Editorials
How ‘Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker’ Redefines LGBT+ Representation
The commonality between horror fandom and the Queer community is well established. For years, the genre so often marginalized and maligned has drawn our community to its films like bears to a leather bar. LGBTQIA+ individuals find validation in a genre that so often depicts its heroes and villains as misunderstood, repressed, and cast to the side. And catharsis can be found in these films, which are never shy to acknowledge the harsh realities and dangers of the world around us. Cue Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker.
The Dissonance of Queer Horror Fandom
That being said, to enjoy the genre, Queer horror fans face significant dissonance in embracing these films. While finding great pleasure and connection in the genre, Queer fans simultaneously find themselves faced with many moments of casual cruelty and bigotry in a genre that also revels in an often toxic male gaze and slings homophobic slurs about with little thought to the collateral damage the viewing audience might experience.
Take Ronny Yu’s Freddy vs. Jason (2003) as an example. Most Queer horror fans will know the infamous scene in question. Kia (played with iconic early aughts flair by Kelly Rowland) confronts Krueger and draws his attention to her in a moment of heroic friendship to allow her friends to reach safety. She taunts him, asking, “What kind of a faggot runs around in a Christmas sweater.” A character who simultaneously embodies much of the strength, style, and charisma that many a Queer fan would embrace chooses to use our identity as a form of attack. Do we applaud her bravery? Do we cheer for her death to punish her casual homophobia? Can we do both? Such is the dilemma of the Queer horror fan.
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker: A Troubling First Glance
At first glance, William Asher’s film Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981) checks the boxes on all the trademarks of insensitive, bordering upon cruel, portrayals of the gay identity we might expect from film in the early 1980s. The gay couple featured in the film faces a tragic end. One partner, Phil, is brutally murdered and framed as a sexual predator. Of course, he is the first death in the film, a fate so often reserved for such tokenized cast members. His grieving partner, Tom, is forced out of his job at the local high school and also accused of sexual perversion.
One of the film’s main characters is Joe Carlson, a proudly homophobic police detective who drops frequent gay slurs and equates homosexuality with sexual predation. The main love interests in the film are our protagonist, Billy, and his girlfriend, Julia. They represent the quintessential heteronormative love story. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Innocent and in love. Everything society suggests we might wish for our youth.
As a gay viewer, it is challenging, but not surprising, to watch such content in film. However, ambivalence moves in both directions. A film that on its surface appears supportive can cause harm. And in the case of Asher’s film, could a story that at first glance appears so wantonly cruel to the community actually be the most affirming gay horror film you’ve never seen?
Deliberate Inclusion of Queer Themes
What is intriguing about Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker is that the Queer subplot could have easily been excised from the film with very little impact to the plot. A psychosexual horror film exploring the incestuous obsession of an aunt toward her young nephew and the murderous lengths she will go to to keep him in her life provides more than enough fodder to carry a feature-length film. The inclusion of Billy’s mentor and coach, Tom Landers, his secret relationship with partner Phil Brody, and Detective Carlson’s obsession with linking Billy to the murder as a way of covering up an imagined love triangle is, on first watch, jarring. Queer characters and plots were still very rare in 1981.
This was an interesting historical period of time that existed after the fight for freedom, represented by the Stonewall riots of 1969, and before the AIDS epidemic, which was just beginning to be reported in the summer months of 1981. Significant strides had been made to fight for basic human rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, but they were still very much marginalized and invisible, particularly in media representation.
Filmmakers’ Empathy for Marginalized Communities
The writer’s and director’s choice to include an explicitly gay subplot was clearly deliberate. And that makes more sense considering the background of the staff who brought this film to life. While no one involved in the creation of this film appears to have been openly Queer, their personal backgrounds make it clear how they could have empathized with, and been supporters of, such marginalized communities.
Co-writer Stephen Breimer was adopted and openly discussed his interest in using this film to explore the ambivalence that comes with not knowing one’s biological roots. And two of director William Asher’s most well-known works beyond this movie were the sitcoms I Love Lucy and Bewitched. Two properties that, while not explicitly Queer, have long enjoyed a deep connection to these communities who see themselves reflected in the strong women who defy the norms of society and the patriarchy. The filmmakers clearly held the Queer community in high esteem.
