Podcasts
Projecting Gay Panic in Patrick Brice’s ‘Creep’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
Creep Evan Hansen.
After spending Halloween shacking up with the colorful characters in Clue, we kicked off November with a discussion of a seminal queer vampire text in The Lost Boys and revisited Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Once More With Feeling” on its 20th anniversary. Now, we’re getting a little…..creepy with Patrick Brice‘s exceptional film Creep!
In the film, Aaron (Patrick Brice) answers an online ad and drives to a stranger’s (Mark Duplass) house to film him for the day. The man wants to make a movie for his unborn child, but his requests become more bizarre as the day goes along.
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Episode 152 – Creep (2014)
Pull out your best Peachfuzz-wear because we’re talking about lots of awkward situations in Patrick Brice’s Creep (2014)! Joining us for the conversation is Devin Baldwin, co-host of the Kill the Dead Podcast!
Come along for the ride as we discuss the gay panic that the film has the potential to induce (just depends on how gay panicky you are as a viewer!) while comparing our respective sets of social skills to see who would be out of the house first.
Plus: mumblecore, social awkwardness, the thunk of an axe meeting a skull, a bestiality misunderstanding and one really creepy story from Trace.
Cross out Creep!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re covering our first Val Lewton production with a look at 1943’s queer classic The Seventh Victim!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for tons of additional content! This month, we’ll have episodes on Amazon Prime’s I Know What You Did Last Summer series, SyFy’s Slumber Party Massacre remake, the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City!
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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