Podcasts
‘Horror Queers’ Podcast Launched, Listen Now!
We’ve been teasing you about it for a few weeks, but the time has finally come: Bloody Disgusting’s bi-monthly queer horror column is making the move over to the Podcasting Network! Now, you’ll be able to hear Trace and Joe banter about horror movies on a weekly basis! We are incredibly excited to bring this show to you and hope you enjoy it as well. For those of you who are averse to podcasts: never fear! We will still be writing our column, albeit less frequently (once a month as opposed to twice).
To make the launch extra exciting, we’ve released the first three episodes in full, so all three are available right now! Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Libsyn and RSS.
If you want even more content, visit our Patreon page where you can sign up for exclusive bonus episodes each month! This bonus content will consist of full-length episodes on new theatrically-released horror films. For January, we’re covering both Escape Room and Glass, the biggest horror movies of the month. Our review for Escape Room is already uploaded, so if you become a patron today you’ll have instant access to that episode!
For your listening convenience, we have embedded the audio for those first three episodes below (and just a heads up: the first episode is more of a “getting to know you” episode, so if you don’t care to learn more about us as individuals, feel free to skip episode 1 and move on to episode 2!).
Episode 1 – Speed Dating
Welcome to Horror Queers, a podcast based on Joe Lipsett and Trace Thurman’s long-running article series on Bloody Disgusting. In this first episode, the guys introduce the Pod and themselves with a series of (overly personal) questions, “Speed Dating” style.
Discover their most anticipated horror films of 2019, who Trace’s first celebrity crush was, which gay sports Joe doesn’t play and, in a highly contentious and thoroughly scientific debate, which Hollywood Chris truly is the best!
Episode 2 – Scream
“Straight” out of the gate, Joe and Trace tackle the biggest horror film franchise of the 90s: Wes Craven’s 1996 revisionist slasher Scream. Join the guys as they unpack all of the film’s queer elements, including its metatextual references, its strong (read: bitchy) female characters, its “out” queer screenwriter and Billy & Stu’s beautiful bro-mance of a love that dare not speak its name.
Also: Joe makes Trace play F/M/K with the film’s male cast in the first of our wide-ranging (and mostly inane) podcast games.
Episode 3 – Hostel
Three episodes in and Joe and Trace are already ready for a vacation…in straight white homophobic hell. That’s right, we’re RIPPING into Eli Roth’s notorious 2004 torture porn flick Hostel, drilling down into the Josh/Salad Fingers relationship and questioning if Roth, the film or the characters are homophobic. Mostly the guys just lament how much better Part Two is.
Plus: in this week’s game Joe forces Trace to play “Archive or Trash It” with Roth’s filmography.
Questions? Comments? Snark? Connect with us on Twitter using the hashtag #HorrorQueers.
> Trace: @tracedthurman
> Joe: @bstolemyremote
And be sure to check out all of our online articles right here.
If you’d like to let us know something that can’t be relayed in a Tweet (be it corrections, suggestions, fan mail, hate mail, etc.), send us an email at horrorqueers@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Joe & Trace
It’s been a busy month on Murder Made Fiction podcast. In addition to introducing a new co-host (Perfectly Good Moment‘s Amanda Jane Stern), we spent Pride Month tackling a wide variety of Leopold and Loeb fictional adaptations.
In 1924 Chicago, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb plotted to commit the perfect murder when they abducted and killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks. As Amanda outlines in her primer on the case, the men were caught almost immediately and the media circus that followed was billed “the trial of the century”.
Listen to Leopold and Loeb mini primer.
The fallout has reverberated throughout the last century as countless books, plays, musicals, and films have drawn on the case for inspiration. Some are more faithful than others, such as Richard Fleischer‘s 1959 drama Compulsion, which stars a young Dean Stockwell as Leopold and Orson Welles as the boys’ lawyer, John Darrow (named Jonathan Wilk in the film).
Listen to Leopold and Loeb: Compulsion (1959).
Then there are the texts that use the idea of queer-coded killers as a jumping off point, but confuse (or flat-out disregard) the details of the real life case in favour of jumbled fiction. That’s what happens in Barbet Schroeder‘s Murder by Numbers, which awkwardly introduces a tortured backstory for lead actress (and executive producer) Sandra Bullock. The result is an uneven film that misunderstands which of its two competing storylines are actually interesting (hint: it’s the Leopold and Loeb stuff with Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt).
Listen to Leopold and Loeb: Murder by Numbers (2002).
We ended up discussing other (often more successful) titles on Patreon, including 1992’s Swoon (a New Queer Cinema art-house take on the crime), Michael Haneke‘s 2007 Funny Games remake, and gay screenwriter Kevin Williamson‘s Scream, which proved to be a much more reverent and sly interpretation of L&L than we anticipated.
We wrapped up the month with a final summary episode about our favorite adaptations before chatting with author and archivist Erik Rebain, who literally wrote the book on Leopold (Arrested Adolescence) and maintains one of the foremost websites on the crime.
Watch our discussion on YouTube below (or listen here):
Next month: For July, we’re turning our attention to the Boston Strangler, with a look at films from 1964 and 1968, as well as the most contemporary version from 2023, starring Kiera Knightley and Carrie Coon.
Want even more true crime adaptations and Murder Made Fiction? Support the show on Patreon to listen to the aforementioned episodes, as well as a full-length primer on the case and 160+ hours of bonus content.
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