THE GAY BED & BREAKFAST OF TERROR

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gb&bot3 Stars  2007/18/109m

“Some things should stay in the closet!”

Director/Writer: Jaymes Thompson / Cast: Mari Marks, Michael Soldier, Georgia Jean, Robert Borzych, Hilary Schwartz, Vinny Markus, Shannon Lee, Denise Heller, Derek Long, Allie Rivenbark, James Tolins, Lisa Block-Wieser, Jim Polivka, Noah Naylor.

Body Count: 12

Dire-logue: “You will no longer yearn for the engorged penis of a well-muscled man in uniform! From this point on you will embrace the light of God and dream of the sugar-sweet Holy vaginal walls of your soon-to-be wife!”

A lot of gay men like slasher flicks, they provide a kind of sanctuary where the misfit final girl (who is normally sexually repressed and ‘outside’ of the microcosm of society that she exists in) outlives the nasty cheerleaders and fag-hating jocks to best the killer and save the day.

This said, gay characters have always been few and far between, normally wasted with prejudice or revealed to be the killer of the ‘normal’ heterosexual teens, overtly camp, in drag or completely ignored altogether. Gay-centric slasher films are almost as rare: Make A Wish pandered to fantasies around lesbianism and set it to a Friday the 13th-lite baseline, Hellbent got it mostly right by playing it, ahem, “straight” and going for the octane-over-aesthetics route and now to join the ranks is a kind of mash-up of the two, it’s The Gay Bed & Breakfast of Terror…

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After a cabaret song about watching out for straight people adorns the credits, several gay couples drive up to the Sahara Salvation, having left it too late to book accommodation for a gay festival. The Sahara is run by mum/daughter oddball duo Helen and Luella, and the former wants to convert a gay fella from his “Satanic ways” to be a husband to oppressed-lez Luella. There’s also Manfred; a boy-slug hybrid who lives in a cage and likes to eat sinners.

The guests include an arty lesbian couple, a drag queen and his leather-daddy BF (played by director Thompson), an older guy and his buffed boy-toy, a couple of ‘normal’ gay guys and their fag-hag and a guitar-strumming hippie lesbian. Some of them soon fall victim to Helen’s Biblical-spouting and her crucifix-shaped dagger or Manfred’s green fangs. Then there’s partner swapping, sex, flashbacks to Helen and Luella’s homicidal-prompting experiences and a bloody finale of camp carnage.

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So it’s cheap and cheery, similar to But I’m A Cheerleader in its tone and execution (‘scuse the pun) with some funny lines and mannerisms: Helen screams her anti-gay diatribe at an en-dragged intended victim, to which he responds “if God hates us so much then why did he make all the beautiful people gay!!!!” There’s a hidden shrine to Reagan and Bush, a merry lesbian nun, hot players all around and a sense that those involved were having a great time.

As entertaining as I found The Gay B&B of Terror to be, it’d be unfair to ignore its less charming elements. Gay films still appear to lean towards stereotypical characters all too easily and there are an excess of in-jokes that those unfamiliar with gay culture will be bamboozled by. This is a fun party flick, if not a little overlong, but for an audience outside of the intended demographic, it’ll sink harder than a Bible verse in a pride march.

And who’s that woman at the beginning…?

13 Sexy Psychos

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Have you ever watched a slasher film and, when the murderous fiend is unmasked, thought, “I’m strangely attracted to that person?” As you’ll see, it happens to me a fair bit. Are we as demented as they, or is there just something a bit sexy about a knife-toting loon? Here’s my Top 13:

MAJOR spoilers follow…

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Name: Ray (Tom Rolfing)

Film: He Knows You’re Alone (1980)

Story: Seemingly jilted by his girlfriend, he kills her on her wedding day and then proceeds to stalk brides-to-be. Needless to say I was on his side fairly early on.

Why-so-sexy? Brooding loner type, nicely cropped hair. Hates weddings.

*

terrirandall

Name: Terry Randall (Daphne Zuniga)

Film: The Initiation (1983)

Story: Terri is heroine Kelly’s evil twin. How freakin’ cool is that? Answer: so cool. Anyway, she’s mental but has decided she wants to kill Kelly and become her to go travelling and stuff. Quite reasonable really…

Why-so-sexy? Just look at that cute face! Even with no make-up she’s adorable! Works a good gardening fork too.

*

*

howard

 

Name: Howard Johns (Solly Marx)

Film: Silent Madness (1984)

Story: incarcerated for nail-gunning a group of sorority girls in the 60’s, Johns is released in an administrative error (John Howard was the patient they should have released – duh!) and so returns to the sorority house to kill. In 3D.

Why-so-sexy? Premature balding aside, those green eyes are quite nice, as is his mutedness. No office talk to bore you over dinner. Has mother issues though.

*

*

mickey

Name: Mickey (Timothy Olyphant)

Film: Scream 2 (1997)

Story: Mickey is Randy’s film student friend, who films a lot of things, thus enabling me to guess his identity two thirds of the way through. I didn’t get Mrs Loomis though. Bad times. Anyway, he likes killing people, no more, no less.

