#Boris would hear his sister being used as an example in what not to be but also she had to be somewhat like them. oh man.... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

benscursedkid · 4 years

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synopsis: bori wants to take merula to the ball. only problem? she’s a chicken.

pairing: borislava andreeva x merula snyde (and a touch of lyubka x diego because they’re cute too)

genre: just fluff and other teenage things :))

words: 3.113

a/n: my second and final gift to the lovely @blubxtch! I hope you like it! i also wanted to say thank you to my other winners for being so patient with me. there’s a lot going on with school right now so thank you for all of your continued support. 💙

*lyubka and bori belong to @blubxtch**

“All this cheer is making me want to barf.”

Bori arches a well manicured brow at her companion. She casts a look around.

It’s true, the student body has seen few better days. Even in the dim light of the dungeons, the air radiates with a sort of warm feeling. The kind that makes the greens look more green and the purples more vibrant than they were before. It’s as though a flip was switched and suddenly her chest is just that much lighter.

She thinks she might choke.

“Always a peach, aren’t you?” Bori jibes, electing to ignore the fact that she’s much the same way.

Merula throws her a snarl and goes back to stirring her potion that’s beginning to get a little thicker than the recipe implies from lack of proper attention. “I’m just saying… not everyone wants to listen to their squeals and shrieks whenever they get asked to the ball.”

Her eyes meet Rowan’s. A wicked smile catches her lips.

She clears her throat, adding the last ingredient to her own potion. “You know, if I didn’t know any better,” She drawls, trying her hardest to keep the amusement from reaching her tone. “I’d say you were jealous, Merula.”

The other girl splutters, nearly dropping her ladle into her potion. Her pink violet eyes glare daggers into the back of her head.

Her smile widens.

“Well, clearly, you don’t know better.” She snaps with a huff, turning up her nose in a display of utter disgust.

“It’s okay to be upset you don’t have a date, Merula.” Rowan tries, sparing just one moment to check over their potion before deciding that it looks finished. “Lots of people don’t! For example, Bori and I—hey!”

Rowan frowns over at her, confused over the sudden interruption, but Bori shakes her head vehemently. The witch tilts her head in thought, not understanding. Unfortunately, it takes a moment too long for her message to be received.

“Oh, really,” Merula sing-songs, her throat scratchy and a little unused to the sound. “You mean, neither of you two have dates either? I thought someone would’ve wanted to take Hogwarts’ resident curse breaker to the ball.” The Slytherin grins, sickly sweet like the cat who ate the canary. “Guess people just don’t like you as much as you thought they did.”

Bori opens her mouth to retort, but a scaly voice cuts her off.

“Andreeva! Khanna!” Snape gripes, walking towards them only to leer over their potion with a knowing grimace. “If this is the best you can come up with then I don’t know how either of you expect to pass this class.”

With another snicker from Merula, he stalks off to go berate another student and Bori and Rowan each peer back into their cauldron. To their shock—and absolute horror—their potion has turned from a soft baby blue to a striking pumpkin orange.

Their jaws drop and Rowan immediately looks to the book for answers while Bori takes to glowering at Merula who, for her part, can't seem to stop sniggering.

“Did you do something to our potion?” Bori demands as her poor friend trips over herself to grab more materials.

Merula crosses her arms, unimpressed. “We were talking the whole time. You were watching me.”

Bori bites her tongue, knowing that she has a point. Still, she has no idea how this happened. Their potion was perfect. How did it just all of a sudden sour?

At her blank look, Merula rolls her eyes and points to a spot on the open page. Bori skims it and freezes. It all comes together.

Merula smirks, turning her focus back to her own cauldron. “Maybe if you bothered to read the rest, you’d know that you need to bottle it the moment you finish. It sours quickly so leaving it any longer will ruin the entire batch.”

“Yes, Merula, thank you for that wonderful observation.”

“No problem.”

Anyone else would have withered under the pressure of her glare, but Merula just grins to herself, happy to have gotten the last word. And while Bori knows she should be infuriated—though believe her, there’s plenty of that too—she can’t help but feel something else as well. It’s like a series of little pinpricks riding up her arms and heating her cheeks.

Excitement.

Much to Bori’s immense relief, springtime appears to be rearing its head over the castle, casting a warm glow onto its inhabitants. More flowers are starting to bloom and less and less layers are being needed to enjoy the outdoors.

Currently, Bori sits on the lip of the fountain in the clock tower courtyard. She relishes in the sunshine that spills into the area, her head facing up toward the sun in reverence. Lyubka sits directly to her right, trying her hardest to finish up an assignment due tomorrow.

It only takes a few more minutes for her sister to finish and pack her things away neatly into her bag. She turns to Bori with a smile. “Enjoying yourself, there?”

Bori nods, taking in a deep breath of fresh air. She picks up on the lingering scent of daisies.

“Well, I suppose you did always like…” Lyubka trails off, leaving her sentence incomplete. Bori frowns and cracks one eye open just to find her sister intently staring at something behind her.

She switches directions and looks between Lyubka and a group of boys gathered by the courtyard entrance. Flashes of an assortment of colored robes catch her eye and Bori has to blink back her surprise. Gryffindors, Slytherins, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs all pile together, seemingly oblivious to all the noise they’re making. They’re all in her year, if her memory serves her right, making them all vaguely familiar though none of them really stand out.

Squinting her eyes, Bori realizes that all of the boys seem to be crowded around one in particular. She thinks she remembers Penny talking about him once. Casanova Caplan, she had called him. From his yellow lined robes, she deduces that he must be a Hufflepuff, though his smile that seems to be made entirely of sunshine doesn’t exactly argue this theory. Paired with his dark eyes and wavy hair, Bori can’t say she’s surprised he’s so popular, even if he’s not quite her type.

But if the look on Lyubka’s face is of any indication, he appears to be exactly her type.

“So,” Bori purrs, wagging her eyebrows at her sister. “You got a date to the ball yet?”

Lyubka blinks for a moment, snapping out of her reverie. “No, but I don’t need one. I’m going with Rowan.”

“I thought Rowan didn’t like balls?”

“No, she doesn’t like dancing,” Lyubka corrects, brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “But after Andre helped us both with dancing lessons and picked out our dresses—which he’s still waiting on you, by the way—I finally convinced her to come.”

Bori nods, glad to hear it. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

Her twin blanks, lost. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Her shoulders pull into a shrug and she looks away in faux innocence. “Oh, no reason really. It’s just that you left a little drool on your chin while you were gazing at Casanova Caplan—ow! Rude!”

The Hufflepuff pouts while Bori tries her best not to smirk at the obvious irritation on her sister’s face. She presses a hand to her arm where Lyubka had whacked her with a textbook and attempts to appear wounded.

“Don’t say that,” Lyubka groans, looking around for prying ears as though her deepest secret had just been spilled. “He has a name, you know.”

“I would hope so,” Bori chuckles. “Casanova Caplan seems rather long.”

Lyubka pins her with a disbelieving look. “His name is Diego Caplan and he’s actually very nice.”

“Oh, so you’ve actually gathered your wits long enough to talk to him—”

“—Bori!—”

“—Lyubka!”

Lyubka closes her eyes and takes a deep breath before beginning. “I haven’t talked to him all that much, but the few times we have crossed paths he was very pleasant.”

“I’m sure…”

“Bori, please,” Lyubka whines and Bori decides to take pity on her.

“Why don’t you ask him to be your date?” Bori grins, looking back over to the group of boys. “If he’s as nice as you say, you both should have lots of fun!”

“No,” Lyubka shakes her head, albeit not without throwing a wistful look Diego’s way. “I’m already going with Rowan and on the off chance he doesn’t already have a date and says yes, it would be rude to ditch her after all the effort I put into convincing her to go in the first place.”

Bori pouts but knows Lyubka is right. With a resigned sigh, she grabs for her water bottle and takes a sip.

“But what about you?” Lyubka inquires.

“What about me?”

She can practically hear the smirk in Lyubka’s voice as she speaks. “When are you finally gonna woman up and ask Merula to be your date?”

Bori nearly chokes on her water. “What?”

“Oh, look! There she is!” Lyubka points across the courtyard where Merula and Ismelda appear to have just arrived. “Maybe we should call her over here. Meru—”

Her hand claps over Lyubka’s mouth before she can continue to embarrass her further. Lyubka arches a brow at her and shoves her hand away. “I swear to Merlin, Lyu, you don’t want to do that.”

