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Scraping the barrel: Eight of the worst gay depictions in film
With the AfterElton.com Greatest Gay Movies Poll in full swing (if you haven't voted yet, please do so!), we thought we'd take a look at the flipside, the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst when it comes to gay depictions on film. Like the "best of" poll, these are not necessarily gay themed films meant for a gay audience, but rather there's something so egregious or offensive, or just plain wrong in them, that the film negatives deserve to be chopped up to be used as ukulele picks. These are films I saw once, and hope to never see again. These selections are mine, and mine alone, so if you disagree with them (and you will), please take it out on me and not anyone else at AfterElton.com. (Well, except Brian, cause that's funny.) Note - these films will be graded using the Cruising scale, with five being the worst.
The Choirboys Released in 1977, The Choirboys had an impeccable pedigree; It was adapted from Joseph Wambaugh's bestselling novel about street cops, and it was directed by Robert Aldrich, who gave us such classics as Kiss Me Deadly and What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Unfortunately, Wambaugh was so horrified by the result, he demanded his name be removed from the credits. I know how he feels. In fact, I wish I could have been around when the movie was being made, so I could invest in it, then demand that my name be taken off of it. The movie is about a bunch of drunken louts who harass people, beat up women, and eventually murder someone. Did I mention that these guys are cops, and supposed to be the heroes? It's a non-stop calvacade of racism, sexism, and homophobia. In one infamous scene, a cop is handcuffed to a tree in the middle of a cruising park, after his pants have been removed by his police pals. A grossly stereotypical predatory queen walks by carrying a purse, and walking a pink poodle, and proceeds to smack his lips and lisp his way through a conversation with the increasingly angry cop. If that's not bad enough, later in the film, one of the cops murders a gay park hustler, but in the film's "happy ending", the guy's cop buddies help him cover up the crime, and he gets away with it! So how bad is The Choirboys? Let me put it this way: the most sane, reasonable character in the film is played by ... James Woods. Cruising rating
The Rock One of the myriad of bad action films Nicolas Cage made immediately after winning the Oscar, 1996's The Rock would be just another forgettable "blow'd up real good" spectacle were it not for one scene that had my eyes roll completely out of their sockets, bounce down the steps, and hail a cab to Hollywood to smack the screenwriters. In this scene, Sean Connery is getting his hair cut by a flamboyant barber (played by...Anthony Clark?) when some bad guys interrupt with guns blazing, sending the barber into a hysterically screaming, hands waving fit. They find him a few minutes later, literally cowering in a corner, sobbing uncontrollably. So what's the point of including a scene like that? Easy, it gets laughs from the target audience, namely young, straight men. The producers know who their audience is, and they know exactly what to feed them. Cruising Rating
See more barrel scrapings after the break.
Copycat Released in 1995, Copycat was a serviceable enough thriller, and featured the fabulous Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, with the able support of Dermot Mulroney, and the cast against type Harry Connick, Jr.. Sigourney stars as an agoraphobic psychologist who has a gay assistant. I was initially pleased that the character was gay, especially because he was so likeable, and because the movie didn't make an issue out of it, it was just matter-of-fact. William McNamara plays a serial killer who starts mimicking other famous killers, like Ted Bundy. So far, so good...until it's revealed that one of the killers he's copying is Jeffrey Dahmer. As soon as I heard that, my heart sank. I knew what they were going to do, and I was right. The gay assistant is murdered by the killer. So, the only reason they made this character gay...is so he could be one of the victims. How utterly cynical and offensive. Cruising rating
Suddenly Last Summer From 1959, Suddenly Last Summer has sparked endless debate, with people who either love it or hate it. You'll have to put me in the second camp. It starred Elizabeth Taylor at the height of her beauty, Katherine Hepburn at her most stoic, and Montgomery Clift at his most enigmatic. The star of the movie, though, is the character of Sebastian, who is the gay cousin of the Liz Taylor character, and who is hard to describe...because we never see his face. Sebastian is presented as a predator (and a pedophile), and eventually he's killed by beach urchins (it's implied they cannibalize him, so the word "faceless" may truly be appropriate). I know that some people can see past the horrific depiction and appreciate the finer points (like Liz in that white bathing suit), but not even that can save it for me. Cruising rating
Partners The 1982 comedy Partners has been described as "Cruising as a sitcom". It's true that both films are about macho, straight cops going undercover in the gay community, but that's where the similarity ends. While Cruising featured offensive stereotypes of gay men as sado-masochistic and promiscuous, Partners featured offensive stereotypes of gay men as lisping, crying weaklings. See..totally different!
