My first selection is Let's Scare Jessica to Death, a wonderful, freaky vampire film from 1971 with a strong undercurrent of themes about gender.  It contains a set of classic gothic elements: a creepy old house with a past, local legends about a bride who drowned on her wedding day, and suspicious locals who hate outsiders.  It is a vampire story that follows in the tradition of "The Yellow Wallpaper," which also uses traditional gothic elements in innovative, psychological ways with a feminist theme.  It also follows in the tradition of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting. 

Like "The Yellow Wallpaper," the story centers around a female protagonist, Jessica, who has recently been institutionalized.  Also like "The Yellow Wallpaper," the film takes place in a first-person narrative subjectivity.  The viewer hears Jessica's inner monologue, which frequently takes the form of schizophrenic-like, nightmarish voices.  The Robert Wise version of The Haunting also features an inner monologue from an unreliable female protagonist.  This creates the classic gothic scenario: is the protagonist encountering the supernatural, or simply losing her mind?

There are several things that make this an innovative horror film: almost all of the truly frightening scenes take place in broad daylight in an idyllic setting, the blending of realistic and hallucinatory imagery (which is greatly enhanced by the sound of the film), and the punctuated, shocking use of blood in the film.

I am really impressed with the performances in the film, especially the female leads: Jessica, played by Zohra Lampert with an amazing desperate nervousness, especially the scenes when she is attempting to appear like she is happy; and Emily, played by Mariclare Costello, who doubles as a contemporary woman and the vampire bride.  The use of Emily's character, which occupies both contemporary space and the supernatural, ghostly space beneath the waters of the cove, is another brilliant innovation of this film, also adding another layer to the blurring between schizophrenic hallucination and reality.  Costello portrays both poles of this character brilliantly.

The image above demonstrates some key themes from the film: the vampire bride, Emily, comes up from the waters of the cove to threaten Jessica's sanity and domestic tranquility.  I read the film as a reflection of societal anxieties about gender roles, which was as important in 1971 as it is today.  Clearly, Jessica is profoundly insecure about herself and her role in her marriage.  Emily, strangely represents both the new feminist ideology of the "hippies," and traditional patriarchy, represented by the wedding gown. 

Emily emerges from the depth of the cove, and deep water is a profound symbol of the unconscious mind, so in a way Emily represents the shadow-figure, or "double" of Jessica.  In that sense, Emily represents everything that is threatening to Jessica.  There is also a wonderful homoerotic moment on the dock when Emily is aggressively trying to seduce Jessica by putting on Jessica's sunscreen.  Jessica is unnerved and totally uncomfortable with this (another brilliant moment of her performance).

I also love the scars in the film.  I think what makes them so unnerving is how long they are and where they are located on the body.

The ending of the film is a shocking and fascinating continuation of these themes, but I'm not going to reveal them here.

Here's a great website dedicated to the film: click here.

Thanks to Best-Horror-Movies for the image!

There's me and Vince with our Stoker Awards for the Unspeakable Horror anthology!

I am so grateful to all of the writers who submitted their wonderful and scary stories to the anthology. 

Thanks Vince!  Thanks HWA!

Yesterday, I was on a GLBT horror panel, and it was a lot of fun to discuss the purpose and meaning of queer horror with Vince Liaguno, Hal Bodner, and Maria Alexander.  I was also on a panel about editing a horror anthology, which was a great experience too.  The panel was moderated by Ellen Datlow who is the ultimate anthology editor in my mind!  She was a great moderator.

Hanging out with Vince Liaguno is totally awesome.  He's the co-editor for the anthology, Unspeakable Horror, but this weekend is the first time I've ever met him in person.  I'm also hanging out with some of the contributors to the anthology like Michael Hacker, Reesa Brown, Maria Alexander, and Lisa Morton (who is also doing an excellent job as one of the organizers of the convention along with John Little).

I went to the reading for the horror poet Rain Graves, and I got a signed copy of her new book.  It was awesome to meet another horror poet. 

Last night, I was totally thrilled to meet Doug Jones from Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth at the Gory Ghoul Ball.  I am a huge fan of his amazing performances (especially the faun in Pan's Labyrinth), and he was very warm and delightful to talk to. 

There's lots more to say, but I'm off for another day at the convention.  Tonight is the Stoker Awards!

I am very honored to be nominated for this award, and I am very grateful to Vince and all of the amazing writers who contributed to the anthology.

I just ordered my new business cards to give out at the convention! They look awesome!

Vince and I will be signing the anthology at the Dark Delicacies kick-off signing on Thursday the 11th.

I will also be on a couple of panel discussions. I am very excited to be participating in these.  I think they will be very interesting. On Friday the 12th at 2 pm, I will be on the panel "Editing an Anthology" with Bill Breedlove, R. J. Cavender, Ellen Datlow, Stephen Jones, and Vince A. Liaguno. At 4 pm, I will be on the panel "GLBT in Horror" with Maria Alexander, Hal Bodner, and Vince A. Liaguno.