Her brown eyes roll, unconvinced and all too used to her empty threats. An uncharacteristic light shines in her eyes, now full of mischief. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before teasing your dear sister about her crush.”

“Lyu, come on, that’s not the same—”

“—Hey, Merula!” Lyubka shouts loud enough for all to hear, waving her hand wildly in the air. The Slytherin in question glares at them, but not without interest. “Yeah, come here! Come here!”

Her sister gestures for Merula to come over to where they are and, much to Bori’s dismay, the girl only considers it for a moment before stomping her way over.

Instincts tell her to turn away, cupping her hand over her eyes. She really hopes that if she can’t see Merula, Merula might not be able to see her utter mortification.

Merula Snyde finally comes to stand in front of her, arms folded and frown firmly in place. For a moment all is quiet and no one says anything. Lyubka can’t stop grinning from ear to ear, which only seems to rile Merula up more.

“What are you smiling at?” She accuses, patience already wearing thin.

And, without a word, Lyubka picks up her bag and walks off—in the other direction of Diego Caplan, mind you. The two of them watch her, incredulous, until she disappears behind the cobblestone walls and ivy.

“What was that about?”

“Hm? Oh, pfft, that?” Bori waves off the topic like batting away a fly. “She’s just mad at me because I was teasing her about her date for the ball.”

Merula’s eyes threaten to widen. “She has a date, too?”

Bori pauses. “Well, yeah sort of.”

The other girl throws her hands up in the air, an annoyed and perplexed expression on her face. “Well, that’s just great. I think that might just leave you and I as the only two in our year without dates.”

Merula looks around as if she could sniff out a single person from a mile away, hands on her hips. Sensing her distress, Bori bites her lip, a surge of fragile confidence bubbling up in her chest.

“About that…” Bori ventures, her voice far too unsteady for her liking. Merula’s gaze snaps back to hers, revealing nothing. She clears her throat. “I was thinking… maybe you and I could go together..?”

This, it seems, is the wrong thing to say.

Merula scoffs, the curve of her lips turning bitter. “Oh, yeah, because you couldn’t get anyone else, right? I’m just some scapegoat, hm?”

Bori flinches, realizing that there were probably much better ways to phrase her question. “No, that’s not it!” She denies, pushing a hand through her brown hair.

“Really?” Merula quips. “Then why?”

Her mouth goes dry and suddenly the words get caught in her throat. Merula shifts her weight from foot to foot and Bori decides just to go for it. “Think about it? The best witch at Hogwarts and the resident curse breaker? Can you honestly tell me that we wouldn’t be the best couple there?”

She quiets at this as though mulling it over. Around them people continue on, but Bori takes no notice of them. The only thing she can focus on now is the dip of her eyebrows knitted together in thought and the scrutinizing way Merula’s gaze drifts over her. She can hear the pounding of her heart in her ears.

After what feels like a millennia, Merula gives a small nod. “I suppose you have a point, we would show everyone else up by a long shot.” The thought tugs a smile onto her face and Bori makes a point not to release a breath of relief.

“I guess it’s settled then?”

“I guess it is.” A handful of awkward nods later and Merula turns around to head back over to Ismelda. She’s only a few feet away before she spins back around to point a threatening finger at Bori. “Oh, and no corsages! They’re tacky.”

Bori offers her a thumbs up in response and Merula finally returns to her place across the courtyard. Her outcome achieved, she gathers her things and tries not to smile too brightly on her way out.

“Would you stop messing with that!” Andre bristles, slapping half-heartedly at her hands that hold fistfuls of her dress. “You look stunning, of course. She’ll be here soon.”

Bori huffs indignantly but turns back to one of the mirrors the staff had conveniently put up for the Celestial Ball.

She has to say, Andre and Rowan did a great job helping her get ready. While the former had “slaved” over the final touches of her dress, Rowan insisted on doing her hair, claiming she’d been practicing to do her own. A few stray strands fall in tight ringlets around her face while the rest of it is pinned back, draping behind her shoulders. She opted to go light on jewelry, keeping in her earrings and adding a silver bracelet to match the color of her floor length dress.

“Bori! Bori!” Her sister’s voice echoes, only for the girl to barrel into her a second later. Her lips are stretched wide in a grin, her body practically buzzing in excitement. “Merula’s here!”

Lyubka doesn’t wait for the words to process, grabbing at her shoulders and spinning her around to face the entrance of the Great Hall. And there she spots Merula, speaking calmly to Ismelda at her left.

Suddenly all the lights and conversations around them fall away, fading into simply background noise. She doesn’t register all the starry decorations that hang from the ceiling or bloom below her feet on the enchanted dance floor.

The only thing she sees now is Merula Snyde.

Magenta eyes lock on hers and instantly Bori knows that the beating of her heart hastens to match hers.

Merula marches toward her with purpose. If it weren’t for the ever so faint blush dusting her cheeks, Bori would be completely convinced of the cool and confident façade she presents. The other students seem to part for her and Bori’s unsure if it’s out of fear or reverence.

Likely a bit of both.

“Gotta say, Andreeva,” Merula remarks once within hearing distance, her eyes taking over her appearance with intrigue. “You look good. I’m impressed.”

“Well, I couldn’t be caught with the best witch at Hogwarts wearing just anything.” Bori coos, batting her eyes in a miraculous stroke of flirtation.

“Merlin knows she tried…” Andre calls from over Bori’s shoulder, earning himself a glare.

But to her surprise, Merula chuckles at the jab, the sound softer than Bori would have thought. “I mean, you’re no me but I suppose it’ll do.”

Bori releases a sound somewhere between a scoff and a genuine laugh. “Oh please, we’re the best looking ones here and you know it.”

Her eyes shine with mirth and she points over her shoulder to the dance floor. “And clearly we’ll be the best dancers too if this is our competition.”

Bori cranes her neck around Merula to see a group of Gryffindor boys trying to bust some moves that look as though they came directly from the highlights of their grandparents. Their eyes meet for a brief moment before they’re both overtaken by bouts of obnoxious laughter. Merula clutches at her side while Bori steadies herself on her date.

“Totally,” Bori agrees once their giggles begin to subside, gasping just a little for breath. “I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to beat that.”

Merula’s freshly manicured eyebrow arches in subtle protest, a smirk painting her glossy lips. “Is that a challenge, Andreeva?”

Her expression grows to match. “Absolutely.”

Grabbing at each other’s hands in such a natural way that neither of them want to question, they push their way into the middle of the dance floor, right under the potentially fake disco ball. They share a grin before allowing themselves to get lost in the melody of the songs. The closeness comes easy to them and Bori finds that being here with Merula just makes an invariable amount of sense.

It’s only after a handful of other songs open and die out that one of them speaks up again and Bori is shocked to find that it’s Merula.

“You know, Andreeva,” She yells to be heard over the music, her body still following the upbeat rhythm. “I’m really glad you’re my date tonight.”

For a moment Bori’s certain she heard her wrong. Are her ears deceiving her? “Really?”

Merula nods, the most sincere and unapologetic smile she’s ever seen before pulling at her mouth. “Yeah. If you hadn’t asked me… I don’t think I would’ve been able to ask you.”

Bori grins and reaches out to drape her arms around Merula’s shoulders, meeting at the nape of her neck. “Well then I’m glad I asked.”

“Me, too.”

She knows that by this time tomorrow, the two of them are likely to go back to pretending this date never happened. Merula will fall back into the act that she’s never enjoyed a moment of her company and Bori will feign hostility at the mere mention of her name.

But for now they dance. They sway.

And let their worries fade away.

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introvertguide · 4 years

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On the Waterfront (1954); AFI #19

The next film on the AFI top 100 under review is the award winning crime drama, On the Waterfront (1954). This film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and picked up 8 including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. The film is based on a series of articles in the New York Sun from 1949 that depicted the condition of the eastern seaboard and all the corruption that was involved at the time. I did a lot of historical digging for this film and realize how important the accuracy was and it seemed pretty spot on. Before I get into story, let me give the standard announcement...

SUPER SPOILER WARNING!!! I TOOK A LOT OF NOTES DURING THE FILM AND THIS WILL SPOIL THE ENTIRE THING!!! WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST AND THEN COME BACK AND CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE!!!