Found Family and Queer Intimacy
LGBTQIA+ audiences will also connect with the themes of found family and surrogate parental figures which are deeply present in this film. Particularly in Billy’s relationship with his basketball coach, Tom Landers. There is deep love and intimacy in their relationship, but it is never sexualized or suggested to be improper. In the film’s bloody climax, his coach is the first phone call Billy makes. Tearfully, he tells his coach: “I need your help.” Any parent will recognize the love and trust implicit in this phone call and Coach Landers’ immediate willingness to come to his aid.
Landers’ willingness to support Billy throughout the film is frequently reminiscent of the caregiving that a parent (biological, adoptive, or otherwise) would provide. He encourages Billy’s journey to seek a basketball scholarship. He resigns from his coaching job rather than drag his students, Billy included, further into the personal drama perpetuated by the homophobic police force. And in an act of painful personal sacrifice that only a parent could understand, he even provides evidence to the police in an effort to corroborate the story that his lover may have attempted to rape Aunt Cheryl.
There is clearly no truth to this story, but Coach Landers is willing to sit with the pain of tarnishing the name of his life partner and their relationship if it means a chance to help Billy escape this situation unscathed and go on to live his life fully.
Subverting Heteronormative Expectations
The comparison of Coach Landers’ support of Billy is juxtaposed frequently with the more heteronormative parental figures that surround him. His Aunt Cheryl most obviously. On paper, she should represent the loving mother figure that society suggests all young boys need. However, the film wastes no time demonstrating the darkness behind her “love” of Billy. The first scene they share depicts Billy as a three-year-old boy sobbing uncontrollably in her arms. And flashes forward fourteen years to show her waking him up for school. She uncomfortably purrs into his ears and draws her nails seductively along his back. She later drugs Billy. With milk of all beverages, the ultimate symbol of a mother’s love. At no point does the film suggest that this heteronormative family system is healthy or in Billy’s best interests.
The final frame of the film instead leaves him in the presence of his gay coach, a man who has been labeled as a deviant, predator, and sick man but who has shown himself to be anything but. A brief scene in which their neighbors are shown comforting them in the aftermath of the first murder also highlights the insufficiency of the heteronormative family in supporting Billy. “Maybe you should go with him,” his neighbor says to her husband when Billy steps outside to get some air and try to process the shocking murder that has occurred in his home. “No. I don’t think I better,” he responds. Choosing instead to sit in quiet discomfort as this young boy suffers.
Again, the heteronormative family fails to provide the care and compassion which Coach Landers is able to give so instinctively.
Detective Carlson’s Harmful Antagonism
Detective Joe Carlson is the other potential caregiver presented to Billy in this narrative. Similarly to Aunt Cheryl, not only does Detective Carlson fail to provide any support to Billy, but he actively causes harm to all those around him. This is highlighted in a scene where he stops by the family home to question Billy on the murder. Billy is playing basketball in the driveway, and Detective Carlson takes the ball and plays with him briefly, even offering some pointers on how to shoot a better free-throw.
But this scene is played with no sense of parental caring. Instead, Detective Carlson mocks Billy and weaponizes his coach’s homosexuality against him. Throughout the film, Detective Carlson uses gay slurs to refer to Billy, Tom Landers, and Phil Brody. While the language is uncomfortable, a Queer audience can always detect the intention behind the use of such language. In the aforementioned Freddy vs. Jason, Kia’s use of the word “faggot” feels cruel and unnecessary. And the filmmakers confuse the messaging further by positioning her as a hero in that moment. In Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, there is no ambivalence in how we are meant to view the use of such language from Detective Carlson and Aunt Cheryl.
They are the clear villains of the film, and their language is clearly used to tell the viewing audience how misguided they are in their understanding of what it means to be a gay man.
Redefining the Real Monster
In a particularly interesting element of this film, the creators chose to extend the ending beyond Billy’s victory over his murderous aunt. In a typical slasher film, the movie would have ended with her death, as Billy grapples with the trauma of having impaled her upon a fire poker in his fight for safety. But the film continues and brings Detective Carlson back onto the scene where it becomes clear that he, rather than Aunt Cheryl, is the film’s true monster.
