Episode 298: Queer Horror with BJ & Harmony Colangelo

It's eve of Halloween (or "All Hallows' Eve-Eve"), and so it seemed appropriate to do an episode all about QUEER HORROR! When writer and film analyst BJ Colangelo was first on the pod back in March of 2022, we scratched the surface of the indelible link between queerness and the horror genre. Now, in honor of spooky season, BJ is back with her wife Harmony for an exhaustive deep dive! The Wives Colangelo (TM) discuss how, when it comes to horror, "the absolute building blocks and foundational texts of the genre are either made by queer people, or they are queer stories." It's an episode full of revelations (Chucky has a non-binary kid?! Hellraiser is based on gay S&M clubs?!) and controversial hot takes! Whether you're a horror aficionado or, like Lauren, you only ever watch the smooching scene compilations on YouTube, it's a thoroughly delightful and absolutely fascinating episode about how our community SLAYS the horror genre (#halloweenpuns). Listen...IF YOU DARE!!

Check out BJ's writing at /Film (SlashFilm) and follow her everywhere at @bjcolangelo, follow Harmony on Twitter and Instagram at @veloci_trap_tor, and purchase "Sleepaway Camp" through DieDieBooks or digitally at Amazon! Also listen to This Ends at Prom wherever you get your podcasts, and follow @ThisEndsAtProm on all platforms.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, everybody, Welcome to this spooky Halloween episode of Humming
Out Pod. I am your spooky host, Lauren.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm so excited about this episode.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
I wanted to do a special episode because I realized that,
so Halloween's on a Thursday this year. If you're listening
to this when it comes.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Out, it is eve of Halloween.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
I don't know if that's a thing, but yeah, it's
a day before Halloween. And I was like, I should
do a thematic episode. But before we jump into it, Okay,
I'm also doing a thematic queer root shout out.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Shout out to you if your queer root.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Is the nineteen ninety five live action Casper movie.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
This is a big one for some people because it's
fifteen year old Christina Ricci and seventeen year old Devin's
soa not the voice of Casper, but the visual manifestation
of Casper.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So many young folks had clear awakenings seeing this movie.
Also many women who later went on to realize that
they were actually lesbian's. Initially young Devin Saul. We've had
this discussion on the podcast many times. But just like
young Leo DiCaprio and many others of that ILK is
like a very good starter boy crush if you then

(01:28):
eventually realize like, oh that wasn't I see what that was?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
So yeah, shout out to you.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
If either Baby Christiana, reach your Baby Devin SAA and
Casper stirred some queer ghostly feet or the ghost I
don't want to judge. Maybe you thought Cgi Casper was hot.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I don't know. Anyway, check out the movie Casper.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
Yo.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay, so this is like half Reducs episode but not really.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
But what I mean is that I have.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Two guests today, one of whom has previously been on
the podcast. I am here with BJ and Harmony Colangelo.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Aka the Wives Colangelo. Hi, Welcome to both of you.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
Hello, Hi, this.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Is so thrilling.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
So for those who maybe are newer to the podcast
or maybe you don't listen to every single episode, BJ
was on all the way back in March of twenty
twenty two. It's episode one ninety one. BJ tells her
coming out story and we I honestly, if you haven't

(02:36):
heard that episode, pause this one.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Go back listen to the first like ten to fifteen
minutes of bj solo episode because she gives such a
great primer on queer horror and how queerness and the
horror genre are just like intrinsically linked. It goes all
the way back like to like Dracula, Mary Shelley, bram Stalker,
like all of this stuff. It was such an interesting

(03:01):
conversation and as I mentioned during that episode, I am
a huge scaredy cat. I absolutely cannot watch scary movies,
and so I've missed out on a huge chunk of
like queerness, I feel like because I can't see any
of the movies that people are talking about, and especially
in recent years, there have been.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Like so many.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
I do always watch the compilations that people make of
like the smooching moments, so like I cannot see Haunting
a Fly and Manner, but I've seen all of the kissing.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Scenes in it.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Thank you YouTubers who do that for people like me.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
But so, so that's BJ and then Harmony.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
You get mentioned a lot in that episode because you
two are in surprise.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
She talks about me all the time.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes, yes, yes, it's very true.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
But so you're both podcasters, you're writers, you both do
film theory, you are the co of This ends a
prom which we will plug at the end, and You're
also the co writers of sleep Away Camp from Die
Die Books.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
So y'all really know your queer horror.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
And I wanted to have you both on to talk about, Yeah,
some movies that you enjoy, just like just get us
in the mood for Halloween. And so I always say,
you know, how did I identify? That's kind of my catchphrase,
b J. The last time you were on this is
like two and a half years ago, we talked about

(04:32):
you were using the word lesbian, but we talked about
your kind of storied history with lesbian and like, how yeah,
so is that does that still feel true for you
as an identifier?

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Yeah, yep, it definitely still is an identifier. If anything,
I've only gotten more aggressive about it because as the
unfortunate reality of transphobia just you know, getting a little
kickstart thanks to the political discourse, I've gotten more aggressive
about affirming that I am a lesbian and if anyone

(05:06):
has a problem with that, they can uh suck it.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah, okay, so you heard that here, problem that suck
at Yeah, it's true, even though it's like margin of
twenty twenty two doesn't sound like that long ago, but
it's like, oh yeah, things have gotten worse since then,
just in general.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Okay, cool, cool, glad, we're moving in a positive reaction.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
You also mentioned self described as a green haired swamp
queen goddess.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Does this still feel true? Hair is still green?

Speaker 4 (05:35):
Okay to chest, still swampy, still a goddess, and so harmony.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Your hair is not green, but it is a different color,
not found in nature.

Speaker 5 (05:45):
Yeah, but blue is found in nature. It's just I
think the rarest color found in nature, and certainly it
is not a hair color. I'm the kind of blue
hair that makes in cells tend to stereotype people be like,
h those blue haired libs.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
That is so true.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
That has become the like catch all phrase they do
say blue hair.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Look at that. I love that.

Speaker 5 (06:08):
Confront them, hat on, I did it before it was cool.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Reclaim it well, harmony, Other other than blue hair, how
do you identify Since we didn't get to hear that
back in March of twenty two.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
I'm a trans woman. Bisexuality is a like to fuck
my wife. And that's about it. We keep it vague.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
There's nothing to add to that.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
That's beautiful, perfect, okay, okay, so we are going to
jump right into this episode, and it's sort of going
to be like very free flowy format wise, but yeah,
I emailed Bjay to be like, do you both want
to come on and talk queer horror? Because I can't,

(06:54):
and so I'd love for you just to tell me
about yeah, like specific movies or your or what drew
you both to it, your relationship to it, just like
any horror stuff. What does someone like me, a queer
person who is very entrenched in like queer culture but
not at all entrenched in queer horror, Like, where do
I start?

Speaker 2 (07:14):
What do I need to know?

Speaker 1 (07:15):
What do I do for this current Halloween that is approaching?