In this movie, Ryan O'Neal played a tough cop assigned to investigate a series of gay killings, and was forced to partner with the nervous, emotional gay cop played by John Hurt. You can probably guess what happens after that. The John Hurt cop will slowly start to fall in love with his homophobic partner, and we're treated to the expected sights, like gay men who wear a lot of pink, (and Ryan is given a pink Volkswagen to help him fit in), the older gay men are all lecherous, the gay apartment they hide out in is filled with doilies and antiques, and the outfits they have to wear include lots of headbands and short shorts. Cruising rating
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry/Wild Hogs Now, just for you, a good old fashioned double feature! The twin bill of the putrid pair I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and Wild Hogs, just to show how far we haven't come. I vowed I would never watch these two films, but when they came on cable, I was compelled to check them out (okay, actually, I was forced to watch Wild Hogs because when it came on, my butt was asleep, and I couldn't move to get the remote ... and I watched Chuck & Larry as penance for forcing my mom to watch 2 girls, 1 cup.) Enough has been written about the gay panic and "fag" jokes in both films that i'm sure it must have gotten back to the filmmakers, but I guess we'll see, because there are rumours that we may seeing this frightening prediction come true: "Coming Soon - Wild Hogs 2". Cruising rating
And i saved the absolute worst for last. My pick for the most homophobic movie ever made is ...
Irreversible Hey, I love pretentious art house flicks as much as any gay man, but I can also smell a big bag of B.S. from a mile away, and that's what 2002's Irreversible is. In this film, heterosexuality is representative of everything good and life-affirming (with softly lit, gauzy scenes of two straight lovers laughing and making love), while everything queer is dark and depraved and brutal and violent. The heroine is raped, in one of the most horrific scenes ever filmed in a quasi-mainstream film...by a gay man. The woman's husband tracks him down to a bar called "Club Rectum", and ends up killing an innocent gay men (in a scene that involves him beating the man's head with a fire extinguisher until there's nothing left). I've heard the movie called "poetic" and that it's not depraved, it's "about depravity". I've had discussions with people who say that I "just don't get it". No, believe me, I "get it". I just don't buy it. Cruising rating
So, am I off my rocker with any of these? What are your least favorites? let us know! Submitted by on Tue, 2008-08-12 11:48. |
"Tired of the dark ones, famished for the blondes."
Put me in the pro Suddenly Last Summer camo. And I do mean camp!
This is what happens when you force Tennessee to go to a shrink who insists that he drop Frank Merlo and deal with his "Mother issues.' As if the author of The Glass Menagerie wasn't dealing with his "Mother issues"!
Liz was so fetching in that bathing suit she almost got me to "change teams."
Despite your rating system based on CRUISING...
I for one thought CRUISING was a very good film. The very fact that you judge the "worst" gay depictions by this is a slam against a segment of the gay community. Shame on you AfterElton!
Despite what you thought of CRUISING, there is quite a large portion of the gay community that is into leather and some of the activity shown in this classic film. I have found over the years that most of the "nervous nellies" are the ones that did most of the bitching when this film was released. Granted the murders were gruesome, but overall leather is part of the gay community as is drag queens, dikes on bikes, etc.
My own personal opinion is that you could have based your rating on something other than this milestone in gay cinema. There have been far worse films that were detrimental to the gay community than CRUISING.
Couldn't agree with you more.