It’s the homophobic detective who Billy must kill to end the story. And notably, he does so with the help of Coach Landers rather than his girlfriend, who only arrives on the scene after the villain’s death. This storytelling subversion tells viewers who the filmmakers see as the true antagonist of their story and who are the sympathetic heroes.
A Tender Portrayal of Queer Grief
The generous lens this film grants to its gay characters is evidenced no more clearly than in the scene in which Detective Carlson first confronts Coach Landers with his knowledge that he and Phil were lovers. He points out their matching rings and takes glee in pointing out Tom’s inability to openly express his grief or even receive his lover’s personal belongings without outing himself.
A lesser film would not have included such a scene at all or may have played it simply as a plot twist to shock the viewers. Asher instead directs the scene in such a way that the camera lingers upon Coach Landers, allowing the actor (Steve Eastin) to portray this man’s grief in a way that is understated but powerful and as loving as it is tragic.
A Multifaceted Queer Horror Classic
It is a small but powerful moment in a film that might otherwise be written off as a campy and forgettable eighties popcorn flick. And it is exactly this balance in the film which makes it an essential entry in the canon of Queer cinema. As is the beauty of many horror films, it can be enjoyed on multiple levels.
Choose to tune in for Aunt Cheryl’s scenery-chewing spiral into murderous rage, portrayed to perfection by Susan Tyrrell exuding “Baby Jane” energy in a way that only a Queer audience could fully appreciate. Or choose to peek beneath the surface and find a surprisingly poignant and intimate depiction of the challenges of existing as a gay man in a society that will not accept you.
And the power of found family in helping us all navigate the dangers of our world and coming out the other side stronger than before.
When I begin crafting my reviews, I do some quick background research on the film itself, but I avoid looking at what others have to say. The last thing I want is for my views to be swayed in any way by what others think or say about a film. It has been at least 13 years since I’ve seen the English-language shot-for-shot remake of Funny Games. And I didn’t remember much about it. After watching the original 1997 masterpiece just minutes ago, I quickly ran to my computer to start writing this. Whether or not I’m breaking new ground by saying this is up in the air, and I could even be very incorrect with this: Funny Games is the perfect foil to Scream, and the irreparable damage it has caused to the slasher subgenre.
The Family at the Center of this Film
Funny Games follows the upper-class family of Anna (Susanne Lothar), George (Ulrich Mühe), son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski), and dog Rolfi (Rolfi?), who arrive at their lake house for a few weeks of undisturbed peace. Soon after their arrival, they’re met by Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering), two white-clad yuppies who seem just a bit off. Who will survive and who will die in this game that is less funny than the title suggests?
I’ve made this statement about Scream time and time again. Before I get into it too much, let’s take a quick step back to ward off the Ryan C. Showers-like people. I love Scream (as well as 2, 5, and 6). It created a new wave of filmmakers and singlehandedly brought the slasher subgenre back from the dead like a Resident Evil zombie. Like what Tarantino did to independent crime thrillers of the 2000s and 10s, Scream has done to slashers. Post-Scream, slashers felt the need to be overtly meta and as twisty as possible, even at the film’s own demise. There is nothing wrong with a slasher film attempting to be smart. The problem arises when filmmakers who can’t pull it off think they can.
Is Funny Games Anti-Horror or Anti-Slasher?
The barebones rumblings I’ve heard about Funny Games over the years are that writer/director Michael Haneke calls it anti-horror. I would posit that Funny Games unknowingly found itself as more of an anti-slasher rather than an anti-horror. (Hell, it could be both!) Scream would release to acclaim just one year before Haneke’s incredible creation, so I can’t definitively say that Funny Games is a direct response to Scream, as much as I would like to.
Meta-ness has existed in cinema and art long before Scream came to be. Though if you had asked me when I was a freshman in high school, I would have told you Wes Craven created the idea of being meta. It just strikes me as a bit odd that two incredibly meta horror films would be released just one year apart and have such an impact on the genre. Whereas Scream uses its meta nature to make the audience do the Leonardo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… meme, Haneke uses it as a mirror for the audience.