Speaker 5 (07:21):
I mean, quite frankly, I think there's no better time
to get into queer horror than now, because there's never
been more of it than this.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Why I have felt that so strongly lately, And it's
like I never used to feel that sort of on
the outside. It was like, yeah, I'd never seen Jennifer's body,
which was like every time I say that, people are like, ooh,
of you never And I'm like, I've watched the kissing
scene on YouTube, like I've seen the important part, but
in the most like I don't know even just past

(07:50):
five years, there has suddenly been so much. And I
think around the time of Body's Body's Bodies was when
I started to really feel like.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Kind of left out of this whole thing.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
And then I saw the TV glow most recently, I was.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Like, I'm really I'm missing.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Out on discourse like so, so yeah, it feels.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
Like discourse there was with that one.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Hell yeah, I read a Wikipedia synopsis of that movie,
which is what I sometimes do with horror movies. I'll
read the full Wikipedia entry to try to yeah, because
I can't watch them, but I want to know what
people are talking about.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So that's for that one.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
But yeah, I would saying I think the basics that
you need to know when it comes to queer horror is,
like I said on my first go round, the absolute
building blocks and foundational texts of the genre are either
made by queer people or they are queer stories. We
sort of talked about like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley,

(08:52):
all of these like old Gothic writers, but we didn't
talk as much about how when you look at like
the very very early films, usually that's the universal monster movies.
That's sort of where every horror film branches off from
like you can trace every horror movie, doesn't matter how weird,
how interesting, how creative and artistic it's coming out today,

(09:15):
you can trace all of them back to one of
the universal monster movies in some way, shape or form.
And a lot of those movies were directed by people
who either were openly gay, but the Hayes Code was
going on, so they couldn't actually tell gay stories, so
instead they would hide gay stories in monster texts. And

(09:35):
the Hayes Code also required that if there was like
a monster or you know, something that was taboo, that
they had to be punished for it, because we love censorship.
But that meant that a lot of these directors got
very very creative in how they were coding things, how
they were slipping things in subtextually. So the history of

(09:56):
queerness and horror is often the history of queerness as
the monstrous and people embracing the monstrous as well. If
society's gonna see me in this way, then I'm gonna
embrace it, and I'm gonna ruin all of your lives.
And there's something very delicious and fun about that that is,
you know, very exciting. Like I think I talked about

(10:17):
on the last one like you look like lesbian vampire
movies from the nineteen seventies, and everyone's like in a
castle with gorgeous cloria, they're sexy, and two right, like,
how am I supposed to see myself as the villain here?
This is aspirational as far as I'm concerned. Yes, yes,
but the influence of queer creators and horror has never

(10:38):
gone away. It has been consistent, even if it's not
always on Front Street. The easiest people to point to,
I think now for like contemporary horror is there's two
like main main figures here, the first one being Kevin Williamson,
who you're if you're a scaredy cat. He created Dawson's Creek,
You're welcome. But he's also the writer of movies like

(11:01):
The Faculty and Teaching Missus Tingle and I Know What
You Did Last Summer and most importantly Scream. And he
is an out gay man, has been an out gay
man forever. So you look at like the nineties horor cycle,
everything was either emulating or in response to movies Kevin
Williamson made, so like this gay man is controlling the

(11:21):
entire genre. And then the other really big one here
is Don Mancini. Dun uh daddy, daddy do.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
I've never heard of those, so.

Speaker 5 (11:32):
You have heard of his work because Don's known for
one thing.

Speaker 4 (11:36):
So most slasher franchises will have like a really great
outing at first, and then the subsequent sequels will turn
into a hot ass mess. And it's usually because new.

Speaker 5 (11:49):
Writer, single one of them is written to be the
last one, and then a new writer has to come
along and a new director comes along and they go
fuck like, they blew him up? How do I bring
him back?

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Oh? Gotcha? Okay, okay, cool cool cool? Yes. So it's
like the Jason and.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
Yes, yes, Jason, Michael Myers all of this. So it'll
be a new writer, a new director, new cast, and
it's just they become a mess. They're delightful messes, but
they become a mess. There's one major of like the
major major horror franchises where that doesn't happen, and it's
Child's Play or the Chucky franchise, which has which has

(12:26):
had Don Mancini a part of it since the very beginning.
So all seven Chucky movies were excluding the remake that's
not that's its own thing, but all seven of the
Chucky movies and all three seasons of the Chucky series
are written or show run by Don Mancini, so he
has had a control of this narrative the entire time,

(12:48):
and as time has gone on, Don Mancini has made
the series gayer and gayer and gayer. Yeah, like Eat
of Chucky, it has a non binary character.

Speaker 5 (13:03):
So like, that's cool. In the TV show, he does
a boundary union with the cast. It gets like, Chucky
is a guy who's just like, I've got a non
binary kid. I'm not a monster. I love my kid.
And it's like, Chucky, You're a piece of shit. Charles
Lee raised an asshole and yet he still loves his kid.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Oh well, that reminds me of when I watched the
movie Vice and Dick Cheney has the scene and I.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Was like, god, damn it.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Dick Cheney was a good father to his lesson and daughter. Wait,
so and Jennifer Tilly, Wait is it Jennifer or Meg?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
It's Jennifer?

Speaker 5 (13:37):
Oh my god, Meg in the show.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Oh I'm glad she's working.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
You never seen.

Speaker 5 (13:42):
Universe is wide and bountiful.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
Jennifer Tilly's been in since the beginning, Is that right?

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Is she old school Chucky.

Speaker 5 (13:50):
She's been here since Bride of Chucky, where she is
the titular ride of Chucky. She is she plays Tiffany.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
And so did and Gina Gershan like came on the
show as Sean Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah joey pants. And is the guy what is his name?
Don don vancy? Is he queer?

Speaker 5 (14:12):
Like?

Speaker 1 (14:12):
What's okay?

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Okay? So he okay?

Speaker 1 (14:15):
So he's in the grand tradition of And that's really
interesting because so when did the Chucky franchise start?

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Is it early two thousands?

Speaker 4 (14:23):
Is a late nineties?

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Like eight Holy crap? So this guy has lived through watching.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Queerness like become like even trendy unpopular, Like, so what
a cool opportunity for an hour queer man to get to.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Like do stuff in his movie? Was it?

Speaker 1 (14:43):
So it's like it used to be subverted maybe in
the movies and now is like at the fourth it
was a little bit.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
More subtle in the in the early film. So, like,
the Chucky franchise is sort of in like four categories.
There's the first three movies, which are kind of like
traditional slasher movies, uh, you know, from the eighties and
early nineties. Then you have Bride and Seed, which is
where they get really campy and like the queerness definitely
gets put on front street. Like there's a gay character

(15:08):
in Bride of Chucky that was kind of unheard of.
Alexis Arquette is in Bride of Chucky, then you bless
her rip. Then you get to Seed of Chucky, where
you're introduced to Chucky and Tiffany's child, who in that
movie is going by Glenn and Glenda, but it's they them.
Then you get to the Curse and Cult of Chucky movies,

(15:32):
which is sort of like a return to form in
the late twentys early twenty tens. And then you get
the sci fi series, which is putting together all three
of those eras of Chucky into one thing and to
your point where you're like, it's really cool that this
out gay man has gotten to see, you know, queerness
become trendy by the time we get to the series.

(15:54):
The lead character in it is an out gay teenager
who comes across the Chucky doll and so the whole
series is centered around a gay teenager. So he went
from having to like sneak in his little queerness, you know,
subtextually at the early part of the franchise to now
this is the lead role, like the lead romance in

(16:14):
the series are two young gay boys.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
My god, and that's over like decades.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
That's really cool because like I didn't know, like what
you were saying about how most of these franchises that
exist for so long, it's like a full different you know, writer,
director team like et cetera, et cetera. But so for
one person to get to go on that journey, that's like,
good for this guy. I just found out this person exists,
and now I'm like, oh, good for done. That's really

(16:41):
a love boy.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
That's incredible.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Okay, Yeah, well that is something I'd love to ask
about because it's like.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
This transition from queer.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Characters in Horror being the I feel like first they
were like the straight up, like aligned villains, like they
are bad, and then they start to become the cooler,
sexy villains, which is like when.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
You were talking about with the lesbian vampires and stuff.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
But like, so now we've moved into like queer people
being like the protagonists, like the heroes.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
So what's that what been like?

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Because it's like our our queer characters still are like
straight people the villains now or is everybody queer? Like
what how did that transition from like villain a protagonist?