I have a feeling that those who have the strongest reactions against CRUISING have never actually seen the film but take what they've read and seen in THE CELLULOID CLOSET as fact.
I can see why a part of the gay community had a strong reaction against the film in 1980 - but watch the film as a double feature with the documentary GAY SEX IN THE 70s and you'll realize that you get what seems to be a very realistic depiction of the gay leather scene combined with a slightly above average thriller.
You can read scenes very differently - for example the infamous 'Floating balls'- interrogation scene. It highlights homophobia in the police force that no one can deny.
It's easy to hate on CRUISING, but before doing so go out and actually SEE it.
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The Gays Of Daytime
Actually, I have seen it.
And i didn't like it. But i didn't include it as one of the picks because it's been analyzed to death. There will always be a division when it comes to Cruising. One person's milestone is another person's "let's bury it and never speak of it again".
But my use of it as a rating is NOT A PERSONAL ATTACK on anyone, just a tool.
Seen it, hated it, and thought it was very offensive.
Leather = evil???
Jeez, Wolfi, if your point was to defend the leather community your train of thought seems to have been derailed. I have seen Cruising. I saw it when I was 15, two years before I saw and read The Celluloid Closet. If I had not been raised in a very accepting family, seeing that movie probably would have scared me back into the closet.
At first I thought you were saying do not judge the leather community based on their depiction in the movie Cruising, but you are instead saying the leather community is depicted accurately and we should not judge the movie Cruising because of it. If I based my opinion of the leather community on the “accurate” portrayal in Cruising, I would say we should lock them all up for being potential psychopaths. However, I maintain my original opinion that the leather community is made up of perfectly normal people who enjoy a certain side of sexuality, rather than bloodthirsty monsters just ready to kill.
Cruising is guilty of being homophobic, gratuitously violent, and, worst of all, poorly made.
I'm not judging.
Uhm, no - I was in fact defending the movie and not the leather scene. I think the leather scene can stand its own ground without help from someone who's not an active member (I'm not judging, it's simply not 'me').
The film does, by the way, not portray them all as psychopaths that should be locked up. In fact, only three people are very obviously psychopathic: The killer and the two COPS that molest the drag queen hustlers at the beginning of the film.
See, this is where different people see a film very differently.
If CRUISING was a film about STRAIGHT people into S/M and there was a killer going around - chances are 99% of us would not even know the film existed today.
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The Gays Of Daytime
Didn't Madonna make that movie?
Might you be referring to
Body of Evidence?
Didn't see it, but based on the description I've read, it sounds like it.
I didn't see Cruising until more than a decade after it was released, My only reason for seeing it was to find out just how bad it really was. Verdict: really really. What a waste of Pacino in leather. There are so many better possibilities.
Yes, Bill S., One thing I can't criticize the film about..
Wolfi--Psychopaths in Cruising
In spite of going down here...
...as the dumb f*g that kept defending CRUISING, I really wish that someone would find those alleged missing 40 minutes and we could finally see the film as it was originally intended.
Right now is that CRUISING sort of like METROPOLIS (and before anyone even suggests it, I'm not comparing the two films on a 'historically relevant' level here) doesn't make a whole lot of sense because a large part of the plot is simply missing...
All things considered, I think that CRUISING just became a way too easy target - films have been made before and since that were far more offensive - and far more successful at the box office, thus having far more 'impact'.
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The Gays Of Daytime
After listening to Friedkin's commentary on the Cruising DVD
I'm not sure that 40 additional minutes would have helped other than just making it that much more excrutiating. I don't think Friedkin really considered the real world impact of the movie--and I have to say the movie is less offensive than the book (in my opinion). But I think the movie fails at a conceptual level, Friedkin got all caught up in his own creativity.
Interestingly I really like Boys in the Band which is excoriated nearly as much as Cruising. But honestly, I think Cruising deserves it's reputation. I think that though it has some stunning visuals, it's just a mess.
