Short Takes: ‘Alpha Delta Zatan’ (2017) 1/2 ★

Gay porn without the gay or the porn.

Alpha Delta Zatan, features a cast of hot men delivering performances that can charitably be described as amateurish (absolute shit if just being honest), so naturally I checked their filmographies to see if any of them had done porn. None had—at least according to IMDb—but many of them should. I didn’t have to bother checking the filmographies of director Art Arutyunyan or writer Armand Petri for porn credits, however. Alpha Delta Zatan makes it clear that they wouldn’t know how eroticism works if it slapped them in the face with its dick.

But Alpha Delta Zatan is supposed to be a horror film, and Arutyunyan and Petri don’t have much of a grasp of how that works, either. Or basic storytelling, for that matter. This is Alpha Delta Zatan in a nutshell: A hunky member of the ADZ house strips down to his skivvies, unaware of a knife-wielding guy wearing a black Zentai body suit and harlequin mask (not “Harley Quinn,” as one actor insists on calling it) doing poses in the hall. Hunky guy then steps out of his underwear and into the shower, whereupon he’s attacked by the harlequin-masked killer. Rinse, repeat. 

That’s it. That’s Alpha Delta Zatan’s story, man-ass and murder, played on a loop, with only the color of the lighting (Artyunyan fucking loves his gels) to differentiate them from each other. There’s some business about Frat Dad Brad (Jared Fleming) mandating these killings for possible “Zatanic” reasons, and a lot of the frat brothers are shown drinking blood, but none of it is fully developed, let alone explained.

As one would expect, Alpha Delta Zatan is about as scary as David DeCoteau film. Yet, DeCoteau—early 2000s DeCoteau, specifically—would at least play up the homoeroticism, even if the guys in his casts seldom take off their boxer briefs. The guys of Alpha Delta Zatan, however, are decidedly asexual, or possibly just autosexual. They are always admiring their own bodies yet show zero interest in sex with any gender. Admittedly, several of the ADZ’s cast’s bodies are quite admirable, and certainly more to my taste than the twinks DeCoteau favors, but I started getting bored by the third shower scene; by the fourth I was hoping at least one of the guys would go full frontal, just to break the monotony (spoiler: no penises are ever shown). You’ll derive more enjoyment from watching 30-minutes' worth of “fitness inspiration” videos on YouTube than watching Alpha Delta Zatan. Or you could just watch the hard stuff [NSFW, but you knew that].

Short Takes: ‘A Closer Walk with Thee’ (2017) ★

David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer was released earlier this month to reviews ranging from meh to just don’t. I just didn’t and instead watched the 2017 gay-themed possession story, A Closer Walk with Thee, a movie The Exorcist: Believer is most definitely better than.

A group of missionaries belonging to a Christian denomination with very strict edicts against set decoration have set up shop in an East Los Angeles house with the hopes of bringing area residents to the Lord. They have their work cut out for them. Their first convert, Ascencion (Deborah Venegas), comes staggering back possessed by a demon within minutes of being baptized. (This is a horror film, after all, though it’s easy to forget that given the film is as moodily lit as the interior of a CVS.) Fortunately for Ascencion, Brother Eli (Gregory Shelby) is a crack exorcist and casts that demon out of her in time for her to be home for lunch.

But there’s a more insidious possession taking hold in one of the mission’s own members, sweet-faced organist Jordan (Aj Knight), who is not only cursed with Shane Dawson’s hairstyle but is also overcome with impure thoughts of Brother Eli (and, in one scene, the body of Christ). Jordan does his best to keep these feelings under control, but he’s powerless to resist his urges when he spies on Eli in the shower—urges that are so strong (because Brother Eli’s ass is that fine!) that he never once considers consequences of jacking off outside the bathroom door. He’s just asking to be caught by Lindsey (Kelsey Boze), the most judgmental of his fellow missionaries. But it’s going to take more than Brother Eli shouting, “Reveal yourself, you fag demon!” to turn Jordan straight.

It’s the treatment of Jordan’s possession where A Closer Walk with Thee goes from bad to patently offensive, and when my rating dropped from a star and a half to a single star. Had the writing-directing team of John C. Clark and Brie Williams chose to fully commit to satirizing the hysteria of religious fanaticism, as they do periodically in the movie’s first half, or base the horror in that same fanaticism, which, as we’ve seen again and again, is pretty damned terrifying, I might have been able to simply blame the movie’s shortcomings on a low budget and limited filmmaking experience. Unfortunately, Clark and Williams chose to literally equate being gay with demon possession, with Jordan becoming a rape-y, homicidal homo, making A Closer Walk with Thee more closely aligned with the shit peddled in an evangelical Christian “hell house” (albeit better acted) than a movie purportedly aimed at LGBTQ audiences.

