Podcasts
Talking Through Internalized Homophobia in ‘Spiral’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
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Open Your Heart, Baby
Joe and I are nearing the end of our “Underseen or Underrated?” theme that we’ve been working through in 2022, and the last few weeks have been a bit intense, to say the least. For 2017, we revisited Darren Aronofsky‘s religious/eco horror thriller mother! before doing it for the lulz in Sam Levinson’s (Euphoria) 2018 film Assassination Nation. Then we dosed ourselves with LSD for Gaspar Noé’s Climax for 2019 and now we’re entering 2020 with Kurtis David Harder‘s underseen queer horror film Spiral!
In the film, an interracial same-sex couple (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman and Ari Cohen) move to a small town in the mid-’90s so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16-year-old daughter Kayla (June Laporte) with the best social values. However, nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighborhood as their neighbors (Lochlyn Munro and Chandra West) have a peculiar interest in their “untraditional” family.
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Episode 168 – Spiral (2020)
What’s better than escaping from the city and moving out to the country? Well, if it’s 1995 and you’re an interracial gay couple, almost anything. That’s the story at the heart of Kurtis David Harder’s queer horror film Spiral, our 2020 entry in our “Underseen or Underrated?” theme.
Join us as we discuss this unabashedly queer horror film that manages to combine supernatural horror with very real horror to great effect. We’ll discuss the hate crime that opens the film (and compare it to a similar opening in It Chapter Two) and we’ll also discuss internalized homophobia, in a conversation that hits a close to home for Trace.
Plus, polyamory, leaving your doors unlocked in suburbia and PTSD. It’s a heavier episode focused on an admittedly heavy film, but never fear: our trademark humor is still here in spades!
Cross out Spiral!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re concluding “Underrated or Underseen?” theme with a look at the dragtastic queer horror-comedy slasher Death Drop Gorgeous!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 160 hours of additional content! This month, we’re discussing horror movies where the villain wins, as well as Hulu originals No Exit and Fresh, Ti West’s X and a 20th anniversary audio commentary on Blade II!
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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