Speaker 5 (17:31):
Like, well, it's always been like it's been a reflection
of like how society views queer people over time. Time
you get to the seventies with the you know, disillusion
of the Hayes code, that's when stuff got Like seventies
directors were just on something and it was usually cocaine,
and they just went balls to the wall with every
choice they ever made. Everything became the most of everything,

(17:53):
and it's maybe the most dynamic and interesting decade for cinema.
But that's where you started to get like the less
in vampire movies of the seventies. That's where you started
to get like the Hammer horror films, where like vampires
were coming back after being kind of sidelined for a
long time. You know, you had your Abbitt and Castello
met the universal monsters, and then Hammer brought back all

(18:14):
of the monsters in new violent, neon blood sexy ways.
But by the time you get to the eighties, things
have to kind of go underground again because of the
AIDS epidemic, So then stuff becomes coded again, and then
the nineties is kind of the runoff of that, it's

(18:35):
very homophobic, and then by the time you start to
get out of the two thousands, you get to see
more consistent queer characters getting to be the heroes, because
that's where we have finally come full circle. And normally
you get the response of like the nineties and the
two thousands being extremely homophobic in the mainstream, and horror

(18:56):
has never really been the mainstream, but it does tend
to be appreciated in select instances by the mainstream. I
don't think you're gonna get to the point where we're
ever going to cycle back to movies being as blatantly
homophobic as they were during that era, despite being what
it is now. So yeah, I mean probably maybe the
next big change will be we'll go back to getting

(19:17):
more gay monsters, which I'd be fine with as long
as you're doing something right.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
That's what I'm wondering, because it's like, on the one hand,
like it's so great that we have queer protagonists, but
on the other end, we talked PJ in your first
episode about how like villains are always like coolers.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
What you kind of don't want to lose that ass totally.

Speaker 5 (19:36):
Oh there was the period of like the model Minority,
where gay people weren't allowed to be interesting characters and
the queer monsters the best. And it's also like the
best tool for telling queer stories, I think, because queerness
exists in a hetero world and therefore you're an outsider,
and in many cases that would make you monstrous. So
that is a far more compelling story than just being

(19:58):
like everyone gets along, there's no monster.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, okay, god it is.

Speaker 6 (20:06):
It's so complicated, and like with the Scream franchise, because
this is one where i've actually I mean I saw
all the originals like that I could handle for whatever reason,
because it was like.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Funny and silly and I don't know if campy is
the right word, but like I did see all the
original what was it like four or something, but I
haven't seen any of the new ones, and my memory
of the original Scream movies, I don't remember any overt clearness.
And then I just not pick up my stuff about one. Okay,

(20:41):
sure's you neither revisit that one. Yeah, that's like a
subtle like these guys are really good friends kind of
vibe this, Okay.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
It is very much that sort of relationship. There's actually
a very famous scene in Scream After you know, spoiler
alert for a very old movie that where you know,
Billy and st so Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich are
like tormenting Nev Campbell's Sydney and you have Matthew Lillard

(21:13):
like hanging on the shoulder of Skeet Ulrich. That image
gets used a lot as like, oh, look at they're
just boys. They're just friends. They're just guys being friends.
And it is almost identical to a shot in my
favorite movie of all time, nineteen eighty five's Fright Night,
which is a super gay vampire movie with Chris Randan,

(21:34):
where there is a like, again almost an identical scene
where Chris Irannon is hanging over the shoulder of his
quote unquote Renfield type is familiar Billy, and you're just like, oh,
I see this, I see what happened here.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
That's like a direct homage.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
Oh yeah, Like it's exactly the same thing. And like
there's also something very inherently gay just about Dracula and
Renfield in general, because Downfield is his you know, his
his little.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, let's call it what it is.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah, Okay, right, okay, And so a lot of those
things are just like trickled in throughout the genre. And
there's something I want to say, and this is a
very controversial take, but got to hear me on this.
So I assume you've heard of the barrier gaye trope
or like you know that.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Oh yeah, yeah, the barrier gaze.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Can you really briefly like give an elevator not a pitch?

Speaker 2 (22:29):
We don't description for those who familiar, right.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
Right, So the barrier gaye trope is basically a trend
in film and television where gay people die, usually to
push forward the narrative of either another gay person. We
have to torture one gay person by killing their lover,
or it's going to pay forward, yes I e. Buffy,
that's the like the most egregious example, or it's going

(22:55):
to push forth the narrative of like the well meaning
straight ally of like oh no, my gay friend is
dead and now I have to act a certain way.
That trope is very real. It is very problematic. However,
Comma it does not apply to the horror genre because
death is the point in this genre.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, okay, And that's a great point that I had
not thought of.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:17):
So like Blind Manner, for example, that is one that
people point to all the time and they're like, oh,
I love this series, but I hate that it fulfills
the barrier gaze trope, and it's like, this is a
movie about like, this is a series why people dying
and becoming ghosts. That's everyone is going to die and
become ghosts. That's the whole point. It doesn't become barrier
gaze just because these characters happen to be gay. When

(23:41):
everyone's gonna die and become ghosts's like that's the point.
So that is where like queer horror discourse gets very frustrating.
This is where it gets into kind of like the
model minority situation of people getting upset when gay characters
die in horror movies, where it's like, Okay, I see
what you're saying. I get it. It does suck, however,

(24:01):
everyone dies.

Speaker 5 (24:02):
Except like, I just want people to have a fighting chance.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Yeah, maybe let's not have them be the very first
person who like, let's know a little more about them
before they.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
That's exactly.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
Okay, that's such a good point because we did have
a really good discussion in your first episode Bay about
context and how we have lost almost all of that incurrent,
like especially online. So that's a really good point for
the context of herr. It's like, we have to be
a little more lenient because, yeah, the landscape is death,

(24:40):
so let's not freak out one queer characters exist in
that landscape.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Okay, that's a really good point.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
And like so there have been attempts to sort of,
you know, course correct what people view as like a
very problematic history, which I understand. But the one of
the examples I like to bring up to people is
a few years ago there was the slasher movie They
Slash Them, which is an almost exclusively queer cast written
directed by John Logan, who is, you know, an Academy

(25:08):
Award winning openly gay screenwriter, and he very much approached
this as like, I wanted to make a horror movie for,
you know, the kids that I was hanging out with
when I was young, like the young queer kids who
get to be heroes, get to be champions. And it's
like that is such a great idea. But there feels
like there are no stakes in that movie because I

(25:30):
never actually believe any of these characters are in trouble
because I don't think this movie is going to kill
any of the gay characters, and therefore I don't like
the threat. Then suddenly doesn't exist anymore. Like you can
care about characters, but you also need to care about
whether or not they live or die. And if I
don't feel like there's a threat here, then it's harder

(25:51):
to connect.

Speaker 5 (25:52):
I mean, in staid, there isn't in that movie, but yes,
there literally isn't.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, and so's tough threat.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
So that's a movie that I like to point to
in that Like when people say like, oh, I just
hate it when they all die or I hate this,
I hate that, it's like, okay, well here's a movie
where they don't die. And everyone hated this movie, and
like a lot of people bash the hell out of
that movie. And it's like, well, they gave you what
people have been asking for in the discourse minds uh,

(26:22):
he punched your car outs. They gave you what you
asked for, and this is why you don't like it.
You need to have those stakes, You need to have
that investment in these characters. You need to be able
to to mourn these characters. There's there's a quote that
Roger Ebert said an interview that gets used a lot,
which is that movies are machines that generate empathy. If

(26:42):
you do not give people a reason to like invest
in these characters and care about them, then you're not
going to be able to generate empathy for them. And
so horror, I think, is one of the great mediums
we have to teach people one how to empathize and
invest in the suffering of other people and want to
see them survive. But it also gives you a playground, essentially,

(27:05):
to learn to navigate your own negative emotions because a
lot of people. You know, I'm not saying that everybody
needs to watch horror, of course not, but I do
think that because horror is such a wide genre, there
are movies for everyone. You just have to, you know,
have somebody curate for you. Take some baby steps. Don't
throw yourself into the deep end and be like, well,

(27:27):
I don't like horror, but let's see what hell rasor
is all about, Like, don't do that to yourself.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
But but but it's so gooy and sexy and fun.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
And based on gay sn m clubs.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yes really, rather the one where he has pins in
his face?

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yes, okay, okay, and.