And yet it’s distributed by Altered Innocence, a company “dedicated to releasing LGBTQ and Coming-of-Age [sic] films with an artistic edge.” I’d argue that A Closer Walk with Thee belongs with a different company, but faith-based outlets generally shun content with f-bombs and butt stuff. A shame, because A Closer Walk with Thee has the potential to be the best thing in PureFlix’s catalog instead of one of the worst in Altered Innocence’s. #PureFlixAfterDark.

Short Takes: ‘The Shadowed Mind’ (1988) ★★

Peter Greenaway at half price? An early work of an especially horny—and bi-curious— Richard Stanley? South African director Cedric (American Ninja 3 & 4) Sundstrom, comes really close to earning either distinction with his artsy horror/thriller The Shadowed Mind. If only he had succeeded.

Set in a private mental health hospital operating out of what appears to be an abandoned factory, Dr. Hildesheimer (Towje Kleiner), with the help of his worshipful assistant Helen (Trish Downing), treats patients with all manner of ailments, mostly of the sexual variety. Patients include childlike Matthew (Simon Poland), wrestling with body dysphoria and sexual identity; Julia (Hayley Dorskey), a victim of child sexual abuse who shows signs of multiple personality disorder; and General (Simon Sabela), who marches around in full military dress, randomly barking orders. Tellingly, General is the hospital’s most “normal” resident.

The newest arrival is Stephanie (Adrienne Pearce), a compulsive exhibitionist. She, of course, attracts the attention of others at the hospital, especially Paul (Rufus Swart, who also co-wrote the script), a patient who heretofore has been struggling to ignite a long-dormant libido, and, conversely, orderly Kurt (Evan J. Klisser, showing some serious camel toe whenever he’s clothed), who’s always hunting for partners to satisfy his hyperactive libido. Though Stephanie is quick to flash her tits, she doesn’t give in to either man’s advances as readily. Kurt, knowing he has willing partners in nurse Alice (Jennifer Steyn) and fellow orderly Nick (Nicholas Ashley Nortier), takes Stephanie’s rejection in stride. Paul, not so much.

Then people start getting murdered, and the timing couldn’t be more inconvenient, as the clinic is about to receive a $1 million grant.

Though The Shadowed Mind falls short of being good, many of its flaws are also what make it such a curious viewing experience. The script is often silly and nonsensical, but it’s also enjoyably weird. Sundstrom, helped by Ruth Strimling’s art direction and George Bartels’ cinematography, makes the most of the film’s location, yet you can’t quite suspend disbelief that a private hospital would operate in a warehouse with crumbling walls and busted out windows, no matter how artful the lighting. The performances are uneven, with several actors—Pearce and Dorskey especially—speaking as if they learned their lines phonetically, and yet these off-kilter line readings kind of work with the film’s overall vibe. The Shadowed Mind also pushes the envelope a little further than most American movies, at least as far as the sex and nudity goes, to say nothing of the queer content (the violence is tame compared to your average U.S.-made slasher), yet somehow remains in limbo between arthouse and grindhouse sensibilities.

I didn’t regret watching The Shadowed Mind, but wishing it lived up to all it could’ve been prevented me from enjoying it as much as I hoped I would.

Double Takes: ‘The House of Usher’ (1989) ★★ / (2006) ★

OK, I was wrong.

A couple years ago, when I reviewed a selection of David DeCoteau movies, I advised readers to skip DeCoteau’s very gay and very bad Edgar Allen Poe’s The House of Usher and try their luck with two other schlocky versions, one from 1989, the other from 2006, speculating that both movies look “like they deliver the fun kind of bad DeCoteau didn’t.”

They do not, though director Alan Birkinshaw’s The House of Usher (1989), comes close. In this one, Molly (Romy Walthall, billed as Romy Windsor) and her fiancée Ryan (Rufus Swart) are vacationing in London when they get an invitation to visit Ryan’s heretofore unknown uncle, Roderick Usher. But on the way to visit Uncle Rod, Ryan swerves into a tree to avoid two children in the middle of the road (why, yes, they are ghosts; how did you ever guess?) Ryan’s injured, so Molly goes to get help, by chance stumbling up to the Usher mansion, where Clive the asshole butler (Norman Coombes) assures her that he’ll make sure Ryan gets the medical assistance he needs. Meanwhile, why doesn’t she have a cup of tea and a lie down upstairs before dinner with the master of the house?

When Molly finally meets Roderick (Oliver Reed), she’s assured that Ryan is in the hospital but unable to receive visitors just yet. Though Molly has her doubts, she agrees to stay put. However, it seems no amount of drugged tea—served regularly by Clive’s miserable wife (Anne Stradi)—will keep Molly in her room. As she explores the titular House of Usher, discovering, among other things, another member of the Usher clan (Donald Pleasence) kept locked away in the attic, Molly begins to suspect Uncle Rod might have sinister intentions.