I agree
When I interviewed Friedkin for our piece on the DVD release he said that the additional 40 minutes was just more club sex, which I can't imagine would help the fact that the movie is fundamentally flawed. If it were a straight-up whodunit, I think it could have been pulled off without being offensive. But all the Heart of Darkness nonsense where Pacino's character is driven by his very exposure to the S&M community to become a monster is just wrong. (And, as other commenters have pointed out, there's never any clue as to who the killer is, and they go out of their way to make it confusing in order to implicate EVERYONE associated with the scene.)
Even the lone gay guy with no connection to the scene (and is actually vocally opposed to it) is brutally slaughtered, and the only person who could have done it was Pacino (it sure wasn't James Remar, the dancing roommate). WTF?
And Friedkin has admitted to deliberately skewing the view of the leather scene to make it more terrifying (which it really isn't in the least, in real life) by changing the music to hard punk (when it was really disco) and making it much more in-your-face and aggressive. There was never any intention to accurately represent anyone, there was one sole purpose: to use gay sexuality as a horror element.
That said, from the viewpoint of today I find the movie absolutely hilarious just because it is so openly manipulative and so self-consciously nasty. But that doesn't change the fact that the filmmakers intended something far darker.
That said...
...maybe one thing we can agree on is that the soundtrack is actually very good, if you're into that kind of music.
:-)
Oh, and I've seen the film twice at the Castro in...uh... the Castro - once a really old print with the infamous 'Not a representation of homosexuality as a whole' (a very similar wording was actually used by SHOWTIME as a disclaimer before new episodes of QUEER AS FOLK, if I remember correctly) and once a new 35mm print made from the same master used for the DVD - and both times the mostly gay male audience was in on the joke....
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The Gays Of Daytime
I chose Cruising for the rating...
dannydc--have YOU seen Cruising?
How about the Jackal?
Jackal bothered me more
Jackal bothered me more than Copycat (it also sticks out to me more than the The Rock one). I rather enjoy serial killer thrillers and since the whole concept of the movie was to have a killer copy the crimes of the most famous serial killers it made sense to include Dahmer because he does happen to be one of the big names. Also, his death was used to emotionally get to SW's character and hardly a "cheer for death of the gay" situation.
What exactly are Jackal's and The Rock's reasons for including those characters other than for laughs or to use/abuse homophobic aggression within the audience?
Jackal--The Rock--Baby Boom
I kind of love "Suddenly Last Summer" too!
because it is soooo campy. You could watch it in a triple bill with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Polyester, and the histrionics would fit right in.
But THANKS for making the Choirboys the worst! Even Cruising did not play brutality for supposedly positive laughs. That movie literally sickened me. And, if I recall correctly, the sissy's pink poodle was named "faggot". X(
re: Copycat, there were a number of films which introduced homos just to be victims of serial killers in that decade, including The Jackal and Single White Female. The best thing in the must-read book The Celluloid Closet is the 'necrography' -- how the gay characters in movies all DIED.
edited to add: haha Psionycx, we posted at the same time -- the Jackal made you squirm too, eh?
Ugh! The Jackal
I forgot all about that one. And i remember Bruce Willis going on Jay Leno, and Jay was talking about how "brave" Bruce was to kiss another man on screen.
And then Bruce actually said "As brave as that was, it wasn't as brave as Ned Beatty in Deliverance"
Swishy gay guy killed
It seems like a plot device intended to make straight guys root for the villain for a moment. That's why the scene in The Jackal annoyed me so much, since of course the gay guy had to go down squealing like a girl just to show that gays can't even die like "real" men.
There was nothing really "brave" about this kiss either, since it's not like he was playing an actual gay character. The whole seduction was just a part of his character's assassination plot. But it does say something about our culture that there's nothing "brave" about commiting murders onscreen but kissing another man is something noteworthy.
The Jackal
Still worse
COPYCAT
I agree with your list, minus COPYCAT. It was clear that with the notoriety of the case, Dahmer would be one of the featured killers and whether we all like it or not, Dahmer was gay and preyed on gay men.