Speaker 5 (27:48):
Like, oh yeah, it's done by Clive Barker. Clive Barker
also did Night Breed. If you're gonna watch it, yeah,
you need to watch the director's cut because it's fire
superior version, arguably one of the best directs cuts ever made.
He did Midnight Meat Train. He you know, is responsible
as Hell's Midnight Meat Train.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
It's Midnight b Train where Bradley Cooper becomes obsessed with
a man named after a piece of wood y.

Speaker 5 (28:15):
Yeah, Clive Barker just does whatever he wants. He's a
maniac queer.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, super sick.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
I don't know anything, but this is so.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
I know the name Clive Barker, but I did not.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
I had no This is really I am mister.

Speaker 5 (28:31):
There's also the new Hell Raiser, which stars Jamie Clayton
as the Priest aka Pinhead, which means you get now
trans cenobites and they kind of never had a gender.
That was the point. But like that's an extra layer
of queerness. It's like you've put three hats on this hat.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
It's great, Okay, this is wild. I had no idea
Hell Raiser was queer. I just knew about the pin
The pin person with Pinhead is the.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
Night of that character.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
That's what everyone calls it.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
That makes free pihead whatever you want to call it. Okay,
But yeah, the aesthetics of the Cenobites, which are these
you know, demons where pain and pleasure are one and
the same, they are definitely modeled after the gay sn
M clubs that Clive Barker used to go to. They're
all wearing leather and chains and you know, terrorizing each
other for the funzies. It's super super.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
Good, Okay, L I had no idea. Oh and wait,
what I was going to ask earlier is the modern Scream.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
I don't know if they're not reboots. I guess because
they're I mean, it's in there.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Can the sequels there were just like kids, we call
them like sequels.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Oh, I like that, but.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
There was like a big gap right in between, like yeah,
and so are the new ones like overtly overtly queer
like queer characters or like what's he doing with those
new ones now that he can in a way that
he couldn't, And like, you.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Know what's fascinating is the new ones. Suscream five and
six come from the film collect known as Radio silence.
They also made an incredible movie called Ready or Not
that people love because it's Samorrow Weaving covered in blood
in a wedding dress and screaming.

Speaker 5 (30:09):
It's funny.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, it's very funny. So you've seen that image. You've
seen that. They also did Abigail this year, the Valleria
Vampire movie. But in Scream five and six they introduce
the character of Mindy Meeks. She has a second last
name I can never remember, but she's related to Jamie
Kennedy's character, Randy Meeks. That's that's their uncle because their

(30:34):
mom is Heather Modarazzo's character from Scream two, So you
know Heather Madarazzo lesbian icon. Incredible, yes, but the kids,
the kids are twins and one of them is played
by Jasmine Savoy Brown and in Scream six has a girlfriend.
So it's very, very very openly queer. And then in

(30:55):
the next movie for Scream seven, which we don't know what,
there's been a lot of chaos behind the scenes. His
own I have read about can of Worms. Yeah, shout out,
Melissa Brera, You're a real one. But Kevin Williamson is
now taking over to direct Scream seven rather than just

(31:17):
you know, be the guy who wrote the original screenplay
and created this world. He's now directing Scream seven, okay,
and so I'm very curious to see like what he's
going to do with this world, if there's going to
be a new queer character, what we're gonna see, like
we just we just don't know yet, okay.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Ooh that's cool.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
And then in terms of I mean, I want y'all
to talk about whichever movies.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
You want to talk about.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
I know I'd mentioned in my email the ones that
were really in my face on social media were Bodies,
Body's Bodies, and I saw the TV glow like with
those any thoughts feelings like those. That was when I
felt like everyone was talking about movies not necessary, like
it seeped out of queer Twitter for me, and I

(32:08):
was like, oh, this is like everywhere, these movies are
like making us splash or whatever the kids.

Speaker 4 (32:15):
I'll talk that, I'll talk Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, and that
that one was so fun because the queerness is so casual.
It's not part of you know, the plot, like it
is part of the plot in the sense that like
it's a couple and you're, you know, watching this couple
that have, you know, not the easiest relationship going on,

(32:39):
and for that to just be right, for that to
be treated as just like normal matter of fact. I
was like, Oh, that's really nice. That's like a nice
little addition here. And the fact is like their love
and their relationship is part of it, but it's not
about it, which I And then as far as I

(33:02):
saw the TV glow is concerned, I guess that's more
of a harmony wheelhouse.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
But harmony is an eagle on merit.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
Harmony is a very unpopular opinion about I saw the.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Tea well, I'd love to hear.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
I would love to hear an unpopular opinion, if you
I know, like I know, giving an unpopular opinion is
like opening yourself up.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
To very angry fans.

Speaker 5 (33:24):
But yeah, no, yes, I mean I watched that. I'd
been I'd been dreading that movie because the previous film
by Jane Shoon bra We're All Going to the World's Fair,
was toploitely say, not my cup of tea, And I
was not a terrible fan, but I do kind of
respect the scrappiness of that movie, which is fair. I

(33:45):
was not looking forward to I saw the TV glow.
I was dreading it when it was doing festival circuits
because if I like it, that's fine. If I'm mediocre
on it, that won't end well. If I hate it,
that's very bad. Sure, sure, this is a matter of
I think it's bad. It's a matter of that means
either I say nothing, or I say or I heard

(34:08):
a lot of people's feelings.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Well, this is the curse of like being a queer
person talking about I was gonna say queer media, but
kind of like anything queer that exists is like you
have to figure out. Sometimes you're like, I really don't
like this, but for the for the community, Like I
guess I'll keep my opinions to myself because it's like
good that it's getting out there. But it's like, okay,

(34:31):
when what's the tipping point? At what point do we
have enough stuff out there that we're allowed to be
honest about our opinions the way like straight white people
could be honest about anything so much?

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Yeah, exactly, because that's.

Speaker 4 (34:49):
The trap that we all fall into, as anybody who
is marginalized writing about art that is coming from marginalized voices,
is that, on one hand, This is my very like
diplomatic assessment of I saw the TV Glow, which is
not about the movie itself. It's about like kind of
the culture that has surrounded it, because I think that
is more interesting to talk about than the actual movie.

(35:09):
Like people are going to feel about that movie, how
they feel about it. The culture surrounding that movie is
what I think is more interesting is that a lot
of people came out in twenty twenty, either sexuality, gender,
what have you, because a lot of people had a
lot of time to sit in with their internal thoughts
and come to some conclusions. And I think that that

(35:30):
is beautiful and I think that is incredible. But it
also means that a lot of people were coming out
and discovering things about themselves while they were inside and
they were not outside in having to deal with large Oh.
So people became like very fixated on trying to find
what I like to call like the myth of the
universal experience, which is when people post like their cute

(35:53):
little memes or whatever of like the trans girl starter
kit or like the lesbian starter kit, and it's like,
you know, whatever, whatever, and to some extent, like that's
very cute. It's a way to find community. But also
it is we've invented a new way to other people
by doing that. Yes, there are so many queer and
trans people I know who will not say anything negative

(36:17):
about I saw the TV Glow because they know this
movie has been very vital for a lot of people.
It has helped a lot of people come to terms
with their own feelings about their gender or their sexuality.
Or there's even somebody who used their letterboxed review to
come out as trans. That is a very big deal,
and no one else in the community wants to like

(36:38):
shit on that by being hey, I don't like this movie.
Because because we've become such like indoor kids, people are
now treating media as an extension of their personality. So
if you say I don't like this movie, they're not
hearing I don't like this movie. They're hearing I don't
like you.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
It's a stand culture. It's too much.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
I need to use that term because it's so embarrassing.
But that is what Yeah, and the parasocial relationship and
all this stuff that we're talking about online, like this
is the the I was going to say the negative
side of it, but it's like it's kind of all
negative side, like those things. I hope we move away
from them, but yeah, it becomes so personal and so
like intrinsic to someone's identity that then you can't criticize

(37:23):
it or even kind of like talk about it as
it's just a movie, like you're not allowed to do
that because it was not. It's codependency, and yes it's codependency.

