FanFare

This low-budget freak show/cult-classic/cultural institution concerns the misadventures of Brad Majors and Janet Weiss inside a strange mansion that they come across on a rainy night. After the wholesome pair's car breaks down in the woods, they seek refuge in a towering castle nearby. Greeting them at the door is a ghoulish butler named Riff Raff, who introduces them to a bacchanalian collection of partygoers dressed in outfits from some sort of interplanetary thrift shop.
posted by johnofjack on Sep 24, 2022 - 43 comments

This psychological slasher and queer cult classic from 1982 tells the story of orphaned teen Billy (Jimmy McNichol) who becomes caught up in the twisted mind of his increasingly unhinged Aunt Cheryl (Susan Tyrrell, really going for it). It's driven by a surprisingly upfront queer subplot involving a bigoted detective who suspects Billy is part of a gay love triangle that ended in murder, and features a positive portrayal of a gay high school basketball coach along with some campy, gorey thrills. (It also lingers an awful lot on Jimmy McNichol's topless chest and butt, and includes a young Bill Paxton as a homophobic teammate.) Available on Shudder. [more inside]
posted by mediareport on May 23, 2021 - 4 comments

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction “[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange.”―Roxane Gay “In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women’s memories and hunger and desire. I couldn’t put it down.”―Karen Russell In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and...
posted by CMcG on Dec 8, 2019 - 6 comments

Danielle Cain is a queer punk rock traveller, jaded from a decade on the road. Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious and sudden suicide, she ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa. All is not well in Freedom, however: things went awry after the town’s residents summoned a protector spirit to serve as their judge and executioner. Danielle shows up in time to witness the spirit—a blood-red, three-antlered deer—begin to turn on its summoners. Danielle and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town—or get out alive.
posted by dinty_moore on Jun 30, 2019 - 7 comments