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Posted on September 22, 2018

The Wasted Promise of The Predator

Guest Post

The Predator should have been great. The cast is good, full of actors like Keegan-Michael Key and Alfie Allen who thrive even in small roles, and the behind the scenes talent is even better. Shane Black directs a script he co-wrote with Fred Dekker, both of whom worked on the incredibly fun ‘80s tween horror-comedy Monster Squad (1987). Shane Black shines when he takes a shaggy dog premise and injects some unexpected life in it, and that’s exactly what this movie—the fourth or sixth (depending on if you count the Alien Vs. Predator duo) film in a franchise that started in the late-80s—needed. The Predator ends up being kind of a tepid mess, however, especially in the third act. To misquote Monster Squad, The Predator needed some nards.

Posted on September 12, 2018

Sleepaway Camp and the Transgressive Possibilities of Queer Spectatorship

Guest Post

After a quick Google search, I was astounded as to how many blogs denounce Sleepaway Camp (1983) as transphobic. I’ve always been conscious of the film’s inherent homophobia – two children touch each other after seeing their father and his partner in bed, suggesting homosexuality as a taught paedophilic behaviour – but I’m less certain of the film’s inherent transphobia. As a cisgender gay man, it’s questionable whether I can rightfully claim what is and isn’t transphobic, but watching Sleepaway Camp, something less regressive resonates within me.

Angela’s father embraces his partner (top) for Angela and her brother to mimic their behaviour (bottom)

I first recall watching Sleepaway Camp at 15 years old. Besides the ending, I hated it. The only thing that carried me through was Angela (Felissa Rose) who I felt desperately empathetic towards. A quiet, tortured soul, I wanted to like her. I certainly felt a proud grimace of hope whenever she opened her mouth to speak. Little did I know, I was Angela; she’s the bullied caricature of every queer kid. Read more

Posted on September 5, 2018

Teeth: A, Sort of, Superhero Movie

Guest Post

When released in 2007 Teeth seemed to be a very misunderstood film, most particularly by its distributors who marketed it as a sexed-up up body-horror/monster movie. This was summed up by the UK DVD which features on its reverse a coquettish picture of lead character Dawn (Jess Weixler) with various blood splatters around the text. It contrasts heavily with director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s preferred marketing image in which Dawn, dressed in a “Sex Changes Everything” T-shirt stares confused at the viewer. Released on DVD through the Dimension Extreme label (familiar to fans of Torture Porn), Teeth’s very nature as a horror-comedy, and specifically a satire on American sexual values, was obscured.

Posted on August 29, 2018

The Gifts of Deafness in Horror

Guest Post

There remains debate as to whether deafness and hearing-impairments should be classified as disabilities. Many, including those within the deaf community and their allies, affirm that deafness is a culture rather than a disability. Still, others affirm that having a hearing impairment imposes disadvantages on an individual. We can think of many ways that being deaf brings challenges in common daily life activities- the ringing of a doorbell, the answering the telephone, the knock of a door. In horror media, deafness may mean missing the screams of loved ones, or not perceiving an audible threat, until the threat is close enough to sense by other means.

Horror characters rely on specific strengths to get through the terror they are experiencing and/ or to survive. In some examples of television and film, deaf characters utilize their hearing impairments as a gift to fend off the horrors while the hearing characters around them remain vulnerable. In these instances, we see a paradigm shift from one in which deaf persons suffer incapacities to one in which their deafness relates to a tenacity in the face of terror, even as they maintain their human vulnerability.

Posted on August 21, 2018

The Foaming Node: A mutant cult and television

Guest Post

Those seeking to replicate the random strangeness of television by ‘googling’ bizarre keywords may be afflicted by a sense of emptiness. This is because excess brings eternal hunger rather than satiation where there is always something darker, more obscene and twisted waiting for the right hashtag to emerge. One may eventually realize that even though the media junkyard of the Internet certainly supersedes Television in terms of perversity, it is missing the uncertainty that made the latter a special source of weirdness. Let us remember that unlike the sinister infinity of the online (nether) world, morbidities were promised but never guaranteed by the preprogrammed broadcast of the TV. This absence of choice imbued viewing experiences of the weird kind with a unique sense of awe; as one could equally stumble upon the bizarre—ranging from exposes on outlandish cults to psychosexual documentaries on alien abductions—or the oppressing normality of John Travolta in Look Who’s Talking Too (1990). The Foaming Node (65min, 2018) by Ian Haig, which recently screened at the Revelation Film Festival in Perth, seems to borrow from Television’s dark sense of marvel to deliver a story about a freakish cult.