Speaker 5 (37:32):
It's a problem, and people don't recognize it as codependency
because it's been normalized so much, especially on online circles.
I mean, I guess my my large thoughts about I
Saw the TV Glow are that On our podcast oftentimes,
you know, we talked about teen girl movies, we talked
about coming of age movies. I'm in my thirties now,
maybe you know a Cinderella story is not that bad.

(37:54):
But I tell you what, when you're like of when
you're past a certain age, that is a nothing burger
of a I'm like, maybe I'm just a little too
old to watch I Saw the TV Glow. Maybe it's
been a long fifteen years of not being an indoor
kid for me. That makes this movie just interesting in
a way that I appreciate. So I lost days of

(38:16):
sleep after that movie came out, because I was like,
oh god, I'm staring down the barrel of a yeah,
a movie I don't like.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Oh totally this is and I really appreciate you talking
about it because I so know that that is.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Like I've absolutely had that.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Feeling where it's like I don't like the queer thing
that everybody likes.

Speaker 5 (38:36):
And like this is common for me. I often don't
like the queer things everyone likes.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Well, yeah, I love Bejing. What you said about people.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
I mean, anyone who listens to this podcast knows how
many people came out in twenty twenty because so many
people that's been their story. And it's not just the
insideness that I think made a lot of it very
shall we say self folks, which makes sense, you know,
like you're you're inside with yourself, you're gonna be self focused.
But it's also a lot of baby clears. It's also

(39:07):
like a lot of really new and harmony. You're someone
who I mean, Bja, you mentioned your episode Harmony. You
transitioned like many many, many many years ago, so you're
like so far ahead, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean by.

Speaker 5 (39:21):
The time this comes out, it'll be about fifteen years
on the dot.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Wow, yeah, okay, So and for anyone who for I
feel like if I'm familiar with the idea at least
of I saw the Tuva glam like everybody must be
right because I don't even watch her. But is it
is it a I've seen some discourse quote unquote, is
it oh, directly overtly like this is a trans story

(39:48):
or is it more subtle?

Speaker 5 (39:50):
Because I have seen it is not subtle. So here's funny,
though there are cis people who completely miss that.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
It's okay, it's just about the safety.

Speaker 7 (40:01):
Of nostalgia and comfort in nostalgia. That's the storytelling device
to get you there. But like, this is one of
those things where if you know even remotely what you're
looking for, it is like a flashing red light in
front of your face.

Speaker 5 (40:16):
It is zed.

Speaker 1 (40:18):
But then I have heard some people be like, I
don't know if and I'm like, wait, now I'm confused
to someone who hasn't seen it, because reading the synopsis
on Wikipedia, I'm like, this is just this is what
it's about.

Speaker 5 (40:30):
The main character played by Justice Smith literally wears a
dress in this movie and then goes, no, I don't
like this. I'm scared and then runs back into the
closet like this movie's really fucking obvious about what it's about. Right.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
I did make a TikTok about this because every once
in a while I wade into the discourse. Mind's always
a mistake. I don't know why, yeah, especially on that end.
But I made a video because people were like, I
don't understand how many ciscritics are like not seeing this,
And so the explanation that I gave people is that
when you are marginalized in some way, shape or form,

(41:03):
the way I like to compare it is it's like
being able to speak another language. Like if you are
somebody who can speak English and Spanish, there is a
high probability that you will be probably okay in trying
to understand something similar like Italian. You're not going to
know the language inside it out. Yeah, you're not going

(41:26):
to understand the language like perfectly, but you're going to
be able to infer that grazi is probably similar to
grassius and it does mean the same thing. And so
a lot of like cis straight critics are not able
to speak the inherent language that like a lot of
queer people can speak. So they're not seeing it in
this movie, whereas when we watch it, we're like, oh, yeah,

(41:49):
this is speaking my language, like that's what's happening. That's
why they're missing it because they don't know how to
speak this language. But for us, we're all fluent, so
we're like, what do you mean you don't understand what's happening?

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah, okay, yeah, because my understanding until I read a
couple of like tweets or poll coats or whatever, I
was like, oh, wow, this is like a trans horror movie.
And then I would see some people being like, I mean,
it's not like over and I was like, now I'm confused.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
So it's good to know that it's just good old
fashioned over the head.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah for some people, and har harmony was your kind
of main issue or not, whatever was what you did
not enjoy about it? Was it that it felt kind
of like rudimentary or like hitting it over the head,
or like, what was your take on it that it
didn't really Yes, yeah, yes to all of that.

Speaker 5 (42:43):
I mean, I mean, okay, so I don't I don't
know if this is it for everybody else, but I
certainly don't think the right way to watch a movie
is just to say yeah, I get it, with increasing
volume and frustration for most of the movies run time
of like yeah, I get it, it just doesn't work
for me. Like I wrote over three thousand words about

(43:05):
my feelings on this, especially because this is a period piece.
It starts in the nineties and then moves up to
you know, presumably the modern day. It's a little vague
about it, but no, I mean I came out is
trans in the two thousands. I know what it was like.
I was there, and this is not exactly what it

(43:25):
was like. But then again, this character doesn't actually ever
come out spoilers, I guess for this scared straight story
that's actually about trying to scare you gay. I don't know.
It's so it is so on the nose, it is
so I don't know. I'm trying to be nice about

(43:47):
this because I don't I don't want to upset anyone.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Will it be like people, you know, like, assuming the
earth makes it another fifty or so years, will it
be like, oh, this was kind of the first I
don't know if mainstream is the right way, but like
trans horror movie and like we can you know, enjoy
it for what it was, but like, wow, it was
very like isn't that kind of a thing where years

(44:11):
will be like one.

Speaker 5 (44:11):
Of those things where it's like, oh my god, it's
aged so badly, and I'm like, no, I think this
is gonna age just fine. I think it's gonna be
one of these things. Like the whole point of the
movie that the seeing the TV glows and watching a
Buffy the Vampire Slayer type show and just being like,
oh my god, I saw something of myself in that.
And then you get a little older and you try
to rewatch it and you go, oh, this wasn't as

(44:32):
bold and ambitious as I thought it was. This is
kind of a baby show for babies. It's kind of
like corny and bad, right, Like the ice cream Man
is just a man in a mask, and he's not
scary like I thought he was when I was a kid.
I think that I should hope that people will go, yeah,
I know this meant a lot to me at the time,
but they will seek out other queer horror, they will

(44:54):
seek out other queer media. They will grow beyond this story,
is my hopes for it.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
Yeah, that's very much. That's very much how I operate,
which you know, Harmony and I talk about coming of
age stories all the time on our show because that's
the whole point of it. And there are movies that
I look back on that I loved as a teenager,
like I loved Freaky Friday with Jamie Lee Curtis and
Lindsay Lahman. I still do to this day, but you

(45:23):
look back at it as an adult and you're like, wow,
this movie is also like pretty racist against Asian people
and treating like ancient Chinese magic as like a plot device.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
And I've never seen that interesting.

Speaker 4 (45:34):
Yeah, that's that's how they switch is it's through like
magic fortune cookies, and it's like, okay, well that's something.
But when you're thirteen, a lot of times you're not
going to like process that. So you can look at
it as adult and you can love something critically and go, okay,
I love this movie, and it's also like kind of problematic.
I think that this movie of I Saw the TV
Glow is so important because of what it means to

(45:57):
so many people right now, Like I think this is
a perfect trans movie for the time here that we
are in right now with this big boom. I mean,
Jane Shoon Brun started writing this movie when they started transitioning,
and I think it shows and I don't necessarily think
that that is a bad thing. I don't think it's
a bad thing at all. It's going to resonate with
a lot of people.

Speaker 5 (46:16):
It's them processing it, so we have a similar journey,
a similar starting point to where we are now.