Scream vs. Funny Games: A Clash of Meta Intentions
Scream doesn’t ask the audience to figure out which killer is behind the mask at which points; it just assumes that you will suspend your disbelief enough to accept it. Funny Games subverts this idea by showing you the perpetrators immediately and then forcing you to sit in the same room with them, faces uncovered, for nearly the film’s entire runtime. Scream was flashy and fun, Funny Games is long and uncomfortable. Haneke forces the audience to sit with the atrocities and exist within the trauma felt by the family as they’re brutally picked off one by one.
Funny Games utilizes fourth wall breaks to wink at the audience. Haneke is, more or less, trying to make the audience feel bad for what they’re watching. Each time Paul looks at the camera, it’s almost as if he’s saying, “You wanted this.” One of the most intriguing moments in the film is when Peter gets killed and Paul says, “Where is the remote?” before grabbing it, pressing rewind, and going back moments before Anna kills Peter. This is a direct middle finger to the audience. You think you’re getting a final girl in this nasty picture? Hell no. You asked for this, so you’re getting this.
A Contemptuous Look at Slasher Tropes
Both Funny Games are the only Haneke films I’ve seen, so I can’t speak much on his oeuvre. But Funny Games almost feels contemptful about horror, slashers in particular. The direct nature of the boys and their constant presence in each scene eliminates any potential plot holes. E.g., how did Jason Voorhees get from one side of the lake to a cabin a quarter of a mile away? You just have to believe! In horror, we’ve come to accept that when you’re watching a slasher film, you MUST accept what’s given to you. Haneke proves it can be done simply and effectively.
Whether you think it’s horror or not, Funny Games is one of the greatest horror films of all time. Before the elevated horror craze that exists to inflict misery on the viewers, Haneke had “been there, done that.” When [spoiler] dies, [spoiler] and [spoiler] sit in the living room in silence for nearly two minutes in a single uncut shot. Then, in the same uncut shot, [spoiler] starts keening for another two or three minutes. Nearly every slasher film moves on after a kill. Occasionally, we’ll get a funeral service or a memorial set up at the local high school for the slain teenagers. But there’s rarely an effective reflection on the loss of life in a slasher film. Funny Games tells you that you will reflect on death because you asked for death. You bought the ticket (rented the film), so you must reap what you sow.
Why Funny Games Remains One-of-a-Kind
This piece has been overly harsh on slasher films, and that was not the intention. Behind found footage, slasher films are probably my second favorite subgenre. As someone who has watched their fair share of them, it’s easy to see the pre-Scream and post-Scream shift. But there’s this weird disconnect where slasher films had transformed from commentary on life and loss to nothing more than flashy kills where a clown saws a woman from crotch to cranium, and then refuses to pay her fairly. Funny Games is an impressive meditation on horror and horror audiences. Even the title is a poke at the absurdity of slashers. If you haven’t seen Funny Games, I highly suggest checking it out because I can promise you, you’ve never seen a horror film like it. And we probably never will again.
As a horror fan, I tend to think about remakes a lot. Not why they are made, necessarily. That answer is pretty clear: money. But something closer to “if they have to be made, how can they be made well?” It’s rare to find a remake that is generally considered to be better than the original. However, there are plenty that have been deemed to be valuable in a different way. You can find these in basically all subgenres. Sci-fi, for instance (The Thing, The Blob). Zombies (Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead). Even slashers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, My Bloody Valentine). However, when it comes to haunted house remakes, only The Woman in Black truly stands out, and it is shockingly underrated. Even more intriguingly, it is demonstrably better than the original movie.
The Original Haunted House Movie Is Almost Always Better
Now please note, I’m specifically talking about movies with haunted houses, rather than ghost movies in general. We wouldn’t want to be bringing The Ring into this conversation. That’s not fair to anyone.
Plenty of haunted house movies are minted classics, and as such, the subgenre has gotten its fair share of remakes. These are, almost unilaterally, some of the most-panned movies in a format that attracts bad reviews like honey attracts flies.