And if I remember correctly, Sigourney Weaver's character is devastated and visibly distraught by the loss of her best friend, who is portrayed in a rather positive way throughout, and comforted by Holly Hunter.
The line of logic that the character was 'made gay just so he could be killed' doesn't really apply in this case. What - the character killed in the Ted Bundy copycat killing was made female just so she could get killed? Uhm... see, yeah - logic doesn't fly either.
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The Gays Of Daytime
I see what you're saying, but...
True
And it was more obvious by the fact that Dahmer used to kill black and asian men, and the weaver's assistant was white. It was a character created to be killed.
But Irreversible is the most homophobic film that i see
At least two of Dahmer's known victims...
...were white - though it is true that generally his victims were Asian or African American.
It was a serial killer movie - of course there were characters created to be killed in it- by the modus operandi of a famous serial killer. That was the whole point of the film ;-).
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The Gays Of Daytime
Perhaps ironically...
Yes.
Jeremy Renner's performance in DAHMER is outstanding.
And while it is chilling, I like how it plays out more as a character study of Dahmer than going for the more obvious 'skull in a fridge' gore it could have become.
I remember when it was released, family members of the victims were not pleased, though - I guess because parts of the movie could be interpreted as actually being somewhat sympathetic towards Dahmer.
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The Gays Of Daytime
Go ahead and call me a "Nervous Nellie"
Is that the best (worst) you can come up with?
Hated Cruising. Always have. Always will. And here's why --
http://www.ehrensteinland.com/htmls/library/cruising.html
Hey David,
i agree with you wolfi
i agree with you wolfi copycat should not be in that list.
The gaycharacter in that movie was a very positive one and even though he did get killed i did not feel as that was his only fuction in that film.Bad people exist in any group so also LGBT.
As a fan of horror movies
As a fan of horror movies I'm rather used to the concept of "spot the dead guys/girls" where there is always a set of charcaters who are cannon fodder, as well as characters obviously only set up with the only purpose to die to freak out the main character or send them on a path of revenge (both best friends and girlfriend seem to be popular targets in trying to get the viewer to care about the danger or the main character's plight). So seeing a gay character among this group didn't ping me in particular.
I do understand the frustration ("Why couldn't there be two gay characters and only one gets killed"), but it still didn't strike me particularly highly homophobic, especially since there was a practical reason to have a gay victim (since Dahmer is one of the big name serial killers it makes sense to include him).
"Copycat" isn't nearly as bad as others you could've chosen
Future epitaph: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
I may be making excuses here, but in addition to what several folks have said about Weaver's reaction to her friend's death in "Copycat," it also makes (brutal, unpleasant) sense plotwise, in that Holly Hunter's partner, Dermot Mulroney, is also killed as well. Thus, both women lose men who are significant to them, and they have to team up together to get the killer.
As I recall, "The Fan," with Lauren Bacall and the gorgeous Michael Bien, is more homophobic and brutal than "Copycat." And don't forget "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2" (which some critics claim is about a closted gay teenager's fear of his sexuality, so every time he's near an attractive man, that's who dies), and of course "The Silence of the Lambs," in which the killer is so bizarre that, for me, he wasn't even really frightening. ("It puts the lotion on its skin..." Oh please.) And weren't there a pair of gay lovers as killers in one of the "Dirty Harry" movies? And Nick Nolte as a closeted psychopathic cop who brutally murders a pathetic transgendered woman in "Q & A"?
"Suddenly Last Summer" is whacked on so many levels, complaining about Sebastian is almost beside the point. Lord only knows how many demons Williams was exercising with that one. (He visited the cannibalism theme again in his story "The Black Masseuse.")
No eighties' "comedies" like "Revenge of the Nerds" or "Mannequin" etc.? At least "Chuck and Larry" has the class (!) to end with a gay weddding, which all the characters happily attend.
I can see why the complaint
I can see why the complaint about Copycat might be a good example of a category that is bothersome, but worst portrayal of all the movies out there? I believe Celloid Closet listed some of the most iconic anti-gay imagry, such as the drag queen killer who gets shot by the hero in a bathroom and gets shot again and gets up again and gets shot again over and over like a rombie monstrosity. Or the heroes hitchhiking and getting into a car, having it turn out that the driver is gay (he has a purse you know), so they kick him out of the door and steal his car.
