Podcasts
The Dark Fairytale of Polish Mermaid Musical ‘The Lure’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
Ariel Would Never
We’re finally into September after a wild and diverse August filled with professional women, queer Chosen Families, owl-headed slashers, horny lighthouse keepers, and highly controversial homoerotic underground monsters (which begs the reminder: listen to the podcast instead of just commenting on the post).
Trace and I, along with special guest Jessica Scott, are kicking off the new month with Agnieszka Smoczynska’s ‘The Lure’, a feminist parable about two mermaids – Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszańska) – who become cabaret sensations in Warsaw in the 1980s.
As their power and popularity grow, the sisters are betrayed by their chosen family, night club singer Krysia (Kinga Preis) and her shitty son Mietek (Jakub Gierszał), for whom Silver undergoes a dramatic physical transformation (cue the trans reading of this already very queer film).
Despite the musical numbers and colourful costumes, this sure as hell ain’t Disney! (It’s Hans Christian Andersen)
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Episode 194 – The Lure (2015/2017) feat Jessica Scott
It’s time to reel in the catch of the day: Polish coming of age mermaid musical horror film The Lure (2015 or 2017).
Along for swim lessons is Jessica Scott, who helps to clarify that Silver’s storyline does *not* complicate the film’s feminist reading.
Plus: the clear trans allegory, our fave musical numbers (and how the film connects to Burlesque), ties to both Disney and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and why Mietek SUCKS.
Cross out The Lure!
Coming up on Wednesday: We’re celebrating the 35th anniversary of Clive Barker’s seminal queer classic, Hellraiser (1987).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 200 (!!!) hours of additional content! This month, we’re discussing Horror Sequences in Non-Horror Films, social media slashers Sissy and Exploited, the double prequel you didn’t know you needed in Orphan: First Kill and Ti West’s Pearl. Oh, and we’ve got an audio commentary on Wishmaster just in time for its 25th anniversary!
Maybe you haven’t thought about your good friend Sweeney Todd in a while, or maybe you have. The 2007 movie is a bit of a memory, though a fond one – it has a healthy 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, for what it’s worth. But 2023’s Broadway revival starring Josh Groban, who your mom thinks is “so talented” (she’s right!), was enough of a hit that its run was extended.
It appears we’re in a bit of a Sweeneyssaince.
For the uninitiated, Sweeney Todd is the story of a barber who kills his customers and disposes of the bodies by passing them off to pie shop owner Mrs. Lovett, who uses them as a special ingredient. But there’s more below the trap door.
Sweeney Todd isn’t just a late 70s musical that turned into a movie; it started as a penny dreadful called The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance (author unknown), told week-to-week in the 1840s. Penny dreadfuls were essentially fiction zines featuring serialized stories that were usually horror-based and cost a penny, leading to the very literal nickname.
The String of Pearls differs from the more well-known Sweeney Todd plot in that it follows the investigation of a missing persons case that leads to the reveal of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett’s arrangement, as opposed to the more modern iteration which treats audiences to the duo hatching their homicidal plan and then giving the worst haircuts ever. What a delightfully wild reveal that must have been if you were a reader in Victorian London after weeks of wondering what had become of the missing sailor carrying a string of pearls to deliver to a lovely girl.
Kristen and Will discuss the history and future of Sweeney Todd and works inspired by it this week on Guide to the Unknown. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to get a new episode every Friday.
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