The film starts out with the murder of a man named Joey Doyle. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) calls to Joey’s window at night to have him meet up on the roof concerning a pigeon. We see that Terry is with a bunch of gangsters who are waiting up on the roof for Joey. The audience doesn’t see the actual meeting, but a person falls off the building a couple seconds later and it is assumed that Joey is dead. It seems that Terry was not aware that Joey would be killed, he thought they were going to rough him up or intimidate him.

Terry is not put out too much because he goes to a local pub right after and we meet the local crime boss. Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) is a stereotype mob boss who runs a tight ship and could snap at any moment. It is an awkward scene where one person in the room is having fun and everyone else is nervously waiting for something to go wrong. Friendly’s right hand man is Terry’s brother Charley (Rod Steiger) and Friendly has a fondness for Terry because of the relation and also that Terry used to be a boxer. Before the night is over, Terry is given a stack of cash for his help with Joey and the promise of a cushy job on the dock the next day.

The next morning, a group of people look over Joey’s body on the street and his sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) is understandably angry about the event. She shames her father and the other workers for not saying anything and she yells at the local priest (Karl Malden) for not being more involved. She wants to get involved and help her father get work so she goes down to the docks with the priest to see what the situation is really like. People attached to the mob are given preferred treatment (including Terry) and all the other workers have to scramble in hopes of getting work. The priest sees the corruption and decides to hold a union meeting in the church to encourage the workers to speak out against Friendly to improve the working conditions.

A group of dockworkers not part of the corruption meet at the church, but all remain quiet. The stay “D & D” (deaf and dumb) to what is going on so that they don’t get hurt. Joey is sent by Friendly to the meeting to see if anybody talks and he sits in the back. It seems apparent that he is there to intimidate the others into remaining silent. Before the meeting is officially over, a brick comes through the window and a bunch of gangsters pound sticks on the ground, waiting for the workers in the meeting to leave. Most everyone is attacked and beaten on the way out except for the priest, Edie, and Terry. The priest convinces one of the workers named Dugan (Pat Henning) to talk to the Waterfront Crime Commission to prevent another attack like this.

Dugan agrees to testify and we move forward to the day before he is supposed to go in front of the court. He is working on unloading a ship of Irish whiskey and an “accident” occurs in which a pallet of booze falls on Dugan, killing him. The priest comes to give last rights and gives an impassioned speech to the surrounding workers about how keeping quiet is a crucifixion and good men would not let this happen if they could stop it. Some of the gangsters through garbage at the priest while he is talking, but he continues on and Terry starts to feel guilty about his part in the deaths and injustice. He punches one of the enforcers who is going to throw something and this does not go unnoticed. In a very symbolic image, the priest rides a crane up out of the ship and ascends out of the hold like an angel ascending towards heaven. Very cinematic and full credit to cinematographer Boris Kaufman for this fantastic shot that no doubt contributed to his Oscar win for his work on this film.

Terry starts to fall for Edie and considers testifying against friendly. He knows, however, that she will learn of his connection to her brother’s death and fears show will hate him. Friendly gets wind of Terry’s connection with Edie and sends Charley over to convince him to not testify. In a very poignant scene, Charley and Terry talk in a taxi and Charley tells him that he needs to promise not to squeal or Charley will take him to the docks to be executed. Terry says that he can’t live being a bum. He used to be a prizefighter and Friendly had convinced him to take a dive during a fight and all his potential was wasted. It is the famous “I could have been a contender. I could have been a somebody” scene. Charley let’s Terry go and goes in to stall so the Terry can escape and instead Charley is killed and left hanging from an ice hook in an alleyway as a message to Terry.

This goes too far and Terry goes to the local bar to shoot Friendly. Instead of the crime boss, Terry runs into the priest and is convinced to testify in court as a better form of revenge. He agrees and Terry identifies friendly in court as being corrupt and ordering the murder of both Joey Doyle and Dugan. After testifying, Friendly threatens Terry and says that he will never find work on the docks. Terry is shunned by all the other workers for squealing and only finds kindness from Edie.

Terry shows up the next day for work recruitment and every person there (including a random hobo) is given work except for him. Terry goes to confront Friendly and is summarily beaten by a group of gangsters. The dock workers see this and say that they will not work unless Terry is allowed to work as well. Friendly has lost his power over the docks and can’t kill Terry since he has already talked and is now being protected by the police. The priest shows up and tells Terry to stand up and lead the workers onto the ship, cementing the shift in power. A severely beaten Terry is helped up and he stumbles onto the boat followed by the rest of the works. The movie ends as the plank doors to the ship’s hull close.

Although the characters are sensationalized, the situation was very representative of what life what life was like on the East Coast docks during the late 40s and early 50s. This film is a time capsule for American life right after WW2 and a lesson concerning what can happen with complete corruption. Very fascinating from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one.

I have a little bit of an issue with Brando and his acting in this film. I do not think he is that good. He mumbles his lines like he does in every movie and it is apparent that he is a good actor but not that great at line delivery. Also, when I say he is a good actor, I don’t mean this film. He comes across almost whiny and conceited and I never really get behind the character. I freely admit that I don’t really like Brando in general as a person (at least from the stories I hear, I have never met him) and that might taint my judgment of his performances. I never bought him as a boxer and I never bought him as being tough. He is acting like a soft hearted bully, but it just doesn’t impress me. He got top billing and his name is bigger than the movie credit on the opening title cards, but I thought Karl Malden did a much better acting job. I am thankful for Brando’s contribution to creating method acting, but that doesn’t make this a great performance and I don’t think he deserved the Oscar.

Also, just like with The Godfather, Brando played a part that was memorable with great lines and won the award for Best Actor while the rest of the male cast who gave outstanding performances were relegated to Best Supporting Actor (three actors nominated in both cases) and came home empty handed. Brando kept getting quirky character roles in well written films and surrounded by incredible talent...and then he was given all the credit for the incredible result. I just don’t like that guy and I realize it is a personal bias. I just don’t like how he is given all the credit (and takes all the credit) for projects he was a part of. But moving on...

I again want to point out the cinematography for this movie because I am not generally impressed by this aspect of films, especially when they are in black and white. I think On the Waterfront, Citizen Cane, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf are all examples of how prop placement, camera angles, pans, and lighting can be used to tell a story beyond just the acting and dialogue. A well deserved Best Cinematography award for Boris Kaufman.

So does this film deserve to be on the AFI top 100? Yes. For the famous “contender” speech, the reflection of history, the visual storytelling, and the wonderful acting, it absolutely deserves a spot. Would I recommend it? Well...I would say yes but not for Brando. I was so bored by the part of Terry Malloy that I found many other things that I liked to get through the film. The first time I watched I was expecting this great performance and I was thoroughly disappointed. Watch the film for everything else besides Marlon Brando and you will be impressed.

#on the waterfront #marlon brando #karl malden #eva marie saint #elia kazan #crime drama #longshoreman #union #movie review #afi films #introvert #introverts

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shirtlesssammy · 7 years

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Ladies Drink Free: Recap

Then:

Claire is a hunter in training.

Now:

Outside the Lucky Badger Ale House, a young woman texts her brother about her false whereabouts, but he catches her in her lie and they start walking home. She wants to head back to the bar, and he wants her to act her age. On the lonely, snow covered path, they hear a noise from the surrounding forest. Hayden, the sister, seems scared, and wants to turn around. Her brother insists there’s nothing scary out there, and proceeds to walk deeper into the dark woods. OOOoooOOO. Hayden is the one who screams though, and her brother rushes to find her knocked out in the snow. Masked attacker monster reveals himself, and Molo Ram’s brother’s heart right out of his chest.

At the BMoL high-tech trailer, Sam and Dean wait. Dean is impatient catering to the Brits, but Mick soon shows up with a case. In Wisconsin, a young man was found dead with his heart ripped out, his sister survived the supposed animal attack, but is in the hospital. Mick pings it as a werewolf attack. The boys wonder how Hayden survived. Then Mick nerds out over his fancy British boarding school for Men of Letters, Kendricks. He learned everything there is to know about Lycanthropy there. Sam’s impressed with the Hogwarts for Hunter-lites. Dean, not so much.

The boys are cool to take care of this milk run, and Mick wants to tag along. Dean’s still pushing back at working with the BMoL, but Sam thinks they can use their knowledge. “If he’s coming, you’re babysitting him,” Dean insists, before heading out.

Of course, once on the road, Dean is subjected to a hella interesting boring podcast of Mick’s.