This version of Usher has some things going for it. There are a few—very few—noteworthy set pieces, including a hand forced into a meat grinder fake-out and a character getting his dick gnawed-off by a rat; plus, Reed and, especially, Pleasence raise the bar considerably. Unfortunately, we spend most of our time with Walthall, whose performance seems better suited for a movie entitled Sorority Beach Party than a Gothic horror. In fact, the movie’s whole tone is off, like Birkinshaw and screenwriter Michael J. Murray had initially conceived this adaption of Poe’s story as a horror comedy but couldn’t think up any jokes—good or bad—before filming began. Yet, the movie is still filmed like a comedy, as brightly lit as a Disney Channel sit-com and with tacky sets that look as if they were hastily painted for a haunted house attraction at a high school Halloween fair. And the less said about the ending, which is as infuriating as it is nonsensical, the better.

But at least 1989’s Usher has some entertainment value. Not so director Hayley Cloake’s 2006 adaptation, which clocks in at a mere 81 minutes yet feels twice as long. This time out, our doomed heroine is Roderick Usher’s ex-girlfriend from college, Jill (pouty blonde Izabella Miko), who travels to the Usher estate upon learning of the death of Roderick’s sister—and Jill’s best friend—Madeline. Though the stern, Mrs. Danvers-esque housekeeper Mrs. Thatcher (Beth Grant) is less than welcoming, Jill sticks around after Maddy’s funeral, rekindling her romance with the charmless Roderick (a monotone Austin Nichols). Jill puts up with Mrs. Thatcher’s cock-blocking and her beau’s nightly sessions in a sensory deprivation tank to treat his neurasthenia, but it’s only upon discovering that the Usher family tree is a straight line that she begins to reconsider her relationship to the brooding Roderick.

Cloake’s movie may be a bit more competently made than DeCoteau’s Usher, but it isn’t any better; it’s just straighter. The movie’s most inspired elements—mixing in bits of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca into the story; the incest twist—are wasted, as are most of the actors. Miko makes the best impression, though I’m not sure if that’s testament to her acting skill so much as she’s just given more of a character to play than her co-stars. An actor who should have stolen this movie was Grant, a prolific character actor who usually makes a big impression in small roles. Grant frequently appears in comedies, so I was looking forward to seeing what she did with a more serious role. Not much, it turns out. It’s not her fault, though; it’s screenwriter Collin Chang’s. And if you’re thinking of checking this one out to ogle Miko or Nichols, don’t bother. Though rated R, this Usher only offers a few shots of Miko in panties and skimpy top and a near-subliminal shot of Nichols’ pubes. At least DeCoteau had the courtesy to appeal his audience’s prurient interests, albeit clumsily. Despite the curb appeal of her movie’s cast, Cloake’s The House of Usher is strictly a teardown property.

More Flaccid than Fabulous

The vampire was just made for sexploitation. After all, seduction is a large part of the vampire’s M.O. And since it’s ideal for sexploitation, then it stands to reason it’s perfect for gaysploitation. Yet while there are quite a number of movies featuring lesbian vampires, gay vampires aren’t quite as well represented (though there might be some mitigating factors).

Interview with the Vampire had potential, but then they
cast this guy.

But the gay vampire is out there. You just have to step off the well-lit path of Netflix and Prime algorithms and go deeper into the streaming service abyss. Eventually a thumbnail image of two or more attractive men, baring fangs and abs, will catch your eye, tempting you to join them. And like a willing victim, you press play.

Which is how I ended up watching the 2011 British “film” VAMPIRES: BRIGHTER IN DARKNESS.

Like any cute, young gay man, Toby Brighter (puppy-eyed Dan Briggs) has had trouble attracting a man in the six months following his breakup, so his sister Charlotte (Rebecca Eastman, deftly making her obnoxious character insufferable) has secured him a blind date via a gay dating website. Though Toby doesn’t have high hopes the date will be a success, he nevertheless bathes for the occasion.

And gets our hopes up for what will follow.

Toby’s date isn’t with some drooling troll but the very handsome, very elegant Lucas Delmore (Rhys Howells). And he’s wealthy, too, having reserved the entire guild hall restaurant so they can be alone. Lucas is equally enchanted by the working-class stud. By the date’s end the two men are, if not in love, at least very infatuated with each other. However, Toby goes home alone as the two men have agreed to take it slow.

But just as Toby is about to enter his flat, Lucas appears on his doorstep, only now Lucas is more menacing and rape-y than suave and charming. Through the power of boners, he convinces Toby to invite him inside, whereupon the two make-out hot and heavy. What the audience knows but Toby doesn’t is Lucas is a vampire!

Except the man on top of Toby isn’t Lucas but Lucas’ jealous ex Anthony (James MacCorkindale), who shape-shifts back into his true form when Lucas appears at the front door. Toby manages to invite Lucas inside before he bleeds out and, after lots of hissing, growling and fast-forward action, Lucas manages to fight Anthony off. This leaves Lucas with a choice: let Toby die or make him a fellow vamp. He makes Toby one of the undead, of course, though he at least asks Toby’s permission, as he’s a gentleman. So much for taking things slow.

