That Sweater Is Just Tacky.

You may or may not be aware of this but June is National LGBT Pride month.  This is the month where we celebrate who we are and remind others of our struggle for equal rights because it is around the anniversary of both the Stonewall and the White Night Riots.  This is the month where we remind ourselves that a whole lot of us keep our rock-throwin' arms in fantastic shape, that those shoes don't go with that top, that drag queens are deceptively strong, that lesbians do not have the kind of boobs you see in girl-on-girl porn and that gigantic, muscular men in black leather often have tiny purse dogs.

It's fun stuff.

ANYWAY, that being the case, this week you're gonna get, if not entirely LGBT-themed horror, a good chunk of it.  If you don't wish to read about it, that's fine.  I'm not here to change anybody's mind on anything.  Please note, though, that I WILL delete hateful commentary.  It doesn't belong here.

All of that being said, let's get on with the show.

And, we're gonna kick it off BIG with probably the gayest mainstream horror flick EVER, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

Director Jack Shoder, in 1985, brings us a pre-AIDS paranoia gay-coming-of-age story even if he won't fucking admit it.

Because greased-up Dawson's Creek casting is just de rigueur in Hollywood...

So, here's the dealio.  5 years after the events in the first movie, the Walsh's move into 1428 Elm Street, Nancy's old house and Jesse, our protagonist with the sexually ambiguous name, moves into Nancy's room.  Because this is a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, he starts having dreams about Freddy demanding that he kill for him since Nancy fucked up or something like that.  To do this, Freddy wants to be inside him.  Literally.  

Now, you'd never guess it or anything but Jesse has a girlfriend.  He has a girlfriend like I had a girlfriend in high school.  All for show.  Anyway, Lisa, said girlfriend, finds Nancy's diary in Jesse's closet which, of course, covers all of her interactions with Freddy.  He gets all panicky like a fluffy bunny and brings it to his parents who, of course, argue with him about it so he storms out.

And, somewhere along the line, he shoots dicks out of his mouth.

Now, like any repressed gay kid, Jesse finds himself walking late at night being all pensive and shit.  Because this is 1985, he takes himself into a bar where he finds his gym coach who's all decked out in his butch top S&M leathers and ready to ask "hips or lips".

Come to Daddy.

Now, seeing as how they aren't in school or anything, we know why Coach takes Jesse back to school to run some laps as detention.  Jesse doesn't but that's because Jesse is a fucking moron.  "Hit the showers?"  Seriously?

It's OK, though, because Freddy likes a little light bondage and knife play.  He slices up Coach but good and leaves his non-existent butt to hang.

The safe-word is banana.

But, when the steam clears, it's Jesse that has the glove on.  Of course, he panics like a little bitch and runs away.

In the meantime, not-girlfriend Lisa has done some digging into Krueger and has found the power plant where he worked and brought his victims.  At the same time, Freddy pays a call on Jesse's sister but when she wakes up, Jesse's standing over her with the glove.

To counteract these increasingly creeper-like actions, and to try and get the taste of Freddy penis out of his mouth (it had been there during a make-out session with Lisa during her pool party but he LEFT the party and ran straight to his dude-friend's house instead of continuing with his girlfriend because, y'know, dong), Jesse has his bestest buddy Ron watch over him as he sleeps.  Not his girlfriend.  A dude.  Of course, this doesn't work because Ron is an ass who falls asleep right after Jesse does.  As soon as Ron's eyes close, Freddy begins clawing his way out of Jesse.

That's gonna leave a mark.

Of course, the door is jammed so Ron's pretty much helpless against Krueger.  Duh.  

So, Jesse, who had apparently gone to bed at about 1 in the afternoon, legs it over to Lisa's house where her pool party is still... ummm... happening. 

When he gets there, though, he takes control of Jesse again and decimates the party.

'Cause this is Thriller...

Lisa saves Jesse/Freddy from being shot, because she's stupid, and runs to the power plant where she tries to use fucking conversion therapy on Jesse.  She's all "Pray the Freddy Away" and tries to cure him with a kiss.  Because this never works, Freddy accosts them on the school bus the next morning.