Mick fills the brothers in on the British history of werewolf hunting. They’re efficient, and because of that, there hasn’t been a werewolf outbreak in Britain since the 1920’s. Sam wonders about friendly ones. They bring up Garth (GARTH!) but Mick doesn’t believe in monsters staying on the right side of the law. (STAY HIDDEN GARTH!)

They finally arrive at their destination (Boris strongly suspects they’re in Wisconsin Dells --this isn’t a fun times, water-park, resort weekend guys. There’s werewolves to hunt.) The Winchesters are a little overwhelmed with the 3-star, baby-shampoo, pool having lodge, but adjust just fine by morning. Dean even went for a swim (GAG REEL PLZ). Sam did more research. He discovered that in the 1930’s the BMoL were working on a plasma therapy to cure werewolves. “Useless, I’m afraid,” Mick interjects.

At the hospital the brothers try talking to Hayden’s mother, but she shuts them down cold. Dr. “Mick” Buckingham walks in and casually escorts the mother out for a quick exam. He discovers that Hayden was bitten, but declines to inform the brothers. Sam and Dean discover that the mother has been bombarded by “Big Foot Truthers” --one a young, pissed-off, blonde “Fish and Wildlife” employee --CLAIRE!

Claire is busy texting/lying to Jody about touring UW-Madison. She gets a call on her fake phone, and it’s just a trolling Dean. (Beatrice Quimby! 9 year old Boris is happy--although I thoroughly identified with Ramona.) She sees right through his nonsense. Meeting up at the hotel, Claire fills the others in on her investigation so far. Dean activates protective!Dad mode. Mick decides to take off, which allows the brothers to grill Claire about her shenanigans.

Dr. Buckingham pays another visit to the hospital, this time with a syringe of silver nitrate. He starts sending it through Hayden’s IV, but she awakens, all rabid werewolf-y, and attacks Mick. He plunges the syringe right into her heart, killing her.

The next morning, the gang get the low-down on Hayden’s death. The strangest thing about it all: Her wounds healed. ��Ok, what the hell?” Claire wonders out loud. Mick continues to lie. The salient point being: whatever attacked Hayden is still out there. They split up to investigate further.

Sam and Claire head off to interview Hayden’s friend. Claire tells her “old skeezer” friend Sam to wait in the car. Aww, remember when Sam was Claire’s age? Where does the time go?

Dean and Mick head to the bar. Inside the bar they ask the bartender about Hayden. Dean tries to level him his best intimidation face.

It turns out that Conner, the other bartender with the douche tribal tat, had a thing with Hayden. (Not dating, though, bro.) Conner insists that he worked and then went straight home the night before but Dean presses him, insisting that he's lying. Dean turns to Mick and, as an illustration, asks him what he did last night. (Dean, you don't trust Mick one bit – you beautiful, clever, special crocus.) Mick stutters out a shoddy reply about writing a report and going to bed, clearly caught off guard.

Conner still insists that he did nothing wrong the prior night. Dean then asks if he met Claire. When Conner chortles about their less-than-stellar interaction Dean leans in nice and slow and says, “You ever touch her again, I'll break your face.” Thanks, Dad <3 (Stepdad?)

Outside Dean calls Mick out on his ultra lame alibi. Young girls – particularly new werewolves – don't just die out of nowhere. He slaps a hand on Mick's injured shoulder and Mick, the noob, grunts in pain. He admits to injecting her with silver nitrate. “She attacked me,” he protests, “and...I had orders.” Oh, Mick. Mick insists that he's just doing the job, then needles Dean about “palling around with witches and demons.” MICK, them's fightin' words.

“Things aren't just black and white out here,” Dean insists. He brings up psychic Magda as an example of someone who deserved the second chance. (Oh, Magda, by Grabthar’s hammer...you shall be avenged!)

“That's your luxury,” Mick says. “We have a code.” Dean angrily reminds Mick that a mother has now lost both of her kids and, mic dropped, walks away.

Outside the school, Claire emerges triumphant. “You really do look like a creeper,” she tells Sam as he lounges outside the high school on her car hood. Which...yeah. True. Claire had success weaseling information from Hayden’s best friend. She found out that Hayden was dating an ultra-possessive guy - which was why she was at the bar that night.

Sam barely acknowledges the latest clue, instead shifting to ask her why Jody thinks she's in Madison looking at the University of Wisconsin. BUSTED. Sam didn't tell Jody yet about Claire’s werewolf hunt, but he presses her for information about why she's hiding her hunting.

Claire confesses that she did try hunting with Jody for a while. But instead of Claire taking an action role, she ended up sitting in the car or on the sidelines while Jody bad-assed her way through case after case. (I feel for you, Claire...but I also really want to watch Jody kicking ass all over the place. #torn) “I'm better off on my own,” Claire says. She imagines that'll make everyone happier.

“I'm so sick of you guys dive-bombing my life like you care,” she growls. She stalks off into the woods around the school to cool down, rage music blasting in her ears. Down at the school’s baseball diamond, Claire's spidey sense starts to tingle. She whirls to see the tall masked man from the cold open and whips out her knife.

The two engage in fisticuffs. Here, fisticuffs means she goes at him with the knife but he gets the better of her, presses her into the ground, rips aside her jacket, and bites her in the shoulder. (Hello, rape parallel.)

Sam rushes to help and gets her back to their swanky resort hotel. Claire burns with fever. When Mick tries to drop werewolf health care tips, Sam tells him coldly that they're done with him. He killed a kid; he can GTFO.

Claire asks how long she has until she turns. Dean kneels in front of her and assures her that she can live with lycanthropy. She just needs to lock herself up for a few nights every month. Claire chokes out, “Maybe some people control this, but I can barely keep it together on a good day. If there's any chance that I could hurt Jody or Alex or...anyone, I'd rather die.”

Sam, reading through the MoL book Mick brought along, suggests trying the blood therapy. One in nine test subjects were cured! Mick is less optimistic. “That study was on mice,” he explains. They once tested their blood therapy on a human but the subject died in agony. (Query: WHY wouldn’t you test it on an animal that’s a better physiological parallel to humans like pigs or monkeys instead of jumping straight to human trials? Amateurs.)

Claire is immediately on board with trying blood therapy.

“You don't get a vote in this,” says over-protective Dean.

“It's my life. I get all the votes,” Claire tells him. That's fuckin' right, Claire.

Dean, pissed off, turns to Sam for backup. Sam agrees with Claire (though he can't meet Dean's eye) – it's her life. Dean bows his head and begrudgingly asks Mick how the werewolf cure works.

Easy as pie - they need the sire's blood. Back to the case it is, then! Dean still suspects tribal tat douchebro bartender Conner. He orders Mick to stay behind, which seems like a questionable decision. However, Mick understands the threat that boils persistently under Dean's skin and acknowledges that if anything happens to Claire in his charge, then he's a dead man courtesy of Dean Winchester.

The boys intercept Conner outside of the Lucky Badger and immediately threaten him with a silver knife. The silver has no effect on Conner (other than scaring the poop out of him.) In the sky clouds begin to drift away from the full moon.

At the hotel Claire is in intense pain. Mick prepares another syringe of silver nitrate for his protection while Claire peels back her bandage. Before her eyes the wound heals. Claire jumps for the gun, ready to end her life, but Mick grabs it first. She begs him for death before it's too late. He tells her that he knows a man who would kill her without any hesitation. His instinct is to do the same...but his “instincts haven't been so grand of late.” Claire huddles miserably onto the couch. Mick proposes sedating and restraining her and, with any luck, she'll wake up cured.

“If I wake up,” Claire whispers. “I gotta call Jody. She's gonna be so mad at me.” She looks so young as she says this. It breaks my heart.

Just then the masked werewolf breaks in. He knocks Mick out, then punches out Claire and drags her away. (Fuck you, werewolf.)

Sam and Dean bust in and Dean immediately looks like he's ready to make good on his threat. Mick protests that he tried to prevent her abduction. Furthermore, he can be useful. He put a tracker on Claire. And...now he’s pissed off Sam now, too. “You can kill me later,” he tells them. It's time to find Claire.

At a house in the woods, Claire is tied up in the kitchen while Hayden's boyfriend Justin does his evil villain speech.

Justin had been part of a happy pack until hunters found them and broke them apart. He attacked Hayden so he could rebuild a pack again. “I'm a nice guy,” he protests to the woman he turned and tied up against her will. He pulls out a refrigerated heart and shoves it in her face – literally.

She spits the heart – and his words – into his face. She has a family so he can fuck right off. Claire doubles over in pain again and when she lifts her head her eyes glow yellow.

