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.
I was late to the Radio Silence party. However, I do not let that stop me from being one of the loudest people at the function now. I randomly decided to see Ready or Not in theaters one afternoon in 2019 and walked out a better person for it. The movie introduced me to the work of a team that would become some of my favorite current filmmakers. It also confirmed that getting married is the worst thing one can do. That felt very validating as someone who doesn’t buy into the needing to be married to be complete narrative.
Ready or Not is about a fucked up family with a fucked up tradition. The unassuming Grace (Samara Weaving) thinks her new in-laws are a bit weird. However, she’s blinded by love on her wedding day. She would never suspect that her groom, Alex (Mark O’Brien), would lead her into a deadly wedding night. So, she heads downstairs to play a game with the family, not knowing that they will be hunting her this evening. This is one of the many ways I am different from Grace. I watch enough of the news to know the husband should be the prime suspect, and I have been around long enough to know men are the worst. I also have a commitment phobia, so the idea of walking down the aisle gives me anxiety.
Grace Under Fire
Ready or Not is a horror comedy set on a wealthy family’s estate that got overshadowed by Knives Out. I have gone on record multiple times saying it’s the better movie. Sadly, because it has fewer actors who are household names, people are not ready to have that conversation. However, I’m taking up space this month to talk about catharsis, so let me get back on track. One of the many ways this movie is better than the latter is because of that sweet catharsis awaiting us at the end.
This movie puts Grace through it and then some. Weaving easily makes her one of the easiest final girls to root for over a decade too. From finding out the man she loves has betrayed her, to having to fight off the in-laws trying to kill her, as she is suddenly forced to fight to survive her wedding night. No one can say that Grace doesn’t earn that cigarette at the end of the film. As she sits on the stairs covered in the blood of what was supposed to be her new family, she is a relatable icon. As the unseen cop asks what happened to her, she simply says, “In-laws.” It’s a quick laugh before the credits roll, and “Love Me Tender” by Stereo Jane makes us dance and giggle in our seats.
Ready or Not Proves That Maybe She’s Better Off Alone
It is also a moment in which Grace is one of many women who survives marriage. She comes out of the other side beaten but not broken. Grace finally put herself, and her needs first, and can breathe again in a way she hasn’t since saying I do. She fought kids, her parents-in-law, and even her husband to escape with her life. She refused to be a victim, and with that cigarette, she is finally free and safe. Grace is back to being single, and that’s clearly for the best.
This Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy script is funny on the surface, even before you start digging into the subtext. The fact that Ready or Not is a movie where the happy ending is a woman being left alone is not wasted on me, though. While Grace thought being married would make her happy, she now has physical and emotional wounds to remind her that it’s okay to be alone.
One of the things I love about this current era of Radio Silence films is that the women in these projects are not the perfect victims. Whether it’s Ready or Not, Abigail, or Scream (2022), or Scream VI, the girls are fighting. They want to live, they are smart and resourceful, and they know that no one is coming to help them. That’s why I get excited whenever I see Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s names appear next to a Guy Busick co-written script. Those three have cracked the code to give us women protagonists that are badasses, and often more dangerous than their would-be killers when push comes to shove.
Ready or Not Proves That Commitment is Scarier Than Death
So, watching Grace run around this creepy family’s estate in her wedding dress is a vision. It’s also very much the opposite of what we expect when we see a bride. Wedding days are supposed to be champagne, friends, family, and trying to buy into the societal notion that being married is what we’re supposed to aspire to as AFABs. They start programming us pretty early that we have to learn to cook to feed future husbands and children.
The traditions of being given away by our fathers, and taking our husbands’ last name, are outdated patriarchal nonsense. Let’s not even get started on how some guys still ask for a woman’s father’s permission to propose. These practices tell us that we are not real people so much as pawns men pass off to each other. These are things that cause me to hyperventilate a little when people try to talk to me about settling down.
