Podcasts
[Horror Queers Podcast] We’re Reaching (Again!) With Billy Zane’s Gay Collector in ‘Demon Knight’!
A Perfect Movie with Titties in It.
In case you’ve missed out on some of our recent episode: we’ve pissed a bunch of you off by proclaiming Kerr Smith‘s Carter as a repressed homosexual in Final Destination. Then we defended the controversial and widely-maligned slasher sequel Seed of Chucky. And finally, we got a little too deep into a discussion of bodily fluids during our discussion of Ginger Snaps.
This week, Joe and I are joined by Sarah-Tai Black and continuing our franchise marathon with a discussion of Ernest Dickerson‘s (Bones) booby-filled Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight! In the film, Brayker (William Sadler) is on the run from a demon known as The Collector (Billy Zane), who is after a Biblical artifact that could lead to demons controlling the world. After seeking refuge in a run-down church, Brayker teams up with local convict (and totally queer) Jeryline (Jada Pinkett) to stop The Collector before he can get his hands on the precious artifact.
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Episode 27 – Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995)
Hello Kiddies! The Horror Queers are joined by Tales from the Crypt expert Sarah-Tai Black to discuss the booby-filled 1995 banger Demon Knight! In what may be their most tangent-filled episode yet, they not only code Billy Zane’s Collector as gay and Jada Pinkett’s Jeryline (a name that no character pronounces the same way) as a “soft butch” lesbian, but they also proclaim the queer icon status of the Crypt Keeper!
Trace tries to decipher the rules of the demons (they’re so contradictory!). Sarah-Tai gets a Bible study lesson. And Joe is dumbfounded by Sarah-Tai’s story of how Alan Cumming once bullied her at a roller rink (and a thong-clad Anna Paquin just stood there and let it happen).
Lastly, Joe cribs a lot of his supposed “knowledge” of Demon Knight from this wonderful article written by Stephanie Crawford.
This Week’s Game: What would a sequel to Demon Knight look like?
Cross out Demon Knight!
Coming up Wednesday: Just in time for the its 20th anniversary (and this Friday’s release of Crawl) we finally get to discuss some aquatic horror in Steve Miner’s (Friday the 13th Parts 2 and 3) horror comedy Lake Placid!
– Joe & Trace
P.S. Be sure to check out all of our online articles right here.
P.P.S. As an added bonus, if you subscribe to our Patreon you can listen to a full-length bonus episode on Ari Aster’s new mind-fuck Midsommar!
Aaliyah Innocent.
May was a busy subgenre-switching month. After kicking things off with disaster “slasher” The Poseidon Adventure (listen), we watched American Giallo The Fan (listen), then wrapped things up with Vincent Price’s horror comedy Theater of Blood (listen).
Now, in honor of Pride Month and the return of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (renamed The Vampire Lestat for S03), Trace and I had to check out the straight-washed second attempt to bring Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles to life.
Back in 2002, director Michael Rymer pitched Hollywood on his vision for Rice’s second Chronicle book, The Vampire Lestat. Instead, the suits opted to adapt the third book, Queen of the Damned (likely due to the ancillary opportunities of the soundtrack, written entirely by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis).
In the film, Lestat (Stuart Townsend) awakens from slumber to reinvent himself as a leather-pant-wearing rocker. Lestat’s very public vampire persona attracts the attention of Talamasca novice Jesse (Marguerite Moreau), as well as the vampire’s maker Marius (Vincent Perez). But the nu-metal has the greatest impact on Akasha (Aaliyah), who awakens and promises to take over the world if her old foe Maharet (Lena Olin) doesn’t stop her.
Whose side will Lestat join? Will Marius help his fledgling or abandon him to public sacrifice? And does anyone actually care about Jesse? (Please note: that last question is rhetorical.)
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.
Episode 389: Queen of the Damned (2002)
Practice your Egyptian accent and bare that midriff because we are talking the troubled “adaptation” of Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned (2002).
Directed by Australian Michael Rymer, this one was doomed by the suits before it was even greenlit (which happened AFTER all of the songs were written by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis). It’s a bit of a clusterfuck.
Plus: praising everything Aaliyah (RIP); critiquing everything Stuart Townsend (aside from his abs and leather pants); a soft queer reading of Marius; and bemoaning boring protagonist/audience surrogate JESSE.
Cross out Queen of the Damned!
Coming Up Next: We’re tackling Ben Stiller’s horror-adjacent dark comedy The Cable Guy (1996), in anticipation of its 30th anniversary!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 495 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal Season 3 Episodes 5 & 6, Backrooms, Passenger, Leviticus, an audio commentary on the original Scary Movie (2000), and the return of our Requel Tier as we begin our episode coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat.