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Movies in the 50s and 60s gave us a whole new stable of deeply troubled male delinquents, with gayness twisted up in all manner of loathsome (and self-loathing) personalities. At this time, homosexuality was thought of and “treated” in the real world as a psychiatric disorder. Arrested development, mother fixation, cross-dressing, transgenderism, sexual dread, sexual paranoia, voyeurism, etc., now rose to the surface as the new telltale traits for movie bad guys.

This era’s two uber-mamma’s boys were Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) and Victor Bruno as Edwin Flagg in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962). There is also Marlin Brando’s latent homosexual introversion in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). His character’s sexual repression and ultimate frustration of desire cause tragic consequences in the film’s murderous end.

Gay actor Sal Mineo set a new standard in suspect, off-color character behavior in films like Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965) and Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1971).

Rebel Without a Cause depicts for the first time on film a blatant homosexual desire, between James Dean (Jim Stark) and Sal Mineo (Plato). Dean, who was openly bisexual, encouraged Mineo to express homosexual feelings toward him during the filming in an attempt to add more depth and realism to the characters. There certainly was sexual chemistry between the two actors on screen, but it being the 1950s, naturally Plato must die! In the film’s finale, Plato's distraught housekeeper delivers his (and every homosexual’s) epitaph: "This poor baby got nobody. Just nobody."

Psycho’s introduction of the “raving psychopathic cross-dressing killer” into pop culture struck a resonant chord with the public. The film spawned all manner of similar “psychobabble” horror flicks, each featuring a sexual “sicko," like Rod Steiger's character in the black comedy No Way to Treat a Lady (1968).

Steiger plays Christopher Gill, whose troubled relationship with his own mother has transformed him into a demented killer of women. This master of disguise impersonates women and a gay hairdresser to carry out his fiendish murders.

Another unholy child of Psycho is Dressed to Kill (1980), the entertaining and outrageous farce on the whole “psycho” genre. It features Michael Caine as a mentally warped killer with serious mother issues of his own. The film’s psycho-baloney centers on a wannabe-transsexual who's compelled to slash up any attractive female who reminds him (Oh, horror!) that he's still very much a man.

Speaking of crazed, murderous cross-dressers, one can’t forget how much The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), with Tim Curry as iconic monster transvestite Frank N. Furter, owes to not only Psycho, but also the whole “Frankenstein” genre of gothic monster movies.

The most recent love-child of Norman Bates and Addison DeWitt might be the current misanthrope/monster du jour--Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal in the Silence of the Lambs film series. His intelligence is so high, his pathology so deep, his wine collection so fabulous, that he is beyond diagnosis. He always struck me as some sort of “pan-sexual" This gracious gentleman not only eats men alive, but he does so with superb presentation and excellent table manners.

Silence of the Lambs also featured serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine)--a transvestite who is so fascinated with women that he is constructing an outfit out of their skin.

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