And it call being presented in a way where we should cheer them on.
It's not to argue that those examples aren't bad, but rather that on a scale of badness I can think of much worse.
Those examples
FREDDY'S REVENGE
I just had to get on Wikipedia and found this:
Film commentators often remark on the film's perceived homoerotic theme. Some people have argued that a subtext exists about Jesse's repressed homosexuality, and they point out the encounter that he has with his gym teacher in a bisexual S&M leather bar, and his flight to a hunky male friend's house after an aborted attempt of making out at his ostensible girlfriend's pool party. [3][4] During the latter scene, Jesse, shirt unbuttoned, states that he's scared that "something is trying to get inside my body"; his shirtless friend replies, "Yeah, and she's female and waiting for you in the cabana, and you want to sleep with me." Director Jack Sholder claims that he never intended for there to be a gay subtext to the film, but has subsequently admitted that he does see it in the film, according to the "Nightmare Encyclopedia" included on the DVD box set. Mark Patton, the actor who portrays Jesse, is in fact gay.
The last sentence hit me, also because at the time of release I found Jesse/Mark quite cute - could it be that the actor's ACTUAL sexual orientation largely influenced what was going on onscreen?
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The Gays Of Daytime
Contributed, perhaps...
The Fan
You've mentioned one of my favorite movies of all time, so I have to chime in! As much as I adore The Fan for being the trashy, incoherent trainwreck that it is ("A Remarkable Woman!"), the scene where Biehn picks up the gay guy at the bar so that he can kill him and set him on fire to throw cops off his scent is pretty terrible.
But I think the ending of Looking for Mister Goodbar, where gay Tom Berenger brutally rapes and murders Diane Keaton in what is probably one of the most horrific climaxes I've ever seen, would definitely top it on my list.
The Fan
I love The Fan too--Lauren Bacall sort of belching out "Hearts Not Diamonds".
I agree with you about Looking For Mister Goodbar--I guess it's based on a true story but they made him more gay in the movie because they didn't show his background--in the book he was more "trade" and a complete psychopath.
Mister Goodbar
You are right about the end of that movie. The only scene in a movie that shook me up like that was the opening to "Jaws". But I didn't really think that the killer being gay registered that much with me.
Now "Freebie and the Bean" -- that is classic stink. During the summer of '74, as I recall, it played second bill at every drive-in in San Jose.
Worst gay movies
Wow Snicks... you aren't kidding when you said scraping the barrel. I have seen a lot of gay and gay-depicting films from around the world and you picked 8 of the absolutely worst, especially when one considers what the world was like (or how supposedly advanced the world claimed to be) when these films came out.
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To support good gay films, attend Gay Film Festivals
"The Detective"
Chuck & Larry
CHUCK & LARRY was such a trainwreck. Nevermind that Asians have far more reason to be outraged by it than us gays.
The funny thing is, by just cutting out ONE SINGLE SCENE (Danny Aykroyd's character saving Chuck and Larry from having to kiss), the film could have actually ALMOST worked...
I believe the makers and Sandler when they say they're intentions were good, but somehow should have stepped back and say 'Wait a minute, this is not right.'To this day, I'm wondering whether Richard Chamberlain and Lance Bass were TRICKED into being in it or actually thought this was a good idea...
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The Gays Of Daytime
What about Braveheart?
Great list Snicks. The only obvious homophobic movie that seems to be missing is Braveheart. That one is particularly bad because it drags on through much of the movie. The prince and his lover are depicted as weak, sniveling, scheming queens. The king takes every opportunity to insult his queer son. Then to top it all off, not only does the king kill his son's lover, but the prince is not even allowed to be angry or upset about his loss.
I remember people cheering when the king basically killed the fag. Then to have that movie win the Oscar for Best Picture was just