I hope to see you in Burbank.  Make sure to get one of my cool new business cards!

I sampled a bunch of online reviews, and most of those reviews include unforgiving (and sometimes savage) criticisms of weaknesses and problems with the film.  Merciless reviews are very common for works in the horror genre, and also common for works with queer themes. 

So I'm going to discuss a bunch of stuff that is really awesome about Gildark's Cthulhu.

First of all, Tori Spelling is fantastic.  She does a great job with a layered portrayal of a femme fatale seductress who simultaneously embodies societal pressures to be straight (also referred to as "compulsory heterosexuality").  This becomes sinister and fantastical when she drugs the protagonist Russ and actually steals his seed.

Russ is positioned as the prototypical gay adult with a small-town, conservative religious background.  In this film, that background is transmogrified into a horrific Cthulhu cult that is quite aggressive about stealing Russ back from his gay lifestyle; considering how many gay kids are treated by their churches, the aggression by this nightmarish cult is very fitting.  The fantastical cult represents how queer horror works: taking the anxiety, rejection, and pain of conflicting forces of religion and sexual orientation and translating the experience into a nightmarish representation in the context of a horror story.  In this case, the film inhabits the Lovecraft mythos to accomplish this.

I really appreciated the modernist sensibility of the film, which used flashbacks, dreams, and nightmarish sequences that unsettles a viewing audience that is more accustomed to linear narrative. 

The film really inspires me to learn more about the Lovecraft mythos.  It is my understanding that the film draws on a variety of tales, and I think the film provides an excellent entrance into a larger study of Lovecraft's fiction.  For someone who is totally uninitiated into Lovecraft, I'm sure the film would be confusing, especially due to the sophisticated narrative structure.  It reminded me of the way that Chris Carter constructed his alien conspiracy mythology in the X-Files (also in the Pacific Northest).  I'm actually excited to read more Lovecraft, and then revisit the film in an attempt to decode some of the disturbing images from the film like the creatures in the labyrinth underground and the image of the people emerging from the sea. 

I also wanted to say that I thought the individual performances were excellent (in a few scenes, the group dynamic didn't work).  The ending was incredibly disturbing and puzzling in a way that I appreciated.  One of the final scenes with the cult was really disturbing, reminiscent of the Satanists at the end of Rosemary's Baby.  I also appreciated the unconventional love story that involved a pastiche of melancholy flashbacks and tender scenes.  The romance was also fraught with conflict, which worked well with Russ's conflicted family life. 

My favorite part was Russ's surreal underground odyssey, which reminded me of the strong paranoid impulses of postmodernism.  This scene was given depth by the background of the Lovecraft mythos. 

Overall, Cthulhu is a very exciting event on the landscape of queer horror, especially because it interfaces with the esoteric weirdness of Lovecraft.  I really hope we see a lot more queer horror that attempts this level of complexity and narrative sophistication.

Night of the Zombie Skunks

I recently left the VP Prez project, so this is my penultimate issue in the series. The script for the May issue, "Rue Morgue High," was also written by me (and there is another issue in the production queue, but that one may or may not be solicited). Based on a recent press release from the publisher, it looks like the series is going to go down a darker path from here, targeting a more "adult," traditional gothic horror fanbase. 

The majority of my scripts for the series have featured odd crossover elements like animal characters and cyborgs (or animal cyborgs like Canus the dog).  In the second issue, the main characters are Neanderthals fighting werewolves.  The third issue, "Whistle to Open Worlds," featured a bizarre racial satire.  With the exception of the the third issue, my scripts have been targeted to a young adult audience, including a lot of adolescent characters. 

A reviewer described the first issue as "kooky" horror, and a review from Fangoria, although a positive review that really understood the fairy tale subtext of the story, emphasized that the story was more for adolescent readers than adult horror fans. 

So, "Night of the Zombie Skunks" is the most kooky issue yet with the most adolescent animal characters.  And it is also the gayest.  Most everything I write has gay subtext, but this story is really gay.

"Night of the Zombie Skunks" is an allegory about puberty and being a gay adolescent in Junior High, and the story is enacted by anthropomorphized, Bambi-like forest creatures. The protagonist is young Stevie the Skunk.

The central conflict is that Stevie wants to "stink" like the other boys at school.  I think that "stinking" in the story is clearly a metaphor for puberty (there's also a joke at the end about deodorant), and also a metaphor for fitting in with the straight kids.  A couple of bullies at school are terrorizing Stevie because he hasn't started to stink yet.  This is very important for adolescent skunks.  However, the bullying is more sinister because it is blatantly homophobic.  When I wrote the story, I definitely intended for Stevie to be a gay boy, and he even has a pin-up of a James Dean skunk in his locker.

