QUEER, CULT & CURIOUS CINEMA

Welcome to the darkness… I create queer, cult and curious cinema events and blog about the films and things I find along the way. I’m the creator and host of BAR TRASH and co-creator of QUEER HORROR NIGHTS with my wonderful friends at Last Frame Film Club.

My love affair with genre cinema started (too…?) young with an illicit purchase of 3 unapologetic shockers from a VHS rental library fire sale in the 1980s – THE EXORCIST, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and THE EVIL DEAD.

Fuelled by a decade of censorship and Section 28, watching badly-behaved genre movies became my ritual of rebellion. As Blossom Lefcourt puts it when writing about the big-busted movies of Doris Wishman:

“I believe the true reason I watch and enjoy Wishman is for the simple fact that I’m not supposed to. She is a private rebellion, ironically found within the realm of filmmaking that I am supposed to be rebelling against.”

Blossom Lefcourt (1).

My ‘Token Homo’ nom de cinéma was inspired by prolific queer auteur David DeCoteau’s background in the American exploitation industry:

“I was sort of the ‘token homo’ in the business, & most of the day I’d be filming naked women and crashing cars.”

David DeCoteau (2).

It relates to all the queer creatures who occasionally crawl into frame in genre films – an idea inspired by Carol J. Clover’s ‘final girls’ (3) – as well as the experience of being alone in a cinema watching untold horrors unfold on the big screen.

I remain fascinated by all kinds of genre and exploitation films, the filmmakers who shot them, and most importantly, the exhibitors who found thrilling ways of showing them. Projecting stories on the wall is my way of uniting the tribes.

If you’ve lost interest in mainstream movies, feel trapped in the echo chamber of ‘good taste’, or simply want to see a curious film with fine company, I hope to see you at one of my events soon.

TOKEN HOMO x

Reading between the lines…

1. “TITTY-LATION: On ‘Double Agent 73’” by Blossom Lefcourt in “The Films Of Doris Wishman” edited by Peggy Awesh (2019).
2. David DeCoteau quoted in “Meet David DeCoteau, the King of Homoerotic On Demand Schlock” by Will Sloan, Flavorwire.com, 28 OCT 2014.
3. “Men, Women And Chainsaws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film” by Carol J. Clover, Princeton University Press, 2015.