Anthony and Lucas prepare to do battle, yet I’m preoccupied with
thoughts about doing something with that drab kitchen. Painting
those cabinets a different color would do wonders.

Get comfortable with this expression. Abigail
Law-Briggs wears it for the movie’s entirety.

Alas, the movie maintains a glacial pace, despite promising to ramp up the action. Not only do Lucas and Toby have an angry Anthony to contend with, Lilith, the vampire queen who turned Lucas, (Abigail Law-Briggs, who gives the movie’s best bad performance), has returned and she’s mobilizing her coven and summoning CGI demons from the Sega Genesis Hell to take Lucas back into to her fold, or whatever. Then Lucas travels to Green Screen Egypt to meet with Semech (Richard Sherwood), who I think is like an ancient vampire king (but he’s still a queen, gurl), and then I went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee because there was no way I’d be able to make it to through the remaining hour and ten minutes without some additional caffeine in my system.

I should’ve done cocaine. 

Experience the horror of ’90s caliber CGI.

Vampires: Brighter in Darkness isn’t a work of incompetence so much as the result of writer-director-editor Jason Davitt’s grand ambition exceeding his £5.99 budget. This movie originally aired as a TV series on Sky channel 201 (is that a public access station?) and was edited into a 2-hour-10-minute movie, but I doubt it would be any more enjoyable in 15-minute installments. Davitt clearly wanted to craft a vampire epic with a gay romance at its core, but there are too many story points to keep track of and too little action to hold a viewer’s interest. And if you’re expecting to see a lot of skin, forget it. Briggs’ opening credits shower scene is the only nudity in the thing. The acting, at least, isn’t too terrible, though all the actors cast as vampires speak like they have loose dentures whenever they have their fangs in.

Admittedly, this scene was kinda’ cool.

Davitt went on to make a sequel, Vampires: Lucas Rising, but given that I spent the last 45 minutes of Brighter in Darkness wishing it would just fucking end already! I decided to give it a miss. So instead, I watched VAMPIRE BOYS (also 2011). I doubted it would be much better, but at least it was significantly shorter.

Jasin (Jason Lockhart, who just might be literally sleepwalking through his role) and his coven of Vampire Boys, roam the streets of Los Angeles, seeking The One, which, as established by the movie’s black and white opening (artsy!), is to be someone of the opposite sex. And not too bright, apparently, as the young woman’s escape attempt amounts to little more than her twirling in place while Jasin and crew slowly approach. Alas, she dies, for in this movie’s mythology, The One must truly want to become a vampire to be turned (seems like her attempt at escape, lame though it was, would’ve been a giveaway). And immortality must be renewed prior to an expiration date, like a library book: “You’re entering your one-hundredth year,” warns one of Jasin’s vampire bros. “We must find The One.”

These vampires are also invulnerable to sunlight
and Hot Topic jewelry.

“Los Angeles, City of Angels,” Jasin says in a stilted approximation of wistful. “Let us hope I find mine.”

Jasin finds his angel, and his angel has a dick. Said dick is attached to Caleb (Christian Ferrer), a twink college student who has just moved to L.A. from Ohio. Caleb is sharing a house with fellow student Paul (Ryan Adames, who also contributed some songs to the soundtrack), who says his parents used to own the house then immediately contradicts that statement when he tells Caleb his parents own the house free and clear. (Regardless, someone needs to tend to that lawn.) Paul is clearly interested in Caleb, and Caleb encourages his interest by walking around the house in his boxer briefs. 

Christian Ferrer and Ryan Adames introduce us to the
concept of Sub-DeCoteau Cinema.

 

Jasin Lockhart tries to maintain some dignity while
Dylan Vox channels Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus.

But then, thanks to a bit of vampire telepathy or something, Jasin becomes aware of Caleb’s existence and, sensing he’s The One, goes out of his way to cockblock Paul. Jasin’s infatuation with Caleb doesn’t sit too well with Jasin’s right-hand Logan (best actor of the cast Dylan Vox, of The Lair as well as other things), who thinks Jasin should go after platinum blonde babe Tara (Zasu), apparently wanting the reverse of the agreement between male-female bi couples: outside play is OK so long as it’s with a member of the opposite sex. As for Caleb, he easily falls for his bleached-blond paramour, though he reconsiders when Jasin springs the whole vampire thing on him.

Vampire Boys is indeed not much better than Vampires: Brighter in Darkness. In fact, it’s actually a little worse. Sure, Vampire Boys doesn’t have the Spawn-caliber CGI, the all-over-the-place story, or the patience-trying runtime, and the movie even sweetens the deal with some full-frontal nudity...

Why is this man smiling?

Asked and answered. And in case you’re wondering, yes, he has.