Just then the Winchesters bust in. Dean rushes up to Claire and then backs away cautiously when he sees her bloodied face and yellow eyes. She breaks free from the ropes.

The werewolf gets the drop on the boys. It looks bad until Mick shoots him in the back. We all freak out about the werewolf cure and then Mick takes a vial of blood from an injection site on Justin’s back and fills up his plasma syringe with the sire's blood.

Claire stands up, growling as Dean takes the syringe from Mick. “She wanted this, right?” he double checks with Sam, and then they inject her. (<-- I really like this consent angle.)

The blood therapy is rough. She writhes, whimpering on the couch for who knows how long. It's long enough that Dean needs to leave the room to “get some air.” So...probably a fuckin’ long time.

Claire suddenly lies still, stops whimpering, stops breathing. Sam sorrowfully calls Dean back in. Dean shoves his emotions down about as far as they can go.

Suddenly, Claire's fingernails retract, she opens her eyes which leach of yellow, and she starts breathing again. “You guys look like crap,” she says to everyone's relieved faces.

Later, outside the lodge, Mick looks on her in wonder. She's fully cured and packing her car to go. “That girl is a walking miracle,” he marvels. Dean agrees and you know at least one layer of that is him just being a stupid soppy dad about it. (Dean, you snuggly tulip.)

Dean continues his streak of thanking people he doesn't particularly like for saving those dearest to him and thanks Mick “for the win.”

“So we're good,” Mick says happily. Eh, not so fast. Mick gets just one more chance to prove he's not a useless bag of dicks.

Claire comes up and jokes about craving a milkbone. Oh, Claire-bear. She apologizes to the Winchesters, thanking them for being there when she needed them. They hug and she's off.

Claire calls Jody, leaving a confessional on her voicemail. She's hunting. It can be scary, but it's something she needs to do on her own. “I'm ready, but I never would have been if it wasn't for you being my mom. I love you guys.” Oh, Claire. <3

Claire drives off into the world, lone cowgirl, ready to kick some ass.

Natasha:

(whispers: But I'm still so worried about Gaaaaaarth)

(also whispers: weremiiiiiiiiice)

It’s Better if I Quote Alone:

You either get good fast, or you get dead faster

Long story, and like, Downton Abbey boring

So your foreign exchange student is totally lame

I didn't sign up for this reporting to duty crap

I'm ruined, Sam. Those limey sons of bitches ruined me.

Those three stars are wasted on you

They're like nerd soulmates

Things aren’t just black and white out here

Eat me, Teen Wolf

#spn picspam #spn 12x16 #ladies drink free #spn recap #dean winchester #sam winchester #claire novak #mick davies #supernatural season 12

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 6 years

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The 10 Most Iconic Roles of Vincent Price

Born on this day in 1911, Vincent Price would grow up to be one of the most memorable actors in horror. Price was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, my hometown. I grew up with my father sharing Vincent Price films with me. Saint Louis has their own Walk of Fame honoring the great actor. And the local boutique hotel, the Moonrise Hotel, even has one of their Celebrity Suites dedicated to the horror master. Growing up here, Vincent Price was such an influence on my love of horror. In honor of Vincent Price’s birthday let’s take a look back at his top 10 film performances.

The 10 Most Iconic Roles of Vincent Price

10. The Inventor – Edward Scissorhands (1990)

While not as much horror as the other films on this list, Price’s depiction of The Inventor is one of his most touching. As Price’s last film performance, it is hard for me to watch him without tearing up. After so many years of depicting deranged villains, the role of The Inventor is such a beautiful contrast. The Inventor is so genuinely kind and when he suddenly dies, we feel the pain as much as Edward.

9. François Delambre – The Fly (1958)

In this classic horror flick Price plays François Delambre, who’s sister in law explains to him the circumstances of his brother’s death. Turns out he, of course, was a scientist doing some interesting experiments and just happens to swap heads and one of his arms with a fly. Price gives the audience a great performance as the shocked brother and even returns in the sequel, Return of the Fly. While the film isn’t as gruesome as its 1986 remake, the ending scene of the half human fly screaming “Help me! Help me!” with that high pitched voice will definitely stay with you.

8. Dr. Robert Morgan – The Last Man on Earth (1964)

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The first of many films on this list where Price portrayed a doctor, The Last Man of Earth is based on Richard Matheson’s novel I Am Legend. Price plays Dr. Robert Morgan. A survivor of a recent plague which killed his wife and daughter, as well as everyone else it seems. However those who died from the disease are now returning from the dead as vampires. Every night Morgan goes out hunting vampires. He protects his home with garlic, mirrors, and wooden stakes. While the film is a bit slow, the film is entirely carried by Price’s performance, as most of the film is Price alone. It’s a great example of how good he really was.

7. Roderick Usher – House of Usher (1960)

House of Usher kicks off the great era of collaborations between Vincent Price and Roger Corman. These collaborations were primarily based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, this one included. Also for this film we get a bleach blonde Vincent Price, which definitely adds to the severity of Roderick Usher’s appearance and character. Price brings a regal quality to the role of Roderick who is more concerned with keeping the Usher bloodline intact than making sure his sister is happy. Roderick is evil and selfish and Price’s performance is a perfect representation of Poe’s character.

6. Dr. Warren Chapin – The Tingler (1959)

The film that introduced the world to William Castle’s “Percepto!” gimmick. “Percepto!” involved electric buzzers being attached to the bottoms of some theater seats during screenings. While the gimmick is cheesy it is Vincent Price’s performance that made it believable to audiences. Price’s Dr. William Chapin is a pathologist studying the tingler, a creature that feeds on terror, which you can only defeat by screaming. Dr. Chapin is in a movie theater, looking for the tingle after it escapes his lab. He sees the tingler moving across the screen. As the screen suddenly fades to black, Chapin gives the following announcement:

Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic! But SCREAM! Scream for your lives! The tingler is loose in this theater and if you don’t scream it may kill you!

We hear women screaming over the announcement and it seems like complete pandemonium. That’s when the little buzzers would go off. It’s a great Price performance and it made William Castle’s production even better.

5. Prince Prospero – The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

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I have to say this may be my favorite performance of Price’s in a Edgar Allan Poe adaptation. Price plays the evil Prince Prospero. Prospero throws an elaborate party for the nobility of the area, locking off his castle from the plague stricken town he has ordered to be burned. Prospero is a satanist who has kidnapped the lovely Francesca (Jane Asher) from the town and subjects her to his cruelty and complete disregard for the people he has condemned. Arguably one of the most evil characters Price ever played, Prince Prospero is not one to forget. And the film itself is a visually beautiful representation of color in 1960s film. Each room of the castle is a different color, just as it is in the Poe story. And the opulence of the sets and costumes is beautiful. Definitely a film to check out if you’ve never seen it.

4. Dr. Erasmus Craven – The Raven (1963)

The cast alone, makes this film really fun. You’ve got Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and a super young Jack Nicholson. Price plays Dr. Erasmus Craven, a wizard who has been mourning the death of his wife. One evening he is greeted by a raven gently rapping at his chamber door. Turns out the raven is a wizard as well, Dr. Adolphus Bedlo, played by Peter Lorre, who was transformed by magic. After Craven helps transform him back, they set off along with Craven’s daughter and Bedlo’s son to the castle of the man who transformed Bedlo. Enter Boris Karloff. The highlight of this film is the final magic duel between Price and Karloff. The 1960s special effects are fantastically cheesy but amazing.The back and forth dialogue between Lorre, Price, and Karloff is great and the performances of all three make this an amazingly fun film.

3. Dr. Anton Phibes – The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

I’m going to say that the character of Dr. Anton Phibes is probably the strangest Price ever played. Phibes, who was thought to be dead, returns to London to exact revenge on the doctors he believes are responsible for his wife’s death. Each murder is based on one of the ten plagues of Egypt. So the deaths are unique to say the least. What is great about this Price performance is we never really see him talking. It’s all voice over by Price. When Phibes is speaking his lips don’t move and his mouth stays closed. He plugs a little microphone into his neck and that’s, supposedly how we hear him. It makes for a creepy performance, and a great classic.