Speaker 4 (46:21):
Yeah, but I also understand why this movie would then
not resonate with somebody like harmony or like yeah, countless
other people who were like, yeah, this is this has
not been new for me for a very long time.
All of these feelings that you're processing I processed a
decade ago.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, so I get it so interesting. I didn't know
it was a filmmaker who was also a baby queer
like that. Yeah, Okay, that's really interesting. Yeah, because it's
just like people, And that is what I'm seeing mostly
at least on my timeline, is people having these like
really sort of like beautiful in ten connections to it.

(47:02):
But that makes sense if they're in the same place
as the filmmaker. Like I wasn't aware. That's really interesting, Okay.

Speaker 4 (47:12):
Yeah, and I had people listening to this understand that
like it again, it's not a criticism of them, Like
if this movie speaks to you and like this was
eye opening and magical, like that's incredible, that's your experience.
Harmony's experience does not then negate your experience, like life
is not a zero sum game. That's not how this works.
And so like I think that's what then becomes frustrating

(47:33):
because also like if we critique this movie publicly, one,
it feels like we're critiquing our community, which is like
never a fun experience. Two, it feels like, you know,
critiquing art from you know, a filmmaker who was telling
a story that like most studios are too afraid to
tell because we know this, the studios never take the
right message from anything. If people critique this movie, it

(47:55):
doesn't become like, oh, maybe we should give money to
trans people who've been out for a long time and
hear their experience it because let's never let a transperson
make a movie ever again. And it's like that's not
what we're saying here.

Speaker 8 (48:08):
Oh my god, this is yeah, the horrors that I
tend to appreciate the things that I find the most
upsetting about this world that we live in, and what
I like to see in my dramas and horrors and
all of my sad miserable things like British teleplays from

(48:28):
the seventies and eighties.

Speaker 5 (48:29):
I like stuff that's tangible, and the horror of I
saw the TV glow is so entirely internal. It's just
it's all internal struggle. You are your own worst enemy. Eventually,
your homophobic dad played by Fred Durst dies and he
doesn't have any control over you anymore. But you're just

(48:50):
you are your own worst enemy. You are preventing yourself
from coming out. And that's just not the world that
I live in. I think that that is so important
as like a story for a lot of online spaces
right now, but like, yeah, where's all of the people

(49:10):
who have just been out there having to make it
work in the walking world?

Speaker 2 (49:15):
I want? This is fascinating.

Speaker 5 (49:18):
I want more of that. I want something seasoned. I
want something tangible. I want I feel like something that
I appreciate about, particularly miserable films that I watch. I
was watching Alan Clark's Scum last night, and it's a phenomenal, upsetting,
nasty movie about a boy's prison basically, but there's something

(49:39):
about certain misery that I see that I go Okay, cool,
I'm not crazy, right, because the misery we're talking about
with I saw the TV glows like a general sense
of horrors, like oh, it filled me with existential dread.
I feel these feelings, and I don't feel any of
the feelings that everyone is describing because so much so

(50:00):
beyond that, I don't even know if there's a point
in my life where this ever would have been the
exact right movie for me, because I've just never been
a terribly like online child. I've never been one person
to be consumed by like a television show. Personally.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
It came out before online was a NonStop presence in
our Like everything we're saying, make so much of mine
was a.

Speaker 5 (50:19):
Place that you was at your house and then you
get up, and then you go somewhere and the online
stays there. So I feel like I.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Was still I agree.

Speaker 5 (50:30):
I would love that. I just feel like what I
want to see and what I like to see in
my horrors, queer textually or queer subtextually is something that
feels more like what I recognize as a as a
as a form of suffering or horror or misery or
pain that I look at it and go Okay, I'm

(50:51):
not the only one feeling this. I don't feel crazy.

Speaker 4 (50:55):
Something that Harmony said this would have been probably like
four years ago at this point that I think about
all the time is Harmony and I were talking heads
for a Shutter docuseries. So it's on the streaming up
Shutter or I think you can also get it through
like AMC plus. It's called Queer for Fear. It was
originally supposed to be longer. We only got like four episodes,

(51:16):
which was a bummer. So there's like a ton of
like really great material that I know wasn't used. But
one of the questions they asked all of us is like,
when did you see yourself in a horror movie for
the first time? My answer was Elvira, because I very
much love Cassandra Peterson, who plays Alvira, is under She

(51:36):
perpetuates the character as an androgynous character. And the reason
she' views it, yeah, she says Alvira is androgynist because
Alvira is the inverse of these like very famous androgynoist
people we look to, like David Bowie or Mick Jagger,
who are very clearly men, but there's something very soft
about them, where She's like, Elvira is very clearly like

(51:57):
fem woman, but there's something very hard about her, and
so that ru Yeah, I really opened up my eyes
about like, yes, Elvira is my gender. So I talk
about that, and then they asked Harmony the same question.
And I don't want to answer for you, but what
was your answer? Because I think about it NonStop.

Speaker 5 (52:17):
It was twenty eight days later starting Killing Killian Murphy
twenty eight days Later is one of the best zombie
movies ever made. It's one of my favorite horror movies
ever made. So it's a movie that's it's British. It
starts with Killian Murphy waking up. He'd been hooked up
to like machines and life support for a long time
in a hospital, but now he is like emaciated and

(52:40):
the machines are off and he is in a world
that he does understand. There is no one around. It
is a desolate London. He's like, I'm confused. I just
got out of the hospital. Where do I go. He
goes to a church and it's full of dead bodies
and a priest tries to kill him, and then he
finds out that the whole world is infected by these

(53:01):
running zombie rage monsters who bleed blood out of their
eyes and are very violent, and the only safe haven
that he can find is amongst a black woman, a daughter,
and a loving father, and they have to fight the
small armed forces of the British military who are trying
to establish order. So it is about a guy who

(53:22):
wakes up in a hospital who has this thin wayfish figure,
is immediately attacked by the church and has to fend
off the hyper masculinity of the government. And I basically
emotionally prepared myself since a young age where I'm like, oh, yes,
this is what I This are the threats that I experience.
These are the threats that I fear in the world. Vampires,

(53:44):
I'm not afraid of vampires. Vampires aren't real. Michael Myers,
He's just a guy. I'm not afraid of, just a guy. Jaws.
Sharks are kind of scary, but sharks are also cool.
I don't go in the water, and you're fine, Like
that's manageable, you know, it's all well, all of the
threats and fears are either not real or perfectly manageable,
Versus this one where it's like, oh no, this is

(54:05):
extremely real. Maybe the rage monsters aren't, but who knows.
Maybe someone just walking down the street will decide to
try to murder me on a whim and I have
to We'll have to hold them down and scream while
I plunge my thumbs into their eyes, and that's either
kill or be killed. And that's what the world feels
like to me. Is this movie this wow?

Speaker 2 (54:27):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (54:28):
So no, no, no, no no, but this is making so
much sense because you compare something like that to I
saw the TV glow, And what it sounds like we're
having is one of those good old fashioned generational divides,
which is like the young ones even though they are
not growing up in what I would at all call

(54:49):
a benevolent world, but we've become so divided that there
is a huge, thank god, faction of the world that
is incredibly affirming and queer forward and all that soun
it's online and you did not have that.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
So like if you, people are.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Way more able, especially like you're saying, DJFA came out,
you know, during lockdown and like a lot of this
kind of self focus and isolation stuff. People are better
able to insulate, especially if they're in well exclusively I
guess if they're in a safe area, Like if your
physical form is safe because you live in like a
very blue city or whatever it is, you can create

(55:33):
a nice little safe bubble of queerness, of transness.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
You did not have that growing up.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
So a movie that exists in that bubble from a
filmmaker who wrote it as part of their coming up, Like,
that's not going to relate to you at all, Like
you're not gonna.

Speaker 5 (55:51):
Especially because you know, twenty eight Days Later comes out
right before nine to eleven. I see it after nine
to eleven. So then we have to deal with like
the uh, jingoistic raw rah put a boot in your asset.
It's the American way that we view the world. So
the military is seen as like this extremely powerful school
aspirational thing. You can't criticize the troops, and yet this

(56:13):
movie is all like, no, the troops are evil people,
like they want to assert order by force, and they
hate women and only see them for breeding. And it's
just it came out at the exact right time where
I'm like, no, but this is this feels more like
what I remember the two thousands being like I saw
the TV blow. It takes place in the two thousands,
but it's not the two thousands.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
That it's written by someone who was coming who is
was coming out, is coming out, someone.