...but Brighter in Darkness at least had heart. For all its shortcomings, you can tell the people involved gave a shit. Vampire Boys, on the other hand, is just one more thing released in 2011—when the Twilight Saga was still dominating the box office—that’s cashing in on the vampire craze. I’m not against cashing in, but at least be creative about it. Creativity, however, is perhaps too much to ask from a screenplay written by the same man who gave us Reptisaurus and The Amazing Bulk, and Charlie Vaughn’s directing does little to help matters. It’s a porn parody with all the sex and parody cut out, making its hour and nine-minute runtime feel like 109 minutes. Oh, well, at least they refrained from titling it Vampire Boyz.

‘Want Some Hot Fuckhole?’

As with Vampires etc., I was so grateful when Vampire Boys reached the end credits that I didn’t even consider watching its sequel, Vampire Boys 2. I was sick of watching cock-teasing gay vampire movies. I wanted some movies that would put out. So, I cruised the sleazier side of the internet went home with Tom DeSimone’s SONS OF SATAN (1973) and Roger Earl’s GAYRACULA (1983).

The plot of Sons of Satan offers nothing new beyond replacing blood and guts with boners and cum. Jonathan Trent (Tom Paine), rocking a pair of polyester bell-bottoms and stacked heels, visits the home of “Natas” (nope, not obvious at all) in his search for his missing brother Clark. Though Natas’ name and address were found among Clark’s things, Mr. Natas’ caftan-wearing manservant, radiating bitter antiques dealer energy, sniffs that he knows nothing of Jonathan’s missing brother, that the master of the house is unavailable, and that ring in a display case that looks exactly like the one-of-a-kind that Jonathan gave Clark has been locked that case for over 200 years. Good day, sir!

Jonathan politely fucks off, then reconsiders and breaks back into Natas’ house, discovering that Clark has joined a vampire worshiping cult! He just as quickly learns that “interruptions in our services are never tolerated, Mr. Trent.” His punishment: providing nourishment to the cum-hungry Natas!

Clark (Shannon) prepares to give his master his ‘life force’
(not to be confused with Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce).

Natas awakens to a chalice of freshly squeezed jizz.

I recently learned from the Ask Any Buddy podcast that DeSimone only put his real name on the porn movies he was proud of, so the fact that Sons of Satan was released under his Lancer Brooks pseudonym tells you right away it’s one of his lesser offerings. Then again, he put his real name on Chatterbox and Angel III, so maybe DeSimone isn’t the best judge of his proudest achievements.  

That said, though Sons of Satan isn’t one of DeSimone’s better porn movies, it’s hardly his worst. It has the look of a cheap drive-in horror, which I appreciated, and its atmosphere is appropriately claustrophobic and creepy. But even cheap drive-in horrors—or Vampire Boys—have outfitted their vampires with more convincing fangs. Seeing Darryl Hughes, as the unduly tan Natas, struggle to keep his plastic vampire teeth in his mouth kills the mood, be that mood spooky or sexy. As for the sex…meh. Other than some cum-guzzling and a bit of incest (Jonathan is “forced” to suck off Clark, played by a blond cutie billed simply as Shannon), it’s all fairly bland. Still, Sons of Satan manages to have more bite than either Vampires: Brighter in Darkness or Vampire Boys. 

Who says Sons of Satan isn’t scary? Just look
at that wallpaper!

Jonathan (Tom Paine) is about to be initiated
into the Sons of Satan.

Not much better but way more entertaining than the previous three movies combined is Gayracula, which goes full-on camp with its story about Gaylord Young (toothy blond Falcon star Tim Kramer), a courier in 1783 Transylvania who delivers a package to the Marquis de Suede (Steve Collins) and gets turned into a vampire for his trouble. But before the fangs are bared, cocks are sucked. Gaylord helpfully narrates the action for the vision-impaired: “He sucked my big, hot cock with his moist, juicy lips. He twirled that tongue around my hot dick.” This voiceover is not by Kramer, who delivers his lines like a sixth grader reading aloud in English class, but by one of Gayracula’s screenwriters, Bruce Vilanch (not sure if he's Lorei I. Lee or Dorothee Pshaw), clearly relishing this opportunity to tap into his inner Vincent Price. 

The cardboard castle of the Marquis de Suede

As much as Gaylord enjoyed the Marquis’ “tight, and moist, and hot” ass, he’s not as appreciative of being made into one of the undead. And so he vows revenge on the Marquis, whom he learns 200 years later, is running a nightclub in Los Angeles.

“I traveled inelegantly but effectively.”

Michael Christopher: Master thespian.

The titular Gayracula is delivered to L.A. by none other than gay porn legend Michael Christopher. Once Gaylord’s manservant Boris (Rand Remington, in his sole film appearance) helps Christopher unload the coffin containing Gaylord, he offers the delivery man that most common gratuity in pornography: hot sex. Christopher is so into it that he is not only oblivious to the rats crawling nearby, he barely notices Gaylord rising from his coffin. When Gaylord does attract his attention, all he can do is ask if the vampire would like some “hot fuckhole.” Gaylord declines (“I don’t like sloppy seconds,” he lisps) but still can’t resist eating Christopher’s ass.