Marriage Ain’t For Everybody
I have a lot of beef with marriage propaganda. That’s why Ready or Not speaks to me on a bunch of levels that I find surprising and fresh. Most movies would have forced Grace and Alex to make up at the end to continue selling the idea that heterosexual romance is always the answer. Even in horror, the concept that “love will save the day” is shoved at us (glares at The Conjuring Universe). So, it’s cool to see a movie that understands women can be enough on their own. We don’t need a man to complete us, and most of the time, men do lead to more problems. While I am no longer a part-time smoker, I find myself inhaling and exhaling as Grace takes that puff at the end of the film. As a woman who loves being alone, it’s awesome to be seen this way.
The Cigarette of Singledom
We don’t need movies to validate our life choices. However, it’s nice to be acknowledged every so often. If for no other reason than to break up the routine. I’m so tired of seeing movies that feel like a guy and a girl making it work, no matter the odds, is admirable. Sometimes people are better when they separate, and sometimes divorce saves lives. So, I salute Grace and her cathartic cigarette at the end of her bloody ordeal.
I cannot wait to see what single shenanigans she gets into in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. I personally hope she inherited that money from the dead in-laws who tried her. She deserves to live her best single girl life on a beach somewhere. Grace’s marriage was a short one, but she learned a lot. She survived it, came out the other side stronger, richer, and knowing that marriage isn’t for everybody.
I’ve come to the kind of grim conclusion that sooner or later we’re all going to succumb to horror franchise fatigue. Bear with me, this editorial is more stream of consciousness than most of the ones I’ve written for Horror Press. For those unaware, the forthcoming Camp Crystal Lake show spent a short period of time shooting at a beloved local North Jersey restaurant near me in August. This meant progress for the A24 project that has been radio silent for a while; it also meant no rippers while it was closed for filming, but who said Jason’s reign of terror would be without consequence?
When Horror Franchise Fatigue Becomes An Issue
My friends mentioned it on an idle afternoon, and I carried that conversation over to another friend later that week. It inevitably turned into what all conversations of long-lived franchises do. Talking about how far the series had come, how influential it was, and how it died. Or at least, died without a death certificate. Nothing will keep a studio from coming back to a franchise if that’s where the money is, barring legal troubles and copyright shenanigans.
Revisiting Friday the 13th: A Franchise Rewatch Gone Wrong
As I fondly thought about the Friday series, I was spurred to watch the films. I would watch it all, from start to finish, all twelve movies. Not for any particular article, though the planned process was similar. They’re fascinating films that were both helped and harmed by their immense financial success, so they were as good as any franchise to analyze the changes in. I would note the difference between directors, the shift in tone. How cultural consciousness changed the films as they went on. I would dissect them to see what was at the heart of these movies.
I got about 15 minutes into Part 4 before stopping my marathon.
Horror Franchise Fatigue and the Loss of Enjoyment
Now, this might sound strange. I liked The Final Chapter, I like pretty much all the Friday films (especially the worst ones). And I know that I enjoy them, not from some abstract nostalgia driven memories, but because I had seen several of them recently enough to know that. What it came down to was a very simple question of whether or not I was having fun watching them. The enjoyment was the point, but by the fifth day, I wasn’t feeling anything. I wanted to love the Friday the 13th films the same way I did when I previously watched them, but it just didn’t happen.
And I was confused, how a franchise I had enjoyed so much had just become so unmoving. It wasn’t the experience I had had before. But the truth was that experience couldn’t be restored, and that desire to bring it back was actively harming my enjoyment of the films.
Why Standalone Horror Experiences Still Matter
In contrast, I showed my favorite giallo film to some friends recently. Dario Argento’s Opera is a film I’ve seen plenty of times, and it was a big hit thanks to its Grand Guignol sensibilities and one-of-a-kind cinematography. As far as tales about an opera singer being forced to witness murders go, it got a warm reception. It was crass, it was odd, it was provocative.
And watching my friends’ reactions, from intrigue to disgust to enjoyment, was the exact kind of experience I was hoping for. It was a memorable experience that stuck with me as much as seeing the film for the first time did.