2. Professor Henry Jarrod – House of Wax (1953)

Price’s performance in House of Wax is amazing because we see three sides to the character of Professor Henry Jarrod throughout the film. When the film opens Jarrod is this optimistic artist, capable of making beautiful creations out of wax. We even sympathize with him as each of his figures is set on fire. Then we see Jarrod as this crippled survivor of the fire. Hardened after the traumatic experience, but still able to see the beauty in things.Then we see Jarrod murderer and body snatcher. It’s quite a range of performance, and it makes for a classic Vincent Price film.

1. Frederick Loren – House on Haunted Hill (1959)

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Quite possibly the most quintessential Price performance ever captured on screen. Frederick Loren invites a bunch of strangers to haunted house. Anyone who survives the night will get $10,000. Loren is suave, charismatic, and wealthy. But there is something devious about his little party and something a little suspicious about him. The witty banter between him and his philandering wife is entertaining as he tries to convince her to join the party. By far my favorite Vincent Price film and my favorite performance. It’s a must see for any horror fan!

Well there you have it! 10 amazing Vincent Price performances over the years. Let’s be honest, he was a great actor and every performance was a good one. Which of Price’s roles is your favorite? Watching any in particular for his birthday? Let us know over in our Facebook Group, and stay creepy fiends.

The post The 10 Most Iconic Roles of Vincent Price appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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iofferwith-blog · 7 years

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Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are!

New Post has been published on http://iofferwith.xyz/come-out-come-out-whoever-you-are/

Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are!

Review

Nathan Tipton

Harry M. Benshoff, Monsters in the Closet Homosexuality and the Horror Film. (Manchester: Manchester U P, 1998.) $18.95.

Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are!

1. “The plot discovered is the finding of evil where we have always known it to be: in the other” (97). So wrote Leslie Fiedler in The End of Innocence (1955), his summation of the McCarthy-era horrors. Although ostensibly referring to the 1953-54 McCarthy hearings, Fiedler discloses the societal fear of difference operating within the “Us versus Them” dialectic. Moreover, by finding evil in an Otherness “where we have always known it to be,” he acknowledges both the historical construction and destruction of the Other and, in effect, explains society’s genocidal predilections in the name of moral preservation. Nevertheless, Fiedler’s comment leaves larger questions unanswered. How, for instance, does society arrive at this conflation of evil and “other?” And does society need to create monsters for the sole purpose of destroying them?

2. Harry M. Benshoff “outs” his Monsters In the Closet with the conceit of a “monster queer” universally viewed as anyone who assumes a contra-heterosexual self-identity, including those outside the established gay/lesbian counter-hegemony (“interracial sex and sex between physically challenged people” [5]). For the sake of brevity, his work focuses on homosexual males and their presence, either tacit or overt, in the modern horror film. In so doing, Monsters also proposes (with more than a passing nod to gay historiographer George Chauncey), an extant gay history created through the magic of cinema. For Benshoff, however, the screening room quickly morphs into a Grand Guignol-styled Theatre of Blood, and gays become metaphorical monsters whose sole purpose in horror films is to subvert society before meeting their expected demise.

3. Benshoff draws a provocative, decade-by-decade timeline to illuminate his thesis. He begins in 1930s Depression-era America, the “Golden Age of Hollywood Horror.” In a chapter entitled “Defining the monster queer,” the cultural construction of the modern homosexual is placed alongside (and within) classic horror films such as Frankenstein and Dracula (both 1931). Benshoff notes the decade’s movement from viewing homosexuals as gender deviants to those engaging in “sexual-object choice (48),” thus underscoring the ideological shift from Other-as-Separate to Other-Among-Us. This, then, becomes his foundation motif for the modern horror cinema: the fears within us are the fears of us.

4. While the chapter concentrates heavily on the actors and their presumed sexuality (including “name” stars such as Charles Laughton and Peter Lorre) rather than the films, Benshoff highlights an obvious thread of filmic homosociality, particularly in the films pairing Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. For example, 1934’s The Black Cat features two “mad” scientists ostensibly competing for one female (although she is later revealed to have been dead all along). Benshoff convincingly reads this arrangement as a homoerotic love triangle, with Poelzig (Karloff) and Werdegast (Lugosi) engaged in teasing flirtation, and finally sado-masochistic torture. The torture scene includes bare-chested Karloff being menaced by scalpel-wielding Lugosi, who threatens (and then proceeds) to “flail the skin from [Poelzig’s] body, bit by bit”(64). Though Benshoff reads the film’s homosociality as a positive step, he nonetheless fails to critique the rather obvious, time-honored homosexual tropes of sado-masochism and murderous psychosis.

5. “Defining the monster queer” also includes a surprisingly short section on director James Whale (on whose life the current film Gods and Monsters is based). Benshoff notes, “A discussion of homosexuality and the classical Hollywood horror film often begins (and all too frequently ends) with the work of James Whale, the openly gay director who was responsible for fashioning four of Universal Studio’s most memorable horror films: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)” (40). While Frankenstein is arguably the most recognizable film in this quartet, Benshoff instead contextualizes Whale’s work through his most explicitly homosexual film, The Old Dark House, in which Whale parodies and, ultimately, subverts the above-mentioned stereotypical cinematic tropes.

6. This film, like many “clutching hand” horror films of the period, uses the device of “normal” people trapped in a defiantly non-normal mansion peopled with maniacs and monsters. The Old Dark House is occupied by the Femm (!) family members, who each have gayly-coded personas. Patriarch Roderick Femm is enacted by a woman (actress Elspeth Dudgeon); son Horace is played by known homosexual Ernest Thesiger in, Benshoff wryly notes, a “fruity effete manner” (43); and sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) is a hyper-religious zealot who is, nevertheless, a closet lesbian. The heterosexual Wavertons (Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart), along with their manservant Penderel (Melvyn Douglas), spend the vast majority of the film trying to fend off none-too-subtle homosexual overtures from the Femms, although they too are viewed queerly as an “urban ménage à trois” (44).

7. The story is further complicated by Morgan (Boris Karloff), the drunken butler who “may or may not be an illegitimate son of the house” and Saul (Brember Wills) “the most dangerous member of the family” (45), who is understood as a repressed homosexual. Saul sees in Penderel a kinship but, because of his paranoid repression, must instead kill this object of his desire (with, Benshoff points out, a “long knife” [45]). In the ensuing tussle, Saul falls down the stairs, dies, and is carried off by Morgan, who “miserably minces up the steps, rocking him, his hips swaying effeminately, as if he were some nightmarish mother cradling a dead, horrific infant” (45).

8. Benshoff convincingly hints that the film’s over-the-top depiction of homosexuality was the primary cause of its being “kept out of circulation for many years . . . for varying reasons (legal and otherwise) . . . [and] it was not released on commercial videotape until 1995” (43). In fact, the Production Code established in 1930 forbade any openly (or, Benshoff adds, “broadly connotated”) homosexual characters on-screen and, subsequently, “banished [them] to the shadowy realms of inference and implication”(35). But the problem still remains that even in their connotative presence, homosexuals are portrayed as monsters. Although Whale’s Dark House attempts to imbue some non-normals (such as Morgan) with a sympathetic aura, it does so at the expense of Saul, whose death seems to connote a reinforcement of normality. This status quo death-by-design, indeed, becomes a decades-long device in horror films.

9. As the book progresses, Benshoff moves from homosocial film “outings” to socio-filmic movie interpretations and, in this area, he is clearly more comfortable. In particular, the chapter entitled “Pods, Pederasts and Perverts: (Re)Criminalizing the Monster Queer in Cold War Culture” casts a probing look at the so-called “perfect” 1950s. This decade becomes a touchstone for Benshoff because of the close interrelationship between oftentimes-surreal politics (the McCarthy/HUAC hearings) and “real” cinema. Early films such as Them and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (both 1954) exemplify the dialectic between Us and Them while exploring the dynamic of social denial. Benshoff notes, “As for the closeted homosexual, the monster queer’s best defense is often the fact that the social order actively prefers to deny his/her existence” (129) and thus keep its monsters safely in their closets. His queer reading of Creature, while effective, does not approach the astute discussion of the later films I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) and especially the Black Lagoon sequel, The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), which not only riff on the Marxist dialectic but present the more insidious scenario of the “incorporated queer.”