 

Though not in the way one would expect.

His bloodlust satiated, Gaylord heads to the Marquis’ nightclub, where he’s invited to watch a dancer rehearse his moves.

The rhythm doesn’t get everybody.

After taking a stroll into the club’s backroom for a quickie, Gaylord returns to the main room of the club to check out another performance, this one featuring hunky Ray Medina. Medina’s act includes popping a cork or something out of his foreskin, pulling a chain attached to his leather-cuffed balls, and, in a moment that is either hilarious or sexually traumatizing, periodically shitting out silver balls, complete with farting sound effects. (How I wish I was present to witness the audience reaction to that scene when this movie was screened for a benefit for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.)

Performance artist Tim Medina.

If you’re wondering if the movie—and it is a movie, shot on film, not video—might try to top this moment, let me assure you/burst your bubble: it doesn’t. After watching Medina’s act, which ends with him fucking the rhythm-challenged dancer seen previously, Gaylord invites the Marquis back to his place for a threesome with Boris. But once the guys nut, Gaylord chains up the Marquis and prepares to drive a stake through his heart. To spare his undead life, the Marquis tells Gaylord of a way to break the vampire’s curse: take the virginity of a man he truly loves, in this case Randy (Randal Butler, another one-and-done performer), a waiter barely glimpsed earlier at the Marquis’ club. Once Randy is deflowered (sure), the Marquis performs a ritual (i.e., an orgy with some mild BDSM). Gaylord plays along until he gets off, after which he rids himself—and the world—of the Marquis for good.

Leaving Randy and Gaylord free to frolic in
the pool happily ever after.

Gayracula knows what it is and doesn’t try to put on airs. It’s camp with extra cheese and it’s better for it. I found it more amusing than arousing, however. Though the guys in it are hotter than those in Sons of Satan (or, for my taste, Vampire Boys), the sex in it is almost uniformly mechanical (for all his physical charms, Tim Kramer fucks like an animatronic sex doll). Still, as gay vampires go, I’d rather spend my Halloween watching the robotic ramming of Gayracula or the ’70s shagging of Sons of Satan than sleeping through the turgid talk of Vampires: Brighter in Darkness or enduring the vapid Vampire Boys.

Can I interest you in an ... Egyptian feast?

If You Like ’Em Uncut: Should you seek out either Sons of Satan or Gayracula, beware that there are heavily edited versions out there. The print of Sons acquired by Alpha Blue Archives was apparently delivered to the company as a bunch of random film strips in a shoe box, requiring Alpha Blue to re-assemble as best they could, and their best isn’t very good. Pieces of the film are missing, and the last third is rendered almost incoherent, jumping between Jonathan being held captive in a basement room, being fucked by Natas, then back in the basement, then being approached by Natas. Parts of the footage aren’t even right-side up (though this kind of works). You’ll find a more complete cut from Something Weird Video or, ahem, other sources. Gayracula was heavily edited when initially released on video, leaving out some key plot points, as well as that climactic ritual orgy. I wasted $3.19 renting the edited version, but I was able to find an uncut version elsewhere.

Like Frankenstein’s Monster, Only Fuckable

The folly of men playing God has been a favorite trope in sci-fi and horror films, as far back as James Whale’s 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We probably have more to fear from God’s self-appointed enforcers (Google it; one link won’t do the subject justice), but our suspicions are more easily riled by those geeks in their labs, believing in evolution and telling us to wear masks, possibly because we all harbor memories of them ruining the grading curve in advanced biology back in high school. What other sinister things are the nerds up to, beside wrecking our GPAs and telling us to vaccinate our kids?

Hollywood knows: the scientists are building killer sex monsters!

Of course, that’s never the stated goal. In director Frank Nelson’s 1976 movie EMBRYO (a.k.a. Created to Kill), Dr. Paul Holliston (Rock Hudson) is just trying to save babies. He gets to put his research to the test after he hits a pregnant Doberman pinscher while racing home one rainy night. The mother isn’t likely to survive, but Holliston thinks he can save her puppies, transferring them to his handy artificial womb and injecting them with “Placentolactogen,” the growth hormone he and his late wife were developing before she was killed in a car accident.

Fetal Puppy Syndrome

Only one of the pups survives, but it’s enough to convince the doctor he’s made a major breakthrough. What’s more, the puppy grows at an accelerated rate. In mere days, Holliston has a full-grown Doberman—named Number One—that can get its own food out of the refrigerator and put the bowl in the sink when he’s done. Number One can also let himself out of a parked car and kill a stuffed dog barking terrier, but the doctor, inside a hospital convincing a colleague to surrender any spare fetuses he might have lying around, isn’t around to witness his experiment’s sudden violent aggression.

