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.
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
