Podcasts
Keeping Our Long Overdue Appointment With ‘The Wicker Man’ [Horror Queers Podcast]
“It is time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man…”
After celebrating March’s Friday the 13th with a look at Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part III (listen) and revisiting Radio Silence’s Ready or Not (listen), we’re going back in time to cover Robin Hardy‘s seminal folk horror classic The Wicker Man (1973)!
In The Wicker Man, devoutly Christian police officer Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) travels to to the island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl named Rowan. Upon his arrival, Howie takes note of the strange behavior of the islanders and is appalled to find that they have abandoned Christianity in favor of a form of Celtic paganism championed by the island’s leader Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). No one on the island seems to have ever heard of Rowan, but Howie is determined to find the girl before the community’s annual Harvest Festival, which is when Howie thinks the islanders might sacrifice the girl for the good of their crops.
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Episode 379: The Wicker Man (1973) feat. Sean Abley
Remove your clothes, jump through that fire and dance around the maypole because we’re finally discussing Robin Hardy’s 1973 folk horror classic The Wicker Man! Tagging in for the conversation is writer/director/producer Sean Abley, co-author of the recent book Queer Horror: A Film Guide!
Join us as we go all in on the three different versions of this stealth musical(!!!) and find ourselves in deep philosophical waters as we parse through its heady themes.
Plus: phallic symbols galore, jars of foreskin, a cross-dressing Christopher Lee (who has rarely been better), and debating the intent vs. impact when it comes to sacrificing a man for the good of the crops (it’s always for the crops, isn’t it?).
Cross out The Wicker Man!
Coming Up Next: We’re celebrating Easter with a look at the fan favorite franchise entry Critters 2: The Main Course (listen to our episode on the original Critters here).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 475 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Psycho Killer, The Bride!, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Scream 7, a new audio commentary on Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and our continuing coverage of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (2018) on the Requel tier.
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.