Rock Hudson is astonished that his career has come to this.

Holliston’s pal at the hospital comes through, donating the fetus of a pregnant woman who committed suicide (hey, she’ll never miss it). The doctor quickly gets to work, pumping the baby so full of Placentolactogen that, in less than five weeks, he has a full-grown Barbara Carrera, who presents herself wearing nothing but her hair, Lady Godiva-style. The softcore Muzak on the soundtrack hammers home the message that she’s now down to fuck. The doctor names her Victoria, because her survival is a victory for both of them.

Like Number One, Victoria is a super-fast learner, going from basic math to reading the entire Bible (“An interesting story, but not very logical”). The doctor takes Victoria’s distinct Latin accent in stride. Were the movie to address this I’m sure it would explain away Victoria’s accent with a reference to her deceased mother being of Latin descent, as if accents are genetic. Instead, we’ll just assume that all humans injected with Placentolactogen sound like they come from Nicaragua.

The doctor, by the way, does not live alone. His sister-in-law Martha (Diane Ladd) stays with him as a housekeeper, and it’s implied she might aspire to take her late sister’s place as Holliston’s second wife. Yet the movie wants us to believe that not once during the weeks that Holliston was experimenting on a fetus, and then a human child, did Martha wonder what he was up to. Did Martha ever hear a baby cry or wonder about the dirty diapers in the laundry? Nope, not one fucking time. There’s one close call, when Martha enters the lab with the adult Victoria hiding behind the door, knife in hand, but otherwise, she is oblivious to her new housemate.

Martha finally meets Victoria weeks later at a party thrown by Holliston’s son Gordon and his pregnant wife Helen (John Elerick and Anne Schedeen, doing her best Brenda Vacarro impression), Holliston introducing her as his new live-in lab assistant. Martha is less than pleased, all but muttering “bitch” under her breath when Victoria walks away. Roddy McDowall, as a snooty chess player (“Chess is one of the last bastions of male chauvinism,” he huffs) whom Victoria almost bests in a game, isn’t a huge fan of Holliston’s “assistant” either. It’s to the movie’s detriment that there is no scene of Roddy and Martha huddling in the kitchen talking shit about Victoria. Everyone else—including Dr. Joyce Brothers in a WTF? cameo—finds Holliston’s hot new assistant absolutely charming.

A party in serious need of cocaine.

Barbara Carrera is ready to learn.

After the party, Victoria surprises Holliston in his bedroom, letting him know she wants her experiences with intercourse to extend beyond the social kind. “I want to learn,” she says breathily, her nipples showing plainly through a sheer gown (Embryo may be rated PG, but it’s a ’70s PG). The popping of Victoria’s cherry is the beginning of the end, however, as one orgasm is all it takes for her to start experiencing some painful side effects. Now she’ll stop at nothing to get the 70ml of “pituitary gland extract” from an unborn fetus she needs to stay young and hot, even if it means endangering the lives of a pregnant hooker and Helen. Basically, she turns into [insert name of celebrity addicted to plastic surgery here] on the eve of his/her 40th birthday.

Embryo is basically a 1970s take on a 1950s mad scientist movie. (MoriaReviews.com sources an even earlier—and uncredited—inspiration, the 1928 German film Alraune.) Though he’s phoning it in, Hudson makes the movie watchable, but even his star power can’t keep Embryo from looking like a made-for-TV movie (only Carrerra’s bare breasts assure us it isn’t). Ladd has been in worse movies, but she’s wasted here, asked to do little more than look annoyed and serve coffee. Carrera does OK despite being is miscast, though her nude scenes will make more of an impression than her performance.

Penis Slugs and an Exciting Fetish

Nearly 33 years later Embryo’s plot was revived in 2009’s SPLICE. (Or, 81 years later Alraune’s basic plot was again recycled, but I’m henceforth sticking to my Embryo/Splice comparison. Let’s just accept there’s nothing new under the sun.) Though it is a rehash of an old story, director Vincenzo Natali was allowed to do what so many studios are now afraid to do: avail himself of an R-rating, making a movie reminiscent of the earlier work of fellow Canadian David Cronenberg. Guess it helps to have Guillermo del Toro as an executive producer.

Our protagonists are Clive and Elsa (Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley, respectively), genetic engineers at Nucleic Exchange Research & Development, or NERD (groan-inducing wordplay like that just re-enforces the Cronenberg comparisons). In the opening scene we see the couple, who are also romantic partners, birth something that looks like a cross between a slug and a malformed penis. It’s introduced to a previously birthed, much smaller-but-who’s-judging penis slug, the female. The two penis slugs—named Fred and Ginger—immediately extend long, petal-tipped tongues from their urethra-like mouths, swirling them around each other in such a way that they form a pink flower between them. It’s almost pretty. “They’re imprinting,” says an awestruck Elsa.

