s unfortunate demise. Both of these actors are pretty damn awful, but lucky for them Sutherland is in this flick, and suddenly their acting seems a hundred times better.

They quickly become targets to be seduced to the dark side, but for no apparent reason other than they are both kind of hot. But don’t these vamps see hotties like this every day? Why are these two any different? At least in the original the vamps had the hidden motive of wanting to seduce the boy’s mom into the group, but there is no such plot twist here. The brother seems to have a strange, almost sexual fixation on his sister, but is that what makes them qualify for eternal life? Who knows, the script never gives us any hints.

The only person who seems to know what movie he’s in is Corey Feldman, who reprises his role as vampire hunter Edgar Frog. He’s the only actor having any fun in this movie. Sadly, the script doesn’t give him very much to work with either, and no matter how much fun it is to see Corey do an impersonation of himself at age 14, this gets tiresome too. Two other original film alums, Jamison Newlander and Corey Haim are listed in the credits, but Newlander is only in a deleted scene, and Haim makes an inexplicable cameo at the end of the movie. This scene not only contradicts the events of the original Lost Boys, but has absolutely nothing to do with the events of this movie. In fact, The Tribe contradicts several elements of the original, and I never got the sense that the writers or producers of this movie ever saw the first movie more than once. They did see plenty of other movies though, as The Big Lebowski is quoted several times, as well as The Warriors.

While I don’t have a hard time believing the director of this movie has seen those films ad nauseam, I kind of do have a hard time believing that these Bro-dude surfer/skateboarder type vamps spend their daylight hours indoors being film geeks. The waste of Newlander and Corey Haim is kind of unforgivable, as having them in it more might have given the movie enough nostalgic sentiment that we might have forgiven it for being so shitty. Plus, I would have loved to know if Corey Haim’s character of Sam still had that shirtless poster of Rob Lowe in his bedroom.

And just as a crappy gore hound movie, Lost Boys: The Tribe fails too. The body count is really, really low here. Aside from killing another vamp early on, the only real deaths are those of a group of Girls Gone Wild style tramps. In the original film, the vampires were equal opportunity killers, killing both male and female alike. Killing these girls just seemed like a way of getting some gratuitous shots of T&A in the movie. Which makes sense, as this movie really doesn’t have anything else going for it I guess. May as well throw in some boobies.

I want to say don’t bother with this movie, but the hilarious performance of Angus Sutherland makes this worth watching in a train wreck kind of way. The guy has some really laugh out loud line readings, and that alone kept me kind of entertained. But if you are one of those people who really, really loves the original movie and hold it near and dear, then please stay away. And take comfort in the fact that this was only a straight to DVD sequel, and therefore doesn’t really count. Same way that Bambi II, American Psycho 2 or Bring It On Again don’t count. OK, this movie did do one thing right; they used that cheesy song “Cry Little Sister” from the first movie. And in a very weird way, that’s what I was hoping for the most.