10. The title of The Creature Walks Among Us, for example, serves as an overt play on people’s paranoia, both of Communists and Queers (terms which, during the McCarthy hearings, were used synonymously), and the film focuses on intense male rivalries, ostensibly over one woman, Helen Barton. However, her husband, Dr. Barton, has paranoid fantasies about her sleeping with Captain Grant, the hunky captain of Barton’s yacht (which, Benshoff notes, is based in San Francisco). Benshoff easily reads Dr. Barton as a repressed homosexual who would much rather be sleeping with Grant. At the film’s climax, he murders Captain Grant (thus killing the object of his desire) and is, in turn, killed by the Creature. Helen reflects on the sad scene by trying to explain her husband’s rather obvious sexual repression. She states, “I guess the way we go depends upon what we’re willing to understand about ourselves. And willing to admit”(136). But her words also can be read as a plea for societal tolerance of “Them,” in whatever form they appear.

11. Benshoff furthers his discussion of Them Among Us by exploring the phenomenon of the “I Was a . . .” films, which “purported to deliver subjective experiences of how political deviants operated” (146), again through horrifically-packaged political treatises such as 1951’s I Was a Communist for the FBI or “real-life” horror films along the lines of I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). These films seek not only to uncover the hidden queer but to expose their insidious agenda of pederastic recruitment. However, for the quintessential 1950s homo-cruitment film Benshoff chooses How to Make a Monster (1958) which, despite its menacing tagline “It Will Scare the Living Yell Out of You,” is viewed as remarkable for “the wide range of signified to which the signifier ‘monster’ becomes attached, and the complexity with which it manipulates these signifiers” (150-51). Translation: How to Make a Monster contains many not-terribly-subtle queer-friendly images that are visible the typical moviegoer, hetero- or homosexual.

12. Benshoff pulls out all the stops in his filmic exploration of How to Make a Monster by deploying a Laura Mulvey-esque theoretical pastiche of deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, cultural criticism, and Marxism. He concludes that “the film hints at the revolutionary potential of ‘making monsters’ against those same ideological forces . . . which simultaneously create and demonize the monster queer” (151).

13. So what exactly marks this particular Monster for greatness (indeed, a detail of the movie’s poster is part of the book’s cover art)? For starters, the film contains all the elements of a perfectly queer horror flick: a homosexually-coded mad scientist couple Pete and Rivero (complete with “requisite butch/femme stereotyping” [151]) who are, as an added bonus, also tacit pederasts. They are balanced by two “normal” heterosexual teenage All-American boys, Larry and Tony, who nevertheless get “made up” and engage in a clearly homoerotic “Battle of the Monsters.” The story is further complicated by a Marxist interlude during which capitalist movie studio executives arrive and sever their ties with the monstrous director and his makeup-artist-partner. Benshoff observes, “The scene explicitly links the patriarchal order with capitalism, and Pete [the now fired director] and his monstrous world as opposing it. As Pete turns down the offer of severance pay, one of the studio executives clucks ‘Turn down money — maybe you’ve been living too long with monsters'” (153). Pete, rather than accepting his fate, formulates a revenge plot against the capitalist studio executives, and herein invokes another horror film trope — “that which is repressed (in this case the Hollywood monster movie) must eventually return.” However, Benshoff continues, “these particular monsters are not going to be of the imaginary/Make-Believe/Movie/ Sexuality kind; they are going to be deadly” (154).

14. While this revenge plot is a precursor to the spate of 1980s “Everyman” horror films, both heterosexual (Falling Down) and homosexual (The Living End, Swoon), How to Make a Monster utilizes a novel approach for its monstrous aims. As Benshoff explains, “Back in the make-up lab, Pete tells Rivero of his plan to control the young actors through a special novocaine-based make-up: ‘Now — this enters the pores and paralyzes the will. It will have the same effect chemically as a surgical prefrontal lobotomy.1 It blocks the nerve synapses. It makes the subject passive — obedient to my will.'” (154). Ignoring for the moment the clearly Freudian implications of Pete’s speech, the special make-up also predicts date-rape drugs such as “mickeys” or “roofies,” thus adding another sinister aspect to the scene. Moreover, because Pete and Rivero are coded pederasts, the make-up also predicates accusations of “homosexual agenda” brainwashing leveled by the present-day Religious Right.

15. Of course, Freudian phallocentrism is never far away. Benshoff notes, “Rivero attempts to tell Pete that he thinks Pete has made a mistake in bringing the boys to his home. Pete cannot accept Rivero’s taking an active (vocal) role in the proceedings and stabs Rivero in the belly with a knife, asserting his dominance within the active/passive nature of their relationship” (156). The knife, which naturally is read as a phallus, “sends the boys into a homosexual panic: a struggle ensues and the room is set on fire. Pete dies with his melting creations á la Vincent Price in House of Wax (1953), and the cops break down the door and rescue/apprehend Larry and Tony” (156).

16. All’s well that ends well? Benshoff hedges his bets on Larry and Tony, thinking that they have probably been assimilated (he wryly adds that, before the struggle, the boys try to escape by telling Pete, “Larry and I have sort of a dinner date” [156]), but more because they have been repeatedly tainted by the monster queer. Although his overall critique of the film is favorable by citing its pleas for tolerance, he nevertheless condemns it on Marxist grounds for remaining first and foremost a product of the capitalist system. Benshoff argues that, even though How to Make a Monster attempts to subvert society’s view of homosexuals, it remains a product of a system that routinely exploits women and homosexuals. It does so by constructing their images in stereotypically specific ways and, he writes, “As such, the film contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction” (157).

17. This particular critique is borne out in his viewing of 1960s and 70s horror films, which, even with the advent of both the women’s and gay liberation movements, as well as the weakening of the Production Code, still resort to the same “tired” tropes. He selects productions from the UK’s Hammer Films (which produced horror films from the 1950s until 1973) for scrutiny, noting that “the weakening Production Code’s loosening restrictions on sex and violence helped the horror film define itself in new and explicit terms” (177), and singling out Hammer for capitalizing on this new openness. He further adds, “For the first time in film history, openly homosexual characters became commonplace within the genre, sometimes as victims . . . but more regularly as the monsters themselves (the lesbian vampire)” (177).

18. This lesbian vampire becomes a recurring motif in late Hammer films including the “first overtly lesbian film, The Vampire Lovers (1970)” (192), in which hyper-feminine women seduce and destroy other hyper-feminine women. While this is a welcome change from the stereotypical “butch lesbian” seen in earlier horror films, Benshoff cites Bonnie Zimmerman in his enumeration of Hammer’s sins: “lesbian sexuality is infantile and narcissistic; lesbianism is sterile and morbid; lesbians are rich, decadent women who seduce the young and powerless” (23). The Vampire Lovers, for example, features Carmilla (taken from J. Sheridan LeFanu’s 1872 vampire novel of the same name) seducing a bevy of “young nubile women in diaphanous nightgowns” (193) and then draining their blood. Her victim Emma, a “rather dim-witted ingenue . . . who, in all of her innocence, tumbles into bed with Carmilla after romping nude together through the bedroom” (193), is nevertheless a heterosexual. After Carmilla expresses love for her, Emma (who doth protest too much, methinks) refuses and instead asks, “Don’t you wish some handsome young man would come into your life?” to which Carmilla replies, “No — neither do you, I hope” (193). Naturally, Carmilla must be and is destroyed by, Benshoff notes, “patriarchal agents” (194) (although he doesn’t specify who these agents are) and Emma and her boyfriend Carl are reunited.

19. Benshoff astutely comments on Hammer Films’ success among heterosexual males by noting, “the appeal of these Hammer films was ostensibly directed to the straight male spectator through soft-core nudity and sexual titillation” (196). The film(s), rather than focusing on the lesbianism (although this is a significant, though unspoken, “guilty pleasure”), instead rely on “ample cleavage and sheer peignoirs” (194), and therein lies their appeal. While these nymphet vampire lesbians faded from view in the later 1970s, the scantily-clad “screaming Mimi” victims remain firmly entrenched in postmodern horror films of the 1980s and 90s, although they are primarily coded as exclusively heterosexual.

20. The advent of the postmodern horror film in the 1980s and 90s heralds a new look at old tropes, particularly the monster among us. In “Satan spawn and out and proud: Monster queers in the postmodern era,” these films, repeatedly deploying overt homoeroticism, riff on the perils of difference, repression, and (not surprisingly) coming-out, thus giving Benshoff fertile ground for exploration. For example, 1981’s Fear No Evil, a Religious Right-esque shockumentary, pits Lucifer (portrayed initially as Andrew, a shy, effeminate high-school senior before “coming out”) against the forces of Absolute Good (read: “normal” heterosexuals). The film is highlighted by a nude gym shower teasing/quasi-seduction scene involving Andrew and Tony, the requisite high-school bully figure, in which “Tony mockingly asks [Andrew] for a date, and then a kiss. Rather improbably, Tony does kiss Andrew, to the accompaniment of a rumbling, reverberating, grunting sound-track and swirling camerawork” (239, emphasis added).