When penis slugs meet.

Fred and Ginger are the result of splicing DNA from multiple species, and they can be used to produce medicinal proteins. Clive and Elsa are eager to move on to the next phase of their research, incorporating human DNA, but the corporation funding their work—represented by a somewhat sinister Simona Maicanescu—wants to get Fred and Ginger on the market as soon as possible. The lab’s ass-kissing boss, William Barlow (David Hewlett of Stargate: Atlantis, as well as Natali’s earlier film, Cube), readily concurs.

Clive and Elsa aren’t so accepting of the decision and immediately head to the lab for an experimentation montage. The end result is something that resembles a sentient testicle, but that’s only the placenta. What bursts out kind of resembles a shaved, earless cat with two digitigrade legs. It’s kind of cute, actually. Like Holliston’s experiment in Embryo, Clive and Elsa’s “baby” develops rapidly, taking on more humanoid characteristics but still distinctly alien. She looks nothing like Barbara Carrera. They name her Dren, nerd spelled backwards (Natali and his co-screenwriters Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor might have reconsidered that name had they watched Farscape).

Sarah Polley lures her creation with her tasty, tasty fingers.

Dren’s existence begins to put a strain on the scientists’ relationship. Earlier they discuss having a baby. Clive wants to start a family; Elsa, who had a miserable childhood, does not. Yet it’s Elsa who is eager to bond with Dren, though she seems to treat her more like a pet than a child (some of her teaching techniques are reminiscent of Dr. Joan Crawford’s in Trog). Clive, feeling the strain of having to keep Dren secret, wants her out of their lives. He discovers Dren has amphibious lungs when he holds her head under water. “How did you know?” Elsa asks. “You did know, right?” Clive says yes, but his eyes say something else.

Separated at birth: Delphine Chanéac as Dren; Björk in the video for “Hunter.”

Because their co-workers at NERD are more curious than Diane Ladd, and because they can’t exactly stick a wig on Dren and introduce her as a new lab assistant (she does sort of look like Björk; Icelanders have tails, right?), the renegade scientists need to get Dren away from the lab. Fortunately, Elsa just happens to own a plot convenience: a farm that she inherited from her mother. It’s at this farm that we begin to see Elsa exhibit behavior that invites more Joan Crawford comparisons. Elsa is a perfectly loving parent when Dren is docile and compliant, but she loses her shit when Dren acts out. Then again, what are we to expect when it’s revealed Elsa’s childhood bedroom was more like a cell in a Turkish prison. Elsa’s was not a happy childhood, and yet she held on to this farm, a place that was a living hell for her, paying the taxes and utility bills instead of putting it up for sale before her mother’s body was cold? This strains credulity more than the creation of Dren...

...or the idea that anyone would choose to drive a Gremlin in the 2000s.

Clive isn’t exactly Father of the Year. Like Holliston, he crosses some boundaries, but Clive also brings an exciting fetish into the mainstream [link very NSFW]. There’s also a key tonal difference in how the two movies handle the sex between scientist and, um, subject that makes Splice a bit more disturbing. Because Embryo treats the adult Victoria as a sex object from the get-go, the movie and the audience can bypass any pesky questions about the morality of this relationship (not that anyone watching Embryo is going to think about it that hard). In Splice, however, Dren, besides being a unique species, is presented as being like Clive and Elsa’s daughter, adding an extra layer of “eww!” (or “ahh!,” if that’s your fantasy). Regardless of whether or not you think Clive has committed incest, he’s definitely cheated on Elsa. 

Adrian Brody’s O (I-fucked-up) face.

Things soon take a more tragic—and rapey—turn in the final act, as the movie abandons psychological nuance in favor of straight-up horror, winding down to a sequel-bait ending—or so it would seem. According to Natali, he just liked the idea of leaving things open-ended; he never intended for there to be a sequel. (That Splice under-performed at the box office probably ensured the studio didn’t try to persuade him to change his plans.) With Hollywood being more interested in creating franchises than telling stories, even way back in 2009, I simply forgot that ending movies on a question mark was still a thing.

I had wanted to see Splice when it first came out, but the film was released in the U.S. in June 2010, when I, along with much of the rest of the world, was struggling to stay afloat during a global recession. Dropping $10 on a matinee ticket just seemed irresponsible. Thankfully Splice is currently on Netflix in the U.S.*, during another economic downturn, no less (this movie just might be cursed). Despite its link to financial catastrofucks, Splice is still worth checking out, especially if you like your sci-fi horror to  have a few extra I.Q. points, are nostalgic for Cronenberg’s 1980s horror movies, or just enjoy watching sex scenes featuring human/animal hybrids. Those who enjoy ’70s schlock can find Embryo streaming on various sites, with the version on Tubi being the least shitty looking of the bunch.

*This is a prime sponsorship opportunity, NordVPN. Just sayin’.