You’ve got 2005’s The Amityville Horror (a CGI-heavy slog briefly buoyed by a shirtless, possessed Ryan Reynolds). That same year’s Dark Water (one of many inert remakes of Asian horror films to come from that era). 1999’s The House on Haunted Hill (a manic, incoherent effort that millennial nostalgia has perhaps been too kind to). That same year there was The Haunting (a manic, incoherent effort that didn’t even earn nostalgia in the first place). And 2015’s Poltergeist (Remember this movie? Don’t you wish you didn’t?). And while I could accept arguments about 2001’s THIR13EN Ghosts, it’s hard to compete with a William Castle classic.
The Problem with Haunted House Remakes
Generally, I think haunted house remakes fail so often because of remakes’ compulsive obsession with updating the material. They throw in state-of-the-art special effects, the hottest stars of the era, and big set piece action sequences. Like, did House on Haunted Hill need to open with that weird roller coaster scene? Of course it didn’t.
However, when it comes to haunted house movies, bigger does not always mean better. They tend to be at their best when they are about ordinary people experiencing heightened versions of normal domestic fears. Bumps in the night, unexplained shadows, and the like. Maybe even some glowing eyes or a floating child. That’s all fine and dandy. But once you have a giant stone lion decapitating Owen Wilson, things have perhaps gone a bit off the rails.
The One Big Exception is The Woman in Black
The one undeniable exception to the haunted house remake rule is 2012’s The Woman in Black. If we want to split hairs, it’s technically the second adaptation of the Susan Hill novel of the same name. But The Haunting was technically a Shirley Jackson re-adaptation, and that still counts as a remake, so this does too.
The novel follows a young solicitor being haunted when handling a client’s estate at the secluded Eel Marsh House. The property was first adapted into a 1989 TV movie starring Adrian Rawlings, and it was ripe for a remake. In spite of having at least one majorly eerie scene, the 1989 movie is in fact too simple and small-scale. It is too invested in the humdrum realities of country life to have much time to be scary. Plus, it boasts a small screen budget and a distinctly “British television” sense of production design. Eel Marsh basically looks like any old English house, with whitewashed walls and a bland exterior.
Therefore, the “bigger is better” mentality of horror remakes took The Woman in Black to the exact level it needed.
The Woman in Black 2012 Makes Some Great Choices
2012’s The Woman in Black deserves an enormous amount of credit for carrying the remake mantle superbly well. By following a more sedate original, it reaches the exact pitch it needs in order to craft a perfect haunted house story. Most appropriately, the design of Eel Marsh House and its environs are gloriously excessive. While they don’t stretch the bounds of reality into sheer impossibility, they completely turn the original movie on its head.
Eel Marsh is now, as it should be, a decaying, rambling pile where every corner might hide deadly secrets. It’d be scary even if there wasn’t a ghost inside it, if only because it might contain copious black mold. Then you add the marshy grounds choked in horror movie fog. And then there’s the winding, muddy road that gets lost in the tide and feels downright purgatorial. Finally, you have a proper damn setting for a haunted house movie that plumbs the wicked secrets of the wealthy.
Why The Woman in Black Remake Is an Underrated Horror Gem
While 2012’s The Woman in Black is certainly underrated as a remake, I think it is even more underrated as a haunted house movie. For one thing, it is one of the best examples of the pre-Conjuring jump-scare horror movie done right. And if you’ve read my work for any amount of time, you know how positively I feel about jump scares. The Woman in Black offers a delectable combo platter of shocks designed to keep you on your toes. For example, there are plenty of patient shots that wait for you to notice the creepy thing in the background. But there are also a number of short sharp shocks that remain tremendously effective.
That is not to say that the movie is perfect. They did slightly overstep with their “bigger is better” move to cast Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. It was a big swing making his first post-Potter role that of a single father with a four-year-old kid. It’s a bit much to have asked 2012 audiences to swallow, though it reads slightly better so many years later.
However, despite its flaws, The Woman in Black remake is demonstrably better than the original. In nearly every conceivable way. It’s pure Hammer Films confection, as opposed to a television drama without an ounce of oomph.
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