Why-so-sexy? The QT-lite hair aside, intense stares, lots of film quotes could get annoying though. Nice meaty arms. Straight-up loon, no prissy motives here!

*

brenda

Name: Brenda (Rebecca Gayheart)

Film: Urban Legend (1998)

Story: Brenda is fake-best friend to heroine Natalie (Alicia Witt) but secretly hates her for being present at the accident that killed her boyfriend, David, despite it really being someone else’s fault. Now she wants Jared Leto all to herself.

Why-so-sexy? “Looney-psycho-bitch” Brenda is a real smouldering femme fatale once revealed as the killer. Super big hair that would’ve made the hood she donned difficult to get over her head though… Probably wouldn’t take her home to meet Mum.

*

lars

Name: Lars / Larry (Matt Keeslar)

Film: Psycho Beach Party (2000)

Name: Lars / Larry (Matt Keeslar)

Story: Lars pretends to be a Scandinavian exchange student but is secretly killing people with disabilities or exterior health problems. He murdered his family because they were freaks. So he thought.

Why-so-sexy? When the glasses come off Lars becomes Larry, all confidence and homicidal intentions. Points gained for Keeslar being in Scream 3, then lost for only racking up 4 murders.

*

jeremy

Name: Jeremy Melton / Adam Carr (David Boreanaz)

Film: Valentine (2001)

Story: He’s the geek-turned-sex-god, transforming himself from weedy Jeremy who was humiliated at his school dance into sexy – but alcoholic (understandably) – Adam, boyfriend of the final girl, the only one he doesn’t hate.

Why-so-sexy? It’s Angel for one thing. He hath touched Buffy. But contrary to what Denise Richards says, he is capable of an intricate revenge plot, passing the blame to an innocent party and doing it all looking hot.

*

frank

Name: Frank (John Hopkins)

Film: The Pool (2001)

Story: Revealed to be the machete-wielding nut at the end, Frank is just mental and forgot to take his pills. He blames girls for everything and wants to kill them.

Why-so-sexy? It’s never a stretch to peg the British guy as the villain, must be our evil sounding accent. He’s buff and sweaty but loses points for resembling Simon Cowell.

*

*

hellbent_devil

Name: Killer (uncredited)

Film: Hellbent (2004)

Story: ??? He just turns up at Mardi Gras in West Hollywood (a.k.a. Halloween) and scythes gay blokes for no apparent reason. Maybe the sickle is phallic?

Why-so-sexy? It’s all to do with the physique: not many slasher movie killers go to work in nothing but spandex pants and a devil mask. Thus, he lures in his horny victims by looking so good.

*

leslievernon

Name: Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel)

Film: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Story: Les is a typical guy-next-door who happens to be planning a murder spree at an old farm and invited reporter Taylor (Angela Goethals) and her film crew along to document it. They can’t help intervening and it becomes clear Leslie has thought things through more than they have…

Why-so-sexy? The boy-next-door image notwithstanding, like Hellbent man, Leslie is nicely buffed and that little under-lip beardy thing is nice.

*

 

mandylane

Name: Mandy Lane (Amber Heard)

Film: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)

Story: Killer final girl Mandy reveals herself to be a loon just like her patsy, Emmett, who gets the blame for it all while she rides off into the sunset with man-toy Anson Mount. Who knows what’s up with her? Being beautiful and popular obviously has consequences to consider.

Why-so-sexy? She adheres to the blonde, boobular thing without fault. Plus she’s nicer than the other bitchy girls who go on vacation with her. Who’d ever think she was a psycho, eh?

*

 

fenton

Name: Richard Fenton (Jonathon Schaech)

Film: Prom Night (2008)

Story: For some reason Mr Fenton was obsessed with terminally-dull heroine Brittany Snow, kills her family and then breaks out a few years later to stalk and kill people at Snow’s senior prom. Yawn.

Why-so-sexy? Designer stubble, good athletic build, full lips. He kills boring teenagers freely but bloodlessly.

*

jensen

Name: Tom Hanniger (Jensen Ackles)

Film: My Bloody Valentine 3D (2009)

Story: Tom caused an accident, which caused cannibalism, which caused homicide then more homicide and so on and so forth… He went mad over a decade and returned to town to kill people for absolutely no reason, thus exposing how crap the script for this film was.

Why-so-sexy? All-American good looks as per subjects Fenton, Vernon and Melton, impressive biceps when shown and evidently so angered by lack of substance of plot that he wants to kill all associated with it, especially scribe Todd Farmer.

VICTOR: It’s probably best to pick your own winner this month. Alone. In the privacy of your room.

JOLLY ROGER: MASSACRE AT CUTTER’S COVE

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jollyrogerJOLLY ROGER: MASSACRE AT CUTTER’S COVE

3 Stars  2005/18/77m

“Some things should stay lost at sea.”

Director: Gary Jones / Writers: Jeff Miller & Gary Jones / Cast: Rhett Giles, Tom Nagel, Kristina Korn, Tom Downey, Kim Little, Pamela Munro, Justin Brannock, Megan Lee Ethridge, Hajar Northern, Ted Cochran.