Speaker 5 (56:37):
Who would have been there, but they were not experiencing
the two thousands. It was displayed in I saw the
TV glow that I remember the two thous.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
They're writing their version of what they feel like now,
but kind.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Of placing it back when you were coming out. So
it's like, oh, that's written, So it's discordant.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
God, that's so fucking fascinating, and I'm not getting any
You're You'll be shocked to find out I'm not hearing
any of that nuance online.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
Twitter is not a great place for that. It has
a character limit. That's why I tend to not put
my big thoughts on Twitter. I save them for like medium.
On the rare occasion I feel like writing four thousand
words on a topic because therapy is not big enough
for the discussions I want to have.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
I'd love I have to go back and I'll have
to reread the Wikipedia synopsis, and then I do want
to look at your at your pieces that you wrote
on this, because I am so curious about and I
guess another question that I have so is so queerness
primarily correct me if I'm wrong, But it feels like
sexuality more than gender. Although then I think of something

(57:43):
like Psycho and I'm like, is that kind of about gender? Like,
I don't know, but queerness sexuality is now queerness in.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Horror gonna be looking more.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
At gender and transness as opposed to site like, is
that where horror is going?

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Is this the first one of that?

Speaker 5 (57:59):
Is this a dumb clas It is not a dumb question,
that's an excellent question. So I think that gender so
horror as a genre is not the kindest genre to gender.
I would argue it's probably the meanest genre in terms
of discussing transnis in general, and that includes sex comedies.

(58:21):
Dating back to Alfred Hitchcock's Murder, there have been like
the cross dressing killer type. It got much more famous
with Psycho and a million Psycho knockoffs. You had Brian
de Palmer essentially remaking Psycho in nineteen eighty with Dressed
to Kill. You got Silence of the Lambs about a
decade later, and that went into the Library of Congress
and won like every Academy award. So it's seen as

(58:42):
like culturally really really important, and it is all these
films have queerness being processed through straight people. That's oftentimes
where the trans or gender bending of a monster kinds
of comes into play. It's almost exclusively straight syce men
doing this. You know, well, we'll say, we'll put quotes

(59:03):
on that, and maybe the case of Alfred Hitchcock, but
you know it is what, you know, we'll leave that there.
Right about now is when you're starting to see prominent
examples of transn's displayed in horror as like a literal,
tangible thing and it coming from queer voices. There there
are outlier liars like Richard O'Brien wrote Rocky Horror Picture Show,

(59:24):
and Richard O'Brien is, you know, a very old gay
who has been on hormones and doing they are his
own gender journey for a lot. And I love Richard
O'Brien for all of this. Yeah, so there's been examples
of this, but they are few and far between. I
think that one of the reasons we're seeing it right

(59:46):
now is that it's becoming much more normalized, but also
because of the increasing hostility towards trans people, it is
an exciting thing for people to have as a as
a storytelling element, whether that be like Hunter Schaeffer in
Cuckoo coming out this year, and that movie Hunter Shaffer
does not play a trans character, but Hunter Schaeffer is trans,

(01:00:07):
so therefore the film itself, yeah trans sheen to it? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Is that the Dan Stevens one, Yes, and he.

Speaker 5 (01:00:14):
Is such a little weirdo in it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
I love Okay, Okay, cool cool cool.

Speaker 5 (01:00:20):
So you start to get stuff like that. You get
Jamie Clayton in the Hell with Razor remake, you have
Sam Levinson's Assassination Nation, which is kind of horror adjacent,
but you get horror.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Yes, I forgot about that one.

Speaker 5 (01:00:34):
Okay, is eventually a horror movie because it's basically the purge.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
There's also there's trans masculine characters in Talk to Me
and Evils and Rise, like.

Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
Oh my god, Evil dece is so good.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
Evil Dress is very fun. So the thing though, too,
is that with horror, especially especially when it comes to gender,
if it wasn't like cross dressing killer tropes, which are
you know, yeah, that's its own category to even discuss.
But there is also so many trans reads that can
be made to a lot of horror movies. A lot

(01:01:06):
of body horror movies can be read as trans Werewolf
movies are often read as trans Like Zoe Luna, who
is a transactor. She was in like the Craft Legacy,
She's been in a bunch of stuff. She has talked
about how the werewolf movie Ginger Snaps, which a lot
of people look at as like this is like a

(01:01:26):
very feminist werewolf movie, which it is because it's about
two sisters. But there's a scene in there where after
the main girl is attacked by a werewolf, she starts
growing a tale and yeah, and like body hair, and
she and her sister are like trying to find ways
to hide the tail and hide the hair that she's growing.

(01:01:47):
And Zoe has talked about how like watching that scene,
she's like, oh, yeah, that's what dysphoria feels like to me.
And so there's all these really rich reads that can
be found within a lot of the text. And I
go back and forth on this because obviously, like canonical
representation is very very important, but I also think that
something is lost when we don't allow for like reads,

(01:02:12):
because there are some like a movie like Jennifer's Body,
for example, Jennifer's Body is very clearly like a bisexual movie.
Jennifer is a bisexual. We know this, she goes both ways.
We know this about her, but she never says out loud,
I am bisexual. And I think that is a good thing,
because then this character also then can be read as like, okay,

(01:02:36):
but maybe she is just like a high fem lesbian
who's experiencing a little bit of compet and that's why
she's still fucking meant for fun, which is exactly what I.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Did in Good Yeah, Oh my god, Oh this is
fascinating and so.

Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
And so when you don't have somebody say like, hi,
my name is you know, Jordan, and I am a
non binary, DEMI, bisexual or whatever, then that allows people
who identify outside of those labels to also see themselves
in these characters, because the more specific you get, the
more isolating these characters become. Which is, you know, Harmony

(01:03:15):
and I wrote a book, uh, Sleepwoy Camp Fordidi Books,
and sleep Away Camp is considered to be like the
you know, kind of the grandmother of a lot of
trans horror because Angela Baker spoiler alert for a forty
year old movie, but the end of Sleepway Camp reveals
that Angela Baker, Oh my god, she's a boy, and

(01:03:36):
you see full frontal nudity. And so because they never
say until the second and third movies, then Angela does
canonically become a trans woman and transitions fully. But in
this first movie, because they never say Angela is a
trans character, there are so many people who are able
to interpret, like, I think this character is non binary.

(01:03:58):
It's somebody who is dealing with, like, you know, multiple
experiences of gender or a lack of gender completely. The
trans woman read is obviously way more obvious. But then
I've also even seen people say, like, I think that
this is a trans masque story because it's about a
boy in the you know what, in a body that
is perceived as a woman by everybody else, fighting to
get out, and all of those reads POQ will wait

(01:04:20):
because the movie never gives you a definitive answer. And
so that's one of the things we write about in
our book is how like all of the reads and
interpretations people have of this story, they're all kind of right,
because a read is just an interpretation. It's not the
definitive answer of like, what is happening in this movie?
And so I think it's like such a juicy movie

(01:04:42):
to talk about because of that, because it means so
much to so many different people, and I wish that
we had more of that in Horror, but because everybody's like,
you need to define exactly what this character is otherwise
it's weird.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Baiting, like the period of Drenched.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
This is so interesting because what it is is, this
is what society, our queer culture is really going through
right now, is the push and pull of the importance
and validation of like when people say, oh my god,
when that character said in episode five out loud, like
I'm a lesbian.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
That was so incredibly meaningful to me, like she named it,
she said it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
So we have that side of things, and then we
have the side of things you're talking about, and those
two things they.