After going to his parents for advice, Stevie is sitting in the windowsill, yearning to stink like the other boys at school, when a gigantic owl swoops down and kidnaps him.  The owl (kind of like Ursula in the Little Mermaid) grants wishes, and Stevie wishes for an unparalleled stink.

The next morning, in the shower, Stevie gets his wish, and his stink arrives.  However, his stink kills every skunk who smells it, and they become zombie skunks.  The zombified skunks all have an especially horrible skunk stink, which drives all of the other forest animals out into the open, which was the great owl's plan all along, so he and his buddies can have a gigantic feast.

OK, so the plot is a little weird, but let's get back to the allegory--Stevie's ultra-powerful stink represents his weirdness and his alien-ness.  His stink even kills his mother, which I think really represents how a lot of gay kids feel--that their weirdness is going to shame and disappoint their parents.

Now that I've decoded the super-gay meaning of "Night of the Zombie Skunks," I hope you will pick up a copy at your local comic book store.  Like I said above, it is really a beautiful, high quality comic, and it is my most gay comic book, which I am really proud of.

I am also writing lots of horror poetry, and I am really excited about the directions the poetry is taking me. 

A few weeks ago marked the third anniversary of Unspeakable Horror.  This morning, I was reflecting on the fact that it all started with a blog about gay themes in the horror genre.  A few months after that, I met Vince Liaguno through the website when he was promoting The Literary Six.  And now, three years later, I have this amazing collaboration with Vince Liaguno (founder of Dark Scribe Press), and we have an anthology of queer horror fiction that is nominated for a Stoker Award.  That is really awesome progress!

I took a little hiatus from blogging for the last month or so because I was super-busy with my new job and a series of personal dramas.  Fortunately, May looks to be a new month with great opportunities and beautiful weather here in my new home in Portland, Oregon.  Spring is gorgeous here.

I started watching Harper's Island on the CBS website last night.  I watched three back-to-back episodes.  I am totally hooked and I love it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LONG ISLAND, NY, April 1, 2009 - Dark Scribe Press announced today that it has acquired award-winning author Lee Thomas’ short story collection, IN THE CLOSET, UNDER THE BED. Slated for publication during the fourth quarter of 2009, the collection will bring together - for the first time anywhere - some of Thomas’ rich catalog of previously published shorts and new material written expressly for the collection.

IN THE CLOSET, UNDER THE BED was originally acquired in 2006 by Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press. In 2007, when The Haworth Press was sold, the Harrington Park imprint was not picked up in the deal and the imprint folded, leaving all of its scheduled projects without homes. Since then, the collection has been reworked to include newer stories, including the Bram Stoker Award-nominated “An Apiary of White Bees” which first appeared in the anthology INFERNO (Tor Books).

Thomas is the author of 2007’s THE DUST OF WONDERLAND (winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror) and STAINED (winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel). His other novels include PARISH DAMNED, DAMAGE, and a series of young adult books from HarperCollins penned as Thomas Pendleton and Dallas Reed.

Dark Scribe Press launched in 2007. In addition to its popular virtual publication, DARK SCRIBE MAGAZINE, the press published UNSPEAKABLE HORROR: FROM THE SHADOWS OF THE CLOSET in 2008 to widespread acclaim. The collection of GLBT horror originals is currently a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in an Anthology. In addition to the forthcoming Thomas collection, the company is readying BUTCHER KNIVES & BODY COUNTS, a collection of non-fiction essays on the formula, frights and fun of the slasher film.

“It’s a thrill to be working with Dark Scribe on this collection,” says Thomas, who worked with DSP on both the UNSPEAKABLE and BUTCHER KNIVES projects. “After seeing the tremendous amount of work they put into creating UNSPEAKABLE HORROR, I knew they weren’t a typical small press start up. The editors [on that project] took their time with every aspect of that anthology from reading submissions to marketing the finished product, and the results speak for themselves.”

Although Dark Scribe Press places strong emphasis on the integration of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters and themes into works bearing its insignia, Thomas says, “Dark Scribe understands that a queer element does not mean a book has to be shoved into a literary ghetto. I’ve always believed that literature should be inclusive, not exclusive, which is to say that regardless of a character’s sexual orientation, the story should be inviting to all readers. I’d like to think the stories in IN THE CLOSET, UNDER THE BED will appeal to anyone who loves dark literature as much as I do.”

DSP President and CEO Vince Liaguno is equally as thrilled to be partnering with Thomas. “Lee is an incredible talent, an eloquent and unique voice among the new crop of literary talents in dark fiction today. We’re honored that he’s selected Dark Scribe Press as home to this outstanding collection.”

For more about Lee Thomas, click here.