I think they're gonna be late for school...

So, yeah.  This is, of course, the black sheep in the Nightmare family but it's kind of culturally significant.  In 1985, not a whole lot of movies outside the art house circuit were about gay anybody.  This one, while BARELY outwardly straight, had so much gay subtext they may as well have just come out and said "Hey, Jesse's totally gay."  Hell, Mark Patton, the actor portraying Jesse was already out of the closet at that point.  The entire movie reads like Marcus Bachmann's autobiography.

In an interview for Attitude magazine, Robert Englund stated that this was all intentional, including the casting of Patton.  Patton is apparently an idiot in real life because he said he had no idea (I kid.  I've met Patton and he's a doll.) and Shoder didn't even think about it even though David Chaskin's script was written to be extra-gay and Chaskin said so.  Kinda like the Fast and Furious movies.

Flaming Queen.

And, seriously, Nightmare 2 wasn't even subtle about it.  The claw coming through a girl's breasts makes boobs a threat.  Dick tongue.  S&M in the showers.  Snapping towels and flying balls.  The sign on Jesse's door that says "No Chicks".  The inordinate amount of time Jesse spends wrestling with Ron.

This movie is gayer than a San Francisco Pride parade.

It's also COMPLETELY hilarious.  I mean, it's not a good movie.  In fact, it's friggin' awful, but it's definitely that hilarious kind of awful that we all look for.

This one deserves a party with cosmos and finger sandwiches.

Yer so cool, Brewster!

HEY!  I'm gonna review a vampire flick!  This is a first!

As we all know, the 80s brought us some of the best horror, even if it was filled with enough Aqua Net to last RuPaul for the rest of her life and shoulder pads designed to kill.

This extends to vampire movies, too, in the form of Fright Night.

Fright Night was an odd duck in the vampire genre because it didn't take place in a city or in Romania or London.  It brought the vampire to the 'burbs and with a plot not unlike Rear Window, it added a distinctly Hitchcockian vibe to it.  Add a touch of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf and the American staple of the late night TV horror movie host and you've got a heapin' helpin' o' bloodsuckin' awesome.

Our story goes like this:  Charlie Brewster is a huge horror fan, watching the local late night horror show whenever he can, Fright Night, hosted by Peter Vincent.  This, of course, leads him to be particularly sensitive to the fact that his new, (supposedly... at least he's pretending to be) gay neighbor, Jerry Dandridge, is a vampire.  Nobody believes him but if they did, the movie would be about 20 minutes long.

What the fuck am I doing here?

Since his future lesbian girlfriend, Amy Peterson, doesn't believe him, she enlists the actually quite cowardly Vincent to assist in proving Dandridge is not a vampire.  Peter is, wisely, skeptical but goes along with it.  And then he sees Jerry's lack of reflection in the mirror. 

This causes Dandridge to hunt down future gay porn star Evil Ed and future lesbian girlfriend and turn them into vampires in an effort to lure Charlie to him for the purposes of, DUN Dun duuuuuun, revenge.

YOW!  Black'n'Decker Pecker Wrecker, much?

Tom Holland gave us yet another example of how humor and horror are used successfully together.  Not only did this scare the pants off of my 12-tear-old self, but it made me laugh out loud.  The blending of the different types of vampire films up until that time was brilliant.  The classic aloof vampire. The Hammer-inspired host.  The Renfield-like Evil Ed.  Finding the references made it that much more fun!

Plus, there's this face.  GAH!

Fright Night had a soul to it that a lot of vampire films don't.  Maybe that was because of the change in setting but it felt like "This is what happens when a normal person has to deal with the weird".  And, really, there was only one complete asshole in the film and that was Evil Ed.  I liked the character but he does get to be annoying after a while.  It's that voice of his.  Nails on a fuckin' chalkboard.

Even 28 years later, it's still a fun watch.  Bust it out and laugh all over again.