Body Count: 16

Dire-logue: “Just drinking a little, smoking a little dope and all your friends got massacred, right?”

This cheap n’ cheesy quickie from the same studio that brought us the Scarecrow films takes many cues from The Fog in a tale of a murderous pirate back from the dead to behead the present day ancestors of his treacherous crew.

Considering the studio’s choppy resume, Jolly Roger nicely outperforms the previous efforts both technically and in terms of its general enjoyability. Other films that are pilfered include Leprechaun and Jason Goes to Hell. The short running time is a plus, as the sky-high body count escalates at a nice pace to outweigh the detective efforts of the boring teen couple who witness Roger’s slaughter of their high school friends – four corpses in the first fifteen minutes!

The killer, meanwhile, yo-ho-ho’s his way through town collecting severed heads to put in his Dead Man’s Chest with pirate-themed one liners at every turn, kinda like the lovechild of Freddy Krueger and Jack Sparrow. The sword decapitations are sloppy but gory and there’s a funny hand-chop thrown in as well. Endless clichés by numbers, with generous T&A, gallons of gore (though rum is nowhere to be found, much to Roger’s chagrin) and characters so thinly drawn that they barely have enough screen time to do much but die! Not for all tastes for sure but genre completists should get a kick out of it.

Blurbs-of-interest: Gary Jones directed Boogeyman 3 and Axe Giant; Tom Nagel directed ClownTown.

EYES OF A STRANGER

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eyesofastranger2 Stars  1981/81m

“He’s murdered 12 women. The 13th is about to fight back.”

Director: Ken Wiederhorn / Writers: Mark Jackson & Eric L. Bloom / Cast: Lauren Tewes, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John DiSanti, Peter DuPre, Gwen Lewis, Kitty Lunn, Timothy Hawkins, Ted Richert.

Body Count: 7

The number of coincidences that occur throughout Eyes of a Stranger is phenomenal: from the killer managing to appear anywhere necessary in order to eliminate his quarry to sudden regain of sight and speech!

Loveboat‘s Lauren Tewes is Jane, a plucky Miami anchorwoman convinced that a neighbour of hers is the man responsible for a series of local rape murders. Ignoring her lawyer-boyfriend’s advice, she does a little investigating and ends up endangering her blind, deaf and mute sis (Leigh), who was the victim of a murderous rapist as a child.

Most of Tom Savini’s gore effects were removed before the film was even released with an additional minute and a half cropped from the UK video, but it still pissed off feminist protesters to the point where they picketed movie theatres as the repulsive, slobbish maniac slaps, punches and slaughters a string of female victims (as well as a couple of guys who get in the way). The opening murder is adequately executed with some scares that aren’t so dissimilar to a certain Kevin Williamson-scribed box office hit but those that follow are sorely in need of chase action or grue. We can all see where it’s going to end up with psycho-dude (DiSanti) attacking see/speak/hear no evil girl and Lauren coming to the rescue.

Without Savini’s makeup work and so many missing links, Eyes of a Stranger is just another sleazy, dismissive throwback from the days of yore. And will somebody please explain how so many of these guys successfully crawl into the backseats of womens’ cars!?

CODA

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coda

3.5 Stars  1987/15/96m

“When the music stops, the nightmare begins…”

A.k.a. Deadly Possession / Symphony of Evil

Director: Craig Lahiff / Writers: Craig Lahiff & Terry Jennings / Cast: Penny Cook, Arna-Maria Winchester, Liddy Clark, Olivia Hamnett, Patrick Frost.

Body Count: 5

An impressive minor Australian film originally made for a cinema release but ending up premiering on TV instead. A student of music at an exclusive conservatory is attacked in her apartment and thrown out of a window, surviving for the time being but later being murdered in her hospital bed before she can communicate vital clues to her would-be saviour and subsequent prime suspect.

Said suspects ex-wife – a classmate of the deceased – becomes entangled in the mystery and then obsessed with solving it, this finding herself next in line for stalkage as the maniac in a creepy plastic mask begins cropping up in her life. Because of its final televisual resting place, there’s not much grue here but many cues are taken from Halloween and it emulates some of those spookier moments to great effect, with the killer loitering outside the heroine’s room and stalking her and her friend at the opera!

A minimal cast roster confines all possible suspects and after the initial killing it’s a long time before the next murder but the length chase finale is excellent and confirms the film’s slasher movie ancestry, which it shies away from in the first two thirds in favour of character building and the Murder She Wrote-style sleuthing.

Coda (we’re told a musical term for the conclusion of a composition – la-de-da!) makes a lot of good use out of its intense classical soundtrack, from the metronome on the opening credits and is complimented further by lush photography and intelligent direction during the action scenes. About the only thing that prevents it from advancing further up the star-scale is the overlong mid-section and its preliminary reluctance to blend in with its generic habitat and consequential low body count, which could have been assisted by offing a couple of extra students halfway through.

Nevertheless, like its chosen musical accompaniment, this is a delicate and handsome piece of film.

Blurb-of-interest: Olivia Hamnett played Kate Peterson, the looney-tunes doctor, in Prisoner: Cell Block H.

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