We Don’t Love Horror Franchises, We Love the Experience
It may sound ignorant, but largely, I feel we don’t love franchises. We love the experience. We love the feeling of seeing something come together over the course of hours, the novelty of characters growing and changing if it’s allowed by the scripts. The special emotion invoked when you spend so much time with a piece of media; it’s the same emotion that gets you hooked on a good TV show.
Now for some of you, this is splitting hairs. But I think the core of this is important to recognize: the franchise is just a vessel for the experiences the media provides. It’s shorthand for what you’ve felt and how you feel, a signifier rather than what’s really being signified. The Friday, and Nightmare, and Halloween “series”, as concepts are abstract enough to mean a million different things to a million different viewers, but at the end of the day they are all a collection of viewing experiences to someone.
Fan Culture, Shared Horror Memories, and Closure
Those experiences are the core of “fan culture”. We love how our experiences link with those of others, registering flashes of recognition at a turn of phrase or a reference to a scene. That nebulous tangling of thoughts and feelings with other people is at the essence of shared enjoyment. And if you’re lucky enough, we love to see the book close on a franchise. To see a film series end, having completed its journey is a reward of its own.
But unfortunately, we often don’t get the privilege of watching a series end gracefully or even end at all. The Halloween series and The Exorcist series with their latest entries are obvious examples, and they’ve put the two franchises at arm’s length for me. But they’re far from the only ones.
Scream, Legacy Characters, and the Cost of Overextension
I especially don’t think I can return to the Scream films for a good long while. Putting aside the absolute trash fire made by Spyglass Entertainment firing its lead, then rushing a 7th film so badly they lost the Radio Silence team, I had already tapped out the minute I had heard the film’s premise. If there ever was a horror protagonist who should have stayed retired, it was Sidney Prescott.
All respect to Neve Campbell for finally getting her paycheck, but I can’t think of something less appealing than Sidney coming back. I’ve always been a Scream 3 purist, so I firmly believe that she shouldn’t have been in any of the films after that. She had gotten her happy ending, and left horror as one of the greatest of all time.
But then dangling a legacy character of that significance over a shallow inflatable pool for a third time, and treating it as shark infested waters, just feels ridiculous. The trailer that dropped for it did very little to assuage the notion that it would be anything but predictable.
This isn’t to say I’ve written off Scream entirely, but familiarity in this case has bred some level of contempt. I can identify pretty clearly what I loved about the experience that the Scream franchise used to offer, and this is not it. It’s made me more or less sulky about what it has to offer now; that is, very little of the novelty and shock factor I loved it for.
Why It’s Okay to Walk Away From Horror Franchises You Love
All of these thoughts and encounters led to a series of questions I kept revolving through. Why do we play a game of loyalty to something so abstract as “the franchise”? Is the collection of experiences we attach to a series supposed to be an emotional wage we’re paid to stick around? Is that payment enough? Why should we keep watching a series if we’ve fallen out of love with what it has to offer?
I know as much as you do that the answer to that last question is “we shouldn’t”, and yet we still do. For those of us who have fallen into a similar pessimistic state about the franchises we enjoy, I guess this is all just a way of stating the obvious: it’s okay to leave a series behind. If it’s not fun or engaging or challenging, you can and should set it aside, at least temporarily. While I’m not a proponent of killing fond memories or condemning all nostalgia, that’s just the problem: I want to feel something more than I want to remember that feeling.
Choosing New Horror Over Nostalgia
The old experience of media we once loved can be nice, but there are more new experiences out there than we can have in a single lifetime. We have a near infinite amount to choose from. So, if we’re fortunate, one of them belongs to a series we love, and we can enjoy it once more. But for those of us who don’t have that luck, consider this a reminder that there is a lot more than these familiar faces to see. Next time you feel down about a series you miss or find yourself unable to continue watching, reach for something new. Something odd. Something you haven’t seen. It might just help.
Happy watching, horror fans.
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