Speaker 9 (01:05:27):
Don't have to necessarily be at odds, but right now,
at least online, they're so at odds, like they feel
like two like warring, like West Side story style, and
it's like they don't have to, like there's room for both,
but everyone's very entrenched in their own opinions right now, shockingly,
So that's really interesting to hear that. It's like your

(01:05:47):
preference for leaving it open versus some people who so
want to hear the word that they they want to
hear their micro label, not you the inside of micro label,
but they want to hear their micro label set out loud.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
It's God, that's a really.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Interesting like tension going on right now in general.

Speaker 5 (01:06:06):
Yeah, I think part of it is that, like we
have a wealth of spoils right now, Like there are
so many queer things that are so clearly defined as
queer things, whereas back in you know, you know, the nineties,
two thousands, when we were growing up, there were so
many things that weren't and you kind of had to
get clever about it, or or.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
Wait till Sweeps Week.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
It was two weeks of sweets Week and the girls
kissed in the hot tub and you were like, that's
it for the year, yep.

Speaker 5 (01:06:34):
Or you would get something where it's like okay, people
were like, oh my god, that genderbent episode of Johnny
test and I'm like, well, that's a generational divide. I
remember watching the video for the Fertelli's Chelsea Dagger, and
this is part where it flashes between the singer of
the band and this hot burlesque lady and they're wearing
the same outfit and it's like, huh, that's interesting. Yeah,

(01:06:56):
that's kind of it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
That was the extent. Oh my god, yeah yeah, Wed,
this really does. It makes me feel like a crotchety
elder queer, which I feel like often or honestly most
of the time nowadays. So this is validating from my identity,
my micro label of.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
A quat the elder queer.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
I'm keeping an eye on the time.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
So before we wrap up, I want to, obviously I
want you both to plug your podcast your book and
say where you can individually be followed. But is there
anything we didn't cover that you want to like, any
movies you want to shout out that we didn't get
to or something, or just like any yeah, any queer
horror stuff that we didn't sort of touch on before
before we go.

Speaker 5 (01:07:37):
I mean, there's so so many things I'm bad at
recalling movies just on a whim like that. Let's just
say Angel, Angel's the best movie you ever made. And
that's probably not true, but I say it, and I'm
not going to stop saying it. Angel's best movie you
ever made.

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
And I've never heard of it.

Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
It's from nineteen eighty three, It's about a teenage girl
who works the streets. The tagline for the movie is
on a role student by day, Hollywood hooker by night,
and she ends up being befriended. It's something. She gets
befriended by an old drag queen and or transsex worker
named May who's modeled after May West, and you never
say explicitly what she is, because again we go with

(01:08:15):
loose definition, and they're best friends, surrogate family with like
a senile old cowboy who does like signings and tricks
on the Hollywood strip named Kit Carson. You have an
old landlord who's a lesbian with two sets of eyebrows
that smokes and yells at May, and they bicker like
an old married couple despite the fact that they're both

(01:08:36):
clearly gay and just best friends. And also there's a
serial killer who's trying to kill sex workers, and that's
kind of what the horror of the movie it is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
That's what the eighties was in general.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
I feel like like there's always a serial killer trying
to kill sex workers.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Unfortunate about how but.

Speaker 5 (01:08:52):
It's about friendship and it's looking out for each other.
People of the Knights looking out for each other, protecting
each other that you don't need. You know, cops don't
have any feelings because they're just damn dirty cops. And like,
this movie's marvelous. Is the best movies, every very cool,
super tight script. And also queer people get the chance
to actually fight for their lives and stand a chance.

(01:09:13):
And I just appreciate that, even if it doesn't always
work out. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Oh, I love that, Okay, and shall all right? Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:09:19):
Then the movie that I'm going to recommend because the
last time I was on here I talked about bit
Yeah everyone has since scene. But a movie that I
highly recommend everyone check out is actually a documentary and
it is called Scream Comma Queen. So Scream Queen and
the documentary, Yeah, the posters behind Harmony's said, but it

(01:09:42):
is a documentary about the actor Mark Patton, who plays
Jesse Walsh in a Nightmare and Elm Street Part two
Freddy's Revenge namer An Elm Street Part two. Freddy's Revenge
is very much a gay movie. Freddy is essentially an
allegory for gay feelings and keeping them closeted.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
We gotta do a whole other episode.

Speaker 4 (01:10:05):
Oh, yeah, Freddy is also a drag character. If people
don't know that, Freddy Krueger is Robert England's drag character,
the same way that Elvira is Cassandra Peterson's drag character.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
But okay, this is wild.

Speaker 4 (01:10:16):
But Nightmare Part two is equal parts a gay movie
and an extremely homophobic movie. And they and they cast
Mark Patten in this role, who was gay and was
not out at the time, and the documentary is about
how playing this role has been both the best and
worst thing that ever happened to him, because it was

(01:10:38):
great in that it helped a lot of other people
like see themselves and come out and whatever. But also
this movie kind of ruined his career because then everybody
was like, oh, you're that gay guy from that gay movie.

Speaker 5 (01:10:51):
In the eighties.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
In the eighties, and Mark Patten, luckily is still with
us to this day. He is, you know, living with aids,
but live in his best life, you know, the best
of his ability, which is you know, very interesting. But
the documentary is fantastic and I highly recommend it, and
it's a great piece of learning about queer horror history.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
Oh god, these are great recommendations. Thank you so much. Okay,
and where can people find you both individually and listen
to your podcast?

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
And yeah, and the book that we mentioned.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
Sure, So I write every day at slash Film. I
also have an article in the most recent issue of
Thangoriam magazine. It's the one with art the clown just
like Santa on the cover if you find it on
your newsstands, which is exciting and fun. But This Ends
Up Prom is the show that Harmony and I do
where we talk about coming of age stories about or
marketed towards teen girl audiences. You can find it where're

(01:11:49):
you get your podcasts. We have a Patreon, Patreon dot com,
backslash This endp prom all forms of social media at
This Ends Up Prom, and I'm on all forms of
social media at my name BJ Colangelo.

Speaker 5 (01:12:00):
BJ is so good at plugging stuff I write occasionally,
but in the event that you see it, you'll see
it on social media. It's not it doesn't have a
home like slash film, but I'm around at Instagram and Twitter,
at Veloca, trapter on places. BJ does mostly the online stuff,
as if you've not learned from this episode, online as.

Speaker 4 (01:12:21):
Harmony is chronically offline that is, which is God's the
better of us for the.

Speaker 5 (01:12:28):
Yeah, I would rather have solitude than the internet yelling.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
That is such a wise, wise choice that I have
not made.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):
Our book is available at Die Die Books or you
can get the e reader version at Amazon for the kindle.
But sleep Away Camp is in a very fun academic
text is the way that I'll put it, Like, you're
going to learn something about history.

Speaker 5 (01:12:55):
You're going to learn deep in this movie.

Speaker 4 (01:12:57):
Yeah, about how this movie has been you know, reclaimed
and you know rejected across you know, depending on whatever's
going on politically. That seems to be how people feel
about this movie. And there well, there are also the
two final chapters in this book are purely written by harmony,
and I think that that is worth the cost of
the book itself talking about because I believe it and

(01:13:22):
it's about you know, transness in horror and also how
people in horror treat transcritics and trans voices. So yeah,
Ddie books dot com is where you can get it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Very cool.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Okay, oh my gosh, and I as you know at
Lauren Flans on Twitter and Blue Sky Lauren underscar Plans
on Instagram. Uh. The pod is at Coming Up pot everywhere. Hey,
you can write a review on iTunes or I think Spotify.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Lets you write reviews.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Now. You can certainly look at that we are evolving.
You can certainly given five stars. That's even easier. And yeah, yeah,
everybody a very happy and.

Speaker 2 (01:14:03):
Very queer Halloween.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
Thank you Bost so much. This was an absolute blast.
Anti y'all listening, I will yeah, I'll see you the next.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Time I see you.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
I want to do a post election episode. So that
is that is the current plan for whatever happens. I
would like to talk about it on the podcast. All right, y'all, Happy, happy,
spooky Halloween, and see you next time. Bye.