21. Fear No Evil further exacerbates the thematic homosexual menace with what Benshoff terms a “retrograde ideology,” in that “When the Devil/Andrew again kisses [him,]Tony . . . manifest[s] female breasts. The implication here is unmistakably clear and totally in line with traditional notions of gender and sexuality: Devil = homosexuality = gender inversion. Upon manifesting the breasts, Tony does the only decent thing he can do . . . and stabs himself to death” (239). Stabbing, indeed, seems to be the preferred method of dispatch in horror films, and it is easy to see Tony’s action as a phallic impaling. Furthermore, it also reflects back to Larry’s and (another!) Tony’s homosexual panic in How to Make a Monster, although the postmodern Tony, who has tacitly “given in” to his homosexuality, must die.

22. Two problems, however, immediately arise in Benshoff’s reading: his use of the word “traditional” and the ignorance of the multiple kisses. His pronouncing the pairing of homosexual panic and gender inversion as a “traditional notion” would be acceptable for 1950s films but becomes highly suspect for postmodern-era films. While not to denigrate audiences of 1950s schlock-horror, audiences in the 1980s and 1990s are imbued with a cynicism that, upon viewing this ridiculous scene, would manifest itself in guffaws. Moreover, Benshoff misses or fails to comment on the view of latent homosexuality apparent in Tony. What, then, does it really say about Tony that he asks (teasingly?) Andrew for a date and then kisses him not once but twice, apparently of his own free will? Benshoff reads the scene as an overt metaphor for homosexual panic as gender inversion but fails to see the potential (positive?) societal comment that any homophobic bully is likely acting against his own homosexual feelings.

23. Additionally, given the “rumbling, reverberating, grunting sound-track and swirling camerawork” in Fear No Evil, it is surprising that Benshoff doesn’t draw a correlation between the postmodern horror film and outright pornographic films — other than the snide comment, “Apparently, the Devil really knows how to use his tongue” (239). His “Epilogue,” however, does comment on gay porno’s appropriation of vampiric themes immediately following the release of Interview With the Vampire. Indeed, these films acknowledge a number of gay pornographic productions including Does Dracula Really Suck? (1969), Gayracula (1983), and the non-porno (read: sans explicit sex) Love Bites (1988) which, Benshoff notes, “approached the generic systems of gothic horror in an attempt to draw out or exorcise the monster from the queer” (286).

24. While this reading is plausible, it problematically equates gay porno audiences with those of “conventional” cinema. The reading elides the fact that the ostensible “motivation” for any porno film is a memorable climax (and not necessarily from the film’s actors). Benshoff, however, cites Love Bites as exemplary, not for escaping the confines of porno, but for rewriting “generic imperatives from a gay male point of view” and “allow[ing] both Count Dracula and his servant Renfield to find love and redemption with modern-day West Hollywood gay boys” (286). The film, therefore, both creates a “positive” monster and aspires to mainstream appeal.

25. Benshoff concludes that mainstream postmodern horror films also show remarkable progress in the area of homosocial qua homosexual cinematic portrayals. Fright Night (1985), gay author Clive Barker’s Night Breed (1990), and “straight queer” Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (also 1990) receive especially high praise for their positive attempts at positing an “alternative normal” while not resorting to stereotypical queer tropes. However, the films share the common subversive element of camp, and it is through this humor that they ultimately succeed in humanizing the monster queer. Benshoff quotes Clive Barker as stating, “We should strive to avoid feeding delusions of perfectibility and instead celebrate the complexities and contradictions that, as I’ve said, fantastic fiction is uniquely qualified to address. . . . But we must be prepared to wear our paradoxes on our sleeve” (Jones 75) and indeed, camp manifests itself as a paradox.

26. Again, however, Benshoff surprisingly misses an opportunity to view the films as critiques of suburbia and inbred suburban intolerance, for many of the postmodern films concern themselves with spinning a new urban/suburban dialectic. The urban, ostensibly viewed as the dangerous inner city (and exclusively home to black and gay ghettos) is contrasted with the idyllic (read: white heterosexual and, paradoxically, nostalgically 1950s-esque) suburban landscape.

27. Fright Night riffs on this suburban Invasion of the Body Snatcher motif, but this time the queers are clearly “out” and bent on infiltrating Fortress Suburbia. In the film, Chris Sarandon’s vampiric alter-ego Jerry Dandridge is posited as a tacitly gay antique dealer, replete with bourgeois trappings and attitudes. In other words, Jerry is tailor-made for the postmodern suburbia that Benshoff negatively reads. He subtly voices the same problematic anti-assimilationist view held by many quasi-Marxist queer theorists and activists (Urvashi Vaid, former head of NGLTF — the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, being the most prominent) that has subsequently led to fracturing, rather than unifying, the gay “body politic.” This view is further exacerbated by Benshoff’s resigned comment that the film, “despite its fairly realistic representation of what a gay male couple in the suburbs might look like . . . nonetheless still partakes of the same demonizing tropes as do less sophisticated horror films: queerness is monstrous” (252, emphasis added). I accept Benshoff’s statement within the book’s context, but am troubled by its pessimistic implication that homosexuals can never rise out of their monstrous otherness.

28. Monsters in the Closet is by no means a perfect book. There are flashes of brilliance, humor, and dead-on cinematic readings and critiques. It is, however, balanced by often pedantic (or worse, supra-academic) jargon, generalizations, and sometimes far-fetched film interpretations. More often than not, his cinematic evidence comes through “close readings” of these horror films but reaches problematic status when he draws tenuous connections with exploitation (especially blaxploitation) and quasi-horror films (such as 1974’s Earthquake).

29. Benshoff also deploys an authorial predilection for outing that, at times, repeatedly belabors the queerness of the films. This is particularly troublesome in the first chapter, which seems more concerned with the sexualities of the stars than how they performed their roles. In later chapters, he occasionally indulges in outright finger pointing as illustrated by his noting that “many gay fans considered Tom Cruise’s acceptance of the role of Lestat [in 1994’s Interview With the Vampire] more or less a coming-out declaration” (273). While Cruise’s sexuality has been subject to continual speculation in the gay community, Benshoff’s comment adds nothing to his overall critical appraisal of the film and reads more as his own wistful and wishful fantasy. Moreover, in “Pods, pederasts and perverts,” he perplexingly hides behind the wall of murky Hollywood history when discussing older “stars like James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Farley Granger, Sal Mineo, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, and Marlon Brando” whose sexualities Benshoff cautiously defines as “non-straight” (173). No Signorile he, Benshoff’s evident conflating of the terms “non-straight” and “queer” as anything outside the norm becomes problematic because it denies the definitively gay identities of Clift, Mineo, Hudson, and Perkins, thereby lessening any possible socio-political ramifications.

30. In these respects, it is ultimately weak as film criticism. However Monsters is, despite its drawbacks, a worthy entry into the field of Gay and Lesbian historical constructions. Its decade-by-decade “timeline” deftly illustrates, through the medium of film, a recurring queer presence that survives, transforms, and, against all odds (much like its monstrous counterparts), keeps popping up in the most unexpected places.

Note

1 Interestingly enough, this “device” was also used in another 1950s “real-life horror film,” Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer (1959), about which Vito Russo notes, “Sebastian Venable is presented as a faceless terror, a horrifying presence among normal people, like the Martians in War of the Worlds or the creature from the black lagoon. As he slinks along the streets of the humid Spanish seacoast towns in pursuit of boys (‘famished for the dark ones’), Sebastian’s coattail or elbow occasionally intrudes into the frame at moments of intense emotion. He comes at us in sections, scaring us a little at a time, like a movie monster too horrible to be shown all at once.” (117).

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry M. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester U P, 1997.

Fiedler, Leslie. “McCarthy as Populist.” An End to Innocence. Boston: Beacon, 1955. Rpt. in The Meaning of McCarthyism, 2nd ed. Ed. Earl Latham. Lexington, MA: Heath, 1973.

Jones, Stephen, ed. Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden. Lancaster, PA: Underwood-Miller, 1991.

Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. Rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1987.

Zimmerman, Bonnie. “Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampires.” Jump Cut 24.24 (1980): 23-24.

0 notes